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Offensive PKOs release
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Background .................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Offensive Operations .................................................................................................................................................. 4
Chapter VII ................................................................................................................................................................. 6
Mali Offensive ............................................................................................................................................................ 7
Peacekeepers Taking Sides ......................................................................................................................................... 8
Pro -- Offensive PKOs Good .......................................................................................................................................... 9
Offensive PKOs Stop Genocide ................................................................................................................................10
Force Negotiations.....................................................................................................................................................12
Necessary to Stop Rebels ..........................................................................................................................................15
Genocide/Failed States Impacts .................................................................................................................................16
Human Rights Impacts ..............................................................................................................................................21
A2: Offensive PKO Undermine Impartiality .............................................................................................................24
A2: Kritiks of Peacekeeping ......................................................................................................................................26
A2: Offensive Peacekeeping Fails .............................................................................................................................27
A2: No UN Authority for Offensive PKOs ...............................................................................................................28
No Turns are Unique .................................................................................................................................................29
Pro – Positive Peace Answers .......................................................................................................................................33
No Impact – Direct Violence OW’s ..........................................................................................................................34
A2: Structural Violence = Root Cause ......................................................................................................................35
A2: Structural Violence = Root Cause ......................................................................................................................37
Perm Solves – Generally ...........................................................................................................................................40
Perm Solves – Generally ...........................................................................................................................................42
Perm Solves – Exclusive Focus Bad .........................................................................................................................43
Perm Solves – Links ..................................................................................................................................................44
Perm Solves – A2: Co-optation .................................................................................................................................45
Perm Solves – Militarism ..........................................................................................................................................46
We’re a Prereq to the Alt ...........................................................................................................................................47
Pro – Imperialism Answers ...........................................................................................................................................48
Con -- Offensive Peacekeeping Bad ..............................................................................................................................54
Militarism/Colonialism..............................................................................................................................................55
Don’t Solve Violence ................................................................................................................................................56
Undermine Impartiality .............................................................................................................................................57
Impartiality Impact ....................................................................................................................................................59
Undermines Humanitarianism ...................................................................................................................................61
Nationalism ...............................................................................................................................................................62
Inconsistent With Peacekeeping Values ....................................................................................................................63
Undermines Support for Peacekeeping .....................................................................................................................64
Snowball ....................................................................................................................................................................66
Alternatives ...............................................................................................................................................................67
Bad to Support Congo Government ..........................................................................................................................69
A2: Offensive PKOs Necessary to Stop Rebel Groups .............................................................................................70
A2: Necessary to Defeat Rebels ................................................................................................................................71
Con – Militarized Approaches Fail............................................................................................................................72
Con – Solvency Answers ...........................................................................................................................................76
Con – Right to Protect (R2P) Bad .................................................................................................................................77
Right to Protect Bad Link ..........................................................................................................................................78
Right to Protect Undermines American Leadership ..................................................................................................79
R2P Bad: Sovereignty ...............................................................................................................................................87
A2: “R2P Expands Sovereignty” ...............................................................................................................................91
A2: “R2P Doesn’t kill Sovereignty - it’s Preventive” ..............................................................................................92
A2: “Safeguards Protect Sovereignty” ......................................................................................................................93
A2: “N/U – Sovereignty is Down Now” ...................................................................................................................94
Sovereignty Impact ....................................................................................................................................................96
R2O Increase War – Moral Hazard (Syria/Iran) ........................................................................................................97
R2P Increases War – Moral Hazard ..........................................................................................................................98
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Moral Hazard: Secessionism ...................................................................................................................................100
Secession: A2: Alternative Causality ......................................................................................................................101
Secession Spills Over ..............................................................................................................................................102
R2P Fails: A2 Good.................................................................................................................................................104
R2P Bad: Bias .........................................................................................................................................................110
R2P = Genocide (Sudan/Syria)................................................................................................................................113
R2p Bad: Drone Strikes ...........................................................................................................................................115
R2P = Imperialism ...................................................................................................................................................117
R2P = imperialism: Africa .......................................................................................................................................118
R2P =Imperialism – Kills International Law ...........................................................................................................121
R22 Hypocritical .....................................................................................................................................................125
R2P = White Supremacy .........................................................................................................................................127
R2P = Syria Intervention .........................................................................................................................................129
Ditching R2P Solves................................................................................................................................................130
Syria Crisis Impact: Middle East War .....................................................................................................................132
Right to Protect Causes War Escalation ..................................................................................................................134
Right to Protect Triggers Nuclear Proliferation .......................................................................................................139
Right to Protect Destroys US-Brazil Relations........................................................................................................142
Con – Positive Peace Kritik .........................................................................................................................................146
*** Links *** ..........................................................................................................................................................147
Link – War...............................................................................................................................................................148
Link – War...............................................................................................................................................................149
Link – War...............................................................................................................................................................150
Link – Hegemony ....................................................................................................................................................151
***Impacts*** ........................................................................................................................................................153
Impact – No Solvency – War ..................................................................................................................................154
Impact – No Solvency – Poverty .............................................................................................................................155
Impact – War ...........................................................................................................................................................156
Impact – War ...........................................................................................................................................................157
Impact – Structural Violence Outweighs .................................................................................................................158
Impact – Structural Violence Outweighs .................................................................................................................160
Impact – Sexism ......................................................................................................................................................161
Impact – Environment .............................................................................................................................................162
Impact – Environment .............................................................................................................................................163
Impact – Genocide ...................................................................................................................................................164
Impact – Morality OW’s Extinction ........................................................................................................................165
***Alternative*** ...................................................................................................................................................166
Alternative – Discourse ...........................................................................................................................................167
Alternative – Reject .................................................................................................................................................168
Alternative – Reject .................................................................................................................................................170
Alternative – Small Actions ....................................................................................................................................171
Alternative – Solves Politicians/Elites .....................................................................................................................172
A2: Positive Peace – Vagueness ..............................................................................................................................174
A2: Aff Alone Doesn’t Solve ..................................................................................................................................175
A2: Aff Alone Doesn’t Solve ..................................................................................................................................176
A2: Positive Peace = Violence/Revolt .....................................................................................................................177
A2: Positive Peace = Authoritarianism....................................................................................................................178
Positive Peace Good – Solves Root Cause (1/2) .....................................................................................................179
Positive Peace Good – Solves Militarism ................................................................................................................181
Con – Imperialism Bad ................................................................................................................................................182
Racism .....................................................................................................................................................................183
Ethics .......................................................................................................................................................................185
Indigenous Rights ....................................................................................................................................................186
Terrorism .................................................................................................................................................................188
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Background
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Offensive Operations
Courtney Brooks, March 28, 2013, Explainer: UN Move to Give Peacekeepers First
Ever Combat Mandate, http://www.rferl.org/content/un-peacekeepers-combatresolution/24941095.html DOA: 12-5-14
This resolution would grant peacekeepers their greatest authority to engage in
combat in the history of the United Nations. Peacekeepers currently cannot open
fire unless they are attacked. The newly empowered "intervention brigade" -part of the 20,000-troop mission in DRC -- would be authorized to "search and
destroy," as an anonymous diplomat told Reuters. The draft resolution
explicitly states that the force would be authorized on an "exceptional basis
and without creating a precedent or any prejudice to the agreed principles of
peacekeeping."
UN Peacekeeping Operations: New Trends (Concept Note) 2014,
https://www.pminewyork.org/pdf/Concept%20Note%20Russian.pdf
One of the milestones for UN peacekeeping along this path was the
adoption of UNSC Resolution 2098 in March 2013, which extended the
mandate of the UN Stabilization Mission in the DRC and established an
Intervention Brigade in its structure empowered to use preemptive
force and conduct targeted offensive operations. A short time later,
the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2100 establishing the
peacekeeping operation in Mali. The UN Security Council, taking into
consideration specific threats in that country, authorized MINUSMA to
use all necessary means to fulfill its mandate, including to deter
threats and take active steps to prevent the return of armed elements
to key population centers. One should also bear in mind earlier and
quite common mandates, which envisage the use of "all necessary
means/actions". In some cases peacekeepers used force at a larger
scale - UNOCI's posture under UNSC Resolution 1933 is a relevant
example.
Brett D. Schaefer, is the Jay Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs
in the Margaret Thatch, April 10, 2013, Center for Freedom, a division of the
Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The
Heritage Foundation and editor of ConUNdrum: The Limits of the United Nations
and the Search for Alternatives (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), U.S.
Should Oppose a Return to U.N. Peace Enforcement,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/04/us-should-oppose-return-to-unpeace-enforcement DOA: 12-6-14
Traditional peacekeeping, as acknowledged in Resolution 2098, involves several
basic principles, “including consent of the parties, impartiality, and non-use
of force, except in self-defence and defence of the mandate.” However, recent
Security Council action evidences enthusiasm for more aggressive missions that
harken back to the 1990s, authorizing missions in the gray area between
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traditional missions and peace enforcement.
MONUSCO. Resolution 2098 established an offensive U.N. combat force within the
authorized troop ceiling of 19,815 to neutralize and disarm armed groups in the
eastern DRC. The “intervention brigade” was deemed necessary after current
MONUSCO peacekeepers—already possessed of the most aggressive mandate among U.N.
missions—failed to fulfill their charge to prioritize “protection of civilians”
and instead retreated in the face of attacks by a rebel group late last year.
The DRC government has little authority over eastern Congo, which is infested
with armed groups with political and economic motives. This mandate removes
entirely the fig leaf of U.N. neutrality by establishing MONUSCO as an armed
participant in the conflict required to confront armed adversaries directly and
forcefully.
MINUSMA. Resolution 2100 instructs 12,600 peacekeepers to use “all necessary
means” to stabilize “key population centres and support for the reestablishment
of State authority throughout the country” and to protect “civilians and United
Nations personnel” in Mali.[5] The Malian government has minimal authority in
northern Mali, and there is no peace agreement between the provisional
government and rebel groups in northern Mali. Radical Islamists continue to
conduct terrorist attacks periodically. The U.N. has acknowledged the volatile
environment in Mali. The “use all necessary means” phrase in U.N. parlance
encompasses the use of force and, combined with instructions to reestablish
state authority and protect civilians in northern Mali, virtually assures that
peacekeepers will need to act aggressively to meet their mandate and will be a
target. Thankfully, the Security Council did not repeat the DRC error by
authorizing an offensive peacekeeping force as part of MINUSMA. Instead, the
resolution prudently authorizes the continued presence of an independent French
force to “use all necessary means…to intervene in support of elements of MINUSMA
when under imminent and serious threat.”
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Chapter VII
Most scholars say the UN has the authority to conduct these type of operations
under its Chapter VII mandate/authority.
Fiona Blyth, April 10, 2013, IPI Global Observatory, “Too Risk-Averse, UN Peacekeepers in the DRC Get New
Mandate and More Challenges,” Fiona Blyth is a former military intelligence officer with the British Army who is a
Research Assistant in the Africa program at the International Peace Institute,
http://theglobalobservatory.org/2013/04/too-risk-averse-un-peacekeepers-in-the-drc-get-new-mandate-and-morechallenges/ DOA: 12-5-14
Interpreted by some as the UN’s first authorization for the use of offensive force, UN Security Council Resolution 2098
passed on March 29 and called for the deployment of an “intervention brigade” to the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (DRC) that can use offensive combat operations to “neutralize and disarm” Congolese rebel groups, in particular
the M23 rebels responsible for taking over Goma in the eastern DRC last year. Despite the declaration by the UN that
this breaks new ground, the UN Stabilization Mission in the Congo (MONUSCO) is already authorized to conduct
offensive operations under its Chapter VII mandate, as are all other missions operating under Chapter VII. The Rules of
Engagement (ROE) in these missions authorize the use of force beyond self-defense. As MONUSCO, and its
predecessor MONUC, already have this authorization, the Security Council and DPKO should instead analyze how and
why the mission has failed on notable occasions to fulfill its priority of protecting civilians before prescribing the
solution in the form of an intervention brigade.
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Mali Offensive
Mali mission also offensive
Dr. Jeni Whalan, 2014, Partial Peace: The Politics of Taking Sides in UN
Peacekeeping, Paper prepared for International Studies Association Annual Convention, Toronto, 26-29,
https://www.academia.edu/6474185/Partial_Peace_The_Politics_of_Taking_Sides_in_UN_Peacekeeping DOA: 12-6-14 Lecturer in
International Security and Development BA (UNSW), M.Phil (Oxon), D.Phil (Oxon)
What’s in Blue, June 2014, Open Debate on New Trends in UN Peacekeeping,
http://www.whatsinblue.org/2014/06/open-debate-on-new-trends-in-unpeacekeeping.php
The enhanced focus on these issues was sparked largely by developments in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Mali. In quick succession, the
Council adopted resolutions in March and April 2013 to address unraveling
security situations in both these countries. Responding to the threat posed by
the March 23 Movement (M23)—a source of instability and massive displacement of
civilians in the DRC—the Council unanimously adopted resolution 2098 on 28 March
2013. The resolution established an intervention brigade based in Goma for an
initial period of one year that consisted of three infantry battalions and
auxiliary forces under the command of the UN Organization Stabilization Mission
in the DRC (MONUSCO). Its key task, renewed in resolution 2147, is to carry out
offensive operations to neutralise armed groups that threaten state authority
and civilian security. Less than a month later, on 25 April 2013, the Council
adopted resolution 2100, establishing the UN Multidimensional Integrated
Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) and authorising French troops to operate
parallel to MINUSMA. The mission is authorised to use all necessary measures to
stabilise “the key population centres, especially in the north of Mali and, in
this context, to deter threats and take active steps to prevent the return of
armed elements to those areas”
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Peacekeepers Taking Sides
Congo mission is unique because the peacekeepers are taking sides in the conflict
Dr. Jeni Whalan, 2014, Partial Peace: The Politics of Taking Sides in UN
Peacekeeping, Paper prepared for International Studies Association Annual Convention, Toronto, 26-29,
https://www.academia.edu/6474185/Partial_Peace_The_Politics_of_Taking_Sides_in_UN_Peacekeeping DOA: 12-6-14 Lecturer in
International Security and Development BA (UNSW), M.Phil (Oxon), D.Phil (Oxon)
In a number of its recent decisions, the UN Security Council has asked peacekeepers essentially to
take sides in conflict-affected societies, including by authorizing an intervention brigade to conduct
offensive operations in order to 'neutralize' rebel forces in the eastern Democratic Republic of
Congo. This particular decision is notable not so much for giving peacekeepers authority to use
force, which they have regularly received in the past, but because it makes them a party to the
conflict. In addition to raising potentially profound implications under international humanitarian
law, this decision also appears to transgress the long-standing principle of impartiality in UN
peacekeeping
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Pro -- Offensive PKOs Good
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Offensive PKOs Stop Genocide
Offensive peacekeeping necessary to protect civilians in the Congo from genocide. There
is a moral obligation to support offensive peacekeeping
The East African, October 11, 2014
UN force in Congo appears poised to strike FDLR rebels,
http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/UN-force-in-Congo-appears-poised DOA: 12-414
The United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Monusco)
appears to be on the verge of a military offensive to eliminate a Rwandan rebel
group based in the east of the country. Monusco Commander Lt-Gen Carlos Alberto
dos Santos Cruz told the UN Security Council last week that Congolese civilians
can be effectively protected only through "proactive" operations against armed
groups. He asserted that offensive action on the part of Monusco's combat
brigade is consistent with international law despite risks of "collateral
damage."
"I am absolutely convinced that the best way to protect civilians is being
proactive rather than reactive," Lt-Gen Santos Cruz declared. "Civilian
protection is far more than text in a mandate it is a moral duty."
Carrying
out genocide The FDLR, which is accused of slaughtering and raping civilians in
eastern DRC, consists largely of Hutu militia who fled Rwanda after carrying out
the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. The Brazilian general's October 9 remarks
followed an October 3 UN Security Council call for the "swift neutralisation" of
the FDLR, the French acronym for the Democratic Force for the Liberation of
Rwanda.
Noting that no progress has recently been made in the surrender and
demobilisation of FDLR fighters, the Security Council urged Monusco and the
Congolese armed forces to "undertake military action" against leaders and
members of the group who do not comply with UN demands. In a statement issued
three months prior to the UN deadline for FDLR disarmament, the Security Council
ruled out any political dialogue with the rebel group. READ: UN could attack
FDLR ahead of target date The Council said it was assessing FDLR's compliance
in concrete terms, including the number of fighters and leaders surrendering and
weapons handed over. Rwanda has been at the forefront of demands by some UN
member states that Monusco launch military action against the FDLR following an
offensive last year that eliminated another rebel group known as M23. READ:
Kigali wants military action to neutralise FDLR in Congo
That was the first
time in the UN's 70-year history that its military deployment had initiated
combat as part of a peacekeeping mandate. A 2013 UNSC resolution established a
3,000-member Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) within Monusco. The United States
has echoed Rwanda's insistence that the FDLR must be destroyed. Samantha Power,
the US ambassador to the UN, last week praised Lt-Gen Santos Cruz's proactive
approach.
Offensive PKOs designed to protect civilians
Courtney Brooks, September 6, 2013, Al Jazeera America, “UN Tests Combat Brigade
in Democratic Republic of Congo,”
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/5/un-tests-combat-
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brigadeindemocraticrepublicofcongo.html
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DOA: 12-6-14
The Aug. 28 offensive has been brewing since March, when the U.N Security Council authorized what it calls an
"intervention brigade" in the DRC. The 3,000-person unit is part of the more than 19,000 troops in DRC attempting to
fulfill the U.N.'s "stabilization mission," but it has a significantly different purpose. According to Al Jazeera
correspondent Malcolm Webb, the intervention brigade is better equipped than either the local rebel groups or the
Congolese military, with tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery and night vision goggles. The brigade is comprised
of three infantry battalions, one artillery unit and one special forces and reconnaissance company, and is authorized to
shoot first – unlike any peacekeeping mission before it. The brigade, which the Security Council stressed did not set a
"precedent" for peacekeeping in general, was authorized to use all necessary means to protect civilians and "neutralize
armed groups" – referring specifically to the March 23 Movement, or M23, a rebel force made up of Congolese army
deserters which has acted as a spoiler in the region since forming in 2009.
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Force Negotiations
Action in the DRC forced negotiations
Courtney Brooks, September 6, 2013, Al Jazeera America, “UN Tests Combat Brigade
in Democratic Republic of Congo,”
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/5/un-tests-combatbrigadeindemocraticrepublicofcongo.html DOA: 12-6-14
While the world's attention has been fixed on Syria over the past few weeks, the landscape of diplomacy quietly but
radically evolved amid the dense green hills of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). A flock of attack
helicopters descended there on Aug. 28, in a town north of Goma, in the eastern region of the beleaguered Central
African nation. The aircraft were filled with armed United Nations peacekeepers, along with Congolese military forces.
The first-ever U.N. peacekeeping force with an offensive combat mandate – tasked with "neutralizing" and disarming
rebel forces in one of the world's most intractable conflicts – was in action. Within two days, the peacekeepers and army
had forced rebel militias threatening Goma to withdraw from the front lines. On Thursday, a rebel group known as M23
agreed to resume peace talks with the Congolese government.
Rebels were committing human rights violations
Courtney Brooks, September 6, 2013, Al Jazeera America, “UN Tests Combat Brigade
in Democratic Republic of Congo,”
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/5/un-tests-combatbrigadeindemocraticrepublicofcongo.html DOA: 12-6-14
About 800,000 people have reportedly fled their homes in eastern DRC since the M23 captured Goma in November
2012. The U.N. Stabilization Mission in the DRC, known by its French initials, MONUSCO, was criticized for standing
by as the city was overrun. U.N. officials later said the troops lacked the authority to combat the rebel advance. M23
withdrew under international pressure after briefly holding the city. Since mid-July, de facto truces between the army
and rebels have been repeatedly broken as fighting erupted, with human rights atrocities accompanying the violence. In
July, Human Rights Watch reported that M23 rebels had summarily executed at least 44 people and raped at least 61
women and girls since March.
UN militarism has forced parties to return to the negotiating table
East African, April 26, 2014,
intervention missions
Partiality
dilemma: The new model of UN
Unlike typical peacekeepers, the brigade was not only sanctioned to engage in
combat but it was also equipped for war with tanks, night vision goggles,
artillery and armoured personnel carriers.
The new combat style has been praised for resolving longstanding security
stalemates and protecting civilians in conflicts. As Jeffrey Laurenti, a UN
expert at the Century Foundation argues, it was the frustration with Monusco's
failure to protect civilians and create a conducive environment for lasting
peace after being on the ground for nearly two decades that led to the
authorisation of the interventionist brigade by the Security Council. There is
every reason to rejoice at the success of new UN militarism. In its aftermath,
the UN combative mission has forced the M23 rebels to return to the negotiation
table and resume the previously stalled peace talks with the DRC government in
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Kampala. Predictably, within the UN corridors of power, interventionism is the
new norm. Speaking in Goma on September 2 2013, Mary Robinson, Special Envoy of
the UN to the Great Lakes Region, said, "The recent military engagement [in the
DRC] did not at all complicate it, it was necessary." In the same vein, the
United States ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, said the brigade was
invigorating both the Congolese National Army and the UN peacekeeping mission.
And the US special envoy to the Great Lakes Region, Russ Feingold, echoed
Powers' view, describing the brigade as "a stronger approach that can give
peacekeeping operations more strength in the future and help resolve knotty
problems."
Offensive peacekeeping in the Congo forcing the rebels to the table
Dr Robert Besseling, January 1, 2014, Besseling is a Senior Political Adviser to
the IHS Country Risk and Forecasting Sub-Saharan Africa team, Jane’s
Intelligence Review, Elusive riches - Continued threats to the DRC's minerals
trade
The Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) government is likely to sign a
conclusive peace agreement with the defeated M23 rebel group before the end of
2014. Rwandan and Ugandan pressure on the M23 to disarm, as well as a stronger,
United Nations-backed DRC military, will deter the M23 from launching a fresh
insurgency. Despite the demise of the M23, the group's former combatants are
likely to join new or existing rebel groups in 2014, posing increased risks to
the region's valuable extractive sector. Rwanda's motivations for seeking an
end to the M23's insurgency in eastern DRC lie in economics. Specifically,
President Paul Kagame and senior members of the RDF are seeking the removal of
restrictions on foreign budgetary support imposed by several states including
the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, which were introduced in 2011 following
UN accusations of Rwandan support for the M23. Moreover, Rwanda is likely to
seek a renewed FARDC offensive against the ethnic Hutu armed group, the
Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (Forces démocratiques de
libération du Rwanda: FDLR), which threatens Rwandan security.
Offensive operations forced the rebels into peace talks
Sudarsan Raghavan, November 2, 2013, Washington Post, Raghavan has been The
Post's Kabul bureau chief since 2014. He was previously based in Nairobi and
Baghdad for the Post, In Volatile Congo, A New UN Force with Teeth,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/in-volatile-congo-a-new-un-forcewith-teeth/2013/11/01/0cda650c-423f-11e3-b028-de922d7a3f47_story.html DOA: 12-514
The capture of Goma prompted the U.N. Security Council to approve the
intervention brigade this year, giving it a mandate to “neutralize” all of
Congo’s militias. The force, made up of troops from South Africa, Malawi and
Tanzania, became operational this summer. In late August, the brigade went into
action for the first time, backing Congolese government forces by firing
artillery shells at M23 rebel positions a few miles north of Goma in the town of
Kibati. The fighting drove the rebels back a few miles, preventing them from
shelling Goma and convincing them to enter peace talks in the Ugandan capital,
Kampala, in September.
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Offensive operations forced rebels to the table
Daniel Donovan, April 11, 2013, Foreign Policy Association, “UN Offensive
Operation in DRC a long time coming,”
http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2013/04/11/un-offensive-operation-in-drc-a-longtime-coming/
The second and maybe most important facet this new force brings to the table is the
threat of interference against the M23. While talks between the DRC government and
M23 began in December, they stalled as of mid-February as divisions within the rebel
ranks forced them to abandon the negotiation table until they could once again unify.
Now talks have again resumed. The rebels have taken steps to give the impression
that they would not back down from a UN force, such as labelling this move an act of
war, as well as spreading anti-U.N. propaganda to the populace. The bottom line
remains that this organized brigade represents a threat to the rebel position, and one
that cannot be ignored. This may force the hand of M23 leadership to consent to a
peace deal before facing the possibility of fighting enemies on multiple fronts. If this
move brings about a peace deal, then it will have already been successful.
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Necessary to Stop Rebels
Sustained offensive peacekeeping critical to fend off the rebels
Dr Robert Besseling, January 1, 2014, Besseling is a Senior Political Adviser to
the IHS Country Risk and Forecasting Sub-Saharan Africa team, Jane’s
Intelligence Review, Elusive riches - Continued threats to the DRC's minerals
trade
A stronger FARDC enjoying continued support from the FIB is likely to be a key
deterrent against a renewed M23 insurgency from across the Ugandan border.
MONUSCO is the UN's largest mission, with 21,485 uniformed personnel. On 3
December, it also became the first UN mission to deploy unmanned aerial vehicles
(UAVs) to engage in surveillance of the DRC-Rwanda frontier to deter crossborder raids. It is therefore unlikely that a fresh M23 insurgency will erupt in
eastern DRC over at least the coming year. With the demise of the M23, other
armed groups are likely to recruit the group's former combatants and secure new
agreements with arms and mineral smugglers to finance their operations. Mining
and energy operations are therefore likely to face an ensuing risk of extortion
and theft. Fighting between rival armed groups and the FARDC/FIB is also likely
to raise collateral risks to mining operations. Potential fighting between
former M23 combatants and other rebel groups and militia forces will also
increase these risks. Although the primary targets for any cross-border raids
over the coming months are likely to be FARDC and FIB forces, rebels are also
likely to stage attacks on mining assets in the region to secure new revenue
flows. However, the most significant risk of widespread disruption in the region
would come from a potential Rwandan (and possibly Ugandan) military incursion
against ethnic Hutu groups such as the FDLR, which will become likely if the
FARDC and FIB fail to move against the FDLR.
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Genocide/Failed States Impacts
Genocide happens more frequently and is more destructive than traditional warfare
Gutman,
Journalist and Staff Writer, December 25th, 1999 [Roy, “Wars Without
End,” Newsday, www.newsday.com]
That it could happen in Rwanda underscores a terrifying trend that began with
the end of the Cold War and is likely to persist for decades - that civilians
have become the principal targets in conflicts throughout the world. Today, as
the world puts behind it the bloodiest century in human history, a staggering 90
civilians die for every 10 combatants. In World War I, the opposite was true.
While policy-makers remain vigilant about traditional conflicts between states that could erupt
between India and Pakistan, China and Taiwan, or the two Koreas, for example, the growing focus is
on the internal conflicts in states that fail and collapse. The 21st Century dawns with the
grim reality that the greatest human toll will likely continue to be the
innocents in places such as Burundi, Indonesia, Sierra Leone, Congo and Angola.
Genocide and massive crimes against humanity have become the biggest threat to
peace and stability. "If you look at the death toll in international war versus
that in internal ethnic conflict, the vast preponderance of deaths is from the
latter category," said one senior U.S. official familiar with the intelligence data on conflicts
worldwide. What's more, conventional attempts like diplomacy to head off conflicts
often don't work in these cases, because they may distract attention from the
real aim of those who go to war-to conduct a mass pogrom against their racial,
tribal or ethnic opponents.
This not only causes hundreds of thousands of deaths, but it also prevents societies from
rebuilding themselves after conflicts
Newman,
Academic Associate in the Peace and Governance Programme at the UN
University, 2002 [Recovering from Civil Conflict, ed. Newman & Schnabel, p. 910]
Many recent domestic conflicts are the direct result of the collapse of the Soviet system. In Eastern
and Southeastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the political and economic transitions
experienced by most countries left many or most of them weak and vulnerable to internal and external
political and economic pressures. As previous elites began to compete for power with newly emerging
elites, many of these countries struggled through their first-ever experience with democracy and free
political and economic competition. In addition, many of them were created after the Second World War
and during the Soviet reign, their demographic make-up was reshuffled by forced population movements.
After 1991, populations throughout the post-communist camp experienced a dramatic drop in wealth,
personal security and living standards. A combination of economic collapse, political
vacuum and demands for political strongmen caused the eruption of internal
conflict and war. The former Yugoslavia, the Southern Caucasus and Central Asi a , have suffered
most from this developlement.
In the meanwhile, internal conflicts, often with
significant involvement from neigbouring states, have continued to rage in
Africa, Asia and Latin America. From Somalia to Rwanda, from Cambodia to East
Timor, and from El Salvador to Haiti, internal conflicts have continued to
destabilize their regions, causing immense human suffering. The most atrocious
conflicts take place in Africa. Many African conflicts are rooted in governments' lack of respect for
the rights of individuals, corruption, lack of efficient administration, poor infrastructure and
weak national coherence - ills that are in turn rooted largely in the colonial legacy of randomly
drawn borders, destruction of traditional communities and their governing and conflict management
mechanisms, and economic exploitation. Democracy and political stability are still distant goals
in many African countries. The combination of weak states and the struggle by elites for natural
resources and wealth, the culture of looting, as is particularly obvious in the case of
diamond mines in Angola, Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone, has resulted in a dangerous structural
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environment that fuels conflict. The patterns of conflict are often very similar: military
hostilities between rebel groups and the incumbent government. Characteristic is the use of force to
settle disputes and the fact that most conflicts in Africa take the form of ‘irregular warfare’ in
which for strategic reasons civilians - instead of professional soldiers - are targeted. Finally,
almost all conflicts in Africa have been commercialized. Huge amounts of arms have
been-used to destabilize the continent. While most conflicts are fought for access and
control over resources in the absence of responsible governments, many conflicts have a decisive
external dimension - neighbouring countries that support either government or rebel groups. At least
in theory these conflicts could be resolved or prevented rather easily - certainly easier than supposed
primordial and ethnic intergroup conflicts. It is usually quite apparent what caused the conflict,
and who the responsible parties are. The OAU and other subregional organizations are trying to
prevent and manage conflicts, but they can do little without the necessary resources and lack of
interest in regional cooperation among member states, who are either part of the conflict or do
not care about its resolution. The North's indifference to inequality, injustice, humanitarian
plight and war-lordism in many African countries, along with poorly designed development strategies
over many decades, have done little to prevent violence on the African continent.' Internal,
often intergroup conflicts carry a high price tag - for the populations involved
in violence and for those willing to offer assistance in settling and resolving
it. The example of Mozambique's 16-year civil war is illustrative of the tremendous
costs of conflict: 490,000 children died from war-related causes; 200,000 children were
orphaned or abandoned by adults; at least 10,000 children served as soldiers during the
conflict; over 40 per cent of schools were destroyed or forced to close; over 40
percent of health centres were destroyed; economic losses totalled US$15
billion, equal to four times the country's 1988 GDP; and damage to industry was
so heavy that postwar production equalled only 20-40 per cent of pre-war
capacity. Intergroup conflicts affect the whole of society, irrespective of age,
occupation and gender. Targeting civilians has become a deliberate strategy of
warfare, with the result that an estimated 90 per cent of the casualties of
today's civil wars are civilians, mostly women and children. T h is high rate of
civilian casualties characterizes more than anything else today's internal wars,
contributing to the deep sense of hatred and hostility that make it a difficult
task to rebuild war-torn societies once a settlement has eventually been reached.
And, every time we fail to stop a genocide, it emboldens would-be genocidaires to carry
out more genocides, causing a vicious cycle of atrocities
Ronyane,
Professor at the University of Virginia and the Federal Executive
Institute, 2001 [Peter, Never Again? The United States and the Prevention and
Punishment of Genocide Since the Holocaust, p.207-208]
Nonintervention also sends messages to other would-be genocidaires that they can
pursue their atrocious agendas with impunity. Roger Winter, head of the State
Department's Office of Refugee Resettlement during the Carter and Reagan administrations and
head of the nonprofit U.S. Committee for Refugees, expressed his fear that at the end of the
twentieth century "we actually have a greater possibility of genocide and ethnic
cleansing than we did five or six years ago because all these despots feel they can
get away with it." Such a message, however unintentional, sets a terrible
precedent and ignores the moral interdependence of nations that mirrors growing
economic interdependence.
Genocide goes beyond physical death to destroy the very fabric of social existence that
makes life worth living and death bearable—social death outweighs
Card, Emma Goldman Professor
2003 [Claudia, “Genocide and
muse]
of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin,
Social Death,” Hypatia 18.1 (2003) 63-79, project
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Genocide is not simply unjust (although it certainly is unjust); it is also evil. It
characteristically includes the one-sided killing of defenseless civilians—
babies, children, the elderly, the sick, the disabled, and the injured of both
genders along with their usually female caretakers—simply on the basis of their national,
religious, ethnic, or other political identity. It targets people on the basis of who they are
rather than on the basis of what they have done, what they might do, even what they are capable of
doing. (One commentator says genocide kills people on the basis of what they are, not even who they
are). [End Page 72]
Genocide is a paradigm of what Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit
(1996) calls "indecent" in that it not only destroys victims but first humiliates
them by deliberately inflicting an "utter loss of freedom and control over one's
vital interests" (115). Vital interests can be transgenerational and thus survive
one's death. Before death, genocide victims are ordinarily deprived of control over vital
transgenerational interests and more immediate vital interests. They may be literally
stripped naked, robbed of their last possessions, lied to about the most vital
matters, witness to the murder of family, friends, and neighbors, made to
participate in their own murder, and if female, they are likely to be also
violated sexually. 7 Victims of genocide are commonly killed with no regard for
lingering suffering or exposure. They, and their corpses, are routinely treated
with utter disrespect. These historical facts, not simply mass murder, account
for much of the moral opprobrium attaching to the concept of genocide. Yet such
atrocities, it may be argued, are already war crimes, if conducted during wartime, and they can
otherwise or also be prosecuted as crimes against humanity. Why, then, add the specific crime of
genocide? What, if anything, is not already captured by laws that prohibit such things as the rape,
enslavement, torture, forced deportation, and the degradation of individuals? Is any ethically
distinct harm done to members of the targeted group that would not have been done had they been
targeted simply as individuals rather than because of their group membership? This is the question
that I find central in arguing that genocide is not simply reducible to mass death, to any of the
other war crimes, or to the crimes against humanity just enumerated. I believe the answer is
affirmative: the harm is ethically distinct, although on the question of whether it is worse, I wish
only to question the assumption that it is not.
Specific to genocide is the harm
inflicted on its victims' social vitality. It is not just that one's group membership is
the occasion for harms that are definable independently of one's identity as a member of the group.
When a group with its own cultural identity is destroyed, its survivors lose
their cultural heritage and may even lose their intergenerational connections.
To use Orlando Patterson's terminology, in that event, they may become "socially dead"
and their descendants "natally alienated," no longer able to pass along and
build upon the traditions, cultural developments (including languages), and
projects of earlier generations (1982, 5-9). The harm of social death is not
necessarily less extreme than that of physical death. Social death can even
aggravate physical death by making it indecent, removing all respectful and
caring ritual, social connections, and social contexts that are capable of
making dying bearable and even of making one's death meaningful. In my view, the
special evil of genocide lies in its infliction of not just physical death (when
it does that) but social death, producing a consequent meaninglessness of one's
life and even of its termination. This view, however, is controversial. Stopping genocide
is an absolute imperative—there is no reason we can justify inaction O’Donnell, Staff Writer,
2003 [Michael J, “Genocide, the United Nations, and the Death of Absolute Rights.” Spring, 23 B.C.
Third World L.J. 399, l/n] Genocide is the most heinous crime that can be committed
against a human population. 39 In the famous words of the UN General Assembly, genocide
"shocks the conscience of mankind." 40 A mandate for its prevention and punishment has been
enshrined in a widely-ratified multilateral treaty. 41 Genocide's status as a jus cogen, or
customary norm of international law from which no derogation is permitted under any
circumstances, is broadly accepted. 42 Commentators have suggested that any list of
absolute rights should be short and relatively abstract. 43 It nearly goes without
saying that the right
any such list. 44 Given
wrong, genocide stands
wrong, magnifying its
of a people to be free from wholesale slaughter would top
the near-universal consensus that the taking of innocent life is a moral
alone as a wrong [*407] that actually multiplies a
infamy. 45 The essence of genocide's power is that it denies the very
right to exist to entire groups of people based solely upon their identity, making it at once
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selective in practice and universal in scope.
Genocide has killed more people in the twentieth century than all wars combined
Heidenrich,
Director of the Project on Genocide Prevention at the Institute
for Defense & Disarmament Studies, 2001 [John G., How to Prevent Genocide: A
Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen, p. 7-8]
No one knows how many people in total died from genocide in the twentieth,
century, but some estimates for the years between 1900 and 1988 were compiled by Rudolph
Rummel, the professor who coined the word democide. Rummel’s chillingly comprehensive estimates,
published in 1994 in a book entitled Death by Government, generally exclude -war-related deaths
unless caused by methods now considered criminal under the Geneva Conventions; therefore his
estimates include the Allies' aerial bombings of civilian populations in World War II, including the
atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He wrote: In total, during the first 88 years of
this century, almost 170 000,000 men, women and children have been shot, beaten,
tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death, buried
alive, drowned, hanged, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways regimes have
inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens and foreigners. The number of dead could even
conceivably be near a high of 360,000,000 people. This is as though our species has been
devastated by a modern Black Plague. And indeed it has, but a plague of absolute power and not germs.
genocide will create international instability that leads to nuclear extinction
Campbell,
Assistant Professor at the University of Delaware, 2001 [Kenneth
J., Genocide and the Global Village, p. 10-11]
The Cold War came to a sudden end a decade ago and the current post- Cold War era seems
to have many decision makers, pol icy analysts, and scholars confused and uncertain. However, in
this period of great turbulence and complexity, we should be clear about one
large, simple, but critically important fact: this transition era is completely unique
in the historical cycles of rising and falling international orders. In two
critical respects this is so: first, this transition is occurring (so far) without the
general catastrophe typically associated with such periods. Second, in no
previous transition era did the prevailing powers charged with creating an
improved international order possess the scientific and technical capacity—as
the leading powers now do—to destroy the entire international system along
with everyone in it. This is the first time in the cyclical creation of new
international orders that the great powers possess the power to end the "great
game" for all players, for all time! In no previous transition period from one
international order to another has this been the case. In this sense, the present cycle is truly
singular. These two critical peculiarities should give pause to the architects of our new
emerging global order. For the above factors seem to indicate that our leaders
maximize their efforts to break with this cycle of "learning-by-catastrophe"
and make a leap in institutional learning without waiting for a breakdown of
the international order and a systemic catastrophe from which none of us might
recover. The unique characteristics of this critical transition period seem to place
a premium on state cooperation at least regarding those core problems which , if not
managed or mitigated, threaten to unravel the entire international order. The main
task in this period of transition, in the midst of globalization, is to consolidate,
reinforce, and extend the present , post-Cold War liberal international order. At
the heart of this effort at global governance must be the prevention of genocide
and crimes against humanity.
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Genocide and the collapse of states threatens US security
Sarah Sewall and Carly Kaysen, The United States and the International Criminal Court: National Security and
International Law. Rowman & Littlefield, 2000
American skeptics may remain unconvinced that prosecuting foreign mass murderers or war criminals is related to
U.S. national security. They will argue that U.S. interests are unaffected by most mass atrocities occurring abroad
and that when atrocities do matter, The United States will address them directly. Only in the most superficial sense
is this true. One does not have to believe Robert Kaplan’s prediction of a coming anarchy in order to recognize
that the United States is affected in some measure by the dissolution of responsible government structures and the
spread of violence worldwide. The effect can be multidimensional, affecting U.S. trade and investment, military
security and access, or political objectives. Mass atrocities almost always have wider regional security
repercussions, such as expanded armed conflict, massive refugee flows, and arms trafficking and organized
criminal activity. Crises fueled by gross violations of international law will continue to occupy the attention of the
United States. Furthermore the lines between security interests and normative interests are blurring. When mass
atrocities dominate the media, or when tyrants push too far, democratic societies may choose to stop them partly
or purely for moral reasons. Some NATO leaders called the Kosovo operation a human rights intervention; U.S.
government officials deemed it a matter of national interest. Future campaigns may not bother to dress up
normative goals.
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Human Rights Impacts
Global human rights violations create conditions where extinction is inevitable
Human Rights Web, 94 (An Introduction to the Human Rights Movement Created on July
20, 1994 / Last edited on January 25, 1997, http://www.hrweb.org/intro.html)
The United Nations Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and UN Human Rights convenants
were written and implemented in the aftermath of the Holocaust, revelations coming from the Nuremberg war
crimes trials, the Bataan Death March, the atomic bomb, and other horrors smaller in magnitude but not in
impact on the individuals they affected. A whole lot of people in a number of countries had a crisis of conscience
and found they could no longer look the other way while tyrants jailed, tortured, and killed their neighbors.
In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I did not speak up, because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak up, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade
unionists, and I did not speak up, because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I did
not speak up, because I was not a Catholic. Then they came for me... and by that time, there was no one to speak
up for anyone.
-- Martin Niemoeller, Pastor,
German Evangelical (Lutheran) Church
Many also realized that advances in technology and changes in social structures had rendered war a threat to the
continued existence of the human race. Large numbers of people in many countries lived under the control
of tyrants, having no recourse but war to relieve often intolerable living conditions. Unless some way was
found to relieve the lot of these people, they could revolt and become the catalyst for another wide-scale
and possibly nuclear war. For perhaps the first time, representatives from the majority of governments in
the world came to the conclusion that basic human rights must be protected, not only for the sake of the
individuals and countries involved, but to preserve the human race.
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Human rights key to stop global war
Burke white 04
Burke-White 4 – William W., Lecturer in Public and International Affairs and
Senior Special Assistant to the Dean at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs, Princeton University and Ph.D. at Cambridge, "Human
Rights and National Security: The Strategic Correlation", The Harvard Human
Rights Journal, Spring, 17 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 249, Lexis
For most of the past fifty years, U.S. foreign policymakers have largely viewed
the promotion of human rights anti the protection of national security as in
inherent tension. Almost without exception, each administration has treated the
two goals as mutually exclusive: promote human rights at the expense of national
security or protect national security while overlooking international human
rights. While U.S. |*)licymakers have been motivated at times by human rights
concerns, such concerns have generally been subordinate to national security.
For example, President Bushs 2(X)2 U.S. National Security Strategy speaks of a
“commitment to protecting basic human rights.” In the same document, President
Bush makes it clear that “defending our Nation against its enemies is the first
and fundamental commitment of the Federal Government.”1 This subordination of
human rights to national security is both unnecessary and strategically
questionable. A more effective U.S. foreign policy would view human
rights and national security as correlated and complementary goals. Better
protection of human rights around the world would make the United States
safer and more secure. The United States needs to restructure its foreign
policy accordingly. This Article presents a strategic—as opposed to ideological
or normative—argument that the promotion of human rights should be given a more
prominent place in U.S. foreign policy. It does so by suggesting a correlation
between the domestic human rights practices of states and their propensity to engage in
aggressive international conduct . Among the chief threats to U.S. national security
arc acts of aggression by other states. Aggressive acts of war may directly
endanger the United States, as did the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in
19dl, or they may require U.S. military action overseas, as in Kuwait fifty
years later. Evidence from the post-G)ld War period indicates that states that
systematically abuse their own citizens’ human rights are also those most
likely to engage in aggression. To the degree that improvements in various
states’ human rights records decrease the likelihood of aggressive war, a
foreign policy informed by human rights can significantly enhance U.S. and
global security. Since 1990, a state’s domestic human ri ghts policy
appears to be a telling indicator of that state’s propensity to engage in
international aggression . A central element of U.S. foreign policy has long been the
preservation of peace and the prevention of such acts of aggression. 2 If the
correlation discussed herein is accurate, it provides U. S. policymakers with a
powerful new tool to enhance national security through the promotion of human
rights. A strategic linkage between national s ecurity and human rights
would result in a number of important policy modiªcat ions. First, it cha nges
the prioritization of those countries U.S. policymakers have identiªed as
presenting the greatest concern. Second, it alters so me of the policy
prescriptions for such states. Third, it offers states a mean s of signaling
benign international intent through the improvement of their domestic human
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rights records. Fourth, it provides a way for a current government to
prevent future governments from aggressive international behavior th
rough the institutionalization of human rights protections. Fifth, it addresses
the particular threat of human rights abusing states obtaining weapons of mass
destruction (WMD). Finally, it offers a mechanism for U.S.-U.N. cooperation on
human rights issues.
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A2: Offensive PKO Undermine Impartiality
Impartiality won’t work in many environments
Dr. Jeni Whalan, 2014, Partial Peace: The Politics of Taking Sides in UN
Peacekeeping, Paper prepared for International Studies Association Annual Convention, Toronto, 26-29,
https://www.academia.edu/6474185/Partial_Peace_The_Politics_of_Taking_Sides_in_UN_Peacekeeping DOA: 12-6-14 Lecturer in
International Security and Development BA (UNSW), M.Phil (Oxon), D.Phil (Oxon)
Regardless of intent, however, impartiality proved impossible in many of the conflict environments
to which peacekeepers were deployed. The case of Bosnia is perhaps the clearest example of this
challenge. A New York Times feature in 1995 put it this way: How could the "neutrality" or
"impartiality" many of them believed to be essential to a peacekeeping mission be preserved in the
face of an often barbarous Serbian assault on a Bosnia whose "sovereignty" was recognized by the
very institution they served?
Impartiality enables genocide
Dr. Jeni Whalan, 2014, Partial Peace: The Politics of Taking Sides in UN
Peacekeeping, Paper prepared for International Studies Association Annual Convention, Toronto, 26-29,
https://www.academia.edu/6474185/Partial_Peace_The_Politics_of_Taking_Sides_in_UN_Peacekeeping DOA: 12-6-14 Lecturer in
International Security and Development BA (UNSW), M.Phil (Oxon), D.Phil (Oxon)
Indeed, the experiences of many conflict situations in which peacekeepers were deployed during
this time—above all, those of Bosnia and Rwanda—created a profound crisis in the substantive
legitimacy of the entire peacekeeping enterprise. Faced with belligerents intent on continuing the
conflict, rather than building peace, peacekeepers found that, rather than giving them the power of
procedural legitimacy, their impartiality left them powerless, lacking the credibility to deal with
‘spoilers’ of peace processes and, worse, standing idly by as mass atrocities were committed on
their watch
Impartiality should not be understood to mean neutrality amongst waring parties
Dr. Jeni Whalan, 2014, Partial Peace: The Politics of Taking Sides in UN
Peacekeeping, Paper prepared for International Studies Association Annual Convention, Toronto, 26-29,
https://www.academia.edu/6474185/Partial_Peace_The_Politics_of_Taking_Sides_in_UN_Peacekeeping DOA: 12-6-14 Lecturer in
International Security and Development BA (UNSW), M.Phil (Oxon), D.Phil (Oxon)
Later that year, Annan continued: The world has recognized that diplomacy, whether in the Balkans
or in Baghdad, has to be backed by firmness and by force. Peacekeeping today requires not only
rethinking the means but also the method of implementing the mandates set out by the Security
Council. We have learned that while impartiality is a vital condition for peacekeeping, it must be
impartiality in the execution of the mandate—not just an unthinking neutrality between warring
parties.52
Impartiality should not mean appeasement
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Dr. Jeni Whalan, 2014, Partial Peace: The Politics of Taking Sides in UN
Peacekeeping, Paper prepared for International Studies Association Annual Convention, Toronto, 26-29,
https://www.academia.edu/6474185/Partial_Peace_The_Politics_of_Taking_Sides_in_UN_Peacekeeping DOA: 12-6-14 Lecturer in
International Security and Development BA (UNSW), M.Phil (Oxon), D.Phil (Oxon)
In 2000, this new understanding of impartiality was codified in the Report of the Panel on UN
Peace Operations, known better as the Brahimi Report after its chair, the veteran UN envoy Lakhdar
Brahimi. The influential report declared: Impartiality for such operations must therefore mean
adherence to the principles of the Charter and to the objectives of a mandate that is rooted in those
Charter principles. Such impartiality is not the same as neutrality or equal treatment of all parties in
all cases for all time, which can amount to a policy of appeasement.
“Impartial” intervention is a delusion
Dr. Jeni Whalan, 2014, Partial Peace: The Politics of Taking Sides in UN
Peacekeeping, Paper prepared for International Studies Association Annual Convention, Toronto, 26-29,
https://www.academia.edu/6474185/Partial_Peace_The_Politics_of_Taking_Sides_in_UN_Peacekeeping DOA: 12-6-14 Lecturer in
International Security and Development BA (UNSW), M.Phil (Oxon), D.Phil (Oxon)
Others argued that peacekeeping needed more partiality and enforcement in order to face down the
aggressors in what constituted ongoing conflicts. Writing in 1994, Richard Betts described impartial
intervention as a ‘delusion’ abetting ‘slow-motion savagery’ in Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda.
Impartiality, Betts wrote, sounds like common sense: that intervention should be both limited and
impartial, because weighing in on one side of a local struggle undermines the legitimacy and
effectiveness of outside involvement. This Olympian presumption resonates with respect for law
and international cooperation. It has the ring of prudence, fairness, and restraint. In makes sense in
oldfashioned UN peacekeeping operations, wh re the outsiders’ role is not to make peace, but to
bless and monitor a cease-fire that all parties have decided to accept. But it becomes a destructive
misconception when carried over to the messier realm of ‘peace enforcement’, where the
belligerents have yet to decide that they have nothing more to gain by fighting.’42
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A2: Kritiks of Peacekeeping
Peacekeeping is a necessary compromise
Dr. Jeni Whalan, 2014, Partial Peace: The Politics of Taking Sides in UN
Peacekeeping, Paper prepared for International Studies Association Annual Convention, Toronto, 26-29,
https://www.academia.edu/6474185/Partial_Peace_The_Politics_of_Taking_Sides_in_UN_Peacekeeping DOA: 12-6-14 Lecturer in
International Security and Development BA (UNSW), M.Phil (Oxon), D.Phil (Oxon)
It is no wonder that peacekeeping practice is subject to intense debate about its goals, methods,
means, and effects. Peacekeeping is an ad hoc, ever-evolving instrument of international security
that finds no straightforward authority in the UN Charter, little consistency in the interests, norms
and crises that prompt its deployment, and no clear objective against which its effectiveness can be
assessed. Peacekeeping is in many cases the ‘least bad’ option between inaction and imperialism, an
undesirable but necessary compromise that demands continued justification since it cannot rely on a
simple expression of legal norms, political interests, or its record of success.
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A2: Offensive Peacekeeping Fails
Congo operation more successful than other PKOs
Lionel Beehner, November 15, 2013, Is UN Offensive Intervention in Congo a New
Model of Peacekeeping?http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2013/11/15/is-unoffensive-intervention-in-congo-a-new-model-of-peacekeeping/ DOA: 12-6-14 Lionel
Beehner is currently a PhD candidate at Yale University, a fellow at the Truman National Security Project, and a Term
Member with the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is formerly a senior writer. He is a member of USA
Today’s Board of Contributors and holds an M.A. in international affairs from Columbia University.
Good news is a rare commodity in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). So
skepticism is in order but the initial reports about the progress made by the UN’s
Force Intervention Brigade in pushing the M23 rebels to disarm sound promising.
Earlier this year I blogged that the UN’s 3,000-strong intervention brigade, sent to
“neutralize armed groups” in the DRC, could provide a template of sorts for future
conflicts. The UN suggested that the brigade, which was accompanied by the use of
drones over DRC airspace, was a one-off and not a plug-and-play template to be
tried elsewhere. But compared to past peacekeeping missions, it has been
remarkably successful in a short amount of time. The M23 rebels have, at least
temporarily, laid down their arms. Sure, there are at least 10 other rebel groups still
present in the eastern parts of the country. Sure, the rebels were riven with internal
rivalries before the arrival of UN peacekeepers. And sure the US decision to squeeze
the Rwandan government probably helped shift the momentum as much as the
peacekeeper’s arrival. But, there is still room for cautious optimism.
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A2: No UN Authority for Offensive PKOs
UN has authority for offensive PKOs under Article VII
Fiona Blyth, April 10, 2013, IPI Global Observatory, “Too Risk-Averse, UN Peacekeepers in the DRC Get New
Mandate and More Challenges,” Fiona Blyth is a former military intelligence officer with the British Army who is a
Research Assistant in the Africa program at the International Peace Institute,
http://theglobalobservatory.org/2013/04/too-risk-averse-un-peacekeepers-in-the-drc-get-new-mandate-and-morechallenges/ DOA: 12-5-14
Interpreted by some as the UN’s first authorization for the use of offensive force, UN Security Council Resolution 2098
passed on March 29 and called for the deployment of an “intervention brigade” to the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (DRC) that can use offensive combat operations to “neutralize and disarm” Congolese rebel groups, in particular
the M23 rebels responsible for taking over Goma in the eastern DRC last year. Despite the declaration by the UN that
this breaks new ground, the UN Stabilization Mission in the Congo (MONUSCO) is already authorized to conduct
offensive operations under its Chapter VII mandate, as are all other missions operating under Chapter VII. The Rules of
Engagement (ROE) in these missions authorize the use of force beyond self-defense. As MONUSCO, and its
predecessor MONUC, already have this authorization, the Security Council and DPKO should instead analyze how and
why the mission has failed on notable occasions to fulfill its priority of protecting civilians before prescribing the
solution in the form of an intervention brigade.
Chapter VII permits use of force beyond self-defense
Fiona Blyth, April 10, 2013, IPI Global Observatory, “Too Risk-Averse, UN Peacekeepers in the DRC Get New
Mandate and More Challenges,” Fiona Blyth is a former military intelligence officer with the British Army who is a
Research Assistant in the Africa program at the International Peace Institute,
http://theglobalobservatory.org/2013/04/too-risk-averse-un-peacekeepers-in-the-drc-get-new-mandate-and-morechallenges/ DOA: 12-5-14
The announcement of the intervention brigade in the DRC in Resolution 2098 was
framed as the “first ever ‘offensive’ combat force;” however, offensive
operations are already authorized under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Chapter
VII mandates typically permit the use of force beyond self-defense to ensure the
freedom of movement of the mission, protect civilians, and for the protection of
UN personnel and property. Previous field commanders have interpreted their
mandates as such to allow UN forces to actively pursue rebel groups and to
preempt and disrupt rebel movement ahead of time. Examples of this include the
United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), the United Nations
Stabilization Mission in Haiti (UNSTAMIH) and the United Nations Mission in
Somalia II (UNISOM II).
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No Turns are Unique
It was necessary in the Congo
Daniel Donovan, April 11, 2013, Foreign Policy Association, “UN Offensive
Operation in DRC a long time coming,”
http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2013/04/11/un-offensive-operation-in-drc-a-longtime-coming/
Also, despite the potential effectiveness of the mandate by this offensive
force, they certainly have the faculty to be just as inept as their
predecessors. Falling under the management of MONUSCO may water down their
abilities due to political posturing. However, with the U.N. Security Council
recognizing the need for results after all of the money that was spent in the
past, the new brigades may yet avoid this fate. Ultimately this move was a
necessity for all involved except the rebels. The pattern of the twenty year
conflict in the Congo of the rebel leadership seemingly passing from one person
to the next without hope for peace needs to end. Even when peace is signed it
has been habitually cast aside in favor of further war and the ability to
smuggle minerals from the lawless eastern provinces. A series of failures by
previous missions have brought the DRC no closer to peace and sustainable
development than they were 2 decades ago. The fact that the U.N. Security
Council realized this and responded in kind bodes well for the future of the
nation. Who knows, maybe the rebels will realize they have reached the end of
the road and settle with the government? In the end, doing something different
is preferable in this situation than continuing down the same fruitless path.
Past UN PKOs not powerful enough to force negotiations
Lionel Beehner, November 15, 2013, Is UN Offensive Intervention in Congo a New
Model of Peacekeeping?http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2013/11/15/is-unoffensive-intervention-in-congo-a-new-model-of-peacekeeping/ DOA: 12-6-14 Lionel
Beehner is currently a PhD candidate at Yale University, a fellow at the Truman National Security Project, and a Term
Member with the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is formerly a senior writer. He is a member of USA
Today’s Board of Contributors and holds an M.A. in international affairs from Columbia University.
I think the benefits of ending the violence promptly and with aggressive force far
outweigh the risks (which are plenty). I also think that those who seek political
solutions may be deluding themselves (nor are the two types of conflict resolution
mutually exclusive, of course). Indeed, as readers of this blog know quite well, the
trouble with UN peacekeeping to date has been its inability to shape the balance of
power on the ground in any kind of meaningful way and provide the necessary
security to bring about political reconciliation.
Previous PKOs don’t have the resources
Lionel Beehner, November 15, 2013, Is UN Offensive Intervention in Congo a New
Model of Peacekeeping?http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2013/11/15/is-unoffensive-intervention-in-congo-a-new-model-of-peacekeeping/ DOA: 12-6-14 Lionel
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Beehner is currently a PhD candidate at Yale University, a fellow at the Truman National Security Project, and a Term
Member with the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is formerly a senior writer. He is a member of USA
Today’s Board of Contributors and holds an M.A. in international affairs from Columbia University.
The lessons from the Intervention Brigade are twofold: First, sending in a
peacekeeping force is not enough to change the balance of power and bring about
peace. Without the US cutoff of support to Rwanda’s Kagame, it is likely the brigade
would still be bogged down. Second, the leadership and makeup of such
interventions matter. The skills of Santos Cruz have brought discipline to the
brigade. The South Africans, Tanzanians, and Malawians who make up the bulk of
the brigade have an obvious vested interest in seeing this area pacified. To be sure,
nobody is suggesting this kind of peacekeeper is a neutral or honest broker. In that
way, some might argue they violate the oath of “do no harm.” But too often such
peacekeepers are poorly equipped, or simply lack the mandate, to have any effect on
controlling the belligerents on the ground. This is not a lesson that “force works,
and absolute force absolutely.” But we would be crazy not to try to replicate success.
The disarming of the M23 rebels is a rare success story from a region starving for
good news.
Peacekeeping failed in the Congo until it was offensive
Jacy Fortin, 3-29,13, International Business Times, UN Peacekeepers For Combat?
In DR Congo, Blue Helmets To Get Serious About Intervention
http://www.ibtimes.com/un-peacekeepers-combat-dr-congo-blue-helmets-getserious-about-intervention-1160971
The draft resolution, a copy of which was leaked to RFE/RL, would give a oneyear mandate to a UN peacekeeping brigade in the mineral-rich eastern Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC) to use force against a group known as the M23
rebels. It says peacekeepers would have the "responsibility of neutralizing
armed groups...and the objective of contributing to reducing the threats posed
by armed groups to state authority and civilian security in eastern DRC."
The resolution is the result of fatigue and frustration felt by diplomats in
the UN Security Council over the fact that a peacekeeping force in the Central
African country, which has suffered through decades of conflict, has thus far
failed to have any significant impact on security.
Richard Gowan, associate director at New York University's Center on
International Cooperation, says the resolution is a "very controversial option"
but one that Security Council members felt had to be put on the table.
"It's a response to that fact that you've had peacekeepers in the eastern Congo
for over a decade, and actually, the force has been pretty well-armed by UN
peacekeeping standards," Gowan says. "[But] the force has been repeatedly unable
to deal with militia offensives in the region."
Previous efforts failed
Africa Report, August 21, 2013, http://www.theafricareport.com/East-HornAfrica/world-bank-dollars-and-un-peacekeeping-on-the-offensive-in-greatlakes.html
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The deadly conflict in the DRC, whose vast size covers an area about the size of western Europe, has long defied
solution. For decades the country's litany of woes has confounded observers, caused untold suffering and death for
millions of its citizens, and destroyed its infrastructure.
Past peacekeeping operations failed to prevent genocide
Citizens for Global Solutions, September 2013, “A Peacekeeping Mission with
Teeth,” http://globalsolutions.org/blog/2013/09/Peacekeeping-MissionTeeth#.VILN1YcttmA
A peacekeeping force that can actually go after rebels and guerrillas that
attack civilians and destabilize regions is a very positive step forward for UN
Peacekeeping. Past UN operations have been heavily criticized for be unable to
stop events and groups that were killing innocent civilians. The most damning
example of a UN Peacekeeping failure is the Rwandan Genocide. Peacekeepers were
not allowed to combat machete wielding Hutus as they massacred Tutsis and even
when several Peacekeepers were killed the force was withdrawn rather than being
reinforced and allowed to counterattack. Being able to stop and combat the
groups that led to a need for a UN mission will make for a more lasting peace
than when the groups were ignored or government forces had to be relied on to
stop them. Future instances of the brigade will depend on how well the one in
the DRC performs, but being able to actually stop violence directed at civilians
and peacekeepers alike will go a long way in ensuring that a tragedy like the
Rwandan Genocide will not happen again just because peacekeeping forces' hands
are tied by red tape.
MONUSCO failures were killing its credibility
Sudarsan Raghavan, November 2, 2013, Washington Post, Raghavan has been The
Post's Kabul bureau chief since 2014. He was previously based in Nairobi and
Baghdad for the Post, In Volatile Congo, A New UN Force with Teeth,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/in-volatile-congo-a-new-un-forcewith-teeth/2013/11/01/0cda650c-423f-11e3-b028-de922d7a3f47_story.html DOA: 12-514
The U.N. soldiers are in Congo with an ambitious goal: to reverse the trajectory of one of the world’s most horrific and
complex conflicts, one that has killed more than 5 million people since 1998, the deadliest war since World War II.
They are also here to rescue the image of the troubled U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Congo.
“To be a peacekeeper doesn’t mean you need to be passive,” their top commander, Gen. Carlos Alberto dos Santos
Cruz, said hours before the offensive began. “To be a peacekeeper, you need to take action. The way to protect the
civilians is to take action. If you see the history of atrocities here, it justifies action.”
naction is precisely what the U.N. mission here has been criticized for in the
14 years since the United Nations dispatched soldiers to Congo, the first
members of what has become the largest peacekeeping force in U.N. history. Now,
the U.N. Security Council has launched the Forward Intervention Brigade in a
bold attempt to defeat the dozens of militias that pillage this mineral-rich
central African country, which is roughly the size of Western Europe. The
brigade, composed of 3,000 soldiers, is the United Nations’ first offensive
combat force and is seen as a possible model for defusing crises in other
chaotic parts of the world.
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Previous peacekeeping forces failed in the Congo
Daniel Donovan, April 11, 2013, Foreign Policy Association, “UN Offensive
Operation in DRC a long time coming,”
http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2013/04/11/un-offensive-operation-in-drc-a-longtime-coming/
First, the UN Security Council has recognized the failure by the
peacekeeping mission MONUSCO, originally called MONUC, which has been in
operation for almost 15 years. Despite its mandate to “protect civilians under
imminent threat of physical violence,” the inhabitants of the DRC, particularly within
the eastern provinces, have dealt with a near constant state of conflict since the U.N.
force put boots on the ground. The citizens have suffered from war crimes and crimes
against humanity such as rape, pillage and murder occurring right under the noses of
the U.N. forces madndated to protect them. Last year, the M23 rebels seized
Goma, with little resistance from a U.N. force stationed nearby. It is no small feat for
a body such as the Security Council to admit to past blunders.
This new force is not expected to sit back and watch as the countryside is ravaged.
With a mandate to carry out targeted offensive operations, they have the potential to
bring peace to the region once and for all. This may help build an environment
conducive to development. We can only hope. The reality remains that no semblance
of developmental infrastructure can exist against the backdrop of a state in perpetual
war, where the average citizen fears for their well being or has already fled their
home.
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No Impact – Direct Violence OW’s
Direct violence outweighs structural violence
Maley 85 (William, The University of New South Wales at Duntroon, “Peace,
Needs and Utopia”, Political Studies, XXXIIl, 578-591, Political Studies)
The difficulties in Galtung's approach can be seen clearly when one recalls his view that it is probably a
disservice to man to try to see either direct or structural violence as the more important. To this it can be replied
that, particularly in its most recent formulations, Galtung's idea of structural violence embraces a number of
forms which scarcely anyone would regard as seriously as the crushing, tearing, piercing, burning, poisoning,
evaporation, strangulation, dehydration and starvation which constitute personal somatic violence,'^ To treat
being deprived of 'cultural stimuli' as an evil commensurable with being torn to pieces is a step so audacious as
to demand very specific moral justitication. This Galtung fails to supply, and as a result, his notion of peace is a
very unsatisfactory ideal against which to evaluate a social order.
34
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A2: Structural Violence = Root Cause
Discrete causes of war do exist – Structural violence isn’t the root cause
Patomaki 2 (Heikki, U of Helsinki, The Challenge of Critical Theories: Peace Research at the
Start of the New Century’, JPR 38(6),
http://www.prio.no/misc/Download.aspx?file=%2Fcscw%2Frd%2FReplication+Data%2Ffile41602_wjprappendix1
.doc.)
What Galtung fails to do is spell out more generally the essential ontological qualities of society. Social systems
are open: neither the intrinsic nor the extrinsic condition of closure is, in general, applicable. Social entities –
including socio-historically formed social actors and their understandings and relations – can and do change, and
any social whole, specified in whatever manner, is susceptible to extrinsic influences, including influences from
non-social layers of reality (physical, biological, ecological etc.). In a sense that every event has a real
(structured and complex) cause, ubiquity determinism holds; but causality does not have anything to do with
constant conjunctions. Causality is about the production of outcomes. Moreover, socio-historically formed
human/social beings and their contextual reasons for action are also causally efficacious.
The focus on structural violence instead of direct violence makes preventing war impossible.
Thompson 3 (William, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center
for the Study of International Relations at Indiana University, “A Streetcar
Named Sarajevo: Catalysts, Multiple Causation Chains, and Rivalry Structures,”
International Studies Quarterly, 47(3), AD: 7-10-9) BL
Richard Ned Lebow (2000–2001) has recently invoked what might be called a streetcar interpretation of
systemic war and change. According to him, all our structural theories in world politics both overdetermine
and underdetermine the explanation of the most important events such as World War I, World War II, or the
end of the Cold War. Not only do structural theories tend to fixate on one cause or stream of causation, they
are inherently incomplete because the influence of structural causes cannot be known without also
identifying the necessary role of catalysts. As long as we ignore the precipitants that actually encourage
actors to act, we cannot make accurate generalizations about the relationships between more remote
causation and the outcomes that we are trying to explain. Nor can we test the accuracy of such
generalizations without accompanying data on the presence or absence of catalysts. In the absence of an
appropriate catalyst (or a ‘‘streetcar’’ that failed to arrive), wars might never have happened. Concrete
information on their presence (‘‘streetcars’’ that did arrive) might alter our understanding of the explanatory
significance of other variables. But since catalysts and contingencies are so difficult to handle theoretically and
empirically, perhaps we should focus instead on probing the theoretical role of contingencies via the
development of ‘‘what if ’’ scenarios.
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A2: Structural Violence = Root Cause
There is no root cause of war
Ahmed 8
(Jan, Bill, Asia Observer, Staff,
http://www.asiaobserver.com/component/option,com_fireboard/Itemid,453/func,view/id,3803/catid,26/.)JR
War arises because of the changing relations of numerous variables--technological, psychic, social, and
intellectual. There is no single cause of war. Peace is equilibrium among many forces. Change in any particular
force, trend, movement, or policy may at one time make for war, but under other conditions a similar change
may make for peace. A state may at one time promote peace by armament, at another time by disarmament, at
one time by insistence on its rights, at another time by spirit of conciliation.
All empirical reality denies their claims – Reducing structural disparities has not reduced the
tendency toward war and the causes of war are complex
Rummel 79
(R.J., Understanding war, power, and peace, U of Hawaii,
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE13.HTM#CHAP)
There have been about 350 wars of all kinds since the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, which once and for all
defeated Napoleon's lust for power. If this number fairly well represents the frequency of war in history, there
have been nearly 13,600 wars since 3,600 B.C.1
The toll of human misery measures around 30,000,000 direct battle deaths since Waterloo and 1,000,000,000
since 3,600 B.C.1a Then there are the uncountable deaths, the broken bodies and lives from the ravages and
effects of these wars.
Nor has war abated. Not with civilization. Not with education and literacy. Not with burgeoning international
organizations and communications. Not with the swelling library of peace plans and antiwar literature. Not with
the mushrooming antiwar movements and demonstrations. In the 25 years after World War II, for so many the
war to create and insure peace for generations, some 97 internal and international wars occurred. Total deaths
about equal those killed in World War II. On any single day during these 25 years slightly more than 10 internal
or international wars were being fought somewhere.1b
Nor is war increasing. Although there are ups and downs in the intensity and scope of warfare, the historical
trend is level: a little more than six major international wars per decade and 2,000,000 battle deaths. Around this
trend there are at least three cycles of warfare, showing different peaks around every 10, 25, and 50 years.
Empirical analysis is effective and liberating
Rummel 79
(R.J., Understanding war, power, and peace, U of Hawaii,
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE13.HTM#CHAP)
After all, it is through an intimate, personal experience with our close friends and relatives, with all their virtues
and vices, that enables us to see them as individuals and develop reliable expectations (predictions) of their
behavior. But yet, we also find that for an understanding of those close to us we must push toward common
elements. Certain common needs (hunger, sex), certain common interests (status, love), certain common
psychological mechanisms (frustration, ego), certain social and cultural factors (peer-group pressure, cultural
norms). Even in our closest relationships, understanding seems to presuppose a mixture of intimate personal
knowledge and an insight into common causes, conditions, explanations, and so on.
Similarly with war. To understand a war or a situation in which war is likely is partly to know the war or
situation intimately, of course. As historians, journalists, and diplomats do. But to understand also requires
knowing what this war or situation has in common with other such wars or situations.
There is no root cause of violence
American Psychological Association 7
(http://www.apahelpcenter.org/featuredtopics/feature.php?id=38&ch=2.) JR
Violence is a learned behavior. Like all learned behaviors, it can be changed. This isn't easy, though. Since there
is no single cause of violence, there is no one simple solution. The best you can do is learn to recognize the
warning signs of violence and to get help when you see them in your friends or yourself.
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Perm Solves – Generally
We don’t need to exclude the aff
Cuomo 96 (Chris J. Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, and Director of
the Institute for Women's Studies at the University of Georgia, “War Is Not Just
an Event: Reflections on the significance of Everyday Violence”, Published in
Hypatia 11.4 nb, pp. 31-48)
I propose that the constancy of militarism and its effects on social reality be reintroduced as a crucial locus
of contemporary feminist attentions, and that feminists emphasize how wars are eruptions and
manifestations of omnipresent militarism that is a product and tool of multiply oppressive, corporate,
technocratic states.' Feminists should be particularly interested in making this shift because it better allows
consideration of the effects of war and militarism on women, subjugated peoples, and environments. While
giving attention to the constancy of militarism in contemporary life we need not neglect the importance of
addressing the specific qualities of direct, large-scale, declared military conflicts. But the dramatic nature
of declared, large-scale conflicts should not obfuscate the ways in which military violence pervades most
societies in increasingly technologically sophisticated ways and the significance of military institutions and
everyday practices in shaping reality. Philosophical discussions that focus only on the ethics of declaring
and fighting wars miss these connections, and also miss the ways in which even declared military conflicts are
often experienced as omnipresent horrors. These approaches also leave unquestioned tendencies to suspend
or distort moral judgement in the face of what appears to be the inevitability of war and militarism.
Treating structural and direct violence as a zero-sum game makes both worse – Should do
both
Maley 85 (William, The University of New South Wales at Duntroon, “Peace, Needs
and Utopia”, Political Studies, XXXIIl, 578-591,
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=6&hid=7&sid=fbf7951e-fa9b-4ac2-ba3b2c07e8326bd2%40sessionmgr2) CH
Given the cogency of the case against methodological essentialism, there is no desire to argue here
that there are any logical grounds for preferring one usage of a term in political theory over
another,''* However, there can be sound practical reasons for favouring a particular usage, A
particular usage might provide distinctions of meaning which a different usage might obliterate,^Furthermore, it might be so well entrenched that any departure from it would be liable to cause
confusion. Finally, a particular term, when used consistent to refer to one thing,
may acquire irremediably favourable or unfavourable overtones, to the extent
that to use it to mean anything else might give the new referent an unwarranted
lustre or tarnish, A Russian anecdote reported by Vladimir Bukovsky illustrates this
clearly: A Jew came to his Rabbi and asked: 'Rabbi, you are a very wise man. Tell me, is there
going to be a war?' 'There will be no war,' replied the Rabbi, 'but there will be such a
struggle for peace that no stone will be left standing,'-* The difficulties in
Galtung's approach can be seen clearly when one recalls his view that it is
probably a disservice to man to try to see either direct or structural violence
as the more important. To this it can be replied that, particularly in its most recent
formulations, Galtung's idea of structural violence embraces a number of forms
which scarcely anyone would regard as seriously as the crushing, tearing,
piercing, burning, poisoning, evaporation, strangulation, dehydration and
starvation which constitute personal somatic violence,'^ To treat being deprived
of 'cultural stimuli' as an evil commensurable with being torn to pieces is a
step so audacious as to demand very specific moral justitication. This Galtung
fails to supply, and as a result, his notion of peace is a very unsatisfactory ideal against which
to evaluate a social order,
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Perm Solves – Generally
Perm solves peace and violence are coexistent parts of life,
making the maintenance of human rights and social services
possible
Kemp 3 (Graham, Associate Professor at Chalmers University of Technology,
“Keeping the Peace: Conflict Resolution and Peaceful Studies around the World”,
October 2003, p. 14-15, AD: 7-11-9)
The thesis that violence coexists with peace can be illustrated in reference to Colombia, considered one of the most
violent places on earth. Colombia has endured an armed conflict among the army, guerrillas, and paramilitaries for more than fifty tears,
Statistics show that the rate of assassinations in Colombia has grown as high as 89.5 per 100,000 inhabitants per annum (Comision
Interamericana de Derechos Humanos 1999:34). However, whereas about 250,000 men and women fighters engage in
deadly confrontation, the remaining 40 million people go about their work peacefully, raising children, building a
home, having a family, interacting with friends and neighbors, believing that a better future is yet to come. In effect, widespread direct
violence and many forms of structural and cultural violence coexist with a very strong sense of family,
community, and cooperative networks. In Colombia, interpersonal relations are easily established, and people are renowned for
their friendliness and warmth. More impressively, in the face of conflict, entire communities have established themselves as
"peace areas," where participants in conflict are not allowed to use the territory as part of the war scenario or involve members of the
community in it. Additionally, there are many efforts involving peace building, campaigns for human rights,
expanding participation in the public sector, and improving social services . Finally, many other informal forms of
solidarity exist among ordinary people as they go about their daily lives. Ultimately, this observation explains why a war-torn
society does not collapse. The existence of peace does not count on the partial or total abolition of violence
or war. There is peace amidst great violence; there is violence associated with fighting for peace. In the same way, it is unrealistic to
believe that the more likely peace, the less likely violence, and vice versa. In fact, both phenomena can
increase or decrease simultaneously, or can be present at the same time and place. Viewing peace and violence as
coexisting has practical consequences. Rather than opposing extremes of a continuum like different ends of the same cotton
string peace and violence each make cotton strings of their own. And both peace and violence, together with many other social
entities, wave the fabric of life.
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Perm Solves – Exclusive Focus Bad
Inclusive solutions for peace are preferable to exclusive notions – Do both solves
Duncan 2 (Grace, Student of Peace and Conflict, School of Political Science and
International Studies, UQ, Winter, “Peace, Action and Consequences”,
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=9&hid=7&sid=fbf7951e-fa9b-4ac2-ba3b2c07e8326bd2%40sessionmgr2)
This theory is based on a few key ideas. First, it rests on the assumption that ‘global problems’ such as
genocide, war and poverty are ultimately the result of human failings and imperfections. This is a
psychological, rather than a political or structural understanding of the world. By that I mean that while
institutions, economies, ideas and perceptions obviously play a central role in creating or destroying peace,
they are understood to have been constructed by previous societies, by human beings with psychological
motivations that are not dissimilar from our own. The power of economic forces, for example, could be seen
as the power of greed and fear of poverty. The power of nationalism derives from the human desire to be
accepted and protected within a group. Through this understanding of the world, it can be seen that people
have a profound ability to determine their collective destiny. Just as the present condition of society was
constructed by the past, so the future condition will be created by the present. Second, negative peace and
positive peace will be considered as existing along a continuum. While negative peace is merely the
absence of armed conflict, positive peace is much more. Drawing upon Johan Galtung’s (1969) definition,
positive peace will be taken to mean a condition in which no human being is influenced so that their
physical and mental realizations are below their potential realizations. While it may seem somewhat
utopian, this definition is useful for describing the aim of an action. Thus, this discussion includes under its
umbrella of ‘action for peace’ any act that could conceivably lead to such a condition and contribute to a
more peaceful world.
Exclusive focus on either form of violence is worse – Examining both solves their impacts
Schnabel (Albrecht, Senior Research Fellow at Swiss peace and a Lecturer in International
Organizations and Conflict Management at the University of Bern Institute of Political
Science, “The human security approach to direct and structural violence”
http://www.sipri.org/yearbook/2008/files/SIPRIYB0802C.pdf)
Galtung’s differentiation between direct and structural violence is not an undisputed approach, but it makes
sense in the context of human security analysis. If human security generally means ‘the security of people—
their physical safety, their economic well-being, respect for their dignity and worth as human beings, and
the protection of their human rights and fundamental freedoms’,9 then threats experienced by individuals
and communities that are part of specific social, cultural, economic and political communities are not
limited to direct armed violence. Such threats may be overt expressions of violence committed by specific and
identifiable actors or covert expressions of violence inherent in the disadvantaged position of individuals and
communities in a social, political or economic system that is upheld by power structures beyond their control.
Without violence there is greater potential to provide and meet at least basic human needs, and to develop
possibilities to satisfy needs that determine not only survival but also well-being and quality of life.
Galtung seems to have sensed the need to give greater consideration to the structural aspects and sources of
violence and to shift exclusive (or primary) focus, particularly by governments, from the prevention of
direct violence to the prevention of structural violence. Whether done voluntarily due to a sense of national
and international responsibility or forced by others promoting such norms, such a shift would lower violence and
increase human security.
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Perm Solves – Links
Idealistic conceptions of peace do not need to exclude external manifestations of war and
political changes to avert them
Rinehart 95 (Milton, July, “Title: Understanding the concept of `peace'”, Peace
& Change, 01490508, Vol. 20, Issue 3, )
The Numinar paradigm includes concepts of peace that are more idealistic, intra- and interpersonal, both
internal and external. Peace is idealistic in that nonmaterial goals and processes are valued. Peace is not
necessarily related to economic prosperity. In addition, peace is idealistic in that it is constructed and maintained
through social processes that can be progressively revised. Peace is intra- and interpersonal in that the best level
at which to begin peacemaking is internal. Peace must first exist within the individual in his or her relationship to
others; peace is more the product of interactional patterns or subjective states than of social structures. Yet
external concepts of peace are not excluded. Social systems must also be changed. The problem of peace is
the problem of the internal, but shared, subjective states of people: the manner in which we interpret each
other's actions and the value preferences that underlie our own actions. Cox comments, "To make peace
with people, we need to understand them. To understand them, we need to engage in a holistic and participatory
research which treats social reality as structured in purposive, value-laden, institutional and non-axiomizable
ways."[19]
We don’t preclude an interest in structural violence
Rinehart 95 (Milton, July, “Title: Understanding the concept of `peace'”, Peace
& Change, 01490508, Vol. 20, Issue 3, )
For example, Galtung and Gandhi represent the fuzzy area in between the peace paradigms. Galtung's social
justice concept suggests the creation of intra- and interpersonal peace by changing the social structures that
prohibit the possibility of such peace. Here the ends appear Numinar, but the means are clearly Popular. Further,
I have argued in this article that the worldview hidden beneath this concept remains fear based while containing
some degree of faith in human potential.
Their alternative is additive – Doesn’t exclude our conception of war
Rinehart 95 (Milton, July, “Title: Understanding the concept of `peace'”, Peace
& Change, 01490508, Vol. 20, Issue 3, )
Even though I have used some opposing terms to contrast the Popular and the Numinar paradigms, they do not
appear to be dialectically related as polar opposites. Rather, the Numinar appears to integrate yet go beyond the
Popular in some key ways. First, although the emphasis on peacemaking in the Numinar view is on the intra- and
interpersonal level, the need for structural change is accepted. Peace is found through the integration of both
internal and external processes. Second, the idealistic peace of the Numinar is not the antithesis of the
materialistic peace of the Popular. Rather, it subsumes the material aspects of social reality in the larger process
of the reconstruction of that reality.
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Perm Solves – A2: Co-optation
Defense posture doesn’t preclude solutions to structural violence
Groten and Jansen 81 (Hubert and Juergen, Doctorate in International Studies and
Peace Lobbyist, “Interpreters and Lobbies for Positive Peace”, Journal of Peace
Research, Vol. 18, No. 2, Special Issue on Theories of Peace 175-181, Sage
Publications, http://www.jstor.org/stable/424209, A.D.: 7/9/09)
In the absence of any even partly suc- cessful alternative procedure, there is nothing to lose if we suggest the following: Interpreters
and go-betweens are needed to communicate the important message of critical peace research to the people. They must be women or men
who can relate to both groups, or can be brought to do so. The group of people closest to the workers be- cause they are together on the job
and have other things in common are what we might call 'skilled workers'. In the general way we suggest this term be used it applies to all
oc- cupations. The 'skilled worker' would also be in a good position to collaborate with committed peace
researchers towards the common goal. Thus the 'skilled worker' could be a medium and a contact for both sides involved. She or
he would act as an interpreter and a link between the mass of democratic voters, the niches of democratic workers and the peace researchers.
She or he would be the vital link in a network of people of good will united under the com- mon aim of communicating to the voters what
peace research has to say about struc- tural violence and positive peace and about possible activities. There would be com- munication
among all those involved but the main job would lie with the 'skilled workers', i. e., to pass on the information to the people at work. This
network of people of good will would have to be loosely organized. Most emphatically it would not be a state organization.
It would not engage in research as such. Rather, it would draw on the findings of critical peace research and transpose
them to other levels of thinking and language use . 'Skilled workers' would be essential. Trade unions could help to prepare
them. School teachers could be in it, though not qua school teachers. The local and regional press would be instrumental in communicat- ing
information and raising consciousness. This may sound utopian but there is no harm in trying this road. Civic
action groups have proved through their involvement in ecology that a group of dedicated people can
influence politics. It is not the group itself, or in our case the network, that can influence high politics but they can form lobbies
that are sure to find some politicians who are glad to bring their influence to bear on high politics once
they receive support from their voters. Even small groups could produce results to begin with. And once there are
results it is never difficult to find more dedicated people among all those whose main concern is positive
peace. Peace researchers know there is structural violence and that we must work for positive peace. They only need people of good will to
help them pass on this knowledge to those who can decide by using their democratic vote. Interpreters and lobbies ought to be
used as links. Perhaps this will work.
Eschewing security proposals won’t create positive peace and security plans aren’t coopted
Jahn 83 (Egbert, Author of “Nationalism in Late and Post-Communist Europe:
Nationalism in the Nation States” and Doctor of Relations, “Peace Research and
Politics within the Field of Societal Demands”, Journal of Peace Research, Vol.
20, No. 3, Sage Publications, http://www.jstor.org/stable/423797, A.D.: 7/9/09)
JH
Peace cannot be the result of just one policy , but of different and opposing policies. Otherwise, an absolute world dictatorship
would be the precondition which would merely make the will of others an object of a peace dictator. That is why the label 'German peace
research' is as absurd as for example social- liberal peace research. The very day when peace research agrees with German foreign policy
either total world peace will have come true, or - and this is more probable - the scientific death of peace research will have come. Peace
research which corresponds completely to the policy of a national govern- ment, a party or a peace organization is
no more than peace ideology. Peace research has to keep permanent distance to a policy with peace
intentions and to question national, partisan and bureaucratic prejudices which blur scientific reasoning.
This cannot be accomplished without distance to everyday politics. Without effective leisure, time and work no
scientific reasoning is possible. Therefore, I would like to have at least one room in the ivory tower devoted to applied science within the
turmoil of political expec- tations and attacks. Distance does not imply shunning contacts with parties, government
departments and peace organizations. On the contrary, without an approach to and knowl- edge of political life in detail, one cannot observe
at a suitable distance; at best one would reject politics out of prejudice. Value- oriented peace research is a science which draws its questions
and problems from society and takes no refuge in the ivory tower. How- ever, peace research cannot let itself be directed by
societal expectations. There must be an appreciation of the fact that peace research cannot formulate a scientifically well-founded
analysis with regard to every violent incident on earth. Peace researchers may utter political statements concerning Afghanistan, El Salvador or the NATO decision on the moderniza- tion of missiles in Europe, but then they do not act as scientists, but as politicians with the
borrowed reputation of their scientific institu- tion or their function.
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Perm Solves – Militarism
The permutation prevents a military-focus, prescribing nuanced solutions
Schnabel 7 (Albrecht, Senior Research Fellow at Swiss peace and a Lecturer in
International Organizations and Conflict Management at the University of Bern Institute
of Political Science, “The human security approach to direct and structural violence”
http://www.sipri.org/yearbook/2008/files/SIPRIYB0802C.pdf)
As discussed in the previous section, the human security concept implies that the provision of human
security requirements is largely the responsibility of states. Many states need to rethink and refocus their
security policies and systems in order to provide effective human security for their population and—in
cooperation with other states and coordinated by intergovernmental organizations—assist or encourage states
that lack the necessary capacities to follow suit. The ‘responsibility to protect’ concept seems a suitable
response to these calls for the provision of universal human security. Yet it is for this very reason that
scepticism prevails about the legality of a new norm that considers human security as an innate right and the
provision of human security as the responsibility of states. Such expectations seem to be at odds with states’
rights to sovereignty and non-intervention. Protagonists of the concept point out that their work—and the
accompanying evolving global norm—applies only to direct violence and, in that context, the extreme action of
military intervention under the responsibility to protect concept is concerned only with the most grievous crimes:
mass atrocities and genocide. However, the basic assumptions of the concept justifying measures short of
military intervention are applicable to direct violence in more general terms and to structural violence
‘committed’ by national and international cultural, social, economic and political structures—a major
paradigm shift in international norms and values
Focusing on both provides balanced solutions
Schnabel 7 (Albrecht, Senior Research Fellow at Swiss peace and a Lecturer in
International Organizations and Conflict Management at the University of Bern Institute
of Political Science, “The human security approach to direct and structural violence”
http://www.sipri.org/yearbook/2008/files/SIPRIYB0802C.pdf)
Galtung argues that ‘there is no reason to believe that the future will not bring us richer concepts and more
forms of social action that combine absence of personal violence with [the] fight against social injustice [i.e.
negative and positive peace] once sufficient activity is put into research and practice’. This appendix suggests
that human security may well be the concept that offers this opportunity. Focusing on the impact that both
types of violence have on the human security of individuals and communities, without prejudicing one
over the other in terms of strategic, political or economic significance, allows a more effective focus on the
basic needs of individuals, compared to the security needs of states as expressed in more traditional
national security thinking. This approach responds to one of the original components of the human security
concept: that national and international political and security structures should consider human security equally
important to national security. At this juncture, the human security concept is able to advance the distinctions
between direct and structural violence and between negative and positive peace. In combination with a
heightened sense of (or a moral and legal call for) responsibility by human security providers—those who
govern individuals and communities, the referent objects of human security—both accountability and
responsibility for the prevention of human insecurity might eventually enter the theory and practice of
international law and custom.
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We’re a Prereq to the Alt
Events of war preclude solutions to structural violence – No alt without our action
Rabie 94 (Mohamed, professor of International political economy, Georgetown
University, Praeger, “Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity”, 1994,
http://www.questiaschool.com/read/14788166?title=Conflict%20Resolution%20and%20E
thnicity, AD; 7/11/9) TR
In countries where democracy does not exist and where the control of authoritarian states over peoples' lives
and fortunes is real, the nonviolent resolution and prosecution of political conflict is an impossibility
because violence is the major tool of the oppressor rather than the oppressed. Democratization as the first
order of concern, which the proponents of a limited definition of peace further advocate, cannot be effected
without freedom and liberty, two conditions for access to cherished values. Therefore, a realistic definition of
peace ought to take both arguments into consideration. This is particularly important since the proponents of
positive peace tend to view it more as a process and less as a stationary state of political affairs, while the others
see it generally in opposite terms. In fact, human experience seems to indicate that the absence of war and
violence cannot be maintained without social justice, and social justice cannot be achieved under
conditions of war and violence. Consequently, an operational definition of realistic peace would probably
describe it as the absence of violence under conditions and relationships that provide for the nonviolent
resolution of political conflict and the freedom to pursue legitimate individual and group goals without threat or
coercion. Peace, to be real and human, must be understood and employed as a continuous process to lessen social
tension, resolve political conflict, and create conditions to pursue freedom and justice through a gradual
evolution of human perceptions and socio-political institutions. Thus, a strategy for universal peace must deal
not only with war but also with the very forces and conditions that cause the eruption of war and induce
the spread of violence in the first place. It must also strive to change a people's perceptions of the other in
order to humanize the adversary, acknowledge his grievances, and legitimize his basic concerns. Above all, it
must lay the foundation for transforming existing group relationships and state and civil society
institutions, with a view to creating new more dynamic ones committed to promoting compatible visions and
values with developing shared interests.
War causes structural violence
Schnabel 7 (Albrecht, Senior Research Fellow at Swiss peace and a Lecturer in
International Organizations and Conflict Management at the University of Bern Institute
of Political Science, “The human security approach to direct and structural violence”
http://www.sipri.org/yearbook/2008/files/SIPRIYB0802C.pdf)
Among the causes of insecurity, armed violence is a factor of unique significance because it: (a) causes
human insecurity and prevents the adequate provision of human security through its debilitating direct
and indirect effects; (b) acts as an accelerator of human insecurity, with knock-on effects that increase the
negative impact of existing levels of violence and harm; and (c) is often the articulation of underlying,
protracted and unresolved structural violence and thus an indicator of societal and political instability. Armed
violence is a highly visible pointer to the long overdue necessity of addressing structural violence and its
manifestations.
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Imperialism Good
Imperialism does more good than bad
Boot 03 (Max, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies, “U.S. Imperialism: A Force for Good”
May 13, 2003, http://www.cfr.org/iraq/us-imperialism-force-good/p5959)
While the formal empire mostly disappeared after the Second World War, the United States set out on another bout of imperialism in Germany and
Japan. Oh, sorry -- that wasn't imperialism; it was "occupation." But when Americans are running foreign governments, it's a distinction without a
difference. Likewise, recent "nation-building" experiments in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan are imperialism under another name. ¶
Mind you, this is not meant as a condemnation. The history of American imperialism is hardly one of unadorned good doing; there have been plenty
of shameful episodes, such as the mistreatment of the Indians. But, on the whole, U.S. imperialism has been the greatest force
for good in the world during the past century. It has defeated the monstrous evils of communism and Nazism and
lesser evils such as the Taliban and Serbian ethnic cleansing. Along the way, it has helped spread liberal institutions
to countries as diverse as South Korea and Panama.¶ Yet, while generally successful as imperialists, Americans have been loath to
confirm that's what they were doing. That's OK. Given the historical baggage that "imperialism" carries, there's no need for the U.S. government to
embrace the term. But it should definitely embrace the practice.¶ That doesn't mean looting Iraq of its natural
resources; nothing could be more destructive of the goal of building a stable government in Baghdad. It means
imposing the rule of law, property rights, free speech and other guarantees, at gunpoint if need be. This will require
selecting a new ruler who is committed to pluralism and then backing him or her to the hilt. Iran and other neighbouring
states won't hesitate to impose their despotic views on Iraq; we shouldn't hesitate to impose our democratic views.
Imperialism is needed to maintain order
FERGUSON 04 (NIALL, Professor of History at Harvard University, “A World Without Power” JULY 1, 2004,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2004/07/01/a_world_without_power?page=full)
Critics of U.S. global dominance should pause and consider the alternative. If the United States retreats from its hegemonic role,
who would supplant it? Not Europe, not China, not the Muslim world -- and certainly not the United Nations. Unfortunately, the
alternative to a single superpower is not a multilateral utopia, but the anarchic nightmare of a new Dark Age. ¶ We
tend to assume that power, like nature, abhors a vacuum. In the history of world politics, it seems, someone is always the hegemon, or bidding to
become it. Today, it is the United States; a century ago, it was the United Kingdom. Before that, it was France, Spain, and so on. The famed 19thcentury German historian Leopold von Ranke, doyen of the study of statecraft, portrayed modern European history as an incessant struggle for
mastery, in which a balance of power was possible only through recurrent conflict.¶ The influence of economics on the study of diplomacy only
seems to confirm the notion that history is a competition between rival powers. In his bestselling 1987 work, The Rise and Fall of the
Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, Yale University historian Paul Kennedy
concluded that, like all past empires, the U.S. and Russian superpowers would inevitably succumb to overstretch.
But their place would soon be usurped, Kennedy argued, by the rising powers of China and Japan, both still
unencumbered by the dead weight of imperial military commitments. ¶ In his 2001 book, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics,
University of Chicago political scientist John J. Mearsheimer updates Kennedy's account. Having failed to succumb to overstretch, and after surviving
the German and Japanese challenges, he argues, the United States must now brace for the ascent of new rivals. "[A] rising China is the most
dangerous potential threat to the United States in the early twenty-first century," contends Mearsheimer. "[T]he United States has a profound
interest in seeing Chinese economic growth slow considerably in the years ahead." China is not the only threat Mearsheimer foresees. The
European Union (EU) too has the potential to become "a formidable rival." ¶ Power, in other words, is not a natural monopoly; the struggle for
mastery is both perennial and universal. The "unipolarity" identified by some commentators following the Soviet collapse
cannot last much longer, for the simple reason that history hates a hyperpower. Sooner or later, challengers will
emerge, and back we must go to a multipolar, multipower world.¶ But what if these esteemed theorists are all wrong? What if the
world is actually heading for a period when there is no hegemon? What if, instead of a balance of power, there is an absence of power?¶ Such a
situation is not unknown in history. Although the chroniclers of the past have long been preoccupied with the achievements of great powers -whether civilizations, empires, or nation-states -- they have not wholly overlooked eras when power receded.¶ Unfortunately, the world's
experience with power vacuums (eras of "apolarity," if you will) is hardly encouraging. Anyone who dislikes U.S. hegemony should
bear in mind that, rather than a multipolar world of competing great powers, a world with no hegemon at all may
be the real alternative to U.S. primacy. Apolarity could turn out to mean an anarchic new Dark Age: an era of
waning empires and religious fanaticism; of endemic plunder and pillage in the world's forgotten regions; of
economic stagnation and civilization's retreat into a few fortified enclaves.
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American imperialism is awesome
Miller 11 (Harrison, head writer and research for The Miller Monitor, “Justifying Imperialism” December 21, 2011,
https://sites.google.com/a/ncps-k12.org/amhnews-h-miller-2011/intellectual/justifying-imperialism)
United States imperialism began in the late 1800s and since its inception Americans have been debating the moral validity behind the idea. Through
the tenacious leadership of American presidents, the United States has been influencing other countries in political, economic, and cultural ways.
The effects of United States imperialism have been positive and justify the concept because the ideals of democracy
have been spread to the nations of Panama and the Philippines, and Puerto Rico continue to be positively
influenced by American politics, economy, and culture.¶ Since interaction began between America and Panama in
the early twentieth century we have been able to see how both parties benefit from the United States intervention.
America originally went into Panama because they wanted to build the Panama Canal. The Panama Canal would benefit the United States in trade
because it was a good passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans - it could save Americans time and money. However, Columbia owned
Panama at the time, and would not let the United States build and use a canal in Panama; Panama, displeased with Columbia’s rule in their country,
turned to the United States for help. Once independent, Panama granted America the canal and both nations walked away
from the situation very pleased. America stayed in Panama to build and use the canal until 1977, when the
Panamanians wanted to be fully independent. In 1989, however, the United States helped Panama overthrow the
dictator Noriega and restored democracy to the Central American nation. The United States has stayed in Panama
ever since, and the Panamanians are happy with their involvement because America has helped them maintain
both liberty and democracy.¶ Panama is just one example; America has also maintained freedom and democracy in Puerto Rico. The United
States originally became involved in Puerto Rico as a result of the Spanish American War. They gained Puerto Rico from the war, and
helped Puerto Rico by guiding them and controlling the island's politics and economics for the first few years of
independence. Times have changed, and, Puerto Rico has become a commonwealth; they have their own their own
government, we support them economically. Politically, Puerto Rico’s government is democratic due to the
exposure the island received in prior years from the United States. The democratic government ensures that all Puerto Ricans are
free and equal and entitled to suffrage. Without America’s involvement, Puerto Rico might not have become the democracy that it is today;
America spread democracy to them, and perhaps there is one less dictatorship because of that. ¶ Although America is no longer taking over other
countries as much as they used to in the twentieth century, but a different kind of imperialism still exists – cultural imperialism. Cultural imperialism
is the promotion of American beliefs in morals through the growth of our industry in other nations. While some say that cultural
imperialism does not affect other countries positively, it is clear that there many benefits linked to cultural
imperialism. Those who don't support imperialism believe that America needs to listen to Gandhi, who said that “I want the culture of all lands
to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any”. While the quote has its truths, this is indeed and
opinion that can easily be argued. Gandhi is saying that he is open to learning about other cultures, but doesn’t want to be forced to take part in
one. However, America is not forcing anyone to take part in their culture and has not in the past; countries like
France and China have limited American cultural programming through satellites and the Internet. With six billion
people in the world, one culture taking over would be impossible. And even if it were possible, what constitutes
American culture? It is my belief that our culture is just a homogenized cluster of all the cultures in the world, so in
part, nations are scared to accepted a "tainted" version of their original culture? Cultural imperialism is spreading though
American culture to those who want it, just as the most successful imperialism in the twentieth century resulted when countries were happy overall
with American influence. The majorities of both Panama and Puerto Rico (based on a vote) are happy with the current
involvement of the United States. The United States helped them economically and politically. They are both
democratic, and cultural imperialism is just spreading other American beliefs through American movies goods, and
brand names, to those who want them. ¶ After analyzing historical growth of the American empire, it is safe to say
that there has been an overall positive affect of United States imperialism. Panama has been helped economically with the
building of the canal, and the ideal of democracy made their government democratic. Puerto Rico also has a democratic government, and the
United States economically supports them. Americans spread the ideal of democracy, and as a result these two countries are democratic. American
cultural imperialism exists today for those countries who want to learn about American culture. Thus, the United States has positively affected other
countries with the ideal of democracy, and continues to spread their culture to other countries today, justifying the validity of imperialism.
Colonialism is key for democracy in underdeveloped nations
Ishiyama ‘11
[John T. Ishiyama, “6. Democratization and the Global Environment”, Comparative Politics: Principles of Democracy and Democratization, April 20
2011, Wiley interscience]
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An oft- cited additional “ international ” factor affecting democratic development, particularly in the developing world, is the legacy of colonialism.
On the one hand, there is the extremely Eurocentric view that the spread of democracy is the political outcome of the spread of
European values and traditions via colonialism (for a discussion, see Huntington, 1984 ). This is because, theoretically, the colonial
power may have transmitted some of its culture and language to the colony, which in turn may have led to the
emergence of a “ cooperative ” political culture, or may have left institutions that were conducive to democracy in place when the
colonizing powers exited (Weiner, 1989 ). However, some scholars (Barro, 1999 ; Quainoo, 2000 ) have found no relationship between colonial
heritage and democracy, while others (Lipset et al ., 1993; Clague et al. , 2001 ) fi nd that being a former British colony increases the probability that
a country becomes democratic. In particular, several scholars have argued that the type of colonizer was important in explaining whether a country
was able to develop into a democracy after the end of colonial rule. Myron Weiner (1989) , for instance, noted that by 1983 every country in the
Third World that emerged from colonial rule since World War II with a population of at least one million (and almost all the smaller countries as
well) with a continuous democratic experience was a former British colony. This would suggest that there was something about British colonial rule
that made it different from the colonial administration of other European states, such as France and Belgium. Khapoya (1998) , for instance,
distinguishes between two main types of colonial rule in Africa: indirect rule and direct rule. The British generally used a system of indirect rule,
where the emphasis was not on the assimilation of Africans to become “ black Britishers, ” but rather to share skills, values, and culture, to “
empower ” the Africans with the ability to run their own communities. Thus, instead of assimilating the Africans as British citizens,
society was segregated between the natives and the whites living in the colony. The British also employed an indirect system of administrative rule.
Generally this meant that the colonial authorities would co - opt the local power structure (the kings, chiefs, or headman) and via invitations,
coercion, or bribery, incorporate them into the colonial administrative structure. In return, these local elites were expected to enforce laws, collect
taxes, and serve as the “ buffer ” between the natives and colonial authorities. A positive consequence of this system of indirect rule
(a system used elsewhere in the British Empire, such as in India and Malaya) was that it provided native elites with important
experiences in self - rule. Further, many British colonies adopted practices that mimicked British practices such as
experience with electoral, legislative, and judicial institutions (Clague et al. , 2001 ). Given this level of preparedness, then
following World War II, Britain was much more willing than other colonial powers to grant independence, which in turn made the newly
independent states more willing to retain the institutions the British had put into place. Thus, from this perspective, Britain seems to have left its
colonies in a better situation to develop democracy later than non - British colonies.
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Imperialism Ethical
Imperialism breeds democratic self rule
Kurtz 03 (Stanley, Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, A just empire? Democratic Imperialism: A
Blueprint, April 1, 2003, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6426)
Our commitment to political autonomy sets up a moral paradox. Even the mildest imperialism will be experienced by many as a
humiliation. Yet imperialism as the midwife of democratic self-rule is an undeniable good. Liberal imperialism is
thus a moral and logical scandal, a simultaneous denial and affirmation of self-rule that is impossible either to fully
accept or repudiate. The counterfactual offers a way out. If democracy did not depend on colonialism, we could confidently forswear empire.
But in contrast to early modern colonial history, we do know the answer to the counterfactual in the case of Iraq.
After many decades of independence, there is still no democracy in Iraq. Those who attribute this fact to American
policy are not persuasive, since autocracy is pervasive in the Arab world, and since America has encouraged and
accepted democracies in many other regions. So the reality of Iraqi dictatorship tilts an admittedly precarious moral balance in favor of
liberal imperialism.
American imperialism K2 world peace
Elshtain 03 (Jean Bethke, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of
Chicago Divinity School, “Just War Against Terrorism” pg. 169)
The heavy burden being imposed on the United States does not require that the United States remain on hairtrigger alert at every moment. But it does oblige the United States to evaluate all claims and to make a
determination as to whether it can intervene effectively and in a way that does more good than harm—with the
primary objective of interdiction so that democratic civil society can be built or rebuilt. This approach is better by far than
those strategies of evasion and denial of the sort visible in Rwanda, in Bosnia, or in the sort of "advice" given to Americans by some of our European
critics. At this point in time the possibility of international peace and stability premised on equal regard for all rests
largely, though not exclusively, on American power. Many persons and powers do not like this fact, but it is inescapable. As Michael
Ignatieff puts it, the "most carefree and confident empire in history now grimly confronts the question of whether it can escape Rome's ultimate
fate."9 Furthermore, America's fate is tied inextricably to the fates of states and societies around the world. If large
pockets of the globe start to go bad—here, there, everywhere (the infamous "failed state" syndrome)—the drain on
American power and treasure will reach a point where it can no longer be borne.
Intervention protects basic human rights
Nardin and Pritcharal 90 (Terry- professor and head of the Political Science Department at the National
University of Singapore, Kathleen D- director of community impact product development for the United Way of
America, “ETHICS AND INTERVENTION: THE UNITED STATES IN GRENADA, 1983” 1990, pg 9)
A second major argument in favor of intervention is based on a concern for human rights. This argument rests on
the idea that a country that values democracy and individual rights should be pre-pared to act when those values
are threatened, not only at home but abroad. According to this view, it is simply intolerable for a free nation to stand
on the sidelines while foreign tyrants like Idi Amin and Pal Pat enslave and massacre their own unfortunate subjects.
At least in extreme cases like these. unilateral intervention should be permitted if other means fall. A nation that is
not in a position to intervene Itself should support those governments (like Tanzania in the case of Idi Amin) that
are able to act.
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Imperialism Inevitable
Imperialism can’t be blamed solely on the imperialist
Said 94 (Edward W., was a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, a literary
theorist, and a public intellectual, “Culture and Imperialism” May 31, 1994, pg. 19)
Domination and inequities of power and wealth are perennial facts of human society. But in today's global setting they are also interpretable as
having something to do with imperialism, its history, its new forms. The nations of contemporary Asia, Latin America, and Africa
are politically independent but in many ways are as dominated and dependent as they were 'when ruled directly by
European powers. On the one hand, this is the consequence of self-inflicted wounds, critics like V. S. Naipaul are
wont to say: they (everyone knows that "they" means coloreds, wogs, niggers) are to blame for what "they" are,
and it's no use droning on about the legacy of imperialism. On the other hand, blaming the Europeans sweepingly
for the misfortunes of the present is not much of an alternative. What we need to do is to look at these Matters as a
network of interdependent histories that it would be inaccurate and senseless to repress, useful and interesting to
understand.¶ The point here is not complicated. If while sitting in Oxford, Paris, or New York you tell Arabs or Africans that they belong to a
basically sick or unregenerate culture, you are unlikely to convince them. Even if you prevail over them, they are not going to
concede to you your essential superiority or your right to rule them despite your evident wealth and power. The
history of this standoff is manifest throughout colonies where white masters were once unchallenged but finally
driven out. Conversely, the triumphant natives soon enough found that they needed the West and that the idea of fatal independence was a
nationalist fiction designed mainly for what Fanon calls the "nationalist bourgeoisie," who in turn often ran the new countries with a callous,
exploitative tyranny reminiscent of the departed masters.
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Militarism/Colonialism
Offensive peacekeeping embraces militarism and colonialism
East African, April 26, 2014,
intervention missions
Partiality
dilemma: The new model of UN
Since then, the UN has swung like a pendulum in both theory and praxis from
its traditional non-combative and "neutral" peacekeeping model to a new
militaristic approach that has seen its forces embroiled in combat in African
theatres of war. This follows a new tendency by major global powers at the helm
of the United Nations Security Council to pursue a more militaristic approach,
which is turning UN missions into "combative peacekeeping." This has fuelled
scepticism about the neutrality of UN missions and the behind-the-scenes role of
former European colonial powers in these missions.
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56
Don’t Solve Violence
Offensive peacekeeping can’t resolve the structural causes of violence
East African, April 26, 2014,
intervention missions
Partiality
dilemma: The new model of UN
But the new UN interventionism has its fierce critics. Jean-Marie Guehenno, the
United Nations peacekeeping chief from 2000 to 2008, has cautioned against the
thinking that a combative mission will resolve conflicts in Africa, particularly
Congo's quagmire. Offensive peacekeeping cannot be relied upon to resolve the
structural causes of the conflicts in Somalia, South Sudan or eastern DRC, which
often have regional dimensions and linkages in neighbouring countries. These
pundits want the UN to pursue a solution that will involve willing heads of
state from the region. They say that it is "not a SWAT team that's going to
clean up a bad neighbourhood That requires politics."
An offensive force could encourage the involvement of more groups
News Record, July 30, 2013, “United Nations Authorizes Offensive Operations in
the Democratic Republic of Congo,” http://www.newsrecord.co/united-nationsauthorizes-offensive-operations-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo/
Pieter Vanholder, the DRC country director for the Life and Peace
Institute, believes that attempting to accomplish these goals may result in
unintended consequences. Speaking to Al-Jazeera, Vanholder explained,
“The brigade may be seen as a kind of occupation force. As a consequence
it could become a push factor for some to join armed groups, adding to
local resistance.”
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57
Undermine Impartiality
Offensive peacekeeping kills the UN’s role as a mediator
Africa Policy Brief, April 1, 2014, Partiality dilemma: The new model of UN
intervention missions, http://www.africapi.org/wpcontent/uploads/2014/05/Combative-Peace-UN-Interventionism-CSP-brief-No-1-April2014.pdf DOA: 12-7-14
Also worrying experts is that the new militarism is radically changing the way
the UN has been perceived in conflict situations. "The bigger danger is that
when the UN becomes a combatant on the ground it loses what has been its unique
role of having been a potential mediator of being the impartial outsider," said
Mr Laurenti. Others feel that the shift to a combative style can compromise the
image of the UN peacekeeping forces as neutral actors in conflicts. "It may
compromise the neutrality and impartiality which we find essential to the
organisation's peacekeeping. Its presence should be perceived by all parties as
that of an honest broker, and not a potential party to the conflict," said Gert
Rosenthal, the envoy of Guatemala, a non-permanent member of the UN Security
Council.
Lack of impartiality has undermined peacekeeping in the Sudan
Africa Policy Brief, April 1, 2014, Partiality dilemma: The new model of UN
intervention missions, http://www.africapi.org/wpcontent/uploads/2014/05/Combative-Peace-UN-Interventionism-CSP-brief-No-1-April2014.pdf DOA: 12-7-14
The impartiality dilemma Beyond Congo, UN interventionism is facing an
"impartiality" dilemma. The role of the UN mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) has
caused friction with the leaders in Juba, who are trying to quell an insurgency
led by the former vice-president Riek Machar.
Following the outbreak of
violence in December 2013, the UN Security Council approved with unprecedented
speed a request by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to boost the strength of the
UNMISS to 12,500 troops and 1,323 police, up from 7,000 troops and 900 police.
The perception of the lack of impartiality of the UN force by Juba has created
acrimony. In January, South Sudan president Salva Kiir accused the UN
peacekeeping mission of acting like a "parallel government" in his country.
It
did not help matters that in March, UN trucks that were supposedly carrying food
were found to be carrying weapons and blankets that Juba suspected to be
destined for the rebels.
Offensive peacekeeping operations undermine UN credibility needed to resolve future
crises
Austin Bay, 12-13-13, Sun Journal (Lewiston, Maine), December 13, 2013
Austin Bay: U.N. trying peacekeeping with fangs
But as for the U.N. ordering its well-equipped military units to destroy
specific combatant factions? Critics of offensive mandates authorizing the
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58
"neutralization" of specific factions contend, with good reason, that, when this
occurs, the Security Council has overtly chosen sides. When its peacekeepers
enter a sovereign country with the mandate to attack a rebel faction, the U.N.
loses more than credibility as a mediator. Come the next dirty war, the critics
argue, peacekeeping forces will be met as invaders.
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Impartiality Impact
Lack of impartiality prevents peacekeeping solvency
Dr. Jeni Whalan, 2014, Partial Peace: The Politics of Taking Sides in UN
Peacekeeping, Paper prepared for International Studies Association Annual Convention, Toronto, 26-29,
https://www.academia.edu/6474185/Partial_Peace_The_Politics_of_Taking_Sides_in_UN_Peacekeeping DOA: 12-6-14 Lecturer in
International Security and Development BA (UNSW), M.Phil (Oxon), D.Phil (Oxon)
Similarly, Shashi Tharoor recognized that UN peacekeeping could not go ‘back to basics’ if it was
to respond to the new security threats it faced, but nevertheless declared impartiality to be ‘the
oxygen of peacekeeping’: the only way peacekeeping can work is by being trusted by both sides,
being clear and transparent in their dealings, and keeping the lines of communication open. The
moment they lose this trust, the moment they are seen by one side as the ‘enemy’, they become part
of the problem they were sent to solve.’
Impartiality critical to consent and sustaining peacekeeping
Dr. Jeni Whalan, 2014, Partial Peace: The Politics of Taking Sides in UN
Peacekeeping, Paper prepared for International Studies Association Annual Convention, Toronto, 26-29,
https://www.academia.edu/6474185/Partial_Peace_The_Politics_of_Taking_Sides_in_UN_Peacekeeping DOA: 12-6-14 Lecturer in
International Security and Development BA (UNSW), M.Phil (Oxon), D.Phil (Oxon)
At the local level, similar diversity among the purposes of impartiality exists, as do tensions among
them. First, traditional impartiality has served to make peacekeeping acceptable to relatively strong
host states, sufficient that they would consent to the deployment of peacekeepers. Ensuring the
consent of the host state in one operation also had implications for the viability of future
peacekeeping; as Alan James noted, considerations of precedent were crucial: if a peacekeeping
force gets permission to enter a state to engage in impartial and non-violent activity and then moves
in the direction of partiality and violence, other prospective hosts are going to be extremely cautious
about issuing invitations.71
Impartiality critical to mediation
Dr. Jeni Whalan, 2014, Partial Peace: The Politics of Taking Sides in UN
Peacekeeping, Paper prepared for International Studies Association Annual Convention, Toronto, 26-29,
https://www.academia.edu/6474185/Partial_Peace_The_Politics_of_Taking_Sides_in_UN_Peacekeeping DOA: 12-6-14 Lecturer in
International Security and Development BA (UNSW), M.Phil (Oxon), D.Phil (Oxon)
The final purpose of impartiality identified at the local level is the procedural
legitimation expected to come from a peacekeeping operation that can mediate
between warring factions as an honest broker, fairly and without bias to any side. For
example, the Force Commander of the United Nations Transitional Authority in
Cambodia (UNTAC), General John Sanderson, credits this type of impartiality with
the mission’s ability to win confidence among senior members of the various
Cambodian factions, which provided UNTAC with a new means of influence to
influence their actions.76 This impartiality purpose is most often seen in conflicts among parties who
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are relatively evenly matched, where there is not a strong international interest in the
victory of one side over another, and once the conflict has reached some form of
stalemate.77 Effective mediation can, in turn, be expected to produce better outcomes,
such as a negotiated ceasefire with which armed groups comply, which means this
approach may also have a substantive legitimation function.
60
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Undermines Humanitarianism
UN taking on a combat role undermines humanitarianism
Africa Policy Brief, April 1, 2014, Partiality dilemma: The new model of UN
intervention missions, http://www.africapi.org/wpcontent/uploads/2014/05/Combative-Peace-UN-Interventionism-CSP-brief-No-1-April2014.pdf DOA: 12-7-14
Criticism of UN interventionism has also come from the humanitarian aid agencies
who fear that a combative UN force risks blurring the line between aid workers
providing care and soldiers. "You can have a helicopter one day used to deliver
the Force Intervention Brigade troops to attack a village and next day to
deliver aid to that same village," said Michiel Hofman, a senior humanitarian
specialist with Medicins sans Frontieres in Brussels. The UN bureaucracy can
only take lightly the critics of interventionism at its own peril. In war
situations, perception is everything. Interventionism hugely impacts the
perception of the UN peacekeeping operations not just in Africa but globally.
Offensive missions could turn aid workers into targets
Sudarsan Raghavan, November 2, 2013, Washington Post, Raghavan has been The
Post's Kabul bureau chief since 2014. He was previously based in Nairobi and
Baghdad for the Post, In Volatile Congo, A New UN Force with Teeth,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/in-volatile-congo-a-new-un-forcewith-teeth/2013/11/01/0cda650c-423f-11e3-b028-de922d7a3f47_story.html DOA: 12-514
But the force is also an unparalleled gamble for the United Nations that challenges the basic principles of peacekeeping.
It has orders to react offensively to enforce peace, essentially transforming peacekeepers into combatants. And it is
openly supporting Congolese government forces, a move away from the principle of neutrality that has guided other
U.N. missions. That could affect the United Nations’ ability to negotiate peace deals with the militias and risks
deepening conflicts. Humanitarian agencies are worried that Congo’s brutal militias could see the entire U.N. mission,
which also includes aid workers, monitors and civilian experts, as non-neutral potential targets.
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62
Nationalism
UN militarism in Africa triggers nationalism
Africa Policy Brief, April 1, 2014, Partiality dilemma: The new model of UN
intervention missions, http://www.africapi.org/wpcontent/uploads/2014/05/Combative-Peace-UN-Interventionism-CSP-brief-No-1-April2014.pdf DOA: 12-7-14
Although Africa is unlikely to resist external players in situations like the
CAR, growing perceptions of increased UN militarism on the continent are likely
to stir residual nationalism against external intervention. In recent decades,
the continent, through the AU, has grown increasingly assertive of its
independence vis-a-vis former colonial powers and the West.
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63
Inconsistent With Peacekeeping Values
Offensive PKOs inconsistent with the core principles of peacekeeping
Courtney Brooks, March 28, 2013, Explainer: UN Move to Give Peacekeepers First
Ever Combat Mandate, http://www.rferl.org/content/un-peacekeepers-combatresolution/24941095.html DOA: 12-5-14
Even though peacekeeping is nowhere to be found in the Charter of the United Nations, the UN has
performed almost 70 peacekeeping operations to date. Thought of as existing between Chapter VI and
VII, or Chapter VI ., peacekeeping was envisioned as a method to stave off wars and conflict in the
hopes of pacific settlement of disputes in order to maintain international peace and security. All
peacekeeping operations (PKOs) operate under three principles: (1) State parties consent to the PKO, (2)
Peacekeepers are impartial observers, and (3) Use of force is prohibited except in self-defense and or if
permitted under the mandate provided by the Security Council. UN Peacekeeping operations are only
approved by the Security Council and may sometimes work in tandem with PKOs authorized by
Regional Organizations.
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64
Undermines Support for Peacekeeping
It is difficult to get commitments to peacekeeping involving offensive PKOs
Dr. Jeni Whalan, 2014, Partial Peace: The Politics of Taking Sides in UN
Peacekeeping, Paper prepared for International Studies Association Annual Convention, Toronto, 26-29,
https://www.academia.edu/6474185/Partial_Peace_The_Politics_of_Taking_Sides_in_UN_Peacekeeping DOA: 12-6-14 Lecturer in
International Security and Development BA (UNSW), M.Phil (Oxon), D.Phil (Oxon)
Substantively, robust peacekeepers operating under ‘new impartiality’ are intended to deliver on the
expectations and promises implicit in peacekeeping: that they will protect populations, keep the
peace, and deter conflict. But the procedural legitimacy of ‘new’ impartiality is more contested.
First, it has been less acceptable to loose coalition of the UN’s most significant troop contributing
countries. UN peacekeepers today are supplied overwhelmingly by developing countries; in recent
years, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India have collectively contributed the lion’s share.55 These troop
contributing countries have broadly resisted calls to accept the greater risks involved in using force
in peacekeeping operations, and have regularly invoked the principle of impartiality to question
such practice of ‘taking sides’.
Dr. Jeni Whalan, 2014, Partial Peace: The Politics of Taking Sides in UN
Peacekeeping, Paper prepared for International Studies Association Annual Convention, Toronto, 26-29,
https://www.academia.edu/6474185/Partial_Peace_The_Politics_of_Taking_Sides_in_UN_Peacekeeping DOA: 12-6-14 Lecturer in
International Security and Development BA (UNSW), M.Phil (Oxon), D.Phil (Oxon)
Third, the traditional notion of impartiality is attractive to those countries that contribute the vast
majority of UN peacekeepers, because it minimizes the risk to their security; becoming a belligerent
party also means that peacekeepers become ‘targets for retaliation’.65 Since the Security Council’s
peacekeeping decisions rely entirely for their implementation on the willingness of UN member
states to contribute forces to a mission, it must also take into account the perceptions of troop
contributing countries regarding the acceptability and appropriateness of the peacekeeping
enterprise. For their part, member states derive a number of benefits from their contribution of
troops to UN peacekeeping, but remain ‘highly sensitive’ to the character of these operations:
Naturally, all contributing countries want to avoid casualties and hence exhibit greater reluctance to
contribute troops to missions that are thought overly dangerous. Contributing states thus typically
assess the degree of host government consent for a mission and might be deterred from participating
in operations where this is questionable... National publics are also frequently intolerant of
casualties sustained on peacekeeping operations. This poses a particular challenge to the emerging
concept of ‘robust peacekeeping.66
Offensive PKOs reduce support for peacekeeping
News Record, July 30, 2013, “United Nations Authorizes Offensive Operations in
the Democratic Republic of Congo,” http://www.newsrecord.co/united-nationsauthorizes-offensive-operations-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo/
Furthermore, most countries that supply troops for peacekeeping missions
do so with the expectation of limiting casualties. Placing peacekeepers in a
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fighting role may make supplying troops less attractive for U.N. member
states.
65
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66
Snowball
One offensive intervention sets a precedent for another
Brett D. Schaefer, is Jay Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs in
the Margaret Thatch, April 10, 2013, Center for Freedom, a division of the
Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The
Heritage Foundation and editor of ConUNdrum: The Limits of the United Nations
and the Search for Alternatives (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), U.S.
Should Oppose a Return to U.N. Peace Enforcement,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/04/us-should-oppose-return-to-unpeace-enforcement DOA: 12-6-14
The UNSC has authorized missions in the gray area between traditional missions
and peace enforcement, including the MONUSCO operation before creation of the
intervention brigade, but Resolutions 2098 and 2100 go further toward peace
enforcement than the U.N. has ventured since the 1990s. The U.N. is aware of the
significance of this shift and has taken pains to disguise it. Resolution 2098
explicitly establishes the intervention brigade on “an exceptional basis and
without creating a precedent or any prejudice to the agreed principles of
peacekeeping.” The Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations told
journalists that MINUSMA “is not an enforcement mission.” Yet the very act of
creating the intervention brigade establishes a precedent for future action, and
asserting that MINUSMA is not an enforcement operation cannot overcome the facts
that there is no peace to keep and that peacekeepers are mandated to impose
authority on behalf of the Malian government where it is either weak or absent.
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67
Alternatives
Parallel mission alternative
Dr. Jeni Whalan, 2014, Partial Peace: The Politics of Taking Sides in UN
Peacekeeping, Paper prepared for International Studies Association Annual Convention, Toronto, 26-29,
https://www.academia.edu/6474185/Partial_Peace_The_Politics_of_Taking_Sides_in_UN_Peacekeeping DOA: 12-6-14 Lecturer in
International Security and Development BA (UNSW), M.Phil (Oxon), D.Phil (Oxon)
Since the mid-1990s, states willing to deploy military forces with coercive mandates to conflict
zones have overwhelmingly done so through parallel missions, often with UNa uthorization but not
under UN command nor operating within the UN’s own conception of peacekeepers. It is notable
that the southern African states who contributed forces to MONUSCO’s intervention brigade sought
initially to deploy as a parallel mission of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
UN authorized intervention forces are superior
Brett D. Schaefer, is Jay Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs in the
Margaret Thatch, April 10, 2013, Center for Freedom, a division of the Kathryn and
Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation
and editor of ConUNdrum: The Limits of the United Nations and the Search for
Alternatives (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), U.S. Should Oppose a Return
to U.N. Peace Enforcement, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/04/usshould-oppose-return-to-un-peace-enforcement DOA: 12-6-14
With Srebrenica and Rwanda in mind, the U.N. since 1999 has instructed its
peacekeepers to protect civilians from the imminent threat of violence. These
debacles also led to a reexamination of U.N. peace enforcement culminating in
the Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (Brahimi report),
which acknowledged the need for robust peacekeeping operations at times but also
unequivocally stated: “[T]he United Nations does not wage war. Where enforcement
action is required, it has consistently been entrusted to coalitions of willing
States, with the authorization of the Security Council, acting under Chapter VII
of the Charter.” This report has guided peacekeeping policy for over a decade.
Even as U.N. peacekeeping has been assigned broader responsibilities and
expanded to historic highs in personnel and expense in the 2000s,[2] the U.N.
has observed the principle that it should not engage in peace enforcement
operations. Indeed, the U.N. reiterated the conclusions of the Brahimi report in
the 2009 A New Partnership Agenda Charting a New Horizon for UN Peacekeeping:
The single most important finding of the Brahimi report was that UN peacekeeping
can only succeed as part of a wider political strategy to end a conflict and
with the will of the parties to implement that strategy…. Peacekeeping is not
always the right answer. In situations of high political tension, or in contexts
where regional or national support is lacking, prevention, mediation,
peacebuilding and conflict-sensitive development activities may be more
effective. In active conflict, multinational coalitions of forces or regional
actors operating under UN Security Council mandates may be more suitable.
Successful crisis management rests on choosing the right tools and bringing them
together in ways that maximize their respective strengths.
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68
Alternative in the Congo
Brett D. Schaefer, is Jay Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs in the
Margaret Thatch, April 10, 2013, Center for Freedom, a division of the Kathryn and
Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation
and editor of ConUNdrum: The Limits of the United Nations and the Search for
Alternatives (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), U.S. Should Oppose a Return
to U.N. Peace Enforcement, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/04/usshould-oppose-return-to-un-peace-enforcement DOA: 12-6-14
Neither the DRC nor Mali is ripe for U.N. peacekeeping. The positive environment
from a decade ago has been squandered by DRC President Joseph Kabila with
ample help from spoilers inside and outside the country.[7] There is little prospect
for peace in Mali until a new government is elected that incorporates adequate
representation from long-ostracized groups.[8] While elections are scheduled for
July, significant challenges persist that could derail them.
The Obama Administration has a responsibility not to support the most convenient
options but rather to support efforts that are most likely to result in international
peace and security. Instead of peace enforcement through U.N. operations, the
U.S. should explore and advocate alternatives that address these situations and
support a U.N. mission only when the basic principles of peacekeeping are in place.
Specifically, the U.S. should shift gears and demand that the MONUSCO
intervention brigade be independently commanded in a manner similar to the
French force in Mali or the African Union force in Somalia. International efforts
should concentrate on addressing lack of governance in the DRC, and MONUSCO
should be downsized and focused on less ambitious goals of protecting and
providing security for humanitarian efforts until conditions are again ripe for a more
traditional U.N. peacekeeping operation. In Mali, the U.S. should delay standing up
MINUSMA until conditions improve while supporting the current French and African
interventions.
Although the Administration makes decisions in the Security Council, those
decisions have financial implications. The U.N. charges the U.S. 28.38 percent of
the U.N. peacekeeping budget, including the $1.4 billion annual budget for
MONUSCO (now with an additional $140 million for the intervention brigade).[9]
MINUSMA is projected to cost $800 million annually which is not currently factored
into fiscal year 2014 budget proposals.[10] Congress should challenge the
Administration over whether the U.N. should be entrusted with these situations and
ask which alternatives were explored.
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69
Bad to Support Congo Government
Government is corrupt and its forces are accused of mass rapes
Sudarsan Raghavan, November 2, 2013, Washington Post, Raghavan has been The
Post's Kabul bureau chief since 2014. He was previously based in Nairobi and
Baghdad for the Post, In Volatile Congo, A New UN Force with Teeth,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/in-volatile-congo-a-new-un-forcewith-teeth/2013/11/01/0cda650c-423f-11e3-b028-de922d7a3f47_story.html DOA: 12-514
There are also concerns that the U.N. force is propping up a corrupt government
and aiding an undisciplined military that has a history of human-rights abuses,
including mass rapes. Many Congolese remain skeptical of the new brigade’s
potential to eradicate the militias. Others have lofty expectations that could
bring disappointment and further antagonism toward the U.N. mission.
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70
A2: Offensive PKOs Necessary to Stop Rebel Groups
Defeat of M23 hasn’t deterred other groups
Dr Robert Besseling, January 1, 2014, Besseling is a Senior Political Adviser to
the IHS Country Risk and Forecasting Sub-Saharan Africa team, Jane’s
Intelligence Review, Elusive riches - Continued threats to the DRC's minerals
trade
The defeat of the M23 has not succeeded in motivating many members of other
rebel groups and community-based Maï-Maï self-defence militias that operate
within the region to surrender and disarm. On 3 December, UN under-secretarygeneral for peacekeeping operations Hervé Ladsous said that the FIB would engage
these other armed groups. The FIB is most likely to be deployed against
collaborators of the M23, including some Maï Maï groups in North and South Kivu,
and other groups that operate in areas now effectively under FARDC control, such
as the Alliance des Patriotes pour un Congo Libre et Souverain (APCLS), based in
the town of Masisi, North Kivu, and the Union des Patriotes Congolais pour la
Paix/Forces Populaires Congolaises (UPCP/FPC) in Lubero, also in North Kivu.
According to the UN Group of Experts, both of these groups are involved in the
mining of columbite-tantalum and gold.
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71
A2: Necessary to Defeat Rebels
Can’t defeat all of the rebel groups in the Congo
Sudarsan Raghavan, November 2, 2013, Washington Post, Raghavan has been The
Post's Kabul bureau chief since 2014. He was previously based in Nairobi and
Baghdad for the Post, In Volatile Congo, A New UN Force with Teeth,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/in-volatile-congo-a-new-un-forcewith-teeth/2013/11/01/0cda650c-423f-11e3-b028-de922d7a3f47_story.html DOA: 12-514
U.N. officials say a political solution is still the best path forward, but in a
phone interview last week, Amani Kabasha, the rebels’ political spokesman, said
his group had lost trust in the U.N. mission because it was supporting Congolese
forces. “Even if they kill all of the M23, another group will rise in our
place,” he warned. The intervention brigade is expected to go after more than 40
other militias who are committing atrocities, stealing Congo’s mineral wealth
and preventing the government from functioning — a task that seems virtually
impossible. There is also the problem of perception. The Enough Project, a
human-rights group, said in a report last week that the brigade “risks being
seen, or being used, as a pawn of Kinshasa,” the capital. Both Kobler and Cruz
said the brigade would not work with any Congolese army units that have
committed human-rights abuses. They also said the brigade would work at times on
its own.
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72
Con – Militarized Approaches Fail
Militarized peacekeeping fails
James Sloan, June 3, 2014 is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow, School of
Law, and a former adviser to a UN peace mission. His book The Militarisation of
Peacekeeping in the Twenty-First Century was published in 2011 by Hart Publishing,
Oxford, UN Peacekeeping in Darfur: A ‘Quagmare’ That We Cannot Accept,
http://www.e-ir.info/2014/06/03/un-peacekeeping-in-darfur-a-quagmire-that-we-cannotaccept/
As the author of a 2011 book lamenting the change in direction in UN
peacekeeping since the turn of the century and warning that such operations
would almost certainly fail, I was not surprised to read the articles. Deeply
disturbed, of course, but not surprised. UNAMID is an example of a
‘militarized peacekeeping’ operation—also known as ‘Chapter VII
peacekeeping’, ‘robust peacekeeping’, or ‘muscular peacekeeping’—a type of
operation that has routinely been authorized by the Security Council since the
late 1990s. The operations represent an attempt by the Security Council to
prevent the recurrence of a Rwanda-type situation, where mass atrocities
occurred in the presence of a UN peacekeeping operation, by moving away
from the traditional policy that force may only be used by peacekeepers in selfdefense (or, sometimes, in defense of the mandate of the force), in favour of a
policy authorizing the use of offensive force to protect civilians and others. As I
argued in 2011, this type of operation is unlikely to be successful.
Why Isn’t It Working?
The argument put forward in my book is, in a nutshell, that UN peacekeeping
operations are ill-suited to operations requiring the use of offensive force: they
lack the personnel, the equipment, and the effective leadership required.
Moreover, the tradition that peacekeeping operations may only operate with the
consent and cooperation of the government of the host state means that it is
extremely difficult for a militarized peacekeeping force to be even-handed in its
resort to force: if it were to use force against the host state—even if the
government of the host state was acting contrary to the interests of its civilian
population—it would lose that government’s good will and its continued
operation in the state would be extremely difficult.
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73
It is generally agreed that the handful of peacekeeping operations in the 20th
century that were vested with enforcement powers were disastrous; they were
unable to achieve their mandated tasks and brought the Organization into
disrepute. Examples here include ONUC (a peacekeeping operation in the
Congo in the early 1960s) and two ill-fated operations in the 1990s:
UNPROFOR, a peacekeeping operation charged with protecting civilians in
‘safe areas’ in the former Yugoslavia (including, tragically, the ‘safe area’ of
Srebrenica where some 8,000 thousand men and boys were murdered while
peacekeepers were pushed to one side), and UNOSOM II, a peacekeeping
operation charged with using force to prevent the resumption of violence in
Somalia (which withdrew in ignominy following the deaths of 18 US soldiers
and over 25 UN peacekeepers).
Of course, the UN did not use force in its peacekeeping operation in Rwanda—
despite it being advocated by its ground commander, Canadian General Romeo
Dallaire, in the months before the genocide broke out. Permission to use force
was denied by the UN Secretariat on the basis that it was not provided for in the
operation’s Security Council mandate. The stain left on the reputation of the
UN by the Rwandan genocide was deep. With a view to ensuring that nothing
in the nature of the Rwandan genocide occurred ‘under the noses’ of UN
peacekeepers, the idea that peacekeeping operations should routinely be
mandated to use offensive force in certain circumstances gained favour—
despite the problems with earlier militarized peacekeeping operations. In 2000,
the influential Brahimi Report on peacekeeping was published. On the question
of the use of force by peacekeeping operations, it argued along the following
lines: 1) the UN must never again stand by while civilians are killed, as had
been the case with the Rwandan genocide; 2) peacekeepers must be made
‘robust’ and charged with taking sides—they must never again be mere
‘appeasers’; and 3) only once a sufficient number of well-trained and wellequipped peacekeepers have been contributed by states should the Security
Council establish and deploy an operation.
The first element of the argument is laudable: the UN must certainly not stand
idly by in the face of mass atrocities. However, matters fall apart when one gets
to the second and third elements. Simply adding a line or two to the mandates of
peacekeeping operations, requiring peacekeepers to take on the unimaginably
difficult task of preventing genocide or civilian harm is wildly unrealistic. The
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nature of UN peacekeeping does not lend itself to the use of force:
peacekeeping forces must be donated by states (and may be withdrawn by them
at any time), peacekeeping forces tend to have little in the way of sophisticated
equipment (that, again, in many cases, must be donated), and the command
structure of peacekeeping forces is frequently problematic. For example, an
order from a commander from State A may be ignored by a subordinate from
State B—if that subordinate is able to have the order overruled by a government
official from State B. A version of this scenario is outlined in the Foreign
Policy investigation of UNAMID.
The third element of the argument that emerged from the Brahimi Report, i.e.,
that the Security Council should wait until peacekeeping forces are sufficiently
well-configured to be successful before establishing them or placing them in
situ, is also problematic. It presumes a Security Council that is sufficiently
circumspect to put political considerations to one side, as well as UN member
states that are willing to contribute sufficient financial resources and personnel
to the endeavor—despite the risk of the loss of life. It ignores the reality that
many states may consider the contribution of personnel to operations where the
forces will be in harm’s way to be politically damaging (the US contributes no
personnel to UNAMID) and may even be begrudging when it comes to
donating equipment. Moreover, it ignores the possibility that some members of
the Security Council might consider it to be preferable to put in place an
operation that is ill-suited to the task, rather than risk waiting until the time is
right, lest they be seen to be doing nothing in the face of mass atrocity. Former
Secretary-General Kofi Anan described the establishment of a militarized
peacekeeping operation with a robust mandate, but little chance of fulfilling it,
as creating an ‘alibi’ for the Security Council. Presumably, the idea is that if the
UN is criticized for allowing another mass atrocity to occur, the Security
Council can point to the fact that it did act: it established a militarized
peacekeeping operation to prevent such an atrocity. In this regard, the title of
the third article in the Foreign Policy investigation may be recalled: ‘A Mission
That Was Set Up to Fail’.
Even if we lived in a world where the leaders deciding what direction the
Security Council would take were circumspect and uninfluenced by politics,
and member states—including, of course, the Security Council’s permanent
members—were willing to donate sufficient funding, equipment, and troops to
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ensure the success of such operations, I am not convinced that assigning
peacekeepers forceful tasks is a good idea. Imagine a mayor of a city with
serious crime problems and an inadequate police force deciding that the way to
protect the citizenry was to arm traffic wardens or ambulance attendants. While
these newly robust city employees might very well prevent a number of crimes,
it would not be long before they were no longer seen by the criminal population
as unthreatening—instead, becoming the targets of the criminals. Militarized
peacekeepers are in something of a ‘no-win’ situation: where they use force,
they become the target of various forces; where they do not use force (because
they are vastly outnumbered and to do so would be the equivalent of
committing suicide), there is a substantial risk that the local population—which,
for better or worse, has come to think of the peacekeeping force as their
protector—will see them as failures or cowards. Recall the title of the first
article in the Foreign Policy investigation: ‘They Just Stood Watching’.
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Con – Solvency Answers
No secondary support for offensive PKOs, failure collapses them
David Bosco, April 1, 2013, Foreign Policy, When Peacekeepers Go to War,
http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/04/01/when-peacekeepers-go-to-war/ DOA 12-6-14
Part of the problem with offensive U.N. operations is that the training and
resources of the forces doing the fighting often doesn’t match the mandate. It’s
one thing for the Security Council to authorize offensive operations from New
York; it’s quite another thing for peacekeeping commanders to manage them
successfully on the ground. During the U.N.’s Bosnia operation in the 1990s,
that gap between the Council’s proclamations and the actual work of peacekeepers
grew to tragic proportions. If peacekeepers get bogged down while on the offense
— or, worse, commit abuses of their own — political will for the operation will
likely melt away. The countries contributing the troops for the enforcement
brigade may think twice. It’s doubtful that either the United States or cashstrapped European states will send their own forces to bolster peacekeepers in
need of assistance.
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Right to Protect Bad Link
Offensive peacekeeping operation exist to protect civilians
Midwest Model United Nations, 2013, http://mmun.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/ga4-a.pdf DOA: 12-6-14
The UN for the first time has authorized peacekeepers to conduct
targeted offensive operations within the mandate of the UN
Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (MONUSCO). Security Council Resolution 2098 established a
“Force Intervention Brigade” to assist the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (DRC) in neutralizing armed groups that have been accused of
sexual and gender-based violence, recruitment of child soldiers,
violence against civilians, and other human rights abuses.6 These
offensive operations are meant to provide protection of civilians
until the DRC has created a Rapid Reaction Force that is able to take
over duties from the Force Intervention Brigade. There are many
critics that view the UN’s offensive operations as “peace
enforcement” and that the UN may not be seen as an impartial party to
the conflict in the DRC.
Offensive PKOs based on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P)
Midwest Model United Nations, 2013, http://mmun.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/ga4-a.pdf DOA: 12-6-14
The new mandate for offensive operations in MONUSCO has been part of
a recent trend in strengthening peacekeeping’s ability to protect
civilians. Protection of civilians is viewed as a key factor in the
success of any peacekeeping mission. This recent trend stems from the
20045 World Summit Outcome’s endorsement of the Responsibility to
Protect. The international community made a commitment to protect
their own populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing,
and crimes against humanity. In places where civilians are subject to
such atrocities, the international community agreed that the UN
should act to protect civilians.
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Right to Protect Undermines American Leadership
An unconditional R2P obligation destroys US sovereignty, draining the military
R2p kill us sovereignty, causes overstretch
Groves 8
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/05/the-us-should-reject-the-unresponsibility-to-protect-doctrine
Steven Groves works to protect and preserve American sovereignty, selfgovernance and independence as leader of The Heritage Foundation's Freedom
Project. Groves, who is the Bernard and Barbara Lomas Senior Research Fellow in
Heritage’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, also advocates American
leadership on issues involving international political and religious freedom,
human rights and democratic institutions. He has testified before Congress on
international law, human rights, the United Nations and controversial treaties
such as the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Convention on the Rights
of Persons with Disabilities, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination against Women. In 2013, Groves was awarded the Dr. W. Glenn
and Rita Campbell Award for his work. The award is given annually to the
Heritage employee who delivered “an outstanding contribution to the analysis and
promotion of a free society.” Before joining Heritage in 2007, Groves was senior
counsel to then-Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) on the U.S. Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations. He played a lead role in the subcommittee's
investigation of the U.N. "oil-for-food" scandal, the most extensive
congressional probe ever conducted of the United Nations. Groves previously was
an associate at Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, specializing in commercial
litigation. Before that he served as assistant attorney general for the State of
Florida, where he litigated civil rights cases, constitutional law issues and
criminal appeals, among other matters, in state and federal court. Groves is a
frequent guest commentator on domestic and international television and radio.
He has appeared on ABC, BBC, CNBC, CNN and CNN International, Fox News Channel,
National Public Radio, Voice of America, NHK, Al Jazeera, Alhurra and the
Canadian Broadcasting Corp. His commentary and opinion pieces have been
published by journals such as National Review, The Weekly Standard and Human
Events, as well as by The Washington Times and other major newspapers across
America. Groves holds a law degree from Ohio Northern University's College of
Law and a bachelor of arts degree in history from Florida State University.
If wholly accepted as official U.S. policy, the R2P doctrine would greatly
expand U.S. obligations to prevent acts of genocide around the world. More
important, adoption of R2P would effectively cede U.S. national
sovereignty and decision-making power over key components of national
security and foreign policy and subject them to the whims of the international
community. The U.S. government, as a party to the Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention), is currently
obligated to prevent acts of genocide that occur within U.S. territory.[29] The
Genocide Convention Implementation Act of 1987 (the Proxmire Act), the
legislation implementing the Genocide Convention, was signed into law by
President Ronald Reagan in 1988.[30] The Proxmire Act defined the crime of
genocide as an act committed "with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or
in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group." The new
law even criminalized the act of inciting another person to commit an act of
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genocide.[31] Importantly, U.S. enforcement of these criminal offenses was
limited to acts committed in the United States.[32] However, adoption of the
R2P norm would obligate the United States to prevent all acts of genocide,
ethnic cleansing, and war crimes even if they occur outside of the U.S. Such
an obligation would impose unique responsibilities. As the world's preeminent
military force, the United States would have to bear a disproportionate
share of the R2P international commitment. In the event that acts of genocide
and ethnic cleansing occur, the vast majority of nations in the international
community could reasonably plead military inferiority on each such occasion,
leaving the United States to bear the brunt of any intervention. Most members of
the international community could also plead poverty, again leaving the United
States to fund the intervention. Even if the intervention is funded through the
United Nations system, the United States would still pay an unequal share of the
cost.[33]
The doctrinal dominance of r2p wrecks America’s global leadership BOTH structurally
AND perceptually. Foreign policy must shift back to SELF-INTEREST
Kaplan 8/1/13
http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-tragedy-us-foreign-policy-8810
Robert D. Kaplan is a foreign correspondent for The Atlantic, a senior fellow at
the Center for a New American Security in Washington and a member of the
Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board. His most recent book is Monsoon: The Indian
Ocean and the Future of American Power (Random House, 2010).
The 1990s were full of calls for humanitarian intervention: in Rwanda,
which tragically went unheeded; and in Bosnia and Kosovo where interventions,
while belated, were by and large successful. Free from the realpolitik
necessities of the Cold War, humanitarians have in the past two decades tried
to reduce foreign policy to an aspect of genocide prevention. Indeed, the
Nazi Holocaust is only one lifetime removed from our own—a nanosecond in human
history—and so post–Cold War foreign policy now rightly exists in the shadow of
it. The codified upshot has been R2P: the “Responsibility to Protect,” the
mantra of humanitarians. But American foreign policy cannot merely be
defined by R2P and Never Again! Statesmen can only rarely be concerned with
humanitarian interventions and protecting human rights to the exclusion of other
considerations. The United States, like any nation—but especially because it is
a great power—simply has interests that do not always cohere with its
values. That is tragic, but it is a tragedy that has to be embraced and
accepted. What are those overriding interests? The United States, as the
dominant power in the Western Hemisphere, must always prevent any other power
from becoming equally dominant in the Eastern Hemisphere. Moreover, as a
liberal maritime power, the United States must seek to protect the sea lines of
communication that enable world trade. It must also seek to protect both
treaty and de facto allies, and especially their access to hydrocarbons.
These are all interests that, while not necessarily contradictory to human
rights, simply do not operate in the same category. Because the United States is
a liberal power, its interests—even when they are not directly concerned with
human rights—are generally moral. But they are only secondarily moral. For
seeking to adjust the balance of power in one’s favor has been throughout
history an amoral enterprise pursued by both liberal and illiberal powers.
Nevertheless, when a liberal power like the United States pursues such a goal in the
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service of preventing war among major states , it is acting morally in the highest sense . A telling
example of this tension—one that gets to the heart of why Never Again! and R2P
cannot always be the operative words in statesmanship—was recently provided by
the foreign-affairs expert Leslie H. Gelb. Gelb noted that after Saddam Hussein
had gassed close to seven thousand Kurds to death in northern Iraq in 1988, even
a “truly ethical” secretary of state, George Shultz, committed a “moral
outrage.” For Shultz basically ignored the incident and continued supporting
Saddam in his war against Iran, because weakening Iran—not protecting the
citizens of Iraq—was the primary American interest at the time. So was Shultz
acting immorally? Not completely, I believe. Shultz was operating under a
different morality than the one normally applied by humanitarians. His was a
public morality; not a private one. He and the rest of the Reagan administration
had a responsibility to the hundreds of millions of Americans under their
charge. And while these millions were fellow countrymen, they were more
crucially voters and citizens, essentially strangers who did not know Shultz or
Reagan personally, but who had entrusted the two men with their interests. And
the American public’s interest clearly dictated that of the two states, Iran and
Iraq, Iran at the time constituted the greater threat. In protecting the public
interest of even a liberal power, a statesman cannot always be nice; or
humane. I am talking here of a morality of public outcomes, rather than one of
private intentions. By supporting Iraq, the Reagan administration succeeded in
preventing Iran in the last years of the Cold War from becoming a regional
hegemon. That was an outcome convenient to U.S. interests, even if the morality
of the affair was ambiguous, given that Iraq’s regime was at the time the more
brutal of the two. In seeking good outcomes, policymakers are usually guided by
constraints: a realistic awareness of what, for instance, the United States
should and should not do, given its finite resources. After all, the United
States had hundreds of thousands of troops tied down in Europe and Northeast
Asia during the Cold War, and thus had to contain Iran through the use of a
proxy, Saddam’s Iraq. That was not entirely cynical: it was an intelligent use
of limited assets in the context of a worldwide geopolitical struggle. The
problem with a foreign policy driven foremost by Never Again! is that it
ignores limits and the availability of resources. World War II had the
secondary, moral effect of saving what was left of European Jewry. Its primary
goal and effect was to restore the European and Asian balance of power in a
manner tolerable to the United States—something that the Nazis and the Japanese
fascists had overturned. Of course, the Soviet Union wrested control of Eastern
Europe for nearly half a century following the war. But again, limited resources
necessitated an American alliance with the mass-murderer Stalin against the
mass-murderer Hitler. It is because of such awful choices and attendant
compromises—in which morality intertwines with amorality—that humanitarians will
frequently be disappointed with the foreign policy of even the most heroic
administrations. World War II certainly involved many hideous compromises and
even mistakes on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s part. He got into the war in
Europe very late, he did not bomb the rail tracks leading to the concentration
camps, he might have been more aggressive with the Soviets on the question of
Eastern Europe. But as someone representing the interests of the millions of
strangers who had and had not voted for him, his aim was to defeat Nazi Germany
and Imperial Japan in a manner that cost the fewest American soldiers’ lives,
and utilized the least amount of national resources. Saving the remnants of
European Jewry was a moral consequence of his actions, but his methods contained
tactical concessions that had fundamental amoral elements. Abraham Lincoln, for
his part, brought mass suffering upon southern civilians in the last phase of
the Civil War in order to decisively defeat the South. The total war waged by
generals William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant was evidence of that.
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Simply put, there are actions of state that are the right things to do, even if
they cannot be defined in terms of conventional morality. Amoral goals,
properly applied, do have moral effects. Indeed, in more recent times,
President Richard Nixon and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, rushed arms
to Israel following a surprise attack by Arab armies in the fall of 1973. The
two men essentially told the American defense establishment that supporting
Israel in its hour of need was the right thing to do, because it was necessary
to send an unambiguous message of resolve to the Soviets and their Arab allies
at a critical stage in the Cold War. Had they justified the arms transfers
purely in terms of helping embattled post-Holocaust Jewry—rather than in terms
of power politics as they did—it would have made for a much weaker argument in
Washington, where officials rightly had American interests at heart more than
Israeli ones. George McGovern was possibly a more ethical man than either Nixon
or Kissinger. But had he been elected president in 1972, would he have acted so
wisely and so decisively during the 1973 Middle East war? The fact is,
individual perfection, as Machiavelli knew, is not necessarily synonymous with
public virtue. Then there is the case of Deng Xiaoping. Deng approved the brutal
suppression of students at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989. For that he is
not respected among humanitarians in the West. But the consolidation of
Communist Party control that followed the clampdown allowed for Deng’s
methodical, market-oriented reforms to continue for a generation in China.
Perhaps never before in recorded economic history have so many people seen such
a dramatic rise in living standards, with an attendant rise in personal (if not
political) freedoms in so short a time frame. Thus, Deng might be considered
both a brutal Communist and the greatest man of the twentieth century. The
morality of his life is complex. The Bosnia and Kosovo interventions of 1995 and
1999 are frequently held out as evidence that the United States is most
effective when it acts according to its humanitarian values—never mind its
amoral interests. But those who make that argument neglect to mention that the
two successful interventions were eased by the fact that America operated in the
Balkans with the balance-of-power strongly in its favor. Russia in the 1990s was
weak and chaotic under Boris Yeltsin’s incompetent rule, and thus temporarily
less able to challenge the United States in a region where historically the
czars and commissars had exerted considerable sway. However, Russia, even in the
1990s, still exerted considerable sway in the Caucasus, and thus a Western
response to halt ethnic cleansing there during the same decade was not even
considered. More broadly, the 1990s allowed for ground interventions in the
Balkans because the international climate was relatively benign: China was only
just beginning its naval expansion (endangering our Pacific allies) and
September 11 still lay in the future. Truly, beyond many a moral response lies a
question of power that cannot be explained wholly in terms of morality. Thus , to
raise morality as a sole arbiter is ultimately not to be serious about foreign policy. R2P must play as
large a role as realistically possible in the affairs of state. But it cannot
ultimately dominate . Syria is the current and best example of this. U.S. power is
capable of many things, yet putting a complex and war-torn Islamic society’s
house in order is not one of them. In this respect, our tragic experience in
Iraq is indeed relevant. Quick fixes like a no-fly zone and arming the rebels
may topple Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, but that might only make President
Barack Obama culpable in midwifing to power a Sunni-Jihadist regime, even as
ethnic cleansing of al-Assad’s Alawites commences. At least at this late
juncture, without significant numbers of Western boots on the ground for a
significant period—something for which there is little public support—the
likelihood of a better, more stable regime emerging in Damascus is highly
questionable. Frankly, there are just no easy answers here, especially as the
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pro-Western regime in Jordan is threatened by continued Syrian violence. R2P
applied in 2011 in Syria might actually have yielded a better strategic result:
it will remain an unknowable. Because moralists in these matters are always
driven by righteous passion, whenever you disagree with them, you are by
definition immoral and deserve no quarter; whereas realists, precisely because
they are used to conflict, are less likely to overreact to it. Realists know
that passion and wise policy rarely flow together. (The late diplomat
Richard Holbrooke was a stunning exception to this rule.) Realists adhere to the
belief of the mid-twentieth-century University of Chicago political scientist,
Hans Morgenthau, who wrote that “ one must work with” the base forces of human nature, “not
against them .” Thus, realists accept the human material at hand in any given
place, however imperfect that material may be. To wit, you can’t go around
toppling regimes just because you don’t like them. Realism, adds Morgenthau,
“appeals to historical precedent rather than to abstract principles [of justice]
and aims at the realization of the lesser evil rather than of the absolute
good.” No group of people internalized such tragic realizations better than
Republican presidents during the Cold War. Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon,
Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush all practiced amorality, realism, restraint
and humility in foreign affairs (if not all the time). It is their sensibility
that should guide us now. Eisenhower represented a pragmatic compromise within
the Republican Party between isolationists and rabid anti-Communists. All of
these men supported repressive, undemocratic regimes in the third world in
support of a favorable balance of power against the Soviet Union. Nixon accepted
the altogether brutal regimes in the Soviet Union and “Red” China as legitimate,
even as he balanced one against the other. Reagan spoke the Wilsonian language
of moral rearmament, even as he awarded the key levers of bureaucratic power to
realists like Caspar Weinberger, George Shultz and Frank Carlucci, whose effect
regarding policy was to temper Reagan’s rhetoric. The elder Bush did not break
relations with China after the Tiananmen uprising; nor did he immediately pledge
support for Lithuania, after that brave little country declared its
independence—for fear of antagonizing the Soviet military. It was caution and
restraint on Bush’s part that helped bring the Cold War to a largely peaceful—
and, therefore, moral—conclusion. In some of these policies, the difference
between amorality and morality was, to paraphrase Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim, no
more than “the thickness of a sheet of paper.” And that is precisely the point:
foreign policy at its best is subtle, innovative, contradictory, and truly
bold only on occasion, aware as its most disciplined practitioners are of
the limits of American power. That is heartrending, simply because calls to
alleviate suffering will in too many instances go unanswered. For the essence of
tragedy is not the triumph of evil over good, so much as the triumph of one good
over another that causes suffering.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/05/the-us-should-reject-the-unresponsibility-to-protect-doctrine
Steven Groves works to protect and preserve American sovereignty, selfgovernance and independence as leader of The Heritage Foundation's Freedom
Project. Groves, who is the Bernard and Barbara Lomas Senior Research Fellow in
Heritage’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, also advocates American
leadership on issues involving international political and religious freedom,
human rights and democratic institutions. He has testified before Congress on
international law, human rights, the United Nations and controversial treaties
such as the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Convention on the Rights
of Persons with Disabilities, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination against Women. In 2013, Groves was awarded the Dr. W. Glenn
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and Rita Campbell Award for his work. The award is given annually to the
Heritage employee who delivered “an outstanding contribution to the analysis and
promotion of a free society.” Before joining Heritage in 2007, Groves was senior
counsel to then-Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) on the U.S. Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations. He played a lead role in the subcommittee's
investigation of the U.N. "oil-for-food" scandal, the most extensive
congressional probe ever conducted of the United Nations. Groves previously was
an associate at Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, specializing in commercial
litigation. Before that he served as assistant attorney general for the State of
Florida, where he litigated civil rights cases, constitutional law issues and
criminal appeals, among other matters, in state and federal court. Groves is a
frequent guest commentator on domestic and international television and radio.
He has appeared on ABC, BBC, CNBC, CNN and CNN International, Fox News Channel,
National Public Radio, Voice of America, NHK, Al Jazeera, Alhurra and the
Canadian Broadcasting Corp. His commentary and opinion pieces have been
published by journals such as National Review, The Weekly Standard and Human
Events, as well as by The Washington Times and other major newspapers across
America. Groves holds a law degree from Ohio Northern University's College of
Law and a bachelor of arts degree in history from Florida State University.
Operational Flexibility vs. Precautionary Principles. Even if surrendering
control of America's armed forces to the will of the world community were
acceptable, the U.S. military could not operate effectively under the R2P doctrine.
Once committed to a military operation with all of its attendant risks, U.S.
armed forces must be allowed the operational freedom to create the conditions to
succeed. However, the R2P doctrine espouses a "proportional means"
limitation to the rules of engagement that would likely hinder the success of
a military intervention. Specifically, the ICISS report suggests that the
"scale, duration and intensity of the planned military intervention should be
the minimum necessary to secure the humanitarian objective in question."[51] In
other words, any intervening armed force may act only to end genocidal acts and
ethnic cleansing -- and go no further. However, a combat environment is
rarely so predictable. Some situations would require the total destruction of
the forces perpetrating the genocide or the overthrow of the government
providing command and control. Yet the ICISS report states that "[t]he effect on
the political system of the country targeted should be limited...to what is
strictly necessary to accomplish the purpose of the intervention."[52] Several
instances of genocide and ethnic cleansing in recent history have occurred with
the complicity and active involvement of a national government and its armed
forces. It is unrealistic to mandate that a military intervention limit its
effect on the political system and its leadership while stopping genocidal
crimes. It is likewise naïve to believe that government forces that are
complicit in genocidal acts would cease and desist from committing atrocities
after a military intervention has ended and the intervening troops are
withdrawn. In addition, the R2P doctrine demands that "all the rules of
international humanitarian law should be strictly observed" in the event
of a military intervention.[53] There is, however, widespread debate over
certain crucial aspects of that law. For example, there are major differences
of opinion regarding the classification, treatment, confinement, and trial of
certain classes of enemy combatants. The use of certain weapons, such as
cluster bombs and land mines, is also disputed. The R2P's requirement of
strict observance of the law of armed conflict is therefore unachievable because
there is broad disagreement on what "strict observance" would entail.
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Adoption of r2p crushes US hegemony without improving security
Holmes 11
http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2011/04/whose-responsibility-toprotect
Kim R. Holmes, a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, oversaw the
think tank’s defense and foreign policy team for more than two decades. Holmes
was Heritage’s vice president for foreign and defense policy studies and
director of the Davis Institute for International Studies from 1991 through 2012
except for his service, during most of the first term of President George W.
Bush, as assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs.
Holmes’ priority is writing a book, due in fall 2013, in which he hopes to lay
out a compelling vision for America’s future by uniting Heritage’s domestic and
foreign policy ideas. “Few people bring greater clarity and historical wisdom to
thorny issues than Kim Holmes,” Heritage President Edwin J. Feulner said in
announcing the new role on Dec. 5, 2012. Holmes previously directed Heritage's
team of foreign and defense policy experts in four centers on the front lines of
international affairs: the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy
Studies, the Asian Studies Center, the Center for International Trade and
Economics and the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom. Davis also includes the
Washington Roundtable for the Asia-Pacific Press (WRAPP). Holmes joined Heritage
in 1985 and rose to vice president in 1991. He was a founding editor of the
annual Index of Economic Freedom, which has become a signature Heritage
publication. He led the think tank’s efforts to convince the United States to
withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. He launched Heritage’s widely
respected homeland security program after September 11, as well as its program
on international trade, and expanded the missile defense program to what it is
today. Holmes left Heritage in late 2001 to serve as an assistant secretary of
state. After rejoining the think tank in 2005, he authored the book “Liberty's
Best Hope: American Leadership for the 21st Century.” Recognized around the
globe as one of Washington’s foremost foreign and defense policy experts, Holmes
is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he formerly served on the
Washington Advisory Committee. Previous appointments include the Defense Policy
Board, which is the U.S. defense secretary’s primary resource for expert outside
advice; the Board of Directors of the Center for International Private
Enterprise; and public member of the U.S. delegation to the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe. While at the State Department, Holmes was
responsible for developing policy and coordinating U.S. engagement at the United
Nations and 46 other international organizations. Important goals achieved at
that time included the U.N. mandates enabling Iraq to make the transition to
democracy; the Security Council's first binding nonproliferation resolution; the
U.N.'s first mandate requiring the Office of Internal Oversight Services to
release reports to member states; an international outcry over Libya's assuming
chairmanship of the Commission on Human Rights, which culminated in that body's
refashioning; and establishment of the U.N. Democracy Caucus and U.N. Democracy
Fund. Holmes earned his doctoral and master’s degrees in history from Georgetown
University. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of
Central Florida in Orlando. He was a research fellow at the Institute for
European History in Germany and adjunct professor of European security and
history at Georgetown University
What are these objectives?
First, to undermine the idea that force should be used only to protect national
security. Advocates argue that protecting civilians is the only “just
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cause” for using force. Defending our allies from attack or even launching
military interventions overseas to take out terrorist bases would, under this
definition, be “illegitimate.” The second objective is to elevate the
Security Council as the only body that can legitimately authorize the use of
force by any nation, including the U.S. This has obvious implications for
the U.S. Constitution, which recognizes the war-making powers only of the
President and the Congress. Our nation has the bulk of the world’s military
forces. This doctrine would constrain us from using force for our own protection (except for
very obvious invasions). Worse, it leaves our forces on the hook to
intervene overseas at the behest of the Security Council, at our expense.
It relegates our military to the status of U.N.-mandated world police force.
This makes no sense in terms of U.S. national security or in terms of the
U.N. Charter. Article 51 of the Charter affirms that nations can use military
force for self-defense. The Charter also says that when force is used for other
purposes, it must do so to counter “international” threats and restore
“international” peace. And it says “nothing contained in the present Charter
shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially
within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.” In other words, internal abuses
by states are no excuse to intervene. Advocates of the responsibility to protect
may find this provision inconvenient, heartless or even “illegitimate.” But
that’s what the Charter says. As envisioned by many of its supporters, this
doctrine violates the U.N. Charter. The Security Council has pecked away at
national sovereignty for years, justifying arms embargoes, no-fly zones and
sanctions. But it has recently become far more willing to ignore this Charter
restriction in response to perceived threats to civilian security. Before
dismissing the “slippery slope” argument that the Security Council will someday
claim exclusive jurisdiction over the use of force, remember how far we have
drifted away from the original purposes of the U.N. Charter. “Responsibility
to protect” is pure sophistry, riddled with contradictions. In reality, it
is a cynical attempt to assert external decision-making powers over the
use of U.S. military force. By trying to change the rules, advocates hope to
delegitimize America’s traditional use of force to defend itself and its
allies and to put that decision in the hands of an international body
that includes France , Russia and China. It’s easy to see why Russia and
China would want the U.N. to control U.S. decisions to use military
force. It’s not at all clear why a U.S. president would want that.
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R2P Bad: Sovereignty
Accepting r2p destroys us sovereignty
Groves 8
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/05/the-us-should-reject-the-unresponsibility-to-protect-doctrine
Steven Groves works to protect and preserve American sovereignty, selfgovernance and independence as leader of The Heritage Foundation's Freedom
Project. Groves, who is the Bernard and Barbara Lomas Senior Research Fellow in
Heritage’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, also advocates American
leadership on issues involving international political and religious freedom,
human rights and democratic institutions. He has testified before Congress on
international law, human rights, the United Nations and controversial treaties
such as the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Convention on the Rights
of Persons with Disabilities, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination against Women. In 2013, Groves was awarded the Dr. W. Glenn
and Rita Campbell Award for his work. The award is given annually to the
Heritage employee who delivered “an outstanding contribution to the analysis and
promotion of a free society.” Before joining Heritage in 2007, Groves was senior
counsel to then-Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) on the U.S. Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations. He played a lead role in the subcommittee's
investigation of the U.N. "oil-for-food" scandal, the most extensive
congressional probe ever conducted of the United Nations. Groves previously was
an associate at Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, specializing in commercial
litigation. Before that he served as assistant attorney general for the State of
Florida, where he litigated civil rights cases, constitutional law issues and
criminal appeals, among other matters, in state and federal court. Groves is a
frequent guest commentator on domestic and international television and radio.
He has appeared on ABC, BBC, CNBC, CNN and CNN International, Fox News Channel,
National Public Radio, Voice of America, NHK, Al Jazeera, Alhurra and the
Canadian Broadcasting Corp. His commentary and opinion pieces have been
published by journals such as National Review, The Weekly Standard and Human
Events, as well as by The Washington Times and other major newspapers across
America. Groves holds a law degree from Ohio Northern University's College of
Law and a bachelor of arts degree in history from Florida State University.
While genocide, war crimes, and other atrocities will always be incompatible
with American values, the McCain and Clinton statements raise the issue of
whether preventing genocide and ethnic cleansing would necessarily constitute a
vital U.S. national interest. In some situations, acts of large-scale ethnic
cleansing in some remote nation may indeed affect U.S. national interests.
However, the real question is whether or not the United States should
obligate itself through an international compact to use its military
forces as the rest of the world sees fit in cases of genocide and ethnic
cleansing. Accepting such an obligation would arguably empower other
nations to judge whether U.S. national interests or national values are at
stake. That begs the question of who will decide whether the United States must
commit its limited resources -- including its military forces -- to prevent
atrocities occurring in a foreign land. The R2P doctrine is designed to take
decision making on these crucial issues out of the hands of the United
States and place it in the hands of the international community, operating
through the United Nations. If the United States consented to such a doctrine,
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it would effectively surrender its authority to exercise an essential ,
sovereign power. First Principles and National Sovereignty The United States must
not surrender its independence and sovereignty cavalierly. The Founding
Fathers and subsequent generations of Americans paid a high price to achieve
America's sovereignty and secure the unalienable rights of U.S. citizens. The
government formed by the Founders to safeguard American independence and protect
individual rights derives its powers from the consent of the governed, not from
any other nation or group of nations.[42] Having achieved its independence by
fighting a costly war, America's Founders approached permanent alliances and
foreign entanglements with a fair degree of skepticism. President George
Washington, in his 1796 farewell address, favored extending America's commercial
relations with other nations but warned against extensive political
connections.[43] Washington well understood that legitimate governments are
formed only through gaining the consent of the people. He therefore placed a
high value on the independence that the United States had achieved and was
rightfully dubious about involvement in European intrigues. Integral to
national sovereignty is the right to make authoritative decisions on
foreign policy and national resources, particularly the use of the nation's
military forces. Many of the reasons why America fought the War of
Independence against Great Britain revolved around Britain's taxation of the
American people without their consent and its practice of "declaring themselves
invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever."[44] Once
America gained control of its revenue, natural resources, and industry and had
formed a government separate and apart from any other, the Founders would not
have compromised or delegated its prerogatives to any other nation or group of
nations. Washington rightly warned his countrymen to "steer clear" of such
foreign influence and instead to rely on "temporary alliances for extraordinary
emergencies."[45] The R2P doctrine strikes at the heart of the Founders' notion of
national sovereignty. The Founders would have deplored the idea that the United
States would cede control -- any control -- of its armed forces to the caprice
of the world community without the consent of the American people. Washington
stated that the decision to go to war is a key element of national sovereignty
that should be exercised at the discretion of the American government: Our
detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different
course. If we remain one people under an efficient government, the period is not
far off...when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice,
shall counsel.[46] The U.S. interest, guided by justice and exercised with the
consent of the American people, must remain the standard for making decisions of
war and peace. The interest of the international community, which is guided by
its own collective notion of justice and without the consent of the American
people, should not serve as America's barometer, especially when placing the
lives of U.S. military men and women in jeopardy.[47] The United States cannot
rely on world opinion, as expressed through an emerging international norm such
as R2P, to set the proper criteria for the use of U.S. military force. The
commitment to use force must be made exclusively by the U.S. government acting
as an independent, sovereign nation based on its own criteria for military
intervention.[48] In sum, the R2P doctrine does not harmonize with the
first principles of the United States. Adopting a doctrine that binds the
United States to scores of other nations and dictates how it must act to prevent
atrocities is the very sort of foreign entanglement against which Washington
warned us. The United States would betray the Founding Fathers' achievement of
independence and sovereignty if it wholly acceded to the R2P doctrine.
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Actively rejecting r2p crucial to maintain sovereignty
Groves 8
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/05/the-us-should-reject-the-unresponsibility-to-protect-doctrine
Steven Groves works to protect and preserve American sovereignty, selfgovernance and independence as leader of The Heritage Foundation's Freedom
Project. Groves, who is the Bernard and Barbara Lomas Senior Research Fellow in
Heritage’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, also advocates American
leadership on issues involving international political and religious freedom,
human rights and democratic institutions. He has testified before Congress on
international law, human rights, the United Nations and controversial treaties
such as the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Convention on the Rights
of Persons with Disabilities, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination against Women. In 2013, Groves was awarded the Dr. W. Glenn
and Rita Campbell Award for his work. The award is given annually to the
Heritage employee who delivered “an outstanding contribution to the analysis and
promotion of a free society.” Before joining Heritage in 2007, Groves was senior
counsel to then-Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) on the U.S. Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations. He played a lead role in the subcommittee's
investigation of the U.N. "oil-for-food" scandal, the most extensive
congressional probe ever conducted of the United Nations. Groves previously was
an associate at Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, specializing in commercial
litigation. Before that he served as assistant attorney general for the State of
Florida, where he litigated civil rights cases, constitutional law issues and
criminal appeals, among other matters, in state and federal court. Groves is a
frequent guest commentator on domestic and international television and radio.
He has appeared on ABC, BBC, CNBC, CNN and CNN International, Fox News Channel,
National Public Radio, Voice of America, NHK, Al Jazeera, Alhurra and the
Canadian Broadcasting Corp. His commentary and opinion pieces have been
published by journals such as National Review, The Weekly Standard and Human
Events, as well as by The Washington Times and other major newspapers across
America. Groves holds a law degree from Ohio Northern University's College of
Law and a bachelor of arts degree in history from Florida State University.
Protecting American Sovereignty
Given the recognition of the responsibility to protect doctrine in the 2005
World Summit Outcome Document, as well as the continuing efforts by certain
actors in the international community to promote and operationalize R2P, the
United States should clarify its position on its national sovereignty and the
criteria for the use of its armed forces.
To that end, the United States should:
Maintain its current official position, as set forth in Ambassador Bolton's
letter regarding the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document, that the R2P doctrine
does not create a binding legal obligation on the United States to intervene in
another nation for any purpose.
Affirm that the United States need not seek authorization from the U.N.
Security Council, the U.N. General Assembly, the international community, or any
other international organization to use its military forces to prevent acts of
genocide, ethnic cleansing, or other atrocities occurring in another country.
Base its decisions to intervene in the affairs of other nations -- including
punitive economic, diplomatic, political, and military measures -- on U.S.
national interests, not on criteria set forth by the R2P doctrine or any other
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international "test."
Scrutinize ongoing efforts by certain actors within the international
community to operationalize and otherwise promote the R2P doctrine in the United
States, the United Nations, the international NGO community, and other
international forums.
Reject the notion thatthe R2P doctrine is an established international norm.
Conclusion
The United States should take no comfort from the fact that, as a party to the
2005 World Summit Outcome Document, it has committed itself only to being
"prepared to take collective action" to end atrocities or that the ICISS report
represents the obligation to prevent atrocities as a mere "responsibility." R2P
advocates are attempting to achieve worldwide consensus that the international
community has an obligation to intervene, with military force if necessary, in
another country to prevent acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other
atrocities. R2P proponents may not be satisfied with anything less than a
multilateral treaty -- a United Nations Convention on the Responsibility to
Protect -- that creates binding legal obligations on its signatories.
The United States should therefore continue to treat the responsibility to
protect doctrine with grave skepticism. The independence won by the Founders and
defended by subsequent generations of Americans should not be squandered, but
rather should be safeguarded from furtive encroachments by the international
community.
Only by maintaining a monopoly on the deployment of diplomatic pressure,
economic sanctions, political coercion, and military forces will the United
States preserve its national sovereignty. Acceding to a set of criteria such as
those set forth by the R2P doctrine would be a dangerous and unnecessary step
toward bolstering the authority of the United Nations and the international
community and would compromise the consent of the American people.
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A2: “R2P Expands Sovereignty”
Defense of r2p misdefine “sovereignty” – the redefinition still erodes it
Gay 7/23/13
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-deceptive-appeal-theresponsibility-protect-8764
John Allen Gay is an assistant managing editor at The National Interest. His
book (co-authored with Geoffrey Kemp) War with Iran: Political, Military, and
Economic Consequences was released by Rowman and Littlefield in early 2013, The
National Interest, July 23, The Deceptive Appeal of the Responsibility to
Protect, DOA: 12-7-14
The third pillar is where the rub is. The notion that the international
community has an obligation to become involved in a country under certain
circumstances, regardless of what its government says, appears to erode
national sovereignty. Albright and Williamson charge that this is a
misperception—in fact, they say, R2P “is designed to reinforce, not undermine,
national sovereignty. It places primary emphasis on the duty of states to
protect their own people and its complementary focus on helping governments
improve their capacities to fulfill their commitments.” In other words, R2P
expands the concept of sovereignty—sovereignty includes not only rights, but
also responsibilities, responsibilities which states should help each other
fulfill. Sovereignty here is so sacrosanct that states failing to exercise it
fully lose their title to it—“Only when a government fails or refuses to live up
to the responsibility of sovereignty does it run the risk of outside
intervention.” Yet this is a curious way to construe sovereignty.
Sovereignty becomes not merely an empirical fact about states that is
prudently respected, but a right entrusted from on high; given that the right
passes to the international community when abused, it would seem this
sovereignty sees the world as a federation. International institutions—treated
in the report as the final authorities on third-pillar actions—graciously
devolve their responsibilities to local viceroys and governors-general, whom it
may relieve of their duties if their failures are severe enough. It’s not really
sovereignty, then—it’s mere administrative convenience.
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A2: “R2P Doesn’t kill Sovereignty - it’s Preventive”
Even if it’s prevention, the doctrine still kills sovereignty
Gay 7/23/13
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-deceptive-appeal-theresponsibility-protect-8764
John Allen Gay is an assistant managing editor at The National Interest. His
book (co-authored with Geoffrey Kemp) War with Iran: Political, Military, and
Economic Consequences was released by Rowman and Littlefield in early 2013, The
National Interest, July 23, The Deceptive Appeal of the Responsibility to
Protect, DOA: 12-7-14
Albright and Williamson might reply that all these worries repeat the error
of assuming that R2P is mainly about its third pillar, when in fact “R2P is at
its core an instrument of prevention. It does not mandate military action by
the United States or others. The idea is to generate preventive diplomacy,
increased development aid, sanctions, and other tools to avoid the military
options that might be necessary when prevention fails and atrocities commence.”
The second pillar, for them, bears the most weight. et the way Albright and
Williamson envision this pillar working is also a threat to sovereignty . They imply this in
the Politico op-ed they released to plug the report, as they note that “Syria
today presents us with a stark reminder of the high human costs of equivocation.
As Assad began to turn state organs into his own tool of repression, R2P’s
preventive underpinnings were rightfully called into question...” Indeed.
No preventive action could have kept Assad from turning the state’s
institutions into tools of repression while also respecting Syrian
sovereignty, because Assad’s rule was already repressive. As in most
autocracies, the government could not become less repressive without endangering
its continued hold on power. Assad was thus likely to regard the second-pillar
efforts that would have been necessary to stabilize prewar Syria as a threat,
and to refuse them. (Indeed, other autocracies, such as Russia and Egypt, have
similarly refused such “help.”) So should these second-pillar measures be
conducted over a government’s objections? If not, they’ll often be
insufficient; if so, sovereignty is further eroded. Yet Albright and
Williamson pass over this problem in silence.
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A2: “Safeguards Protect Sovereignty”
R2P safeguards AUGMENT erosion of sovereignty
Menon 6/12/13
http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2013/06/12/its-fatally-flawed/
Rajan Menon is Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of Political Science, City
College of New York/City University of New York, and a senior fellow at the
Atlantic Council.
R2P’s originators anticipated that any prescription perceived as proposing lax
criteria for the use of force would be dead on arrival, so the ICISS report and
follow-on publications of its ilk have bowed before the shrine of
sovereignty. They affirm that the obligation to protect people rests in the
first instance with the governments that have jurisdiction over them, but they
add that when a state cannot or will not protect human rights, the
responsibility shifts to the international community, which means, ideally, the
UN girded with Security Council authorization, or in a pinch regional
organizations if they promise subsequently to seek UNSCR approval. R2P
proponents take pains to explain that the concept is not a pretext for military
intervention. Force, Gareth Evans tirelessly reiterates, should be used only
during human rights emergencies and only following the failure of diplomacy,
mediation, naming and shaming, and sanctions. Even then, he stresses,
feasibility, risks, proportionality and the prospects for success must be
weighed. (There is more than a dollop of just war theory in R2P; Augustine and
Aquinas would be proud.) R2P’s expositors also recommend various preventive
measures: early-warning mechanisms, pre-crisis mediation, peacekeeping,
economic assistance and post-conflict reconstruction.2 Yet the reassurances
that force would be a rare, last-ditch response have not placated critics,
for several reasons. R2P’s pre-intervention prescriptions merely repeat
existing remedies and add nothing to diplomacy’s toolkit. What’s new is the
casuistry of reframing and diminishing sovereignty in order to legitimize
altruistic armed intervention in defense of the abstract rights that most
political communities agree upon in theory. Given R2P’s emphasis on feasibility
and the chances for success, weak states are its most likely proving
grounds; powerful ones need not fear, no matter the magnitude of their
misdeeds. Because idealism and power are inextricably intertwined, with the
latter frequently corrupting the former, R2P provides powerful states one script
for playing the Good Samaritan when intervention promotes their interests, and
another for eschewing or opposing aid when it doesn’t.
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A2: “N/U – Sovereignty is Down Now”
Aff is unique – sovereignty is strong – HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION is the ONLY cause
Chirstensen 3/2/12
http://notesonliberty.com/2012/03/02/bizarre-love-triangle-towards-a-newinternationalism/
Brandon Christensen (follow him on Twitter) received his B.A. in cultural
anthropology from UCLA in 2013, where he also minored in Middle Eastern and
African studies. His writings have been featured in the Freeman and at
RealClearHistory. He was born in the middle of Utah, raised in a small Northern
California town, and spent two years attending a community college in Santa Cruz
before moving to Los Angeles. He is interested in pre-colonial polities,
property rights, ethnicity, and international trade.
Perhaps, but I strongly disagree with Dr. Larison’s observations here. Not
with the notion that weaker states have selfish interests too, but rather with
the argument that state sovereignty has been eroding precipitously over the
past twenty years. To the isolationist, free trade and international governance
(including military alliances) are necessarily bad things for a state and its
sovereignty, because these concepts are perceived to be taking away from the
ability of a state to make decisions in its own interests. Yet the major powers
and, to a lesser extent, the regional powers of the world are largely able
to do what they want in terms of formulating domestic and foreign policies.
Just think of the recent attempt by Brazil and Turkey to get Iran to play nice
with its nuclear technology. With the exception of the United States in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the “weak states” of the world and their predation by major
powers seems only to be occurring along peripheries of the major powers’
territories, specifically in the region of the world traditionally under Russian
influence. And even these predatory practices of the Russian state are largely
aimed at defending Moscow’s peripheries from the incursions into region by the
American state. So I would look at the situation of weak states outside the
peripheries of great powers not as a steady erosion of state sovereignty, but as
the last stage of colonization by Europeans a century ago. The weakness in these
states was inherent from the beginning, as they were largely constructed to
extract resources for shipment to European industry and to ensure that recently
conquered non-Western rivals, whether monarchies, confederations, city-states,
or empires, remained conquered once and for all. In order for a state to have
sovereignty, it needs to be recognized by its own people as legitimate, and not
by major powers (though it certainly helps!), and the structure of weak states,
at least outside the peripheries of major powers, is illegitimate in the eyes of
most the people living within these states. Dr. Larison continues: “If there is
one thing more misguided than organizing foreign policy around ‘humanitarian’
and democratist meddling in the affairs of other nations, it has to be the
revival of the liberal nationalist conceit that there should be an independent
nation-state for every group that wants one.” Hardly. The Wilsonian notions of
humanitarian intervention and democratic nation-building are easily the most misguided
ideals being espoused throughout Washington today, and the fact that some of
the idealists over at Foreign Policy have latched onto liberal nationalism as a
way to promote their misguided policies should not deter us from the fact that
the United States has not pursued nor promoted liberal nationalism in its
foreign policy since Wilson’s disastrous meddling in Europe over (nearly) a
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century ago. Let us be clear: the NATO excursions into the Balkans had nothing
to do with promoting liberal nationalism, and everything to do with humanitarian
intervention, democratic state-building, and geostrategic maneuvering. The
military excursions into Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia, and God knows
where else over the past twenty years have nothing to do with the concept of
liberal nationalism and everything to do with humanitarian intervention,
democratic state-building, and/or geostrategic maneuvering. Liberal
nationalism, as it is promoted by the idealists, is extremely new on the
scene in D.C. and is probably just one of the many, many fads that swing
through the capital and are used to apply humanitarian intervention and
democratic state-building to foreign policy proposals.
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Sovereignty Impact
Global adoption of R2P causes great power wars – denial of sovereignty.
Trombly 11
Dan Trombly, GWU IR Grad Student, 8-27-2011 The upending of sovereignty
http://slouchingcolumbia.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/the-upending-of-sovereignty/
The second dangerous element is that on the international scale, the potential for creating
serious enmity among the great powers. The importance of consensus belies the reality of
how consensus is formed, not by automatic recognition but by a careful negotiation of
interests and calculation of threats. Yet the more we choose, falsely, to view R2P as simply a
norm which automatically initiates a series of actions to enforce itself, the more tension we
are likely to provoke when this imagined process hits against the friction of world politics
as they actually are. While I have predicted that military limitations by US allies in power projection and
the increasing ability of countries to deny the US ability to unilaterally project power itself will make the
implementation of R2P unlikely beyond Africa or certain parts of the Middle East, even the attempts to apply
it in the backyard of China or Russia could seriously destabilize the international system. For the US to
seek to implement a norm which in theory only a UNSC veto prevents from being
employed against China in that country’s backyard would be a serious escalation of
tensions and in utter denial of the type of sovereign, qualified space China is seeking to
create in its own neighborhood. R2P is not a plot by great powers. But it is a radical denial of the
historic purpose of sovereignty, which was not to protect societies from foreign states, but to protect society
from itself. But rather than empowering a global society, it will empower the great powers of the
international system, along with those societies whose appeals suit their perceived
interests. It is built on a fundamentally untenable illusion of consensus among great powers
which will not endure a crisis in a more strategically meaningful area of the world. Should
activists succeed in convincing great powers that societies of affected states can legitimize the actions of
intervening states, and jus ad bello trump the need for the impossible-to-enforce consensus, the results will
seriously challenge the basis of amicable great power relations in the first place.
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R2O Increase War – Moral Hazard (Syria/Iran)
R2P incentivizes war deal-making – it rules out compromise. Specifically drives Assad
and militias
Gay 7/23/13
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-deceptive-appeal-theresponsibility-protect-8764
John Allen Gay is an assistant managing editor at The National Interest. His
book (co-authored with Geoffrey Kemp) War with Iran: Political, Military, and
Economic Consequences was released by Rowman and Littlefield in early 2013, The
National Interest, July 23, The Deceptive Appeal of the Responsibility to
Protect, DOA: 12-7-14
The R2P concept of sovereignty can also give bad actors like Assad perverse
incentives . A case in point is threats to bring those behind atrocities before
international courts—threats made in Albright and Williamson’s report. Assad is
hardly more likely to seek peace and step down if he thinks that might see
him brought before the International Criminal Court and thrown in prison
for decades. Such a risk is all the more reason to hang on desperately —and to
keep inflicting horrors on his people. Second-pillar actions, too, could
make him more troublesome. If the international community insists that states
accept outside efforts to change their politics, autocracies will have
incentives to resist the international community; those within autocratic
regimes who benefit from their positions have incentives to spoil the deal. And
the resistance can be quite destructive, endangering international
stability and even causing atrocities. Iran’s support for terrorist groups and
sectarian militias throughout the Middle East may be driven in part by this dynamic .
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R2P Increases War – Moral Hazard
Moral hazard blocks negotiated solutions
Beaumont 5/4/13
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/04/un-syria-duty-to-intervene
Peter Beaumont writes on foreign affairs for the Guardian and Observer. He has
reported extensively from conflict zones including Africa, the Balkans and the
Middle East, and has reported widely on human rights issues and the impact of
conflict on civilians. The winner of the George Orwell Prize for his reports
from Iraq he is the author of The Secret Life of War: Journeys Through Modern
Conflict
Jennifer Walsh, professor of international relations at Oxford University who
has studied the development of R2P, agrees with Evans's analysis. But she also
identifies a "moral hazard" inherent in R2P – that it can create a perception
in conflicts that a rebel force may be only a regime-sponsored atrocity away
from international interveners coming to its aid. The incentive for rebels
to find a negotiated solution is thus reduced.
Serbia proves moral hazard
Menon 6/12/13
http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2013/06/12/its-fatally-flawed/
Rajan Menon is Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of Political Science, City
College of New York/City University of New York, and a senior fellow at the
Atlantic Council.
Those who start wars are often confident that they know how they will end. They
are just as often proved wrong. Idealistic humanitarian interveners, a subspecies of such hubristic planners, congratulate themselves on their highmindedness, which leads most of them to assume that if no self-interested
motives attach to their intentions, then no self-interested consequences can
emerge from them. Of course this is absurd. One result of NATO’s (eventual)
decision to strike Bosnian Serb forces in 1995, very popular among the
soon-to-be-hatched R2P brood, was to alter the political balance within the
Kosovar Albanian opposition. The Dayton deal skirted Kosovo, confirming most
Kosovars’ belief that the world couldn’t care less about their plight. The new
context helped the KLA but, as already noted, shaped the ferocity of its
tactics. In response, Serb forces mounted a major counterinsurgency campaign.
Indeed, the multiplication of Western calls to “do something” had the
perverse effect of inducing Slobodan Milosevic to ramp up the killings and
expulsions. Once NATO started bombing, Milosevic moved even faster and more
ruthlessly to quash the KLA, but NATO still limited itself to airpower and
restricted pilots to safe altitudes. The result? In less than three months after
NATO began bombing, Serbian troops killed some 10,000 people in Kosovo and
drove another 1.4 million from their homes. The shallowness of the alliance’s
commitment to humanitarian principles was revealed when it chose to conduct a
campaign that would produce minimal, ideally zero, casualties for its own
soldiers, no matter the horrendous consequences for the people it had intervened
to protect. NATO’s defenders say that it did not do the killing and expelling,
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that Milosevic was responsible and that he would have done what he did anyway.
Yes, the Serbian leadership unquestionably bears responsibility; yes, atrocities
occurred before NATO acted; but there can be no doubt that the scale and
duration of Serbian atrocities owed much to NATO’s intervention. The selfexculpatory claim that what happened would have happened is unpersuasive. It is
also worth noting in passing what the Kosovar victory enabled—a set of concerns
almost universally ignored in Western accounts of the war. NATO defended the
intervention as a response to killings and ethnic cleansing, but after the war
Albanians killed many Serb civilians and forced thousands of Serbs and
Roma from their homes even as NATO troops (organized as KFOR) were moving in
to secure Kosovo. The KLA maintained detention centers in Albania where several
hundreds of Serbs and other minorities, plus Albanians suspected of complicity
with the Serb authorities, were held. Some were tortured, others killed—in some
cases after their organs were removed for sale by Albanian criminal networks.6
High-ranking KLA officials participated in some of these activities. Before the
war, in those parts of Kosovo not controlled by Serb forces, criminal clans,
again involving KLA leaders, seized industries, natural resources and property,
foreshadowing the massive corruption and criminality that mark Kosovo today.
None of this ever excited much passion in Brussels or Washington; nor were
European governments welcoming toward refugees fleeing Kosovo. Their focus was
on Serb atrocities. The KLA, which had gained in stature partly because the
United States and Europe embraced it as a war partner and as the legitimate
representative of Kosovar resistance, got a pass. In humanitarian
intervention’s Manichean world of artificial passion plays, there are no shades
of gray. Unintended consequences are either ignored or blamed on others.
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Moral Hazard: Secessionism
R2P sparks global secessionism through moral hazard
Janik 13
Janik, Ralph R. A., The Responsibility to Protect as an Impetus for Secessionist
Movements: On the Necessity to Re-Think Territorial Integrity (December 6,
2013). Matthias Kettemann (ed), Grenzen im Völkerrecht (Jan Sramek Verlag,
2013). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2364478
Ralph Janik is research assistant of Prof. August Reinisch and lecturer at the
University of Vienna. After completing his studies in law and political science
at the University of Vienna and the Universidad Alcala de Henares (Madrid) , he
has worked inter alia as a research assistant in the project “ International Law
through the National Prism: The Impact of Judicial Dialogue” at the University
of Vienna, Section for International Law and International Relations , as well
as at the Law Faculty of the University of Amsterdam, where he also obtained his
postgraduate LL.M. degree in international law
The historical and political roots of such secessionist struggles will be
briefly outlined in the next section, which is followed by a short overview on
the legal framework regarding secessionist claims. After having discussed the
extent to which law has a say in this subject matter and the possibility of
secession as a » remedial «, ultima ratio right under extraordinary
circumstances, the following part will then proceed to demonstrate that
secession is increasingly gaining factual and legal importance in light of
the increasing tendency to deal with intra-state conflicts on the
international plane instead of treating these as essentially domestic matters.
The last step in this development has been the emergence of the concept of the »
Reponsibility to Protect « which essentially enshrines the duty of states to
protect their respective populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic
cleansing, and crimes against humanity and also de lege ferenda obligations upon
the international community to act once a state is unable or unwilling to
protect its population from such acts or even carrying out these serious human
rights violations itself. As will be shown however, this concept does not only
have positive effects but may also constitute an incentive for secessionist movements
to actively provoke the government they are fighting to react in a manner
that might force the international community to step up with at least some kind
of international support on their behalf. Here, one needs to bear in mind that
such support might decisively shift the balance of power towards the otherwise
clearly disadvantaged secessionist group. This incentive is further fostered by
the fact that massive state retaliation may also provide the basis for the
above-mentioned right to » remedial secession «, thereby also influencing the
international community in its subsequent assessment of the pressing issue of
recognition. Assuming that such a nexus of the Responsibility to Protect and the
right to remedial secession indeed exists, the international community could
thus often unknowingly and unintentionally become the midwife of new
states. That would call for a fundamental re-conceptualization either of the
attitude towards secessionism or that towards intervention on humanitarian
grounds; this point will be addressed in the last part, which will be followed
by a conclusion.
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Secession: A2: Alternative Causality
R2P is the CRUCIAL determinant of global secessionism
Janik 13
Janik, Ralph R. A., The Responsibility to Protect as an Impetus for Secessionist
Movements: On the Necessity to Re-Think Territorial Integrity (December 6,
2013). Matthias Kettemann (ed), Grenzen im Völkerrecht (Jan Sramek Verlag,
2013). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2364478
Ralph Janik is research assistant of Prof. August Reinisch and lecturer at the
University of Vienna. After completing his studies in law and political science
at the University of Vienna and the Universidad Alcala de Henares (Madrid) , he
has worked inter alia as a research assistant in the project “ International Law
through the National Prism: The Impact of Judicial Dialogue” at the University
of Vienna, Section for International Law and International Relations , as well
as at the Law Faculty of the University of Amsterdam, where he also obtained his
postgraduate LL.M. degree in international law
It is all too likely that, due to the change in attitude towards intervention
in civil wars, often fought over secessionist demands, as well as regarding
recognition of thereby possibly emerging states, such conflicts are here to
stay and may well increase in the future. This would particularly – but not
exclusively – affect countries composed by many ( easily ) separable groups
living in more or less distinct territories without sharing any sense of
community or even solidarity. The possibility of a doubled moral hazard
caused by the interplay of remedial secession and the prospect of outside
intervention is thus of crucial significance for the future of the international legal order. Yet,
this effect in general and regarding secession in particular has largely
remained ignored both by practitioners and theorists. Rather, scholars
usually seem reluctant to voice fundamental criticism in connection with
the advances in connection with the use of force on humanitarian grounds,
especially upon authorization by the Security Council, in fear of being seen as
advocates of oppressive regimes. At the same time, states seem to avoid or
simply not consider the possibility of this very issue in their shortterm
pursuance of strategic goals, while they are keen on avoiding the creation of
any precedence at all costs and regardless of the facts. In the case of Kosovo
for instance, the intervening countries simply emphasized that the conflict was
not an issue of an attempt to secession but a humanitarian catastrophe that had
made the use of force necessary to stop and prevent a regime from gross human
rights abuses. 107 Nanda, Self-Determination, 279. 108
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Secession Spills Over
Secession linked globally – spills over
Larison 11
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-wages-of-kosovo-and-southsudan/
Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC, where he also keeps a solo blog. He
has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News,
Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and is a
columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of
Chicago, and resides in Dallas.
This is always very easy for others with nothing at stake to say. Sudan’s
break-up doesn’t threaten the rest of Africa until it provides the
precedent in other countries for similar independence movements. Kosovo was
supposed to be exceptional, too, until recognition of its independence
more or less directly led to the effective partition of Georgia. When the
U.S. and other states recognized Kosovo, few believed that it could have an
effect on South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but it did. How many countries will suffer
from greater instability because self-determination prevailed in Sudan? Once
major powers start re-drawing borders to satisfy the demands of selfdetermination or other concerns, there is no obvious place to stop . Kosovo’s example
isn’t supposed to have any effect on the situation in Karabakh, either, but why
are the people in Karabakh and Armenia bound by this Western assumption?
Supporters of the secession of South Sudan have to take into account the
possibility that the success of the southern Sudanese in achieving
independence will encourage other separatist and automomist movements in
Africa and elsewhere. In many ways, African nation-states are among the most
arbitrary, artificial creations in the entire world, but that doesn’t mean that
splitting them up into equally artificial, less viable statelets will make
things any better. Kosovo’s separation from Serbia and eventual independence
empowered a gang of criminals.
Secession creates a domino effect
Byman and Pollock 12
Byman, Daniel, and Kenneth Pollack. "The Syrian Spillover." Foreign Policy
(2012).
Kenneth Michael Pollack, PhD, is a noted former CIA intelligence analyst and
expert on Middle East politics and military affairs.
Dr. Daniel L. Byman is a professor at Georgetown University's Walsh School of
Foreign Service in the Security Studies Program and Department of Government
Secessionism: As the Balkan countries demonstrated in the 1990s, seemingly
triumphant secessionist bids can set off a domino effect . Slovenia's
declaration of independence inspired Croatia, which prompted Bosnia to do
the same, which encouraged Macedonia, and then Kosovo. Strife and conflict
followed all of these declarations. Sometimes it is the desire of one subgroup
within a state to break away that triggers the civil war in the first place. In
other cases, different groups vie for control of the state, but as the
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fighting drags on, one or more groups may decide that their only recourse is
to secede. At times, a minority comfortable under the old regime may fear
discrimination from a new government. The South Ossetians, for example,
accepted Russian rule but rebelled when Georgia broke off from the Soviet Union,
as they feared they would face discrimination in the new Georgian state. After
Russia helped South Ossetia defeat the Georgian forces that tried to re-conquer
the area in 1991-1992, the next domino fell when ethnic Abkhaz also rebelled and
created their own independent area in 1991-1992. The frozen conflict that
resulted from this civil war finally burst into an international shooting war
between Georgia and Russia in August 2008.
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R2P Fails: A2 Good
Self-interest and UN charter structurally precludes effective R2P
Holmes 1/7/14
http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2014/1/the-weakness-of-theresponsibility-to-protect-as-an-international-norm
Kim R. Holmes, a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, oversaw the
think tank’s defense and foreign policy team for more than two decades. Holmes
was Heritage’s vice president for foreign and defense policy studies and
director of the Davis Institute for International Studies from 1991 through 2012
except for his service, during most of the first term of President George W.
Bush, as assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs.
Holmes’ priority is writing a book, due in fall 2013, in which he hopes to lay
out a compelling vision for America’s future by uniting Heritage’s domestic and
foreign policy ideas. “Few people bring greater clarity and historical wisdom to
thorny issues than Kim Holmes,” Heritage President Edwin J. Feulner said in
announcing the new role on Dec. 5, 2012. Holmes previously directed Heritage's
team of foreign and defense policy experts in four centers on the front lines of
international affairs: the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy
Studies, the Asian Studies Center, the Center for International Trade and
Economics and the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom. Davis also includes the
Washington Roundtable for the Asia-Pacific Press (WRAPP). Holmes joined Heritage
in 1985 and rose to vice president in 1991. He was a founding editor of the
annual Index of Economic Freedom, which has become a signature Heritage
publication. He led the think tank’s efforts to convince the United States to
withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. He launched Heritage’s widely
respected homeland security program after September 11, as well as its program
on international trade, and expanded the missile defense program to what it is
today. Holmes left Heritage in late 2001 to serve as an assistant secretary of
state. After rejoining the think tank in 2005, he authored the book “Liberty's
Best Hope: American Leadership for the 21st Century.” Recognized around the
globe as one of Washington’s foremost foreign and defense policy experts, Holmes
is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he formerly served on the
Washington Advisory Committee. Previous appointments include the Defense Policy
Board, which is the U.S. defense secretary’s primary resource for expert outside
advice; the Board of Directors of the Center for International Private
Enterprise; and public member of the U.S. delegation to the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe. While at the State Department, Holmes was
responsible for developing policy and coordinating U.S. engagement at the United
Nations and 46 other international organizations. Important goals achieved at
that time included the U.N. mandates enabling Iraq to make the transition to
democracy; the Security Council's first binding nonproliferation resolution; the
U.N.'s first mandate requiring the Office of Internal Oversight Services to
release reports to member states; an international outcry over Libya's assuming
chairmanship of the Commission on Human Rights, which culminated in that body's
refashioning; and establishment of the U.N. Democracy Caucus and U.N. Democracy
Fund. Holmes earned his doctoral and master’s degrees in history from Georgetown
University. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of
Central Florida in Orlando. He was a research fellow at the Institute for
European History in Germany and adjunct professor of European security and
history at Georgetown University.
Over the last 60 years, additional international conventions and United Nations’
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resolutions have also established norms and standards of international
humanitarian law. These include the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and its
subsequent Protocols. Although not sidestepping the respect for national
sovereignty still embedded in the U.N. Charter (and thus the right of the
Security Council to decide ultimately questions of international peace), these
conventions and resolutions did quite consciously stretch the boundaries of old
definitions of sovereignty. They not only diminished the legitimacy of national
sovereignty but also broadened the scope of action that international bodies
could take in defense of human rights and to protect against genocide and mass
murder. It was always a balancing act, but there was inherent tension between
the rights of national sovereignty—which the U.N. General Assembly and Security
Council jealously protected— and the rights of individuals to protection—which
were championed in such bodies as the Human Rights Council, the Office of the
High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the human rights treaty bodies.
The resolutions on R2P ratified by the U.N. General Assembly in 2005 tried to
overcome these tensions, but it still recognized the ultimate authority of
the Security Council. Each state had a responsibility to protect its
population, the resolution said, but collective action was to be taken “through
the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on
a case-by-case basis.…” In other words, only the Security Council could decide
whether an intervention of the international community should be undertaken,
which implied not only the rights of the veto of the Permanent Five (P-5)
members (including the United States), but also that the universal humanitarian
legal principles supposedly established by the R2P resolution were still
subordinate to the principles of national sovereignty--to rights of the P-5
members in particular.
Why does this matter? Because it points to the fact that R2P is a mere aspiration, as
opposed to a real principle of international norms or even law. R2P
sometimes not only runs against the practices of Realpolitik (where national
sovereignty still reigns supreme), but more importantly, it is at odds with a
fundamental principle of the United Nations itself—namely, the ultimate legal
deference to national sovereignty as decided by the national members of the Security
Council. The Council may approve of the concept with respect to Libya but does
not do so in Syria because certain members of the P-5 (namely Russia) object. In
that difference is the ultimate weakness of R2P as a principle . The opposition of Russia
to a Syria intervention, for example, reveals that no matter what Moscow may
think about R2P as a principle, it will not adhere to it if it violates its
national interests. Frankly, as a matter of principle, the United States as a P5 member more or less does the same thing. Regardless of what the General
Assembly may say, it is the actions of the Security Council that count in
international peace and stability. If there is no consensus among the P-5 on
how R2P should be followed, or subsequent observance of any agreement on it in
practice, then it will never survive as a viable legal or normative
principle of international order.
R2p fails – humanitarian intervention without the pretext solves better
Holmes 1/7/14
http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2014/1/the-weakness-of-theresponsibility-to-protect-as-an-international-norm
Stefan Bauschard
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Kim R. Holmes, a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, oversaw the
think tank’s defense and foreign policy team for more than two decades. Holmes
was Heritage’s vice president for foreign and defense policy studies and
director of the Davis Institute for International Studies from 1991 through 2012
except for his service, during most of the first term of President George W.
Bush, as assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs.
Holmes’ priority is writing a book, due in fall 2013, in which he hopes to lay
out a compelling vision for America’s future by uniting Heritage’s domestic and
foreign policy ideas. “Few people bring greater clarity and historical wisdom to
thorny issues than Kim Holmes,” Heritage President Edwin J. Feulner said in
announcing the new role on Dec. 5, 2012. Holmes previously directed Heritage's
team of foreign and defense policy experts in four centers on the front lines of
international affairs: the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy
Studies, the Asian Studies Center, the Center for International Trade and
Economics and the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom. Davis also includes the
Washington Roundtable for the Asia-Pacific Press (WRAPP). Holmes joined Heritage
in 1985 and rose to vice president in 1991. He was a founding editor of the
annual Index of Economic Freedom, which has become a signature Heritage
publication. He led the think tank’s efforts to convince the United States to
withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. He launched Heritage’s widely
respected homeland security program after September 11, as well as its program
on international trade, and expanded the missile defense program to what it is
today. Holmes left Heritage in late 2001 to serve as an assistant secretary of
state. After rejoining the think tank in 2005, he authored the book “Liberty's
Best Hope: American Leadership for the 21st Century.” Recognized around the
globe as one of Washington’s foremost foreign and defense policy experts, Holmes
is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he formerly served on the
Washington Advisory Committee. Previous appointments include the Defense Policy
Board, which is the U.S. defense secretary’s primary resource for expert outside
advice; the Board of Directors of the Center for International Private
Enterprise; and public member of the U.S. delegation to the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe. While at the State Department, Holmes was
responsible for developing policy and coordinating U.S. engagement at the United
Nations and 46 other international organizations. Important goals achieved at
that time included the U.N. mandates enabling Iraq to make the transition to
democracy; the Security Council's first binding nonproliferation resolution; the
U.N.'s first mandate requiring the Office of Internal Oversight Services to
release reports to member states; an international outcry over Libya's assuming
chairmanship of the Commission on Human Rights, which culminated in that body's
refashioning; and establishment of the U.N. Democracy Caucus and U.N. Democracy
Fund. Holmes earned his doctoral and master’s degrees in history from Georgetown
University. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of
Central Florida in Orlando. He was a research fellow at the Institute for
European History in Germany and adjunct professor of European security and
history at Georgetown University.
Finally, there is the question of how R2P affects the United States. Since the
U.S. has a veto on the U.N. Security Council, it will never be forced to send an
armed force in defense of the R2P principle against its will. But that is not
the real concern. Rather, it is that, over time, the norm will be established
that the only proper use of American military force is for the kinds of
humanitarian operations implied by the R2P principle. Woodward and Morrison
imply such a norm when they say “R2P is arguably the most radical adjustment to
sovereignty since the Peace of Westphalia was signed in 1648.” The authors see
this as a positive development, rather than as a concern for the use of force.
They envision it as a revolutionary advance, a “victory for democracy because it
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pledges to support sovereign rule only when it protects the populace it
governs.” Undermining national sovereignty as a principle is a double-edged
sword for the United States. As any U.S. diplomat with U.N. experience will tell
you, many nations around the world are all too happy to downplay national
sovereignty if it means criticizing the internal practices of the United States
or Israel. And yet they jealously defend that sovereignty when it comes to their
own acts. More fundamentally, however, the purposes of U.S. armed forces are
still, first and foremost, to defend the sovereignty, security and freedom of
the American people. They are not primarily mercenary forces to be deployed at
the behest of a U.N. body, no matter how well intended that mission may be.
Therefore, significantly altering U.S. military missions or planning to
accommodate the R2P doctrine would be misguided. After all is said and
done, R2P is not really a principle but an aspiration , and a rather weak one
at that. Its defenders often say, “The fact that we cannot protect people
everywhere is no reason for doing nothing when we can.” In other words, they
argue that intervening in the face of mass murder is an option that cannot be
relinquished. That is true. But we don’t need R2P to have that option. Whether
the U.N. Security Council authorizes such an intervention will always be a
practical judgment, at the discretion of sovereign members of the UNSC, and
depending on all sorts of circumstances. And it is these exceptions that
illuminate the weakness of R2P as a principle. The problem with R2P is
that its reality never lives up to its high-sounding principles. If it
wanted to, the Security Council could have intervened to stop genocide in
Rwanda and elsewhere. The reason it didn’t are the same ones that will
likely keep it from doing so elsewhere in the future. Ultimately R2P is
riddled with too many contradictions and practical problems to make it a
serious doctrine for implementation by U.S. strategy. It mainly comes down
to an argument of moral suasion to intervene against mass murder and
genocide, which one can make without resorting to tortured arguments about supposed
international principles or even the proper purposes of warfare, and certainly
without damaging the vital notion of national sovereignty.
Scattershot application means fail
Holmes 11
http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2011/04/whose-responsibility-toprotect
Kim R. Holmes, a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, oversaw the
think tank’s defense and foreign policy team for more than two decades. Holmes
was Heritage’s vice president for foreign and defense policy studies and
director of the Davis Institute for International Studies from 1991 through 2012
except for his service, during most of the first term of President George W.
Bush, as assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs.
Holmes’ priority is writing a book, due in fall 2013, in which he hopes to lay
out a compelling vision for America’s future by uniting Heritage’s domestic and
foreign policy ideas. “Few people bring greater clarity and historical wisdom to
thorny issues than Kim Holmes,” Heritage President Edwin J. Feulner said in
announcing the new role on Dec. 5, 2012. Holmes previously directed Heritage's
team of foreign and defense policy experts in four centers on the front lines of
international affairs: the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy
Studies, the Asian Studies Center, the Center for International Trade and
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Economics and the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom. Davis also includes the
Washington Roundtable for the Asia-Pacific Press (WRAPP). Holmes joined Heritage
in 1985 and rose to vice president in 1991. He was a founding editor of the
annual Index of Economic Freedom, which has become a signature Heritage
publication. He led the think tank’s efforts to convince the United States to
withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. He launched Heritage’s widely
respected homeland security program after September 11, as well as its program
on international trade, and expanded the missile defense program to what it is
today. Holmes left Heritage in late 2001 to serve as an assistant secretary of
state. After rejoining the think tank in 2005, he authored the book “Liberty's
Best Hope: American Leadership for the 21st Century.” Recognized around the
globe as one of Washington’s foremost foreign and defense policy experts, Holmes
is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he formerly served on the
Washington Advisory Committee. Previous appointments include the Defense Policy
Board, which is the U.S. defense secretary’s primary resource for expert outside
advice; the Board of Directors of the Center for International Private
Enterprise; and public member of the U.S. delegation to the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe. While at the State Department, Holmes was
responsible for developing policy and coordinating U.S. engagement at the United
Nations and 46 other international organizations. Important goals achieved at
that time included the U.N. mandates enabling Iraq to make the transition to
democracy; the Security Council's first binding nonproliferation resolution; the
U.N.'s first mandate requiring the Office of Internal Oversight Services to
release reports to member states; an international outcry over Libya's assuming
chairmanship of the Commission on Human Rights, which culminated in that body's
refashioning; and establishment of the U.N. Democracy Caucus and U.N. Democracy
Fund. Holmes earned his doctoral and master’s degrees in history from Georgetown
University. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of
Central Florida in Orlando. He was a research fellow at the Institute for
European History in Germany and adjunct professor of European security and
history at Georgetown University.
The 1990s genocides in Srebrenica and Rwanda sparked U.N. debate on how to
prevent such massacres. This led to a 2001 U.N.-commissioned study, “The
Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on
Intervention and State Sovereignty.” That report laid out the doctrine’s main
ideas: All nations have a responsibility to protect their citizens from largescale loss of life or ethnic cleansing, and if a nation failed to do this, the
“international community” — working through the U.N. — had a “responsibility” to
protect the aggrieved population. The U.N. General Assembly enshrined this idea
in the 2005 Millennium Summit Outcome Document. The U.S. accepted, but
stipulated that the document did not “obligate” nations to intervene. The
Security Council subsequently reaffirmed the “responsibility” lines on several
occasions, most recently in this year’s first Libyan resolution. It referenced
the “authorities’” responsibility to protect its population. There are many
problems with this idea. First is the hypocrisy of protecting one
population while ignoring others. Why intervene with force to stop a
potential massacre in Libya and ignore real genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region?
Why were some of the same people who advocate a responsibility to protect in
Libya so fiercely opposed to intervening in Iraq, where Saddam Hussein killed
about 300,000 civilians? Given its scattershot application, “responsibility to protect” fails as a
principle .
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R2P Bad: Bias
Prefer our evidence – r2p good cards tainted by promilitary bias
Mahoney 10/22/13
http://www.opendemocracy.net/openglobalrights/liam-mahony/myth-of-militarymight-in-r2p-choices
Liam Mahony has been working in the field of civilian protection and human
rights since the 1980s. Author of Proactive Presence: Field Strategies for
Civilian Protection, he has done extensive fieldwork in many countries, and is a
pioneer in the theory and practice of international protection. A former
lecturer in Human Rights at Princeton University, he co-founded Fieldview
Solutions and through it has led analysis and training for hundreds of UN and
NGO protection staff deployed in conflict zones.
In the debate over “ Responsibility-to-Protect ”, assumptions, cultural myths and
language conspire to promote unwise military action. The effectiveness of
military responses to conflict has become unconsciously and widely assumed. Are
military responses so popular because objective scientific study has proven
their efficacy? Or does this debate mostly reflect the daily teaching in many
cultures throughout the world, that the bigger stick always wins? The promotion of
violent force as the problem-solving option of last resort pervades popular
culture from Hollywood to school history curricula. And it pervades this debate .
R2P proponents insist that their doctrine prefers non-military approaches. But
the language of the debate suggests otherwise: robust by definition means strong
and healthy, but in the international community’s debate over approaches to
conflict it is usually a synonym for military and violent. The double-edged
phrase last resort implies both that the military option has great risks but
also that if all other means fail, this is the one that will work. Gareth Evans’
piece in this debate, for instance, refers to the military option as something
to be considered when “no lesser measure” is available. With thousands of lives
at stake, why would we settle for “lesser measures?” Such language, so
frequently used even by those who are honestly committed to civilian protection,
inevitably supports calls for military action, even if it is unwise. The
implicit message is that the only really serious action is military
action. Everything else is weak and half-hearted. This language also
invites world powers like the US to clothe their military aspirations in
humanitarian rhetoric, regardless of whether their intent or final impact
helps civilians on the ground. Syria, with its consistent support to Hezbollah,
has been considered an enemy by the US for decades. Can we seriously be
considering that the US is all of a sudden engaging now out of concern for
Syrians civilians? The US is already engaged militarily supporting one side in
this war, and the civilian death toll has only increased as a result. If
anything, the debate regarding how best to protect civilians in Syria is much
too late – the balance of consequences for civilians should have been assessed
before the first military or political support was offered to the rebels, back
in 2011. I have had the opportunity to spend some time in the Democratic
Republic of Congo in recent years, assessing strategies for the protection of
civilians, in a situation where the international community and the UN have put
all their eggs in the military basket. Many Congolese themselves are also
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desperately hoping for military salvation. Yet after a decade of blue berets and
billions of dollars spent, civilians remain totally vulnerable to privations
from armed groups as well as from the (UN-supported) Congolese military. This
year the UN was faced with broad-based pressure to do something more. Despite
there being no objective assessment of the real protective impact on the
Congolese people of the current militarized approach, the only “new” strategy
they could come up with was to strengthen the military approach and approve a UN
force with an explicit offensive mandate: more military, more “robustly”
offensive. Interestingly, a recent study looking at a different type of
conflict – resistance movements against repressive regimes – suggests that in
the last hundred years, unarmed resistance movements were more successful
at achieving their objectives than armed ones. (Chenoweth, Erica, and Maria J.
Stephan. Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent
Conflict.) With adequate research, the hypothesis of a correlation in
international interventions between military force and protective impact
might be shown to be valid, or it might not. But in the meantime it is largely a
myth , a heuristic simplification that gives us a too-readily-available and
simple answer to complex situations. It is also a myth that gives many people
hope, because we deeply wish that there were a quick solution to the human
suffering we are witnessing in the conflicts that prompt these debates.
Decision-makers truly concerned with protecting civilians need to recognize
this unconscious assumption that privileges the military option . Rather than
reacting to knee-jerk pressures to do something, or to do more, policy decisions
should be based on a careful context-based analysis of each particular case, and
an extremely cautious assessment of reasonable expectations of consequences.
This kind of assessment is necessary before military action, before economic
sanctions, or any other pressure. Those in power who order atrocities - whether
President Assad or an armed group leader in the Congo - are most often
interested in sustaining or increasing their own power. Such power is political,
economic, and military and it depends on their relationships with others. A
strategy to protect civilians must examine the real interests of these people,
identifying all the political, economic and military relationships they have
that present opportunities for leverage. From that analysis, a nuanced and more
complex strategy would combine the range of tools of leverage available. These
in turn would be tailored to maximize their combined impact, and the strategy
would assess the projected balance of consequences with an emphasis on
minimizing negative impacts on civilians. Those in power who order violence
against civilians are usually linked to a range of powerful economic interests,
and may be even more sensitive to economic pressures than to military ones. (In
fact, external military threats can sometimes serve to strengthen domestic
support for a targeted group – consider how Hezbollah has benefitted from
Israeli attacks on Lebanon.) Economic sanctions are not a panacea, either, and
may well in some cases hurt civilians far more than can be justified by their
impact. Further, just as military decisions tend to be based on geo-politics
divorced from the interests of civilians, decisions about economic measures tend
to be skewed in the interests of economic power brokers for whom sacrificing
profits for humanitarian gain is unacceptable. It should not be surprising that
we cannot control the arms trade, for instance, when huge multinational
interests in the US and Europe make so much money from it; or that we have
difficulty fully implementing other kinds of “smart” sanctions even when they
have UN Security Council backing. The fact that sanctions so seldom effectively
target the wealthy, but instead too often inflict greater suffering on the poor,
is no accident. The point here is not that economic measures are better or worse
than military ones, but rather that there is no self-evident hierarchy among
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them. If wise decisions are to be made, the costs and benefits of different
measures must be carefully assessed, based on past experiences and on the
real dynamics of each current context. But this is not what is happening.
Instead, the debate
is dominated by myths, bias and rhetoric . The crucial assessment of
the expected balance of consequences has become a phrase for s oundbite s, rather
than an analytical prerequisite to action . As long as the military option is perceived as
more potentially effective than it is in reality, and economic and political
pressures considered less effective than they might be, unwise decisions result.
That is the f undamental nature of bias.
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R2P = Genocide (Sudan/Syria)
R2p derails effective genocide prevention – abandoning it is key to Syria and Sudan
De Waal 12
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/opinion/how-to-end-mass-atrocities.html?_r=0
Alex de Waal is executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher
School, Tufts University., How to End Mass Atrocities, New York Times, March 10,
DOA: 12-7-14
High from last year’s interventions in Libya and Ivory Coast, Evans wrote
triumphantly in Foreign Policy last December that those missions brought “an end
to most of the confused debates” about humanitarian intervention. The vision he,
Power and fellow idealists share is to send the cavalry over the hill not only
to stop any massacres but also to herald justice and democracy. If only it were
that simple. In the face of “evil,” the idealists tend to turn righteous and
forget to ask important questions about what they want to achieve and
how. The result is a misrepresentation of history and a misunderstanding of
the measures that can most effectively halt atrocities today. One major problem is that the
idealists tend to misconstrue or overlook the fundamental motivations of
perpetrators. They typically see the killers as insatiable. This is
understandable because they are driven by the memory of the Holocaust and the
Rwandan genocide. But the Nazis and Hutus were exceptional for making the
extermination of a people essential to their politics. Most mass killers have
other goals. In many cases, the perpetrators simply stop killing when they have
reached their goals, become exhausted, fallen out among themselves or been
defeated. Take the Nigerian civil war of 1967-70. Despite a blockade of the
secessionist province of Biafra and the genocidal rhetoric of some Nigerian
leaders, the killing ended when the Biafran rebels finally fell to Nigerian
forces. Having achieved their military aim, the Nigerians then began a process
of reconciliation and reconstruction under the banner “no victor, no
vanquished.” In Guatemala, the perpetrators of the 1980-83 massacres of Mayan
communities suspected of supporting Communist insurgents called an end to the
atrocities after defeating the rebels. In Indonesia, the generals stopped
killing the Communists in 1966 once the group no longer posed a threat. The
soldiers of President Milton Obote massacred tens of thousands of people in
Uganda’s Luwero Triangle in 1983-4 — until they were defeated on the
battlefield. Likewise, the killings in East Pakistan ended with India’s invasion
in 1971 and the Khmer Rouge’s atrocities in Cambodia with Vietnam’s intervention
in 1978-79. In other words, even once they are under way, mass atrocities do
not lead inexorably to bottomless massacres. The killers usually have
political goals: They are determined to kill until they have achieved their
objectives, not until there’s no one else left standing. Their use of violence
can be excessive, but more important, it is often instrumental. This creates an
opportunity for negotiating an end to mass atrocities, through peace talks and with
financial and diplomatic incentives and pressure. In recent history such dealmaking has brought to an end, albeit often an imperfect one, massacres in
Burundi, East Timor, Kenya, Macedonia and South Sudan. Yet the idealists insist on
pursuing a more ambitious agenda: nothing short of democracy and justice,
imposed by military intervention. And this can undermine simply getting the killing to
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stop. For perpetrators, the prospect of foreign intervention and prosecution
rules out the possibility for compromise. For rebels, it creates a perverse
incentive to escalate ethnic violence so as to provoke an international
military response. The idealists’ blind spot about nonideal endings also means
they cannot decide what do to when the killings do subside. In September 2004,
Secretary of State Colin Powell announced that a genocide had occurred, and
might be continuing, in Darfur. But by then the level of violence had already
begun to drop, and it continued to diminish over the next few years. U.S. policy
stayed stuck on trying to stop massacres that were no longer happening. In 2009,
Scott Gration, the U.S. special envoy to Sudan, was saying there were “remnants
of genocide.” But in 2010, Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, was still insisting there was an “ongoing genocide.” Unable to commit
itself to either aggressive regime change or a program of reconstruction and
reconciliation, the U.S. government hasn’t made any progress on either approach.
And its indecision has delayed finding a workable political solution for Darfur.
Western policy makers interested in stopping mass crimes should not overlook
tools that can work. Where violence is used as an instrument for political
gain, it is negotiable. Some perpetrators can be moderated through
diplomacy. Others will stop killing if they defeat a rebellion or realize they
cannot. The main aim should be to stop genocidal killing . Holding elections and prosecuting
the perpetrators of crimes, however laudable those goals, aren’t the priority.
Today, with civilians in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains threatened by mass hunger and
violence, U.S. campaigners are calling for humanitarian intervention. They
should remember to keep the political solution firmly in focus. The root of the
crisis is a war between evenly matched adversaries who must recognize that they
need to live with the other. The peace talks that stalled last July should
be revived. This would require Khartoum to lift the ban against the Sudan
People’s Liberation Movement in the northern sector and begin an inclusive
constitutional reform process. The rebels and their South Sudanese backers, for
their part, would have to repudiate the goal of regime change. Politics are
also all-important in Syria. The crisis has evolved from a civilian uprising
to a fully fledged civil war, with each side fearing annihilation if it loses.
The regime of Bashar al-Assad needs a soft landing, and so the model for
solving this crisis is the kind of patient mediation effort that was deployed in
Yemen, not aggressive intervention as in Libya. Responding to mass atrocities,
whether ongoing or imminent, is difficult enough, but the idealism of Evans
and Power makes it that much more so. They have composed a story, based on
ethics rather than evidence, that incorrectly assumes all perpetrators of mass
political violence are insatiable killers and that dictates who should respond
(Western nations), how (with military intervention) and why (for justice and
democracy). It is a morality tale that undermines the best ways to deal with the worst crimes.
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R2p Bad: Drone Strikes
R2P legitimacy key to escalating globe drone strikes
Brooks 1/14/13
http://www.globalpolicy.org/qhumanitarianq-intervention/52290-hate-obamas-dronewar.html?itemid=id#26087
Rosa Brooks is a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, a
columnist and contributing editor for Foreign Policy and a Bernard L. Schwartz
senior fellow at the New America Foundation. From April 2009 to July 2011, she
served as Counselor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Michele
Flournoy, and in May 2010 she also became [1] Special Coordinator for Rule of
Law and Humanitarian Policy, running a new Pentagon office dedicated to those
issues. Brooks wrote a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times from 2005 to
2009, and is an expert on national security, international law and human rights
issues. At the Pentagon her portfolio included both rule of law and human rights
issues and global engagement, strategic communication, and she received the
Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service for her work.
This notion of a " responsibility to protect" was embraced by the international
community -- including the United States -- with surprising rapidity. In every
way, it represents a radical assault on traditional legal concepts of
sovereignty. The "responsibility to protect" doctrine -- often now referred to
as R2P -- suggests that when a state fails to protect its own population, it can
no longer claim any right to be free of external intervention (including, in
extreme cases, military intervention) if intervention is needed to secure the
safety of a threatened population. And by implication, that intervention need
not necessarily be authorized by the U.N. Security Council. If the Security
Council "fails to discharge its responsibility to protect in conscience-shocking
situations crying out for action...concerned states may not rule out other means
to meet the gravity and urgency of that situation," observed the 2001 ICISS
report. The logic is clear enough: If failure to protect its population
delegitimizes a state's legal claim to sovereignty, then the failure of
collective security structures (such as the UNSC) to take appropriate corrective
action would similarly delegitimize those collective institutions. Put a little
differently, the Responsibility to Protect logically implies that both "the
international community" and individual states have a right and a duty to
intervene -- militarily, if necessary -- when another state is "unwilling or
unable" to protect its own population. If the language justifying drone
strikes in sovereign states appears to directly parallel the language of
the Responsibility to Protect, it's no accident. Although the R2P doctrine
was developed in response to genocide and other mass atrocities, the language of
R2P was easily turned to other purposes . That's not entirely inappropriate, either:
R2P's underlying logic is equally applicable to terrorism, which is itself
a form of human rights abuse (and one that can have devastating consequences for
civilian populations). As I have argued elsewhere, you "might even say that the
R2P coin ought logically to be seen as having two sides . On one side lies a state's duty to
take action inside its own territory to protect itsown population from violence
and atrocities. On the other side lies a state's duty to take action inside its
own territory to protect other states' populations from violence. Either way, a
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state that fails in these duties faces the prospect that other states will
intervene in its ‘internal' affairs without its consent." In a sense, then, it
was the human rights community's critique of sovereignty that helped pave the way for drone strikes.
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R2P = Imperialism
R2p is a fig leaf for imperialism
Global Policy Forum 14
http://www.globalpolicy.org/qhumanitarianq-intervention.html
Global Policy Forum is an independent policy watchdog that monitors the work of
the United Nations and scrutinizes global policymaking. We promote
accountability and citizen participation in decisions on peace and security,
social justice and international law.
What is to be done in a crisis like the genocide in Rwanda, when the
international community seeks to stop the killing? Can nations, acting through
the UN Security Council, fulfill a "responsibility to protect" innocent
civilians? Or is such a doctrine just a Trojan horse for great power abuse? When
nations send their military forces into other nations' territory, it is
rarely (if ever) for "humanitarian" purposes. They are typically pursuing
their narrow national interest - grabbing territory, gaining geo-strategic
advantage, or seizing control of precious natural resources. Leaders hope to
win public support by describing such actions in terms of high moral purposes bringing peace, justice, democracy and civilization to the affected area. In the
era of colonialism, European governments all cynically insisted that they
acted to promote such higher commitments - the "white man's burden," "la
mission civilisatrice," and so on and so forth. The appeal to higher moral
purposes continues to infect the political discourse of the great powers.
Today's " humanitarian intervention" is only the latest in this long tradition of political obfuscation .
In 2003, the US-UK invasion and occupation of Iraq was labeled "humanitarian
intervention" by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair
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R2P = imperialism: Africa
Indeterminacy of R2p allows repeated interventions against Africa
Branch 11/6/12
http://www.globalpolicy.org/qhumanitarianq-intervention/52035-theresponsibility-to-protect-what-is-the-basis-for-the-emerging-norm-ofr2p.html?itemid=id#26087
Assistant Professor of Political Science, San Diego
State University, 2008Research Associate, Makerere Institute of Social Re
search, 2011EDUCATION
Ph.D. (Political Science) Columbia University, 2007
A.B. (Social Studies) Harvard University, 1998
Africa has a long history of being 'protected' by the West. And today, with the
precipitous rise of the so-called Responsibility to Protect (R2P), it appears
that intervention in the name of protecting Africa has returned to the centre of Western concern – or
regained its utility. Three-quarters of the crises in which R2P has been invoked
or applied have been in Africa and the Special Advisor to the Secretary-General
on R2P announced that “the responsibility to protect really came from Africa and
the African experience" Africa also provided the military testing ground
for R2P and following foreign military intervention in Libya in 2011, according
to Ramesh Thakur, “R2P is closer to being solidified as an actionable norm".
R2P’s privileged application in Africa bears comparison to the continent's
experience with the International Criminal Court (ICC). Critics have argued that
the Court targets Africa because it can operate there in an accountability-free
zone, able to intervene in ongoing conflicts, take sides in civil wars, scuttle
amnesties and peace processes, or align itself with US military forces – all
without being held responsible for the consequences of its actions. But at least
with the ICC, there is a concrete institution – prosecutors and judges who make
statements and decisions that can be critiqued on legal, political, or moral
grounds. With R2P, however, even this modicum of publicity and formalisation is
absent. And this makes its expanding use in Africa all the more dangerous.
The first problem is that no-one seems sure of what R2P even is. Its
proponents have celebrated it as a norm, a doctrine, a concept, an idea, a
principle, a framework, or a lens, while its critics have dismissed or condemned
it as an excuse, an ideology, a fad, or an empty slogan. Illustrating this
uncertainty is the fact that, while most agree that R2P enjoys no legal status
of its own, others seem to give it an almost super-legal status. Take the
statement by Susan Rice, current US Ambassador to the UN, for example, who in
2007 invoked R2P to justify a threatened US ground and air attack against Sudan
without Security Council approval. Rice cited R2P to dismiss the possible legal
problems of invading a sovereign state, asserting: “Still others insist that,
without the consent of the UN or a relevant regional body, we would be breaking
international law. Perhaps, but the Security Council last year codified a new
international norm prescribing ‘the responsibility to protect’. It commits UN
members to decisive action, including enforcement, when peaceful measures fail
to halt genocide or crimes against humanity.” Not surprisingly, there is also
no consensus on what actions R2P actually legitimates, nor by whom or when.
The problem is compounded by the multiplicity of statements on R2P, from the
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2001 International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS)
report to the United Nations’ 2004 A More Secure World: Our Shared
Responsibility, to the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document, to the SecretaryGeneral’s 2009 Implementing the Responsibility to Protect. The original
statement of R2P in the ICISS report explains: “State sovereignty implies
responsibility, and the primary responsibility for the protection of its people
lies with the state itself. Where a population is suffering serious harm, as a
result of internal war, insurgency, repression or state failure, and the state
in question is unwilling or unable to halt or avert it, the principle of nonintervention yields to the international responsibility to protect.” Of course,
the statement poses more questions than it answers. What is the threshold at
which responsibility is legitimately taken up by the international community?
Who makes that decision? And who is the international community? The precise
sequence of actions necessary to fulfil R2P is also left undefined. According to
ICISS, R2P comprises three “specific responsibilities”: the responsibility to
prevent, by addressing “both the root causes and direct causes” of crises; the
responsibility to react to “situations of compelling human need” by employing
“appropriate measures”, up to military intervention; and the responsibility to
rebuild, which will help address “the causes of the harm the intervention was
designed to halt or avert”. Given the increasingly expansive formulations of
R2P, according to which R2P action is to help prevent, react, and rebuild
countries, work with, pressure, and coerce states, and address root causes and
prevent the recurrence of conflict, there seems to be little that is not
included among the instruments that may be legitimately used in the name of R2P.
This could span from development aid to diplomatic pressure, from direct
budgetary assistance to invasion and occupation, from traditional reconciliation
to international criminal prosecution. Even one of R2P’s most vocal academic
supporters, Alex Bellamy, admits that, “it is seldom – if ever – clear what R2P
requires in a given situation”. The result is a situation in which some analysts
can condemn the AU-UN intervention in Darfur as a dismal failure of R2P while
others can laud it as a success; some blame R2P as an excuse used to prevent
effective intervention there while others credit it with enabling international
involvement. The same ambiguity characterises discussions of the R2P in Kenya
during the post-election violence in 2008. Some would agree with Kofi Annan that
“Kenya is a successful example of R2P at work” but others deny that R2P played a
role in the unfolding of international involvement, explaining that “the
situation was only labelled a R2P situation retrospectively”. This fundamental
indeterminacy of R2P was made even clearer, as was its danger, in the
Libya intervention. The doctrine’s first full-scale deployment led to the
bombing of civilian infrastructure, the deposing and killing of Muammar Gaddafi,
the installing of a rebel government, and the arming of civilians – all in the
name of protection. The last was justified by a senior French diplomatic source
as: “an operational decision taken at the time to help civilians who were in
imminent danger. A group of civilians were about to be massacred so we took the
decision to provide self-defensive weapons to protect those civilian populations
under threat…It was entirely justifiable legally, resolution 1970 and 1973 were
followed to the letter." R2P is not only dangerous because it is flexible enough
to be used to justify overthrowing governments and arming civilians, but also
because it allows those using it to refuse accountability. States can engage in
political and military intervention without having to justify those
interventions on political or military grounds, only on protection grounds. And
they can refuse responsibility for the consequences of their actions – all is
fair when civilian protection is at stake. R2P can be used to justify military
intervention or non-intervention, invasion or withdrawal. Thus, it is precisely
R2P’s indeterminacy that makes it so popular today. This may suggest something
about the West’s current approach to Africa: occasional violent engagement in
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the name of protection when a state has been declared to have failed in its own
protection role, complemented by military assistance to client states in the
name of promoting their capacity to protect. This is combined with disengagement
when convenient in the name of allowing states to fulfil the protection mandate
themselves, all with no objective standards and no accountability. Mahmood
Mamdani has argued that one consequence of R2P is to insti-tute a divided international system
that distinguishes African states , whose legitimacy and sovereignty are to be judged by
the “international community”, from Western states, whose sovereignty is beyond question
and that judge and intervene in Africa. R2P institutes a divided international system in
another way as well: one within Africa that distin-guishes those African states
that are favoured by the West and tend to be labelled human rights protectors,
responsible, and thus deserving support, from those that are out of favour with
the West and are labelled human rights violators, failed or criminal, and
meriting international coercion. This is not to say that every Western ally will
be termed a human rights protector and every adversary a human rights violator.
But, by grounding the judgment as to state legiti-macy in the flexible,
informal language of R2P, giving that judgment to those who have the power to
claim to speak in the name of the international community, and stripping away
the need for the state or interveners to be accountable to African citizenries,
this division remains an ever-present and dangerous possibility.
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R2P =Imperialism – Kills International Law
R2P is a pretext for interventionism – crushes collective security and ilaw
Herman 11/9/13
http://www.voltairenet.org/article180927.html
Edward S. Herman is professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School,
University of Pennsylvania and has written extensively on economics, political
economy, and the media. Among his books are Corporate Control, Corporate Power
(Cambridge University Press, 1981), The Real Terror Network (South End Press,
1982), and, with Noam Chomsky, The Political Economy of Human Rights (South End
Press, 1979), and Manufacturing Consent (Pantheon, 2002).
Both the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and “Humanitarian Intervention”
(HI) came into existence in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, which
ended any obstruction that that contesting Great Power had placed on the
ongoing power projection of the United States. In Western ideology, of
course, the United States was containing the Soviets in the post-World War II
years, but that was ideology. In reality the Soviet Union was always far less
powerful than the United States, had weaker and less reliable allies, and was
essentially on the defensive from 1945 till its demise in 1991. The United
States was aggressively on the march outward from 1945, with the steady spread
of military bases across the globe, numerous interventions, large and small, on
all continents, engaged in building the first truly global empire. The Soviet
Union was an obstruction to U.S. expansion, with sufficient military power to
constitute a modest containing force, but it also served U.S. propaganda as an
alleged expansionist threat. With the death of the Soviet Union new threats were
needed to justify the continuing and even accelerating U.S. projection of power,
and they were forthcoming, from narco-terrorism to Al Qaeda to Saddam’s weapons
of mass destruction to the terrorist threat that encompassed the entire planet
earth and its outer space. There was also a global security menace alleged,
based on internal ethnic struggles and human rights violations, that supposedly
threatened wider conflicts, as well as presenting the global community (and its
policeman) with a moral dilemma and demand for intervention in the interests of
humanity and justice. As noted, this morality surge occurred at a moment in
history when the Soviet constraint was ended and the United States and its close
allies were celebrating their triumph, when the socialist option had lost
vitality, and when the West was thus freer to intervene. This required overriding the several hundred year old Westphalian core principle of international
relations – that national sovereignty should be respected – which if adhered to
would protect smaller and weaker countries from Great Power cross-border
attacks. This rule was embodied in the UN Charter, and could be said to be the
fundamental feature of that document, described by international law scholar
Michael Mandel as ”the world’s constitution.” Over-riding this rule and
Charter fundamental would clear the ground for R2P and HI, but it would also
clear the ground for classic and straightforward aggression in pursuit of
geopolitical interests, for which R2P and HI might supply a useful cover.
It is obvious that only the Great Powers can cross borders in the alleged
interest of R2P and HI, a point that is recognized and taken as an entirely
acceptable premise in every case in which they have been applied in recent
years. The Great Powers are the only ones with the knowledge and material
resources to do this ‘benevolent’ global social work. As NATO public relations
official Jamie Shea explained in May 1999, when the question came up as to
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whether NATO personnel might be indicted for war crimes during NATO’s bombing
war against Serbia, which seemed to follow from the letter of the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) charter: NATO countries
“organized” the ICTY and International Court of Justice, and NATO countries
“fund these tribunals and support on a daily basis their activities. We are the
upholders, not the violators, of international law.” This last is a contestable
assertion, but Shea’s other points are clearly valid. It is enlightening that
when a group of independent lawyers submitted an extensive dossier in 1999
showing probable NATO violations of ICTY rules, after a long delay and following
open pressure from NATO authorities, the anti-NATO claims were disallowed by the
ICTY prosecutor on the ground that with only 496 documented killings of Serbs by
NATO bombs “there is simply no evidence of a crime base” for indicting NATO,
although the original May 1999 indictment of Milosevic involved a crime base of
only 344 deaths. It is of similar interest that International Criminal Court
(ICC) prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo declined to prosecute NATO officials for
their attack on Iraq in 2003, despite over 249 requests for ICC action, on the
ground that here also “the situation did not appear to meet the required
threshold of the Statute.” These two cases illustrate the fact that the
structures and laws that underlie the application of R2P (and HI) exempt
the Great Power enforcers from the laws and rules that they enforce on
the lesser powers. It also exempts their friends and clients. This means
that in the real world there is nobody responsible for protecting Iraqis or
Afghanis from the United States or Palestinians from Israel. When U.S. Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright acknowledged on national TV in 1996 that 500,000
Iraqi children may have died as a result of UN (but really U.S.) -imposed
sanctions on Iraq, declaring that U.S. officials felt these deaths were “worth
it,” there was no domestic or global reaction demanding the end of these
sanctions and the application of R2P or HI on behalf of the victimized Iraqi
population. Similarly there was no call for any R2P intervention on behalf of
the Iraqis when the United States and Britain invaded Iraq in March 2003, with
direct and induced civil war killings of perhaps a million more Iraqis. When the
Canadian-sponsored International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect
considered the Iraq war in relation to R2P, its authors concluded that abuses by
Saddam Hussein within Iraq were not of a scope in 2003 to justify an invasion,
but the coalition never even raised the question of whether the Iraqi people
didn’t need protection from the invaders responsible for the death of vast
numbers. They worked from the imperial premise that the Great Power enforcers,
even when aggressing in violation of the UN Charter and killing hundreds of
thousands, are exempt from R2P as well as the rule of law. This works from the
top of the global power structure on down; Bush, Cheney, Obama, John Kerry,
Susan Rice, Samantha Power at the top, then on the way down we have Merkel,
Cameron, and Hollande, then further down Ban Ki-Moon and Luis Moreno-Ocampo, and
with their power base to be found in the corporate leadership and media. Ban KiMoon and his predecessor Kofi Annan have been open servants of the Great NATO
Powers, to whom they owe their status and authority. Kofi Annan was an
enthusiastic supporter of the NATO attack on Yugoslavia, a believer in the
enforcement responsibility of the NATO powers, and keen on the
institutionalization of R2P; and Ban Ki-Moon works in the same mode. This same
global power structure also means that ad hoc Tribunals will be formed and used
against villains of choice, as well as international courts. Thus when the
United States and its allies wanted to dismantle Yugoslavia and weaken Serbia,
they were able to use the Security Council in 1993 to establish a tribunal, the
ICTY, precisely for this service, which the ICTY carried out effectively. When
they wanted to help their client Paul Kagame consolidate his dictatorship in
Rwanda, they created a similar tribunal for this service, the ICTR. If these
powers want to attack and bring about regime change in Libya, they can get the
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ICC to accuse Gaddaffi of war crimes speedily and without independent
investigation of any charges, and based mainly on anticipations of civilian
killings. But as noted, the ICC couldn’t find any basis for action against the
invaders of Iraq whose killings of civilians were large-scale and realized, not
merely anticipated. There was, in fact, a major World Tribunal on Iraq organized
to hear charges against the United States and its allies for their actions in
Iraq, but it was privately organized and had a critical anti-war bent, so that
although it held hearings in many countries and heard many prestigious
witnesses, this tribunal was given negligible attention in the media. (Its final
sessions and report in June 2005 were unmentioned in the major U.S, and British
media.) R2P fits snugly into this picture of service to an escalating
imperial violence, with the United States and its enormous militaryindustrial complex engaged in a Global War on Terror and multiple wars,
and its NATO arm steadily enlarging and embarked on “out of area” service,
despite the ending of its supposed role of containing the Soviet Union. It
conveniently premises that the threats that the world needs to address come from
within countries, not from cross-border aggression in the traditional mode that
the makers of the UN Charter considered of first importance. They are wrong:
William Blum lists 35 cases where the United States overthrew governments
between 1945 and 2001 (thus not even counting the war-making of George W. Bush
and Barak Obama; Blum, Freeing the World to Death [Common Courage, 2005], chaps.
11 and 15) In the real world, while R2P has a wonderful aura of
benevolence, it will be put in play only at the instigation of the Great
NATO Powers and it will therefore never be used in the interest of unworthy
victims, defined as victims of the Great Powers or their clients (see
Manufacturing Consent, chap 2, “Worthy and Unworthy Victims”). For example, it
was never invoked to constrain Indonesian violence in its invasion and
occupation of East Timor from 1975 onward, although this invasion-occupation
accounted for an estimated 200,000 deaths on a population base of 800,000, thus
exceeding the proportionate deaths under Pol Pot. In this case the United States
gave the invasion a green light, gave further arms to the invaders, and
protected them from any UN response. This is a case where the UN Charter was
being violated and East Timorese desperately needed protection, but as the
United States supported the invader no international response transpired. It is
enlightening and amusing to see that Gareth Evans has been perhaps the leading
spokesperson in support of R2P.as an instrument of justice. Evans is a former
Foreign Minister of Australia, author of a book on R2P, past president of the
International Crisis Group, a co-founder of the International Commission on
Intervention and State Sovereignty, and a participant in several reports and
debates on R2P. Evans was the Foreign Minister of Australia during the years of
Indonesia’s genocidal occupation of East Timor, and in that role Evans honored
and feted Indonesian leaders and worked with them in sharing the stolen oil
rights of East Timor. (See John Pilger, “East Timor: a lesson in why the poorest
threaten the powerful,” April 5, 2012, pilger.com.) So Evans was really a
collaborator in a major genocide. Can you imagine the media’s response to a nonNATO human rights campaign that used as spokesperson a Chinese official who had
maintained friendly relations with Pol Pot during his most deadly years? It is
enlightening to see how Gareth Evans deals with the criteria for enforcing R2P.
In answering questions on this subject at a UN General Assembly session on R2P,
Evans appealed to common sense: R2P “defines itself,” and the crimes, including
“ethnic cleansing,” are all “inherently conscience-shocking, and by their very
nature of a scale that demands a response…It is really impossible to be precise
about numbers here.” Evans notes that sometimes modest numbers will suffice: “We
remember starkly the horror of Srebrenica… [with only 8,000 deaths]. Was Racak
with its 45 victims in Kosovo in ’99 sufficient to trigger the response that was
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triggered by the international community?” It was sufficient to trigger a
response for the simple reason that it helped advance NATO’s ongoing program of
dismantlement of Yugoslavia. But Evans dodges answering his own question. You
may be sure that Evans does not ask or attempt to explain why there was no
triggering of a response to East Timor with its 200,000 or Iraq’s 500,000 plus a
million. The politicization of choices here is total, but Evans has apparently
internalized the imperial perspective so completely that this huge double
standard never reaches his consciousness. But the most interesting fact is that
a man with such a record and such blatant bias can be accepted as an authority
and his biased perspective is treated with respect. It is interesting, also, to
see how Evans never mentions Israel and Neither Palestine, where ethnic
cleansing has been in active process for decades, works openly and is deeply
resented by vast numbers across the globe. do other members of the power pyramid
suggest Israel-Palestine as an area where consciences are shocked and the nature
and scale of abuse demands a response from the “international community.” In
order to obtain her U.N. Ambassadorship, Samantha Power thought it was necessary
to go before a group of pro-Israel U.S. citizens and assure them, with tears
flowing, that she regretted any past suggestions that AIPAC was powerful and
that its influence had to be over-ridden for developing a U.S.-interest policy
toward Israel and Palestine. She pledged a devotion to Israel’s national
security. The world will wait a long time for Power and her bosses to support
R2P’s application to ethnic cleansing in Palestine In sum, the international power
structure in the post-Soviet world has worsened global inequality and at the same time increased
Great Power interventionism and literal aggression . The increased militarism may have
contributed to the growing inequality, but it is also designed and serves to
facilitate pacification at home as well as abroad. In this context, R2P and HI are
understandable developments, providing a moral cover for actions that would repel many people and
constitute a violation of international law if viewed in a cold light. R2P puts aggression in a
benevolent light and thus serves as its useful instrument. In short, it is a cynical fraud and a
constitution ( UN Charter)-buster
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R22 Hypocritical
R2P is necessarily a hypocritical fiction – only used against weak states
Menon 6/12/13
http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2013/06/12/its-fatally-flawed/
Rajan Menon is Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of Political Science, City
College of New York/City University of New York, and a senior fellow at the
Atlantic Council.
The world has not obliged
Practical interests shape
States and its democratic
comes to R2P, they, just
revolutionary liberals. Raison d’état is resilient:
what states do, not abstract ideals. The United
allies are not exceptions to this rule. When it
as China and Russia have, will block punitive
measures against friendly governments. Imagine that the so-called Arab
Spring makes a delayed appearance in Saudi Arabia. Would the Saudis ever face
a Security Council resolution with “R2P” in it? Would the United States, Britain
or France back an R2P resolution occasioned by Israel’s use of force in the West
Bank or Gaza? No and no. Those who doubt this might ponder recent events in
Bahrain, where a Sunni-run state lords over its Shi‘a majority. The Obama
Administration deemed Qaddafi’s violence against the Libyan opposition R2Pworthy but has been unmoved by the Bahraini regime’s repression of unarmed
protestors. Nor is Washington’s stance likely to change so long as the U.S.
Fifth Fleet is headquartered in Bahrain. Saudi Arabia played a decisive role in
mobilizing Arab support for UNSCR 1973, which authorized the intervention
against Qaddafi; but it sent troops into Bahrain to crush the Shi‘a rebellion
three days before NATO’s intervention in Libya. Qatar, too, mustered Arab League
support for the move against Qaddafi and provided combat aircraft to supplement
NATO’s Libya intervention, but its troops joined the Saudi gendarmes’ march into
Manama. What mattered for the Gulf monarchies was preventing the rise of a
Shi‘a-dominated state in Bahrain aligned with Iran. Self-determination and
liberty could wait—indefinitely. Egyptian security forces killed 840 unarmed
civilians and injured some 6,000 during the uprising against Mubarak; no major
government invoked R2P.Had Mubarak survived and unleashed his army in full,
would he have shared Qaddafi’s R2P-tinged fate? Not likely. Strong horses don’t
attract R2P attention; only weak or vulnerable ones do. Powerful democracies
have long been willing to countenance the killing and expulsions of
people and to arm governments that commit such acts. Consider some
examples. Turkey’s war against the PKK has killed thousands of civilians
since 1984 and displaced another 386,000. In 1988–89, Saddam Hussein gassed and
deported thousands of Kurds, killing as many as 100,000 of them, and
systematically razed their towns and villages. But Washington turned a blind eye
because the Iraqi dictator was then providing a useful service by fighting
Khomeini’s Iran. Consider, too, that between Indonesia’s annexation of East
Timor in 1975 and the 1999 UN-sanctioned, Australian-led intervention, 18,600
East Timorese civilians were killed, and another 102,800 died from war-related
hunger and disease, with the vast majority of the fatalities occurring before
1999. Australia was rightly complimented for leading the multilateral force that
helped bring stability, and eventually independence, to East Timor. But the
Australian government, its own documents have since revealed, knew that
Indonesia was preparing to conquer East Timor in 1975, may have provided tacit
approval, and certainly was willing to arm Suharto’s government in the years
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preceding the annexation.Not only was Australia the only major Western democracy
to officially recognize the annexation; Gareth Evans, then its Foreign Minister,
signed a deal in 1989 with his Indonesian counterpart, Ali Alatas, giving
Australian energy companies access to the seabed off East Timor. As for the
United States, it armed the Indonesian army for years, even though between
500,000 and one million people perished following the 1965 coup that brought
Suharto to power. It is now clear that Indonesia’s conquest of East Timor
occurred with the Ford Administration’s foreknowledge—and acquiescence. American
arms sales to Indonesia rose substantially after its occupation of East Timor.
Britain’s dealings with Suharto followed a similar pattern.
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R2P = White Supremacy
R2p is a cover for global white supremacy
Barake 9/9/13
http://www.fairobserver.com/article/humanitarian-intervention-us-imperialism
Ajamu Baraka was the Founding Executive Director of the US Human Rights Network
(USHRN) from July 2004 until June 2011. The USHRN became the first domestic
human rights formation in the United States explicitly committed to the
application of international human rights standards to the US. Under Baraka, the
Network grew exponentially from a core membership base of 60 organizations to
more than 300 US-based member organizations and 1,500 individual members who
work on the full spectrum of human rights issues in the United States. Baraka
has also served on the boards of various national and international human rights
organizations, including Amnesty International (USA) and the National Center for
Human Rights Education. He is currently on the boards of the Center for
Constitutional Rights; Africa Action; Latin American Caribbean Community Center;
Diaspora Afrique; and the Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights. Baraka
has taught political science at various universities, including Clark Atlanta
University and Spelman College. He has been a guest lecturer at academic
institutions throughout the US, and has authored several articles on
international human rights.
How is it that the administration can announce to the world its intentions to
circumvent, and by doing so, subvert international prohibitions on war? By
wrapping itself in the false flag of humanitarian concerns f or the suffering masses in Syria.
President Barack Obama, the corporate and financial elite’s most effective
propaganda weapon since Ronald Reagan, explains to the world that it is only the
plight of people in Syria that drives the US decision to attack the country. No
one asks the president to explain to the innocent human beings who are walking
around today alive, but who will be the dead and maimed “collateral damage” of
this pending attack, why their sacrifice is for the greater good of humanity.
This justification for the latest breech of international law is yet another
example of the sham that is “humanitarian intervention.” If “mass killings
of its own people” constitutes a “crime against humanity” and “mass” in Syria
means over a thousand people killed, surely the killing of over a thousand in
Egypt must also constitute a serious crime against humanity. But that kind of
rational calculation could only occur if there were one ethical standard for all
states and an equal value placed on human life. Two Moral Standards The reality,
however, is that there are two mutually exclusive moral standards: one for
the vast majority of nations, and another for those comprising the dying
but dangerous collection of European colonial capitalist nations. It is the
naked pursuit of US geo-political interests like the gas off the coast of Syria,
oil, and the desire to isolate Iran that drive policy and not some concern for
the people in Syria. That is the context that shapes and informs US foreign
policies globally. In the current context of relative US decline, international
law related to non-economic functions and relationships – the Geneva accords and
the law of war, human rights and the Charter of the United Nations are now
constraints on the ability of the US to pursue its interests. And with no
domestic checks on executive power with the capitulation and collaboration of
Congress (despite this “feint” toward democratic accountability represented in
seeking congressional approval from Congress before attacking Syria), a
corporate media that serves as cheerleaders for the administration, and peace
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and anti-imperialist movements that are marginal and in political disarray, US
criminality is completely out of control with the result that the United States
has become the quintessential Rogue State. Why has it been so easy for the
State to obfuscate its interests and to create a bipartisan coalition united
in its support for the essentials of US foreign policies, even while there may
be disagreements on some of the tactical issues? This can be partially explained
by the innovative discourses produced by Western propagandists during the
last two decades, the most innovative being the concept of “ humanitarian
intervention” and its dubious corollary, the “right to protect.” Humanitarian
intervention and the right to protect evoke the unacknowledged white
supremacist assumption that the “international community” – read as the
governments of the capitalist/colonialist West – has a duty and a right to
arrest, bomb, invade, prosecute, sanction, murder and violate
international law anywhere on the planet to “save” people based on its own
determinations and values. That is precisely why the question of what entitles
the US to inflict punishments on the Syrian government is not even raised as
part of a public discussion. That question and its answer are obvious to the
victims of Western colonial and imperialist brutality: The US and its
European allies have that right because they have always had the right
over the last 500 years to universalize and impose their assumptions, world
views and values. Normalization of White Supremacist Domination The normalization of
white supremacist domination and its prerogatives are so completely
inculcated in US and Western consciousness that not only is the question as to
what right the US and the West have to attack Syria outside the framework of
consideration, but alternative ways of viewing the world are beyond
cognitive comprehension . This is the cultural and ideological foundation of “American
exceptionalism and the intellectual framework and assumptions that informed
Western-based human rights organizations and their theoreticians in the
construction of the notion of humanitarian intervention. De-contextualized from the
reality of globalized Euro-American domination, the idea that there is a
collective responsibility on the part of states to protect people from gross and
systemic human rights violations associated with war crimes, genocide, crimes
against humanity, and ethnic cleansing, could be viewed as a progressive
development for international relations and global morality – even if that
protection if offered selectively. But in the hands of an arrogant minority that
still dominates the international system and sees its civilizational project as
representing the apex of human development, the right to protect has become a convenient
cover for rationalizing and justifying continued Euro-American global hegemony through the use
of armed interventions to refashion local realities in line with Western
geopolitical interests.
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R2P = Syria Intervention
R2P crucial to selling Syrian intervention
Thrall 2/22/12
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/responsibility-protect-6559
A. Trevor Thrall is an associate professor of government and politics at George
Mason University and director of the Biodefense Program. He is the coeditor of
American Foreign Policy and the Politics of Fear: Threat Inflation since 9/11
and coeditor of the forthcoming book Why Did the United States Invade Iraq?
Intervention in Syria is either a dangerous idea, an opportunity to further the
cause of democracy promotion or nothing less than the moral duty of the
international community. The Obama administration continues to act cagey
about the prospects of a successful intervention and the potential for
geopolitical fallout from Russia, China and Iran. But given European pressure
and the recent Libyan precedent, it seems more than possible that the United
States will come to embrace some sort of military intervention in Syria
as the love child of regime-changing neoconservatives and genocide-preventing
idealists . The real question then will be: Can Obama sell a Syrian intervention to the
public? And if so, how? The likeliest pitch for Obama to use is some form of the
responsibility-to-protect (R2P) ethic . Articulated after the international community’s
tepid response to the Bosnian meltdown, R2P has become the liberal
interventionist’s best friend, offering a justification for violating
national sovereignty and taking foreign governments to task for failing to
protect their people from violence. Obama used this line with Libya, arguing
that: To brush aside America's responsibility as a leader and—more profoundly—
our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would
have been a betrayal of who we are. . . . Some nations may be able to turn a
blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is
different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and
mass graves before taking action. And indeed, the loudest voices so far urging intervention
in Syria belong to the R2P crowd (Washington Post editorial here, for example), thanks
in part to confidence engendered by what they viewed as success in Libya. But
the question remains: Will the public buy this argument? Certainly, such
“responsible rhetoric” resonates—at least on the surface—with the public. Though
precise poll data are scanty, a couple of polls from the Pew Research Center
illustrate that the public generally agrees that the United States has a
responsibility to prevent genocide.
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Ditching R2P Solves
R2P is the worst path in Syria – moderate internationalism solves
Chimini 9/11/13
http://www.opendemocracy.net/openglobalrights/bschimni/r2p-and-syriaimperialism-with-human-face
B.S. Chimini is Professor of International Law at the School of International
Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Second, states have become wiser after the intervention in Libya. States that
did not oppose the invocation of R2P in Libya are now unwilling to support it
because the UNSC resolution 1973 was misinterpreted and used by NATO powers to
bring about regime change. Third, there is the valid concern that military
action will lead to an escalation of violence in Syria and the region,
leading to a greater humanitarian crisis. Millions more will be displaced
outside and inside Syria. Thousands more will lose their lives. It is believed
that even the departure of Assad will bring little relief to the people of
Syria. This has been the experience of the Libyan people, who have in the postGaddafi era been subjected to unceasing violence by armed militias holding sway
in large parts of the country. Fourth, it is felt that military action will
undermine the Geneva 2 process, which holds out the best possibility of
bringing to an end the conflict in Syria. It could mean a long period of
political uncertainty in which the Syrian people will be unable to take control
of their political destiny. Fifth, it is pointed out that the support for
‘democratic forces’ in Syria comes from many Arab regimes that are anything but
democratic. It strengthens the suspicion that what drives support for military
action is a geopolitical agenda. Sixth, there is the genuine fear that arms
supplied to rebels may end up with extremist groups who are a part of the rebel
forces. And seventh, it is believed that there are no innocent parties in this
conflict. Both the government and the rebel forces are contributing to the
escalating violence and violating international humanitarian laws. Even in
global civil society, there is resistance to the idea that the choice
before the international community is between supporting military action
or a brutal regime. This resistance emanates from a certain reading of
history. It is believed that the false choice is a function of the
geopolitics of imperialism with deep roots in colonialism. The roots of
violence in post-colonial states goes back to the construction of the colonial
state that saw the economy, bureaucracy, police and the army positioned to serve
the state rather than the people. The structures of colonial state were never
fully dismantled in the post-colonial era. However, where the post-colonial
states are democracies, social and human rights movements are able to prevent
gross violations of human rights (or, when it takes place, to use the legal
system to bring the perpetrators to justice). But in cases where the postcolonial state transfigured into an authoritarian state, as in the case of
Syria, this is not possible. These authoritarian states have often received
support from hegemonic powers pursuing geopolitical ambitions. But when such
regimes become a liability, the same states manipulate the politics of the postcolonial state by relying on the genuine grievances of the people to oppose the
incumbent regime. The outcome often is increased violence by the state against
its own people. It is against this backdrop that the lifting of the embargo by
the EU to supply arms to rebels, and earlier to allow the use of oil revenues to
fund the insurgency, together with the possibility of President Obama ordering
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military action, are to be viewed. It is felt that despite denials, forces of
imperialism are using the acute distress of the Syrian people to pursue the
agenda of regime change. What we need today is not military intervention
but prudent internationalism. It is an internationalism that refrains from
undermining the normative consensus in the international community on when
military action is permissible. Prudent internationalism also acknowledges
that democracy and democratic practices cannot be exported to societies and that
military action can undermine the future of democracy by sharpening sectarian
and social divides. Prudent internationalism also takes cognizance of the
past outcomes of military action, especially the continuing violence in
societies that have been the subject of military action (e.g., Iraq, Afghanistan
and Libya). Prudent internationalism also does not accept the view that nonsupport of military action is support for the brutal Assad regime. Prudent
internationalism sees a third way , that of diplomatic and political action to resolve
the conflict. It requires that states and civil society forces opposed to
military action ensure that the Geneva 2 process gets under way. Indeed,
there is a moral obligation on all those opposed to military action not to
remain passive spectators to the unfolding tragedy in Syria. In this respect, it
is particularly important that key developing countries such as Brazil, India,
China and South Africa act immediately to garner support for the diplomatic
process. The decision on convening the Geneva 2 process cannot be left to a few
states, in particular the US. Egypt has shown how the same hegemonic power that
speaks of the need to institute a democratic regime in Syria is a mute witness
to its destruction in Egypt. Meanwhile, as efforts are being made to start the
Geneva 2 process, the Syrian people must be offered increased humanitarian
assistance to relieve their sufferings.
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Syria Crisis Impact: Middle East War
Continued Syrian crisis destabilizes Middle East, respawns al Qaeda
Hashemi 2/20/14
Nader Hashemi is director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the Josef
Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. His latest
book is The Syria Dilemma. The views expressed are his own.
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/20/why-u-s-should-care-aboutsyria-crisis/
The moral case for why Syria matters is easy to make. The killing fields of
Syria are now reminiscent of those in Bosnia. Over the past three years, we have
witnessed state-sanctioned war crimes and crimes against humanity replete with
chemical weapons, barrel bombs, the targeting of children, mass rape, a refugee
crisis and according to a new report “industrial-scale” torture and killings.
Indeed, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has described Syria as “a
disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled
in recent history.” But a new dimension to this conflict has emerged: Syria is
now a global security problem. The Syrian conflict is destabilizing the Middle
East . Lebanon has been convulsed, Iraq has been shaken and Jordan’s fourth
largest city today is a Syrian refugee camp. To a lesser extent, Turkey has
also been adversely affected – some 600,000 refugees are said to be currently
living on the Turkish-Syrian border, and Turkey’s role in the conflict has
become a major bone of contention in domestic Turkish politics. Meanwhile, the
conflict has heightened sectarian tensions across the Arab-Islamic world,
fueled in part by the regional maneuverings of Saudi Arabia and Iran and their
respective allies. Both are fighting to expand their regional influence, and
Syria today is the key battleground for the contest. Finally, al Qaeda has reemerged from the ashes of the Syrian conflict. “Al Qaeda now controls
territory that stretches more than 400 miles across the heart of the Middle
East,” CNN analyst Peter Bergen recently observed. This deeply troubling
development has obvious implications for global security, especially for
Europe and the United States.
Al Qaeda makes conflict spread regionally
Karam 1/8/14
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20140108-jihadist-gains-in-syria-iraqraise-stakes-in-mideast.ece
Zeina Karam,
The Associated Press
Al-Qaeda is positioning itself as a vanguard defending Sunni Muslims
against persecution by Shiite-dominated governments in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.
As a result, a Syrian rebellion against President Bashar Assad is evolving
into something bigger and more ambiguous: a fight increasingly led by Sunni
jihadists determined to create an Islamic state. Battling these extremists
is a coalition that includes Syrian moderates who are horrified that their cause
has been discredited, with parts of the nation falling under strict religious
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law. For moderates in the Middle East, the renewed assertiveness of the
extremists is increasingly taking on the aspect of a regional calamity. “The war
in Syria has poured gasoline on a raging fire in Iraq, and conflicts in
both countries are feeding upon one another and complicating an already
complex struggle,” said Fawaz Gergez, director of the Middle East Center at the
London School of Economics. “Now the reverberations of the Syria war are
being felt on Arab streets, particularly Iraq and Lebanon, and are aggravating
Sunni-Shiite tensions across the Arab Middle East.” Why now? Experts see alQaeda characteristically taking advantage of social, religious and
ideological divisions — of the kind that have been exposed by the Sunni-Shiite
battle in Syria.
Longer conflict causes Mideast explosion
Kaplan 8/27/13
http://www.globaldashboard.org/2013/08/27/seven-scenarios-for-the-future-ofsyria/
Seth Kaplan is a Professorial Lecturer in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced
International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. He teaches, writes,
and consults on issues related to fragile states, governance, and development.
He is the author of Fixing Fragile States: A New Paradigm for Development
(Praeger Security International, 2008) and Betrayed: Politics, Power, and
Prosperity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). A Wharton MBA and Palmer scholar, Seth
has worked for several large multinationals and founded four companies. He
speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.
6) Regional conflict. The likelihood of this also increases the longer the
war goes on. Lebanon and Iraq have already suffered from spillover : bombs have
gone off in South Beirut and Tripoli in the past week and Sunni extremists
have been strengthened in Iraq in recent months. It is not out of the realm of
possibility that these trends will continue and a broad Sunni-Shiite
conflict will engulf the whole Levant. This is the worst result, and would
have even greater consequences for the region. Over 50 million people would
be directly affected.
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Right to Protect Causes War Escalation
R2P interventionism is uniquely destabilizing BECAUSE it’s ineffective
Menon 6/12/13
http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2013/06/12/its-fatally-flawed/
Rajan Menon is Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of Political Science, City
College of New York/City University of New York, and a senior fellow at the
Atlantic Council.
Yet the reassurances that force would be a rare, last-ditch response have not
placated critics, for several reasons. R2P’s pre-intervention prescriptions
merely repeat existing remedies and add nothing to diplomacy’s toolkit.
What’s new is the casuistry of reframing and diminishing sovereignty in order to
legitimize altruistic armed intervention in defense of the abstract rights
that most political communities agree upon in theory. Given R2P’s emphasis on
feasibility and the chances for success, weak states are its most likely
proving grounds; powerful ones need not fear, no matter the magnitude of their
misdeeds. Because idealism and power are inextricably intertwined, with the
latter frequently corrupting the former, R2P provides powerful states one
script for playing the Good Samaritan when intervention promotes their
interests, and another for eschewing or opposing aid when it doesn’t. R2P’s
defenders see this indictment as reflecting hyperbole or misunderstanding, or as
the artifice of dictators who declaim about sovereignty and legality but in
truth seek to avoid accountability. Yes, dictators have every reason to avoid
accountability, but it doesn’t really matter which side is right. What matters
is that in a world of diverse polities and cultures, such objections and
anxieties have sufficient appeal to prevent the doctrine from acquiring the
universal pragmatic applicability its supporters seek. Many states have signed
on to R2P, but it does not follow that they will stand behind its
sovereignty-eroding features when it is proposed as a plan for military action.
Disrupting sovereignty destroying the basis for collective security
Brooks 1/14/13
http://www.globalpolicy.org/qhumanitarianq-intervention/52290-hate-obamas-dronewar.html?itemid=id#26087
Rosa Brooks is a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, a
columnist and contributing editor for Foreign Policy and a Bernard L. Schwartz
senior fellow at the New America Foundation. From April 2009 to July 2011, she
served as Counselor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Michele
Flournoy, and in May 2010 she also became [1] Special Coordinator for Rule of
Law and Humanitarian Policy, running a new Pentagon office dedicated to those
issues. Brooks wrote a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times from 2005 to
2009, and is an expert on national security, international law and human rights
issues. At the Pentagon her portfolio included both rule of law and human rights
issues and global engagement, strategic communication, and she received the
Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service for her work.
Second, arguments premised on the Responsibility to Protect are
transparent: Evidence that a state is unwilling or unable to protect its
population from egregious harm can be examined by all, and R2P-based
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interventions are publicly proclaimed, making it possible to hold interveners
accountable for errors or abuses. Nonetheless, the parallels between R2P and
the understanding of sovereignty that undergirds U.S. drone policy are
troubling. I'm no fan of the traditional legal conception of sovereignty, which
has been used to mask many abuses. But in a world with no meaningful
international governance structures, sovereignty -- even a weak and hypocritical
conception of sovereignty -- is one of the few bulwarks against unilateral overreaching by great powers.
Our fragile international order rests less on "law" than on implicit bargains between states , and
insofar as U.S. drone policy further undermines traditional norms relating to
sovereignty and the use of force, it risks undermining those tenuous bargains.
It risks sending the message -- to friends and foes alike -- that we will no
longer even offer much pretence of respecting sovereignty. As a result, it
risks undermining the fragile order we so desperately need.
Sovereignty erosion = international wars
Gay 7/23/13
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-deceptive-appeal-theresponsibility-protect-8764
John Allen Gay is an assistant managing editor at The National Interest. His
book (co-authored with Geoffrey Kemp) War with Iran: Political, Military, and
Economic Consequences was released by Rowman and Littlefield in early 2013, The
National Interest, July 23, The Deceptive Appeal of the Responsibility to
Protect, DOA: 12-7-14
Why is R2P’s gutting of national sovereignty a problem? Respect for sovereignty is
generally a stabilizing force in the international community. It narrows
the scope of acceptable disagreement between states—there are fewer things to
fight about. This can lead, in turn, to fewer international armed
conflicts—and fewer of their attendant atrocities. R2P’s disregard for sovereignty
might empower the international community to, from time to time, actually stop a
genocide by intervention. Yet all too often, no “international community”
exists. Interventions can become proxy conflicts (this would happen in a
Syria intervention, and was a danger in the Balkans). And these proxy
conflicts can readily yield atrocities of their own, perhaps far worse
than those the intervention was launched to prevent.
WW III
Johnstone 1/25/13
http://www.globalpolicy.org/qhumanitarianq-intervention/52236-responsibility-toprotect-is-a-power-play.html?itemid=id#26087
Johnstone gained a BA in Russian Area Studies and a Ph.D. in French Literature
from the University of Minnesota.[1] She was active in the movement against the
Vietnam War, organizing the first international contacts between American
citizens and Vietnamese representatives. Most of Johnstone's adult life has been
spent in France, Germany, and Italy. Johnstone was European editor of the U.S.
weekly In These Times from 1979 to 1990. She was press officer of the Green
group in the European Parliament from 1990 to 1996. Johnstone also regularly
contributes to the online magazine CounterPunch.[further explanation needed].
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Opposing genocide has become a cottage industry in the United States. An
example is a program called "World Without Genocide" at William Mitchell College
of Law in St. Paul. The recent commentary by its executive director, Ellen
Kennedy ("‘Never again,’ it’s been said of genocide. Do we finally grasp it?"
Jan. 19), employs all the usual clichés of that well-meaning but misguided
campaign. Misguided, and, above all, misguiding. The antigenocide movement is
directing people of good intention away from the essential cause of our
time -- to reverse the drift toward worldwide war . The Bible of this campaign is
Samantha Power's book, "A Problem from Hell." Power's thesis is that the United
States is too slow to intervene to "stop genocide." It is a suggestion the U.S.
government embraces, to the point of taking on Power as a White House adviser.
The reason is clear. Since the Holocaust has become the most omnipresent
historical reference in Western societies, the concept of "genocide" is
widely accepted as the greatest evil to afflict the planet. It is felt to be
worse than war. Therein lies its immense value to the U.S. military-industrial complex , and to a
foreign-policy elite seeking an acceptable pretext for military intervention.
The obsession with "genocide" as the primary humanitarian issue in the world
today relativizes war. It reverses the final judgment of the Nuremberg Trials
that: "War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to
the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of
aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme
international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains
within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Instead, war is transformed
into a chivalrous action to rescue whole populations from "genocide." At
the same time, national sovereignty , erected as the barrier to prevent strong
nations from invading weaker ones -- that is, to prevent aggression and "the
scourge of war" -- is derided as nothing but a protection for evil rulers
("dictators") whose only ambition is to "massacre their own people." This
ideological construct is the basis for the Western-sponsored doctrine, forced
on a more or less reluctant United Nations, of " R2P, " the ambiguous shorthand
for both the "right" and the "responsibility" to protect people from their own
governments. In practice, this can give the dominant powers carte blanche
to intervene militarily in weaker countries in order to support whatever armed
rebellions they favor. Once this doctrine seems to be accepted, it can even
serve as an incitement to opposition groups to provoke government
repression in order to call for "protection." Kennedy blames "genocide" on the
legal barrier set up to try to prevent aggressive war: national sovereignty. For
more than 350 years," she writes, "the concept of 'national sovereignty' held
primacy over the idea of 'individual sovereignty' ... The result has been an
'over and over again' phenomenon of genocide since the Holocaust, with millions
of innocent lives lost in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Congo, Guatemala, Argentina,
East Timor ..." Yet Hitler initiated World War II precisely in violation of
the national sovereignty of Czechoslovakia and Poland -- partly, he claimed,
to stop alleged human-rights violations against ethnic Germans who lived
there. It was to invalidate this pretext, and "save succeeding generations from
the scourge of war," that the United Nations was founded on the basis of respect
for national sovereignty. Of course, there is no chance that the United States
will abandon itsnational sovereignty. Rather, other countries are called upon
to abandon their national sovereignty to the United States. Kennedy's list
includes events that do not remotely fit the term "genocide" and leaves out
others that do -- all according to the official U.S. narrative of contemporary
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conflicts. But the significant fact is that the worst of these slaughters -Cambodia, Rwanda and the Holocaust itself -- occurred during warsand as a
result of wars. The systematic killing of European Jews took place during
World War II. In Rwanda, the horrific slaughter was a response to an invasion by
Tutsi forces from neighboring Uganda. The Cambodian slaughter was not the fault
of "national sovereignty" but the direct result of the U.S. violation of
Cambodia's national sovereignty. Years of secret U.S. bombing of the Cambodian
countryside, followed by a U.S.-engineered overthrow of the Cambodian
government, opened the way for takeover of that country by embittered Khmer
Rouge fighters who took out their resentment against the devastation of rural
areas on the hapless urban population, considered accomplices of their enemies.
Some of the bloodiest events do not make Kennedy's genocide list. Missing is the
killing of more than half a million members of the Indonesian Communist Party in
1965 and 1966. But the dictator responsible, Suharto, was "a friend of the
United States," and the victims were communists. A principal danger of the R2P
doctrine is that it encourages rebel factions to provoke repression, or to
claim persecution, solely to bring in foreign forces on their behalf. It is
certain that opposition militants exaggerated Moammar Gadhafi's threat to
Benghazi to provoke the 2011 French-led NATO war against Libya. The war in Mali
is a direct result of the brutal overthrow of Gadhafi, who was a major force for
African stability. The sole purpose of R2P is to create a public opinion
willing to accept U.S. and NATO intervention in other countries. It is not
meant to allow the Russians or the Chinese, say, to intervene to protect
housemaids in Saudi Arabia from being beheaded -- much less to allow Cuban
forces to shut down Guantanamo and end U.S. violations of human rights (on Cuban
territory). Intervention means war; war causes massacres and more wars . The sense of
being threatened by U.S. power incites other countries to build up their own
military defenses and to repress opposition militants who might serve as excuses
for outside intervention. Today, the greatest threat to the peoples of the
world is not "evil dictators," but the militarization of international relations which, unless
reversed, is leading toward the unimaginable catastrophe of World War III.
R2P incentivizes escalation to provoke an intervention
Menon 6/12/13
http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2013/06/12/its-fatally-flawed/
Rajan Menon is Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of Political Science, City
College of New York/City University of New York, and a senior fellow at the
Atlantic Council.
The point here is not to condemn particular states for their selective moral
outrages or for putting interests before ethics. This is what states of all
stripes tend to do. It’s not that they never act in defense of principles or
altruistically; it’s that they don’t do so when important interests point
another way, or when the costs and hazards of defending them are deemed
prohibitive. R2P boosters and revolutionary liberals will reply that the
inability to defend basic values everywhere does not mean they can’t be defended
when possible. Examples of supposedly successful action (Bosnia, Kosovo, East
Timor and Libya) are trotted out, perhaps supplemented by Emerson’s quip about
consistency’s allure for “little minds.” But given the realities of power, what
this riposte concedes is that if a weak and ally-bereft state kills its
citizens, it risks falling into the R2P file and facing armed intervention. If
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not, then not—which brings us to the problem of moral hazard inherent in R2P.
The prospect of an external humanitarian intervention, as noted earlier, led
the KLA to adopt tactics that bordered on terrorism , and Serbia in turn to
adopt tactics that resembled migratory genocide . In Libya, once the UNsanctioned machinery of intervention began to move, anti-Qaddafi insurgents
had no reason to compromise and Qaddafi had no motivation to hold back.
R2P presents a theoretical continuum of measures with armed intervention at one
end, but engaged antagonists know that the various intermediate steps can easily
and rapidly be skipped, the continuum collapsed, and the concept applied
expansively. That encourages opposition forces to magnify violence to
attract and suborn outside help, and it encourages embattled regimes to
accelerate efforts at repression before external intervention can be
agreed upon and implemented. In short, the prospect of R2P interventions can
easily make bad situations worse. onsider Syria in this light. The Assad
government has certainly slaughtered enough of its own citizens to attract R2P
attention. But no major power has proposed armed intervention or even arming the
insurgents in a dramatic or open way. Why? Because, unlike Qaddafi, Assad has
the equipment to make the establishment of a no-fly zone, let alone use of
ground troops, a very hazardous venture. Syria also has reliable supporters and
arms suppliers in Russia and Iran, and Beijing has joined Moscow in scuttling
successive Security Council resolutions aimed at the Assad regime. Russia and
China had not forgotten that in Libya what began as an R2P intervention to
protect civilians turned quickly into one aimed at regime change. It’s
impossible to prove, being a counterfactual, but had an R2P intervention in
Syria ever seemed possible to the combatants, it might well have made the
carnage worse by quickening the tempo of killing.
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Right to Protect Triggers Nuclear Proliferation
Strengthened R2P norm causes prolif.
Bolfrass 9/12/11
Alexander K. Bollfrass is a visiting scholar at the Stimson Center 9-12-2011
Explaining Libya to Iran
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/9970/explaining-libya-to-iran
Eight years after Moammar Gadhafi gave up his mail-order nuclear weapons program and chemical
munitions in exchange for détente with the West, he has been chased from power by a ragtag rebel army
backed by Western airpower. Chances are that Gadhafi regrets his decision to forgo his WMD programs. If
he had been armed with nuclear or chemical weapons, NATO might not have intervened when he threatened
to massacre his own people. While Gadhafi's fall is good news, the end of the eccentric colonel's dictatorship
now heightens the challenge of getting the Irans and North Koreas of the world to give up their nuclear
ambitions in exchange for better relations with the West. Before the bombs started falling on Tripoli, the
intellectual and legal momentum behind such an intervention had been building for years. Through the work
of academics and humanitarian advocates, the idea known as the "responsibility to protect," or R2P, has
emerged as an increasingly mainstream norm among Western policymakers. R2P emphasizes the
responsibility of states to protect their populations and permits international intervention if a government is
unable or unwilling to prevent mass atrocities against its people. In March, the international community did
not dither when Gadhafi appeared to be preparing a massacre in Benghazi. R2P was used to justify the first
U.N.-sanctioned humanitarian intervention in a sovereign country against the wishes of its government. The
architects of the intervention were some of the very same countries that had convinced Gadhafi to give up his
weapons of mass destruction eight years earlier: France, Britain and the United States. Parallel to the
humanitarian community's development of the R2P doctrine, another community of
foreign policy thinkers, those worried about the spread of nuclear weapons, had worked to
promote an idea with very different implications for sovereignty. They reached the
conclusion that fear of outside intervention was among the many factors driving
governments to build weapons of mass destruction. For this reason, they argued, it was necessary
to assuage that fear with the offer of a security guarantee once the government could prove it had abandoned
its WMD ambitions. In Libya, this security-assurance principle successfully brought the archpariah of the
1980s back into the international fold in 2003. The contradictory doctrinal developments in
humanitarian and security circles are not abstract intellectual exercises; they have practical
implications. In light of the Islamic Republic's crushing of the Green Movement in 2009, it takes little
imagination to see a Libya-like situation emerge in Iran. Iranian leaders weighing the pros and cons of
coming clean over their country's nuclear program might look closely at what happened to Gadhafi after he
surrendered his weapons program. They might also consider Saddam Hussein and his nonexistent weapons of
mass destruction, while contrasting both these dictators with Kim Jong Il and his unpunished nuclear roguery
and human rights violations. They might come to the conclusion that nuclear weapons are
useful. In fact, we need not speculate about such a scenario, for this is essentially what Iranian Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said at the start of the Libyan campaign. The Iranians are not the only
ones learning this lesson, one that sets the stage for a future in which nuclear weapons are
prized as a counterweight to the threat of international intervention represented by R2P and
its inherent challenge to state sovereignty. Instead of greater openness and West-friendly
behavior, the response of the rogue states would be deeper retrenchment under the cover of
asymmetric WMD capabilities.
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Proliferation snowballs and puts everyone on hair trigger – every small crisis will go
nuclear.
Soloski 9
Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center,
serves on the U.S. congressional Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass
Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, ‘9 (Henry, Avoiding a Nuclear Crowd,
Policy Review June & July,
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/46390537.html)
At a minimum, such developments will be a departure from whatever stability existed during
the Cold War. After World War II, there was a clear subordination of nations to one or another of the two
superpowers’ strong alliance systems — the U.S.-led free world and the Russian-Chinese led Communist
Bloc. The net effect was relative peace with only small, nonindustrial wars. This alliance tension and system,
however, no longer exist. Instead, we now have one superpower, the United States, that is capable of
overthrowing small nations unilaterally with conventional arms alone, associated with a relatively weak
alliance system ( nato) that includes two European nuclear powers (France and the uk). nato is increasingly
integrating its nuclear targeting policies. The U.S. also has retained its security allies in Asia (Japan,
Australia, and South Korea) but has seen the emergence of an increasing number of nuclear or nuclearweapon-armed or -ready states. So far, the U.S. has tried to cope with independent nuclear powers by
making them “strategic partners” (e.g., India and Russia), nato nuclear allies (France and the uk), “non-nato
allies” (e.g., Israel and Pakistan), and strategic stakeholders (China); or by fudging if a nation actually has
attained full nuclear status (e.g., Iran or North Korea, which, we insist, will either not get nuclear weapons or
will give them up). In this world, every nuclear power center (our European nuclear nato allies), the U.S.,
Russia, China, Israel, India, and Pakistan could have significant diplomatic security relations or ties with one
another but none of these ties is viewed by Washington (and, one hopes, by no one else) as being as
important as the ties between Washington and each of these nuclear-armed entities (see Figure 3). There
are limits, however, to what this approach can accomplish. Such a weak alliance system, with its
expanding set of loose affiliations, risks becoming analogous to the international system that failed
to contain offensive actions prior to World War I. Unlike 1914, there is no power today that can rival
the projection of U.S. conventional forces anywhere on the globe. But in a world with an increasing
number of nuclear-armed or nuclear-ready states, this may not matter as much as we think. In such
a world, the actions of just one or two states or groups that might threaten to disrupt or overthrow
a nuclear weapons state could check U.S. influence or ignite a war Washington could have
difficulty containing. No amount of military science or tactics could assure that the U.S.
could disarm or neutralize such threatening or unstable nuclear states.22 Nor could diplomats or our
intelligence services be relied upon to keep up to date on what each of these governments would be likely to
do in such a crisis (see graphic below): Combine these proliferation trends with the others noted above and
one could easily create the perfect nuclear storm: Small differences between nuclear
competitors that would put all actors on edge; an overhang of nuclear materials that could
be called upon to break out or significantly ramp up existing nuclear deployments; and a variety of
potential new nuclear actors developing weapons options in the wings. In such a setting, the
military and nuclear rivalries between states could easily be much more intense than
before. Certainly each nuclear state’s military would place an even higher premium than before on being
able to weaponize its military and civilian surpluses quickly, to deploy forces that are survivable, and to have
forces that can get to their targets and destroy them with high levels of probability. The advanced military
states will also be even more inclined to develop and deploy enhanced air and missile defenses and longrange, precision guidance munitions, and to develop a variety of preventative and preemptive war options .
Certainly, in such a world, relations between states could become far less stable. Relatively small
developments — e.g., Russian support for sympathetic near-abroad provinces; Pakistani-inspired terrorist
strikes in India, such as those experienced recently in Mumbai; new Indian flanking activities in Iran near
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Pakistan; Chinese weapons developments or moves regarding Taiwan; state-sponsored assassination attempts
of key figures in the Middle East or South West Asia, etc. — could easily prompt nuclear weapons
deployments with “strategic” consequences (arms races, strategic miscues, and even
nuclear war). As Herman Kahn once noted, in such a world “every quarrel or difference of opinion
may lead to violence of a kind quite different from what is possible today.”23 In short, we may
soon see a future that neither the proponents of nuclear abolition, nor their critics, would ever want.
141
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Right to Protect Destroys US-Brazil Relations
Unchecked humanitarian intervention tanks US – Brazilian relations – overwhelms alt
causes
Spektor 12
http://www.americasquarterly.org/humanitarian-interventionism-brazilian-style
Matias Spektor is assistant professor of international relations at Fundação
Getulio Vargas in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
While Washington saw the Libya episode as a successful model for future
humanitarian interventions, Brasília saw it as a dangerous precedent .
Brazil’s foreign policy elite believed the resolution was too broad,
giving NATO free rein over the terms and conditions of the intervention. For
Brazilian leadership, the thin rules governing the use of force on the
part of the major powers represent a great threat to international stability.
The idea stems from a belief that intrusive norms of humanitarian intervention
will corrode the principles of sovereignty and national autonomy and threaten
international stability—representing potentially even a greater risk than the
rise of new powers, radical Islam and even nuclear terror.
Brazil wants LIMITED and RESTRAINED r2p – syncing with the Brazilian position boosts
relations and Brazilian soft power
Spektor 12
http://www.americasquarterly.org/humanitarian-interventionism-brazilian-style
Matias Spektor is assistant professor of international relations at Fundação
Getulio Vargas in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Brazilian officials were sensitive to the criticism. By November 2011, they
began to circulate a concept paper at the UN entitled “Responsibility While
Protecting,” or RWP. The paper argued that without limits on what the powerful
may do, the emerging ideology of humanitarian intervention could easily become a
tool for foreign manipulation. It then went on to suggest that the international
community ought to codify standards and procedures to govern humanitarian
intervention in the future. In practice, RWP proposed the introduction of
criteria—such as last resort, proportionality, and balance of consequences—
before the Security Council authorized the use of force. The paper called for
the creation of a system for monitoring and reviewing the intervention as it
evolves. The RWP concept was not open- ended and it stopped short of specifying
how to roll out the criteria it proposed. Brasília conceived it less as a
finished doctrine and more as a broad message to the international community: if
humanitarian interventions in the future are loosely regulated and big power
coalitions intervene as they please, then R2P will divide the international
community between north and south, rich and poor, strong and weak. There was
nothing new here. Brazil’s core message that interventions need to be carefully
regulated can in fact be found in the 2005 R2P initiative. The fact that the
Brazilian government dusted off its old proposal and presented it to the public
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demonstrated its willingness to engage constructively in the global debate over
the rules that govern the use of force in the next decades. The reception of
Brazil’s RWP in the U.S. and parts of Europe was negative at first. With the
partial exception of Germany, Europe quickly dismissed the initiative as an
attempt to block action and let tyrannical leaders hide behind the legal shield
of sovereignty. So far, Brazil has done a poor job of explaining what RWP
entails and answering suspicions that it is an attempt to paralyze global action
against mass atrocities instead of what it claims it is: a tool to ensure
interventions cause less damage than they set out to prevent. China, Russia and
India did not show much sympathy for RWP either. They were unhappy to see Brazil
go further than they were ready to go in criticizing the Assad regime in Syria,
and in their eyes RWP only confirms Brazil’s unpredictability when it comes to
defending the primacy of sovereignty. This is, of course, problematic for
Brazil. Without the military or financial resources to be a major player in the
business of intervention and peacekeeping operations, its ability to speak up
in global councils rests on the tacit support of others. If it wants its new
ideas to stick, then Brazil first needs to convince and influence powerful
countries. RWP has yet to achieve this. Equally complicated is the reception of
RWP at home. Brazil’s commitment to sovereignty is deeply rooted in and around
the state apparatus, and talk of humanitarian intervention is bound to clash
with embedded understandings of how the world works. It is among networks of
activists and private foundations, however, that RWP seems to have found its
closest friends. Anecdotal evidence suggests that networks of human rights NGOs
active in Brazil and in and around the UN system welcomed the initiative and are
keen to learn more about it. Among these activists, there is a sense that if
R2P is ever going to become a key organizing principle of global order
that is embraced by all, then part of the bargain will have to involve some
form of criteria for intervention. On this view, weaker nations around the
globe will only grant legitimacy to humanitarian intervention if the use of
force on behalf of strangers is strictly regulated to ensure that the interests
of the people come before those of powerful nations. Stepping Up or Stepping Out
of Line? Future disagreement between the U.S. and Brazil over humanitarian
intervention is not inevitable. Brazilian leaders have been sensitive to the
accusation that they just want to be recognized as a major power without paying
any of the costs. Instead, Brasília believes it has gone out of its way to
demonstrate its burden-sharing credentials. To further the debate, though,
Brazilian leaders will need to remain involved in the shaping of humanitarian
intervention norms and avoid alienating the United States. As part of this
process, Brazil is aiming to demonstrate that it is entitled to a permanent seat
on the UN Security Council, based not only on its willingness to deploy military
missions abroad to enforce peace and stability, but on the argument that it can
bring to international and multilateral debates and decisions a new, modern
perspective on security that is more in tune with the demands of a changing
world. Along these lines, Brasília believes that it can add legitimacy to global
order because it seeks to preserve humanitarian intervention while defending the
weak from the selective geostrategic predations of the most powerful. This is a
message that strikes a chord with large swaths of people around the globe. What
is the implication for the United States? Since Brazil is more interested in
adapting existing conceptions of intervention than in offering alternative ones,
the U.S. would be wise to invest in greater dialogue and practical
cooperation on the ground. A good example is the work currently conducted by
the two countries in Haiti or in bilateral military cooperation in partner
countries throughout Africa. Along these lines, Washington should not discard
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RWP too quickly. If notions of civilian protection are going to become
fixtures in the emerging normative landscape, then they will have to be
embraced by major rising powers, first among them the members of the BRICS
(Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). Among those countries Brazil
has been the one most willing to engage on this topic. Rather than see RWP as
an attempt to block progress toward better and more efficient humanitarian
interventions, the U.S. should take it as an attempt to return to the
initial spirit of R2P in the mid-2000s. At inception, the principle did not
focus on the use of military force as the sole or primary instrument to cease
violations of rights. Instead, it gave equal attention to building state
capacity to address structural causes of violence, such as poverty. Brazil wants
to emphasize that side of humanitarian intervention because it will not and
cannot take active part in it through military force. But it is keen to make
contributions in the fields where it has the ability to deliver, such as poverty
alleviation, sustainable agriculture, public service reform, and international
aid and cooperation. These may not be integral to current understandings of
humanitarian intervention, but are likely to become so if R2P is to become a
dominant norm in twenty-first century international society. The best response
by the U.S. would be to take Brazil’s proposals seriously and engage
Brasília in further specifying how the concept would work in practice. Dialogue
with Brazil is a low-cost initiative to try bridging the gap between the Western
industrial countries and the major developing states that now threatens the
future survival of a global shared responsibility to protect.
Constrained r2p boosts Brazilian prestige as global middleman
Stuenkl 11/28/11
Oliver Stuenkel is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the
Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in São Paulo, where he coordinates the São Paulo
branch of the School of History and Social Science (CPDOC) and the executive
program in International Relations. He is also a non-resident Fellow at the
Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin and a member of the Carnegie
Rising Democracies Network. His research focuses on rising powers; specifically
on Brazil’s, India’s and China's foreign policy and on their impact on global
governance. He is the author of the forthcoming IBSA: The rise of the Global
South? (2014, Routledge Global Institutions) and BRICS and the Future of Global
Order (2014, Lexington).
In this context, Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff has offered an
interesting concept that may bring the two sides together. During her
opening speech at the UN General Assembly earlier this year, Rousseff argued
that better mechanisms were needed to assure that in an intervention
unwanted damage would be kept at a minimum, calling it “the responsibility while
protecting ” (responsabilidade ao proteger). Since then, Brazil has been low-key
about the idea, and it has attempted to integrate the concept into last month’s
IBSA declaration. Brazilian President’s Rousseff argument during her speech that
“while there was been a lot of talk (…) of the right to protect, there is little
said about the responsibility while protecting” may seem insignificant, but in
essence means that if carried out in a responsible manner, Brazil could, in
principle, support intervention in the UN Security Council in the future –
and India and South Africa are not fundamentally opposed to this idea. In an op-
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ed in today’s Folha de São Paulo, Matias Spektor, professor at Fundação Getulio
Vargas who coordinates the Center for International Relations, argues that the
concept has the potential to turn into one of the Rousseff
administration’s important contributions to the international debat e. If accepted by
the P5, the Brazilian initiative would impose constraints on interventions
that could help reluctant actors such as China and Russia support them,
mitigating worries that interventions cause more damage than necessary or
support a hidden agenda. In order to successfully launch the concept, Spektor
argues, Brazil needs to promote it on many levels – such as the G20 and during
the BRICS summit, which takes place in India next year. Whatever happens, the
case shows Brazil is eager to turn into an international agenda-setter : It is not
only willing to participate in international negotiations, but it also
increasingly seeks to frame the debate and decide which issues should be
discussed in the first place.
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*** Links ***
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Link – War
Understanding war as a discrete event obscures the structural roots of violence
Cuomo 96 (Chris J. Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, and Director of
the Institute for Women's Studies at the University of Georgia, “War Is Not Just
an Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence”, Published in
Hypatia 11.4 nb, pp. 31-48)
Philosophical attention to war has typically appeared in the form of justifications for entering into war,
and over appropriate activities within war. The spatial metaphors used to refer to war as a separate,
hounded sphere indicate assumptions that war is a realm of human activity vastly removed from normal
life, or a sort of happening that is appropriately conceived apart from everyday events in peaceful times.
Not surprisingly, most discussions of the political and ethical dimensions of war discuss war solely as an
event—an occurrence, or collection of occurrences, having clear beginnings and endings that are typically
marked by formal, institutional declarations. As happenings, wars and military activities can be seen as
motivated by identifiable, if complex, intentions, and directly enacted by individual and collective
decision-makers and agents of states. But many of the questions about war that are of interest to feminists—
including how large-scale, state-sponsored violence affects women and members of other oppressed groups;
how military violence shapes gendered, raced, and nationalistic political realities and moral imaginations;
what such violence consists of and why it persists; how it is related to other oppressive and violent
institutions and hegemonies—cannot be adequately pursued by focusing on events. These issues are not
merely a matter of good or bad intentions and identifiable decisions.
“Risk of war” rhetoric privileges security over peacemaking, turning the case
Waever 4 (Ole, Ph.D. in Political Science and Professor of International Relations at
COPRI, “Peace and
Security”, Contemporary Security Analysis and Copenhagen Peace Research, pg 62-63,
http://books.google.com/books?id=L2GKw5JcmYQC&pg=PA53&lpg=PA53&dq=%E2%80%9CPeace+and+Security%E2%80%9D,+%22Contemp
orary+Security+Analysis+and+Copenhagen+Peace+Research%22&source=bl&ots=7g5DLhB5ZY&sig=ujOh2GZXFvCSlxUWfsvrgOZyWWs&
hl=en&ei=OMZXSo2ZN5GiswOqoanaBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3, 2004, AD: 7-10-9)
President Bush
senior declared in 1989, ‘Once again, it is a time for peace’ (quoted by Rasmussen 2001:341). The
famous ‘New World Order’ speech at the end of the Gulf War (March 6, 1991) was phrased mostly in terms
of peace- ‘enduring peace must be our mission’. Nato enlargement is so hard for Russia and others to oppose because it is presented
apolitically as the mere expansion of the democratic peace community (Williams 2001). The war on terror after 11 September
2001 has surprisingly few references to either peace or security- operation ‘Enduring Freedom’- but
President George W. Bush’s address on 7 October 2001 ended with ‘Peace and freedom will prevail’, and
the (in)famous ‘axis of evil’ was presented (29 January, 2002) in terms of a ‘threat to peace’. Peace has become
the overarching concept of the two examined in this chapter. Security in turn, is gradually swallowed up into a
generalized concern about ‘risk’. Society’s reflections on itself are increasingly in terms of risk (risk society).
More and more dangers are the product of our own actions, and fewer and fewer attributable to forces
completely external to ourselves- thus threats become risks (Luhmann 1990). This goes for forms of
production and their effects on the environment, and it goes for internal affairs, where it is hard to see the
war on terrorism as a pure reaction to something coming to the West from elsewhere. Western actions in
relation to Middle East peace processes, religion, migration and global economic policy are part of what might produce future terrorism.
The short-term reaction to the 11 September attacks on the USA in 2001 might be re-assertion of single-
minded aspirations for absolute security with little concern for liberty and and for boomerang effects on
future security (Bigo 2002), but in general debates, the ‘risk’ way of thinking about international affairs is making itself increasingly
felt. We have seen during the last twenty years a spread of the originally specifically international concept of
security in its securitization function to more and more spheres of ‘domestic’ life, and now society takes its
revenge by transforming the concept of security along lines of risk thinking (Waever 2002). Politically, the
concepts of peace and security are changing places in these years. ‘Security studies’ and ‘peace research’ werer shaped
in important ways by the particular Cold War context, though not the way it is often implied in fast politicians’ statements about the postCold War irrelevance of peace research. ‘Peace research’ and ‘security studies’ I(or rather ‘strategic studies’) meant, respectibley to oppose
or to accept the official Western policy problematique. Today, it is the othe way round. ‘ Peace research’ might be dated
because peace is so apologetic to be intellectually uninteresting, while security is potentially the name of a
radical, subversive agenda.
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Link – War
They dehistoricize war making complex solutions to the structural roots impossible
Gur-Ze’ev 1 (Ilan, Head of the Department of Education at the University of Haifa,
Summer, http://construct.haifa.ac.il/~ilangz/peace23.html)
Pacifist writers as diverse as Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Barbara Deming have emphasized the fact that pacifism entails a critique
of pervasive, systematic human violence. Despite its reductionist tendencies, there is much to learn from the ways in which pacifists conceive
of war as a presence, as well as the pacifist refusal to let go of the ideal of peace. Characterizing pacifism as motivated by the desire to avoid
specific events disregards the extent to which pacifism aims to criticize the preconditions underlying events of war. Following several initial
moves in feminist philosophy, Peach rejects just war abstraction--of the realities, or "horrors," of war; dimensional evil, killable Others; and I
the ethical responses needed to address the morality of war, such as a privileging of justice mil rights over love and caring. Following
Elsluain, she believes that feminist just-war principles should be more particularized, contextualized, and individualized. But the abstraction
of the particularities of war depends on an abstraction of war itself. The distance of such abstraction is created in part by willingness to think
of war without considering the presence of war in "peaceful" times. Wars becomes conceptual entities—objects for
consideration—rather than diverse, historically loaded exemplifications of the contexts in which they
occur. In order to notice the particular and individual realities of war, attention must be given to the
particular, individual, and contextualized causes and effects of pervasive militarism, as well as the
patterns and connections among them
A crisis-driven approach to war focused on timeframe and risk assessment obscures the
omnipresence of militarism at the root of violence
Cuomo 96 (Chris J. Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, and Director of
the Institute for Women's Studies at the University of Georgia, “War Is Not Just
an Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence”, Published in
Hypatia 11.4 nb, pp. 31-48) CH
Ethical approaches that do not attend to the ways in which warfare and military practices are woven into
the very fabric of life in twenty-first century technological states lead to crisis-based politics and analyses.
For any feminism that aims to resist oppression and create alternative social and political options, crisis-based
ethics and politics are problematic because they distract attention from the need for sustained resistance
to the enmeshed, omnipresent systems of domination and oppression that so often function as givens in
most people's lives. Neglecting the omnipresence of militarism allows the false belief that the absence of
declared armed conflicts is peace, the polar opposite of war. It is particularly easy for those whose lives are
shaped by the safety of privilege, and who do not regularly encounter the realities of militarism, to maintain this
false belief. The belief that militarism is an ethical, political concern only regarding armed conflict, creates
forms of resistance to militarism that are merely exercises in crisis control. Antiwar resistance is then
mobilized when the "real" violence finally occurs, or when the stability of privilege is directly threatened, and at
that point it is difficult not to respond in ways that make resisters drop all other political priorities. Crisis-driven
attention to declarations of war might actually keep resisters complacent about and complicitous in the
general presence of global militarism. Seeing war as necessarily embedded in constant military presence
draws attention to the fact that horrific, state-sponsored violence is happening nearly all over, all of the
time, and that it is perpetrated by military institutions and other militaristic agents of the state.
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Link – War
Their reduction of war to the entities and particularities of the aff abstracts war, preventing
contextualized responses to structural violence
Cuomo 96 (Chris J. Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, and Director of
the Institute for Women's Studies at the University of Georgia, “War Is Not Just
an Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence”, Published in
Hypatia 11.4 nb, pp. 31-48) CH
But the abstraction of the particularities of war depends on an abstraction of
war itself. The distance of such abstraction is created in part by willingness
to think of war without considering the presence of war in "peaceful" times.
Wars becomes conceptual entities—objects for consideration—rather than diverse,
historically loaded exemplifications of the contexts in which they occur. In
order to notice the particular and individual realities of war, attention must
be given to the particular, individual, and contextualized causes and effects of
pervasive militarism, as well as the patterns and connections among them. Like
other feminists, Peach criticizes the dualisms and dichotomies that underlie war
and the other evils of patriarchy, including dichotomies between male and
female, combatant and non-combatant, soldier and citizen, ally and enemy and
state and individual which have dominated just-war thinking. Rather than relying
on traditional dichotomies, a feminist application of just-war criteria should
emphasize the effects of going to war on the lives of particular individuals who
would be involved, whether soldier or civilian, enemy or ally, male or female.
(Peach 1994. 166)
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Link – Hegemony
Hegemony causes negative peace
Tavares 8 (Rodrigo l, June, “Understanding regional peace and security: a framework for analysis.”, Vol. 14
Issue 2, p107-127, 21p, Contemporary Politics)
The first instrument, armed violence, can be seen as a mechanism of state policy to shape
the international system. In a paradoxical perspective, realist scholars and conservative policy
makers tend to consider war as a rational tool to carve international order and stability (Waltz
1959; see also Howard 1970). The second instrument, balance of power, is an instrument (or
a set of instruments) that states use to band together and pool their capabilities whenever one
state or group of states appears to become a threat as it gathers a disproportionate amount of
power. Although balance of power could be interpreted as a concept or a strategic doctrine,
here the emphasis is on the mechanisms used by political agents to balance each other’s capabilities.
In conjugation with this, hegemony is the dominance of one state over other states,
with or without the threat of force, to the extent that, for instance, the dominant party can
dictate the terms of relationship to its advantage. In the same line, alliances are military
collective defence arrangements of states formed as a response to a common threat and as
a way of maximizing security and minimizing the eventuality of an external attack.
Modern military alliances are the subject of a significant body of literature (Osgood 1968,
Walt 1987, 1997).
Negative peace trades-off with a focus on the structural roots of violence
Von Heinegg 4 (Wolff Heintschel, * Prof. Dr. iur., Europa-Universitat Frankfurt
(Oder); Charles H. Stockton Professor of International Law, U.S. Naval War
College, Newport, R.I., Summer“The Rule of Law in conflict and Post-Conflict
Situations: Factors in war to peace transitions”, Harvard Society for Law &
Public Policy)
Before dealing with the different forms of terminating (and of suspending) an international armed conflict, it needs to be stressed that the
end of a war merely means a return to peace insofar as the situation thus created is characterized by the
absence of military operations, including occupation. This situation, often referred to as "negative peace,"
of course does not mean a return to normal or amicable relations between the former belligerents, often
referred to as "positive peace." n17 The latter condition, while not apt for an abstract and comprehensive definition, n18 may be
achieved through the exchange of diplomats and by the reestablishment of economic and cultural relations. There is, however, another aspect
of this issue that is of importance in that context. A situation of "positive peace," which is, inter alia, based upon the
principle of sovereign equality of States, regularly presupposes the reestablishment of the full sovereignty
of all belligerents. While the termination of an international armed conflict implies that any further use of
armed force not justified by the right of self-defense will be contrary to the fundamental prohibition of the
use of force, n19 the existence of negative peace does not necessarily imply the return of the vanquished
state to full sovereignty. While there may be an exchange of diplomats as well as other forms of establishing diplomatic
relations, the situation may not be characterized as a return to, or the establishment of, positive peace so
long as the State concerned has not regained its full sovereignty . This was the case with Germany until its reunification
because all questions relating to "Germany as a whole" had been made subject to the so called "Allied reservations," which meant that neither
the Federal Republic of Germany nor the German Democratic Republic were allowed to autonomously decide on that core question of their
respective sovereignty. Moreover, Berlin remained under an [*848] occupational regime. n21 Only with the end of the Allied rights
concerning Germany as a whole, including Berlin, did Germany and the Allies return to a situation of positive peace proper
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***Impacts***
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Impact – No Solvency – War
Militarism is the root cause – The Pro doesn’t solve
Cuomo 96 (Chris J. Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, and Director of
the Institute for Women's Studies at the University of Georgia, “War Is Not Just
an Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence”, Published in
Hypatia 11.4 nb, pp. 31-48)
Theory that does not investigate or even notice the omnipresence of militarism cannot represent or
address the depth and specificity of the everyday effects of militarism on women, on people living in
occupied territories, on members of military institutions, and on the environment. These effects are relevant to
feminists in a number of ways because military practices and institutions help construct gendered and national
identity, and because they justify the destruction of natural nonhuman entities and communities during
peacetime. Lack of attention to these aspects of the business of making or preventing military violence in
an extremely technologized world results in theory that cannot accommodate the connections among the
constant presence of militarism, declared wars, and other closely related social phenomena, such as
nationalistic glorifications of motherhood, media violence, and current ideological gravitations to military
solutions for social problems.
Their solutions backfire, turning the case
Felice 98 (William F., Professor of International Relations and Human Rights at Eckerd College, “Militarism and
Human Rights”, International Affairs, Vol. 74 No. 1, Blackwell Publishing, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2624664,
A.D.: 7/10/09) JH
The attitudes that sustain large and deadly military machines did not fall with the Berlin Wall . The logic is
mesmerizing. The world is a dangerous place divided into sovereign nation-states, each seeking to improve its position in an anarchic
international system. There are few opportunities for cooperation. Each state maintains the right to be free from the scrutiny
and intervention of other states in its internal affairs. Each nation is surrounded by danger and must protect itself to
survive, which gives rise to a preoccupation with power, particularly military power. Internalizing this acute sense of danger
makes it easier to accept high taxation to pay for the militarization at the expense of social development.
Yet such militarization in the name of security and peace often backfires and creates conditions of
insecurity and conflict. Further, such expenditures consistently undermine the ability of nations to fulfil other
international human rights, in particular economic and social rights. ‘Security’ defined solely as the heavily armed defence of one’s
borders. How does a nation provide a basic right to physical security without compromising other human rights? What types of military and
other expenses should be budgeted to attain physical security?
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Impact – No Solvency – Poverty
Structural violence outweighs the aff and a failure to address human security makes their harms
inevitable – They treat the effect, not the cause
Gilman 0 (Robert, President of Context Institute, “Structural Violence”, The Foundation of Peace IC #4,
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC04/Gilman1.htm, 2000, AD: 7-9-9)
How legitimate is it to ascribe these deaths to the structural violence of human institutions, and not just to
the variability of nature? Perhaps the best in-depth study of structural violence comes from the Institute for
Food and Development Policy (1885 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94103). What they find throughout the
Third World is that the problems of poverty and hunger often date back hundreds of years to some
conquest - by colonial forces or otherwise. The victors became the ruling class and the landholders,
pushing the vast majority either on to poor ground or into being landless laborers. Taxes, rentals, and the
legal system were all structured to make sure that the poor stayed poor. The same patterns continue today.
Additional support is provided by the evidence in the above figure, which speaks for itself. Also, according to
Sivard, 97% of the people in the Third World live under repressive governments, with almost half of all Third
World countries run by military dominated governments. Finally, as a point of comparison, Ehrlich and Ehrlich
(Population, Environment, and Resources, 1972, p72) estimate between 10 and 20 million deaths per year due
to starvation and malnutrition. If their estimates are correct, our estimates may even be too low. Some
comparisons will help to put these figures in perspective. The total number of deaths from all causes in 1965 was
62 million, so these estimates indicate that 23% of all deaths were due to structural violence. By 1979 the
fraction had dropped to 15%. While it is heartening to see this improvement, the number of deaths is
staggeringly large, dwarfing any other form of violence other than nuclear war. For example, the level of
structural violence is 60 times greater than the average number of battle related deaths per year since
1965 (Sivard 1982). It is 1.5 times as great as the yearly average number of civilian and battle field deaths during
the 6 years of World War II. Every 4 days, it is the equivalent of another Hiroshima. Perhaps the most
hopeful aspect of this whole tragic situation is that essentially everyone in the present system has become a
loser. The plight of the starving is obvious, but the exploiters don't have much to show for their efforts either not compared to the quality of life they could have in a society without the tensions generated by this
exploitation. Especially at a national level, what the rich countries need now is not so much more material
wealth, but the opportunity to live in a world at peace. The rich and the poor, with the help of modern
technology and weaponry, have become each others' prisoners. Today's industrialized societies did not
invent this structural violence, but it could not continue without our permission. This suggests that to the list of
human tendencies that are obstacles to peace we need to add the ease with which we acquiesce in injustice the way we all too easily look in the other direction and disclaim "response ability." In terms of the suffering it
supports, it is by far our most serious flaw.
Militarism is the root cause
Felice 98 (William F., Professor of International Relations and Human Rights at Eckerd College, “Militarism and
Human Rights”, International Affairs, Vol. 74 No. 1, Blackwell Publishing, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2624664,
A.D.: 7/10/09) JH
This human rights agenda can also only be implemented within a framework of peace. Militarism has neither created a world of peace and
stability, nor protected the human right to physical security. Overemphasis on military superiority undermines the ability
to build regimes of trust and harmony. The arsenals of the war system are symptoms of deep conflict. Arms control and
disarmament and the demobilization of armed forces are prerequisites to providing the institutional framework within which nations may
pursue implementation of the corpus of international human rights law. International security and stability are dependent on domestic
security and stability. The roots of conflict within domestic societies are often the result of economic, social and
environmental pressures which cause poverty and unemployment and pit one community, class, sex or ethnic group against
another. Human rights as the core of domestic and foreign public policy can provide a route for the achievement of peace and stability.
Preoccupations with ‘balance of power’ and military prowess can only continue to produce a world of
insecurity and war. Policies based on outmoded notions of realpolitik exacerbate insecurities. The irony is
that human rights policies provide the clearest road to achieve the ‘realist’ objectives of security and
stability. Long-term interests in international stability should compel governments to explore human security and positive peace. It is
commonly accepted that totalitarianism and human rights are incompatible. The negative impact of militarism on basic human rights must
also be understood. A militarized society exists in contradiction to basic human rights and negates the
opportunities for human freedom.
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Impact – War
Their conception of peace prescribes military solutions as violence control
Sandy & Perkins 1 (Leo R and Ray, Co-Founder of Peace Studies at Plymouth State College and teacher of
philosophy at Plymouth State College, “The Nature of Peace and it’s implication for peace education”, online
journal of peace and conflict resolution 4.2,
http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/jus/jus/ENGSEMJ/v08/undervisningsmateriale/IL%20&%20HR/Topic%202%20%20Reading.pdf, 2001, AD:7-10-9)
Peace as the mere absence of war is what Woolman (1985) refers to as “negative peace.” This definition is
based on Johan Galtung’s ideas of peace. For Galtung, negative peace is defined as a state requiring a set of
social structures that provide security and protection from acts of direct physical violence committed by
individuals, groups or nations. The emphasis is ...on control of violence. The main strategy is dissociation,
whereby conflicting parties are separated...In general, policies based on the idea of negative peace do not deal
with the causes of violence, only its manifestations. Therefore, these policies are thought to be insufficient to
assure lasting conditions of peace. Indeed, by suppressing the release of tensions resulting from social
conflict, negative peace efforts may actually lead to future violence of greater magnitude. (Woolman, 1985,
p.8) The recent wars in the former Yugoslavia are testimony to this. The massive military machine
previously provided by the U.S.S.R. put a lid on ethnic hostilities yet did nothing to resolve them thus
allowing them to fester and erupt later.
Defining war as an event implies that war can be justifies, guaranteeing militarized solutions
to problems
Cuomo 96 (Chris J. Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, and Director of
the Institute for Women's Studies at the Univerity of Georgia, “War Is Not Just
an Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence”, Published in
Hypatia 11.4 nb, pp. 31-48) CH
Just-war theory is a prominent example of a philosophical approach that real-rim-the-assumption that
wars are isolated from everyday life and ethics. Such theory, as developed by St. Augustine, Thomas
Aquinas, and Hugo Grotius, and as articulated in contemporary dialogues by many philosophers,
including Michael Walzer (1977), Thomas Nagel (1974), and Sheldon Cohen (1989), take the primary
question concerning the ethics of warfare to be about when to enter into
military conflicts against other states. They therefore take as a given the
notion that war is an isolated, definable event with clear boundaries. These
boundaries are significant because they distinguish the circumstances in which
standard moral rules and constraints, such as rules against murder and
unprovoked violence, no longer apply. Just-war theory assumes that war is a
separate sphere of human activity having its own ethical constraints and
criteria and in doing so it begs the question of whether or not war is a special
kind of event, or part of a pervasive presence in nearly all contemporary life.
Because the application of just-war principles is a matter of proper decisionmaking on the part of agents of the state, before wars occur, and before
military strikes are made, they assume that military initiatives are distinct
events. In fact, declarations of war are generally overdetermined escalations of
preexist¬ing conditions. Just-war criteria cannot help evaluate military and
related institutions, including their peacetime practices and how these relate
to wartime activities, so they cannot address the ways in which armed conflicts
between and among states emerge from omnipresent, often violent, state
militarism. The remarkable resemblances in some sectors between states of peace
and states of war remain completely untouched by theories that are only able to
discuss the ethics of starting and ending direct military conflicts between and
among states
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Impact – War
Understanding war as an event necessitates militarism which forecloses vital interrogation to
determine true peace
Richmond 7 (Oliver P., lecturer in the Department of International Relations,
University of St. Andrews, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, “Critical
Research Agendas for Peace: The Missing Link in the Study of International
Relations”,
http://www.questiaschool.com/read/5023019836?title=Critical%20Research%20Agendas
%20for%20Peace%3a%20The%20Missing%20Link%20in%20the%20Study%20of%20International
%20Relations, AD: 7/10/09)
As a consequence what has emerged has been an orthodox assumption that first the management of war
must be achieved before the institutions of peace can operate, at a global, regional, state, and local level.
Peace has, in Western political thought in particular, been enshrined first in the belief that only a limited
peace is possible, even despite more utopian leanings, and recently that peace can now be built according to
a certain epistemology. Militarization, force, or coercion have normally been the key mechanisms for its
attainment, and it has been imbued with a hegemonic understanding of universal norms, now increasingly
instilled through institutions of governance. It is generally assumed by most theorists, most policymakers,
and practitioners, that peace has an ontological stability enabling it to be understood, defined, and thus
created. Indeed, the implication of the void of debate about peace indicates that it is generally thought that
peace as a concept is so ontologically solid that no debate is required. There is clearly a resistance to
examining the concept of peace as a subjective ontology, as well as a subjective political and ideological
framework. Indeed, this might be said to be indicative of "orientalism," in impeding a discussion of a
positive peace or of alternative concepts and contexts of peace. (18) Indeed, Said's humanism indicates the
dangers of assuming that peace is universal, a Platonic ideal form, or extremely limited. An emerging critical
conceptualization of peace rests upon a genealogy that illustrates its contested discourses and multiple
concepts. This allows for an understanding of the many actors, contexts, and dynamics of peace, and
enables a reprioritization of what, for whom, and why, peace is valued. Peace from this perspective is a rich,
varied, and fluid tapestry, which can be contextualized, rather than a sterile, extremely limited, and probably
unobtainable product of a secular or nonsecular imagination. It represents a discursive framework in which
the many problems that are replicated by the linear and rational project of a universal peace (effectively
camouflaged by a lack of attention within IR) can be properly interrogated in order to prevent the discursive
replication of violence. (19) This allows for an understanding of how the multiple and competing versions
of peace may even give rise to conflict, and also how this might be overcome. One area of consensus from
within this more radical literature appears to be that peace is discussed, interpreted, and referred to in a way
that nearly always disguises the fact that it is essentially contested. This is often an act of hegemony thinly
disguised as benevolence, assertiveness, or wisdom. Indeed, many assertions about peace depend upon actors
who know peace then creating it for those that do not, either through their acts or through the implicit peace
discourses that are employed to describe conflict and war in opposition to peace. Where there should be
research agendas there are often silences. Even contemporary approaches in conflict analysis and peace
studies rarely stop to imagine the kind of peace they may actually create. IR has reproduced a science of
peace based upon political, social, economic, cultural, and legal governance frameworks, by which conflict in
the world is judged. This has led to the liberal peace framework, which masks a hegemonic collusion over the
discourses of, and creation of, peace. (20) A critical interrogation of peace indicates it should be qualified as a
specific type among many.
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Impact – Structural Violence Outweighs
Structural violence outweighs nuclear war
Gilman 83 (Robert, President of Context Institute, Founding Editor of IN CONTEXT, A Quarterly of
Humane Sustainable Culture, “ Can we find genuine peace in a world with inequitable distribution of wealth
among nations?”, The Foundations of Peace, p. 8, AD: 7-11-09)MT
How legitimate is it to ascribe these deaths to the structural violence of human institutions, and not just to the
variability of nature? Perhaps the best in-depth study of structural violence comes from the Institute for Food and
Development Policy (1885 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94103). What they find throughout the Third
World is that the problems of poverty and hunger often date back hundreds of years to some conquest by colonial forces or otherwise. The victors became the ruling class and the landholders, pushing the vast
majority either on to poor ground or into being landless laborers. Taxes, rentals, and the legal system were all
structured to make sure that the poor stayed poor. The same patterns continue today.
Some comparisons will help to put these figures in perspective. The total number of deaths from all causes in
1965 was 62 million, so these estimates indicate that 23% of all deaths were due to structural violence. By
1979 the fraction had dropped to 15%. While it is heartening to see this improvement, the number of deaths is
staggeringly large, dwarfing any other form of violence other than nuclear war. For example, the level of
structural violence is 60 times greater than the average number of battle related deaths per year since
1965 (Sivard 1982). It is 1.5 times as great as the yearly average number of civilian and battle field deaths during
the 6 years of World War II. Every 4 days, it is the equivalent of another Hiroshima.
Structural violence kills more people than have died in all acts of direct violence
Pilisuk 1 (Marc, “GLOBALISM AND STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE” Peace, Conflict, and
Violence:
Peace Psychology for the 21st Century. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, PrenticeHall.) CH
Limited material resources are not the only plight of poor people. Poverty inflicts psychological scars as well;
it is an experience of scarcity amidst affluence. For many reasons, such as those discussed by Opotow (this
volume), poverty produces the scorn of others and the internalized scorn of oneself. Indigence is not just
about money, roads, or TVs, but also about the power to determine how local resources will be used to
give meaning to lives. The power of global corporations in local communities forces people to depend on
benefits from afar. Projected images of the good life help reduce different cultural values to the one global value
of money. Meanwhile, money becomes concentrated in fewer hands. The world is dividing into a small group of
“haves” and a growing group of paupers. This division of wealth inflicts a level of structural violence that
kills many more persons than have died by all direct acts of violence and by war.
Structural violence outweighs NW
Evangelista 5 (Matthew, Professor of International and comparative politics,
Harvard University, “Peace studies: Critical Concepts in Political Science”,
2005,
http://books.google.com/books?id=9IAfLDzySd4C&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=%22structural+
violence%22+%22nuclear+war%22&source=bl&ots=m9wAXnUQqH&sig=4MnhVGRGJJ_Z8aS5SSmTp
tgRqYM&hl=en&ei=YBJZSoSeKYuqswOQ9fjWBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6,
AD: 7/11/9) TR
But equally important is to recall that it is hardly possible to arrive at any general judgment, independent of time
and space, as to which type of violence is more important. In space, today, it may certainly be argued that
research in the Americas should focus on structural violence, between nations as well as between individuals,
and that peace research in Europe should have a similar focus on personal violence. Latent personal violence in
Europe may erupt into nuclear war, but the manifest structural violence in the Americas (and not only
there) already causes an annual toll of nuclear magnitudes. In saying this, we are of course not neglecting the
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structural components of the European situation, (such as the big power dominance and the traditional
exploitation of Eastern Europe by Western Europe) nor are we forgetful of the high level of personal violence in
the Americas even though it does not take the form of international warfare (but sometimes the form of
interventionist aggression).
159
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Impact – Structural Violence Outweighs
Structural violence outweighs direct violence on magnitude and probability
Pilisuk 97 (Marc, Fall, “The hidden structure of violence”, Fall97, Vol. 20 Issue
2, p25, 7phttp://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=8&hid=7&sid=9058ddcf-12214296-8d1b98c9d5856a77%40sessionmgr7&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=97120169
14)
Poverty, inequality, social marginality, and domination of resources all produce unneeded suffering and death.
These structures are not acts of nature but products of social arrangements created by people in ways not easily
noticed. There are relationships among cultural, structural, and direct violence. Culture, the normative beliefs
and practices of a society, can be a source of violence by allowing a dehumanization of certain persons or
groups. Cultural violence leads to structural violence when it is incorporated into formal legal and economic
exchanges. While individual acts of direct violence have many causes, their occurrence is frequently
predicated upon a larger and often hidden structure that induces violence (Galtung 1996). The three types
of violence differ temporally. Direct violence is an event; structural violence is a process with ebbs and flows;
cultural violence remains more invariant, given the slow transformation of basic culture. In most cases, there is a
flow from cultural violence to institutionalized structural violence, and finally to eruptions of direct violent acts.
Direct violence is used by both underdogs and top dogs but serves quite different purposes for the two
groups. Underdogs use violence as a way to get out of a "structural iron cage" of powerlessness and
poverty or to get back at the society that put them there. Top dogs, on the other hand, use violence as a way
to keep or gain power (Galtung 1996). Structural violence is harder to identify than direct violence. One
can recognize acts of rape or murder as violent and we abhor them. Examples of structural violence,
however, look normal on the surface. Therefore, more often than not, structural violence is left unchanged
and the cycle of violence continues.
Structural violence outweighs because it’s systemic
Parson 7 (Kenneth, Peace Review, April-June, “Structural Violence and Power”,
Peace Review; Apr-Jun2007, Vol. 19 Issue 2, p173-181,
9phttp://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=6&hid=7&sid=9058ddcf-1221-4296-8d1b98c9d5856a77%40sessionmgr7&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=25359940
) CH
Despite a “long century of violence”—rapid proliferation of the instruments of mass violence, the
increasingly complex organization and accelerated deployment of the forces of violence, and the
widespread mediazation of violence over the last three decades alone—our theoretical understanding
and articulation of violence itself has progressed much more slowly. Johan Galtung is one particular theorist who
takes seriously the project of clarifying how our discourses of violence perpetuate or provide alternatives to
relations of violence. Given his longstanding attention to structural violence and the extensive thinking he has done on the relations between violence
and power within the context of militarization, poverty, and political repression, his notions of peace and violence are not without substantial content and
relevance to theorists of conflict and war
Structural Violence has a greater impact than Direct Violence
Maley 85 (William, The University of New South Wales at Duntroon, “Peace, Needs
and Utopia”, Political Studies, XXXIIl, 578-591,
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=6&hid=7&sid=fbf7951e-fa9b-4ac2-ba3b2c07e8326bd2%40sessionmgr2) CH
However, Galtung's major theoretical innovation was to posit a distinction between direct violence, where
there is an actor committing the violence, and structural violence, where there is no such actor, On
occasion he refers to this latter condition as 'social injustice', and he uses interchangeably the labels 'social
injustice' and 'positive peace' to describe the absence of structural violence,-' However, he stressed that
both the absence of direct violence and the absence of structural violence are significant goals, and that 'it
is probably disservice to man to try, in any abstract way, to say that one is more important than the
other'.
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161
Impact – Sexism
Militarism allows for the justification of violence against women
Cuomo 96 (Chris J. Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, and Director of
the Institute for Women's Studies at the University of Georgia, “War Is Not Just
an Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence”, Published in
Hypatia 11.4 nb, pp. 31-48)
To give one very clear example of the ways in which just-war evaluations of wars as events fail to address
feminist questions about militarism, consider the widespread influence of foreign military bases on gendered
national identities and interactions. In Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International
Politics (1990), Cynthia Enloe illustrates how, while decision- making and economic power are held
primarily by men, international relations and politics are inevitably played out on women's bodies in
myriad ways, propagating racist, nationalist, and colonialist conceptions of femininity. One chapter, "Base
Women," is devoted to a discussion of the ways in which local and global sexual politics shape and are
shaped through the constant presence of thousands of military bases worldwide in the symbol of the
soldier, the introduction of foreign conceptions of masculinity and femininity, the reproduction of family
structures on military bases, and through systems of prostitution that universally coexist alongside
military bases Enloe writes, "military politics, which occupy such a large part of international politics
today, require military bases. Bases are artificial societies created out of unequal relations between men
and women of different races and classes" and, one might add, different nations (Enloe 1990, 2). The
constant, global presence of these bases is an example of the mundane givenness and subtle omnipresence
of military violence. Most bases have managed to slip into the daily lives of the nearby community. A military
base, even one controlled by soldiers of another country, can become politically invisible if its ways of
doing business and seeing the world insinuate themselves into a community's schools, consumer tastes,
housing patterns, children's games, adults' friendships, jobs and gossip. . . . Most have draped themselves
with the camouflage of normalcy. . . . Rumors of a base closing can send shivers of economic alarm through a
civilian community that has come to depend on base jobs and soldiers' spending. (Enloe 1990, 66) Just-war
theory—even feminist just-war theory—cannot bring to light the ways ill which the politics of military bases
are related to the waging of war, how militarism constructs masculinity and femininity, or how
international politics are shaped by the microcosmic impacts of military bases. It therefore cannot address
some of the most pressing ways in which militarism and war involve and affect women.
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Impact – Environment
Militarism justifies continual environmental destruction
Cuomo 96 (Chris J. Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, and Director of the Institute for Women's
Studies at the University of Georgia, “War Is Not Just an Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday
Violence”, Published in Hypatia 11.4 nb, pp. 31-48)
If environmental destruction is a necessary aspect of war and the peacetime practices of military
institutions, an analysis of war which includes its embeddedness in peacetime militarism is necessary to
address the environmental effects of war. Such a perspective must pay adequate attention to what is required to prepare for war
in a technological age, and how women and other Others are affected by the realities of contemporary military institutions and practices
Emphasizing the ways in which war is a presence, a constant undertone, white noise in the background of
social existence, moving sometimes closer to the foreground of collective consciousness in the form of
direct combat yet remaining mostly as an unconsidered given, allows for several promising analyses . To
conclude, I will summarize four distinct benefits of feminist philosophical attention to the constancy of military presence in most everyday
contemporary life.
Militarism Destroys the Environment
Cuomo 96 (Chris J. Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, and Director of
the Institute for Women's Studies at the University of Georgia, “War Is Not Just
an Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence”, Published in
Hypatia 11.4 nb, pp. 31-48)
In Scorched Earth: The Military's Assault on the Environment, William Thomas, a U.S. Navy veteran,
illustrates the extent to which the peacetime practices of military institutions damage natural
environments and communities. Thomas argues that even "peace" entails a dramatic and widespread war
on nature, or as Joni Seager puts it, "The environmental costs of militarized peace bear suspicious
resemblance to the costs of war" (Thomas 1995, xi). All told, including peacetime activities as well as the
immense destruction caused by combat, military institutions probably present the most dramatic threat to
ecological well-being on the planet. The military is the largest generator of hazardous waste in the United
States, creating nearly a ton of toxic pollution every minute, and military analyst Jillian Skeel claims that,
"Global military activity may be the largest worldwide polluter and consumer of precious resources" (quoted in
Thomas 1995, 5). A conventionally powered aircraft carrier consumes 150,000 gallons of fuel a day. In less than
an hour's flight, a single jet launched from its flight deck consumes as much fuel as a North American motorist
burns in two years. One F-16 jet engine requires nearly four and a half tons of scarce titanium, nickel, chromium,
cobalt, and energy-intensive aluminum (Thomas 1995, 5), and nine percent of all the iron and steel used by
humans is consumed by the global military (Thomas 1995, 16). The United States Department of Defense
generates 500,000 tons of toxins annually, more than the world's top five chemical companies combined. The
military is the biggest single source of environmental pollution in the United States. Of 338 citations issued
by the United States Environmental Protection Agency in 1989, three-quarters went to military installations
(Thomas 1995, 17).
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163
Impact – Environment
Military practices destroy the environment both during war and peace time
Cuomo 96 (Chris J. Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, and Director of
the Institute for Women's Studies at the University of Georgia, “War Is Not Just
an Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence”, Published in
Hypatia 11.4 nb, pp. 31-48)
There are many conceptual and practical connections between military practices in which humans aim to
kill and harm each other for some declared "greater good," and nonmilitary practices in which we
displace, destroy, or seriously modify nonhuman communities, species, and ecosystems in the name of
human interests. An early illustration of these connections was made by Rachel Carson in the first few pages of
The Silent Spring (1962), in which she described insecticides as the inadvertent offspring of World War II
chemical weapons research. We can now also trace ways in which insecticides were put of the Western-defined
global corporatization of agriculture that helped kill off the small family farm and made the worldwide system of
food production dependent on the likes of Dow Chemical and Monsanto. Military practices are no different
from other human practices that damage and irreparably modify nature. They are often a result of costbenefit analyses that pretend to weigh all likely outcomes yet do not consider nonhuman entities except in
terms of their use value for humans and they nearly always create unforeseeable effects for humans and
nonhumans. In addition, everyday military peacetime practices are actually more destructive than most
other human activities, they are directly enacted by state power, and, because they function as
unquestioned "givens," they enjoy a unique near-immunity to enactments of moral reproach. It is worth
noting the extent to which everyday military activities remain largely unscrutinized by environmentalists,
especially American environmentalists, largely because fear allows us to he fooled into thinking that
"national security" is an adequate excuse for "ecological military mayhem" (Thomas 1995, 16).
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Impact – Genocide
The ideology of militarism guarantees genocide and unlimited violence
Cuomo 96 (Chris J. Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, and Director of
the Institute for Women's Studies at the University of Georgia, “War Is Not Just
an Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence”, Published in
Hypatia 11.4 nb, pp. 31-48)
The feminization, commodification, and devaluation of nature helps create a reality in which its destruction
in warfare is easily justified. In imagining an ethic that addresses these realities, feminists cannot neglect the extent
to which military ecocide is connected, conceptually and practically, to transnational capitalism and other
forms of human oppression and exploitation. Virtually all of the world's thirty-five nuclear bomb test sites, as well as most
radioactive dumps and uranium mines, occupy Native lands (Thomas 1995, 6). Six nuiltinationals control one-quarter of all United States
defense contracts (Thomas 1995, 10), and two million dollars per minute is spent on the global military (Thomas 1995, 7). One could go on
for volumes about the elleci of chemical and nuclear testing, military-industrial development and waste, and the disruption of wildlife,
habitats, communities, and lifestyles that are inescapably linked to military practices. There are many conceptual and practical
connections between military practices in which humans aim to kill and harm each other for some
declared "greater good," and nonmilitary practices in which we displace, destroy, or seriously modify
nonhuman communities, species, and ecosystems in the name of human interests. An early illustration of these
connections was made by Rachel Carson in the first few pages of The Silent Spring (1962), in which she described insecticides as the
inadvertent offspring of World War II chemical weapons research. We can now also trace ways in which insecticides were put of the
Western-defined global corporatization of agriculture that helped k ill olf the small family farm and made the worldwide system of food
production dependent on the likes of Dow Chemical and Monsanto. Military practices are no different from other human
practices that damage and irreparably modify nature. They are often a result of cost-benefit analyses that
pretend to weigh all likely outcomes yet do not consider nonhuman entities except in terms of their use
value for humans and they nearly always create unforeseeable effects for humans and nonhumans . In
addition, everyday military peacetime practices are actually more destructive than most other human
activities, they are directly enacted by state power, and, because they function as unquestioned "givens,"
they enjoy a unique near-immunity to enactments of moral reproach. It is worth noting the extent to which everyday
military activities remain largely unscrutinized by environmentalists, especially American environmentalists, largely because fear allows us
to he fooled into thinking that "national security" is an adequate excuse for "ecological military mayhem" (Thomas 1995, 16). If
environmental destruction is a necessary aspect of war and the peacetime practices of military institutions,
an analysis of war which includes its embeddedness in peacetime militarism is necessary to address the
environmental effects of war. Such a perspective must pay adequate attention to what is required to prepare for war in a
technological age, and how women and other Others are affected by the realities of contemporary military institutions and practices.
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165
Impact – Morality OW’s Extinction
We have a moral obligation to help others in the face of structural violence even if that leads
to extinction.
Watson 77 (Richard, Professor of Philosophy at Washington University, World Hunger and
Moral Obligation, p. 118-119)
These arguments are morally spurious. That food sufficient for well-nourished survival is the equal right of
every human individual or nation is a specification of the higher principle that everyone has equal right to the
necessities of life. The moral stress of the principle of equity is primarily on equal sharing, and only secondarily
on what is being shared. The higher moral principle is of human equity per se. Consequently, the moral action
is to distribute all food equally, whatever the consequences. This is the hard line apparently drawn by such
moralists as Immanuel Kant and Noam Chomsky—but then, morality is hard. The conclusion may be
unreasonable (impractical and irrational in conventional terms), but it is obviously moral. Nor should anyone
purport surprise; it has always been understood that the claims of morality—if taken seriously—supersede those
of conflicting reason. One may even have to sacrifice one’s life or one’s nation to be moral in situations where
practical behavior would preserve it. For example, if a prisoner of war undergoing torture is to be a (perhaps
dead) patriot even when reason tells him that collaboration will hurt no one, he remains silent. Similarly, if one
is to be moral, one distributes available food in equal shares (even if everyone then dies). That an action is
necessary to save one’s life is no excuse for behaving unpatriotically or immorally if one wishes to be a patriot
or moral. No principle of morality absolves one of behaving immorally simply to save one’s life or nation.
There is a strict analogy here between adhering to moral principles for the sake of being moral, and adhering to
Christian principles for the sake of being Christian. The moral world contains pits and lions, but one looks
always to the highest light. The ultimate test always harks to the highest principle—recant or die—and it is
pathetic to profess morality if one quits when the going gets rough. I have put aside many questions of detail—
such as the mechanical problems of distributing food—because detail does not alter the stark conclusion. If
every human life is equal in value, then the equal distribution of the necessities of life is an extremely high, if not
the highest, moral duty. It is at least high enough to override the excuse that by doing it one would lose one’s
life. But many people cannot accept the view that one must distribute equally even in f the nation collapses or
all people die. If everyone dies, then there will be no realm of morality. Practically speaking, sheer survival
comes first. One can adhere to the principle of equity only if one exists. So it is rational to suppose that the
principle of survival is morally higher than the principle of equity. And though one might not be able to argue
for unequal distribution of food to save a nation—for nations can come and go—one might well argue that
unequal distribution is necessary for the survival of the human species. That is, some large group—say one-third
of present world population—should be at least well-nourished for human survival. However, from an individual
standpoint, the human species—like the nation—is of no moral relevance. From a naturalistic standpoint,
survival does come first; from a moralistic standpoint—as indicated above—survival may have to be sacrificed.
In the milieu of morality, it is immaterial whether or not the human species survives as a result of individual
behavior.
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***Alternative***
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Alternative – Discourse
Discourse is key to positive peace
Gay 98 (William, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, December, “The
Practice of Linguistic nonviolence”, Peace Review, 10402659, Dec98, Vol. 10,
Issue 4, http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=7&hid=7&sid=fbf 7951e-fa9b4ac2-ba3b-2c07e8326bd2%40sessionmgr2&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d %3d#db=ap
h&A N=1426690)
Many times the first step in reducing linguistic violence is to simply refrain from the use of offensive and
oppressive terms. However, just because linguistic violence is not being used, a genuinely pacific discourse is not necessarily present.
Nonviolent discourse, like the condition of peace, can be negative or positive. "Negative peace" refers to
the temporary absence of actual war or the lull between wars, while "positive peace" refers to the
negation of war and the presence of justice. The pacific discourse that is analogous to negative peace can
actually perpetuate injustice. Broadcasters in local and national news may altogether avoid using terms like "dyke" or "fag" or even
"homosexual," but they and their audiences can remain homophobic even when the language of lesbian and gay pride is used . A
government may cease referring to a particular nation as "a rogue state," but public and private attitudes
may continue to foster prejudice toward this nation and its inhabitants. When prejudices remain
unspoken, at least in public thrums, their detection and eradication are made even more difficult . Of course,
we need to find ways to restrain hate speech in order to at least stop linguistic attacks in the public arena. Likewise, we need to find ways to
restrain armed conflicts and hostile name calling directed against an adversary of the state. However , even if avoidance of linguistic
violence is necessary, it is not sufficient. Those who bite their tongues to comply with the demands of
political correctness are often ready to lash out vitriolic epithets when these constraints are removed. T hus,
the practice of linguistic nonviolence is more like negative peace when the absence of hurtful or harmful
terminology merely marks a lull in reliance on linguistic violence or a shift of its use from the public to the
private sphere. The merely public or merely formal repression of language and behavior that expresses
these attitudes builds up pressure that can erupt in subsequent outbursts of linguistic violence and
physical violence.
Linguistic violence causes structural violence – Resistance solves
Gay 98 (William, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, December, “The
Practice of Linguistic nonviolence”, Peace Review, 10402659, Dec98, Vol. 10,
Issue 4, http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=7&hid=7&sid=fbf 7951e-fa9b4ac2-ba3b-2c07e8326bd2%40sessionmgr2&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d %3d#db=ap
h&A N=1426690) CH
The first step is breaking our silence concerning the many forms of violence. We need to recognize that
often silence is violence; frequently, unless we break l he silence, we are being complicitous to the violence of
the situation. However, in breaking the silence, our aim should be to avoid counter-violence, in its physical
forms and in its verbal forms. Efforts to advance peace and justice should occupy the space between
silence and violence. Linguistic violence can be overcome, but the care and vigilance of the positive practice
of physical and linguistic nonviolence is needed if the gains are to be substantive, rather than merely formal, and
if the goals of nonviolence are to be equally operative in the means whereby we overcome linguistic
violence and social injustice.
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168
Alternative – Reject
Moving away from crisis-driven politics solves
Cuomo 96 (Chris J. Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, and Director of
the Institute for Women's Studies at the University of Georgia, “War Is Not Just
an Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence”, Published in
Hypatia 11.4 nb, pp. 31-48)
Moving away from crisis-driven politics and ontologies concerning war and military violence also enables
consideration of relationships among seemingly disparate phenomena, and therefore can shape more
nuanced theoretical and practical forms of resistance. For example, investigating the ways in which war is
part of a presence allows consideration of the relationships among the events of war and the following:
how militarism is a foundational trope in the social and political imagination; how the pervasive presence
and symbolism of soldiers/warriors/patriots shape meanings of gender; the ways in which threats of statesponsored violence are a sometimes invisible/sometimes bold agent of racism, nationalism, and corporate
interests; the fact that vast numbers of communities, cities, and nations are currently in the midst of
excruciatingly violent circumstances. It also provides a lens for considering the relationships among the
various kinds of violence that get labeled "war." Given current American obsessions with nationalism,
guns, and militias, and growing hunger for the death penalty, prisons, and a more powerful police state, one
cannot underestimate the need for philosophical and political attention to connections among phenomena like
the "war on drugs," the "war on crime," and other state-funded militaristic campaigns.
Rejecting negative peace opens the space for positive peace
Salomon and Nevo 2 (Gavriel and Baruch, educational psychologists, University of
Haifa, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, “Peace Education: The Concept, Principles,
and Practices around the World”, 2002,
http://www.questiaschool.com/read/109637749?title=Peace%20Education%3a%20%20The%
20Concept%2c%20Principles%2c%20and%20Practices%20around%20the%20World, AD:
7/9/9) TR
It is obvious that peace education is not a single entity. A variety of distinctions can be offered. For one, peace
has more than one meaning, and so does its absence—violence. Galtung (1973) distinguished between
positive and negative peace, with the former denoting collaboration, integration, and cooperation, and the
latter denoting the absence of physical and direct violence between groups. He also coined the construct of
"structural violence," denoting societal built-in inequalities and injustices. A second, possible distinction
pertains to the sociopolitical context in which peace education takes place: regions of intractable conflict
(Rouhana & Bar-Tal, 1998), regions of racial or ethnic tension with no overt actions of hostility (e.g., Leman,
chap. 14, this volume), or regions of tranquility and cooperation. A third distinction can be made between
desired changes: changes on the local, microlevel, for example, learning to settle conflicts and to cooperate on an
interpersonal level, versus desired changes on a more global, macrolevel, for example, changing perceptions,
stereotypes, and prejudices pertaining to whole collectives. Although in both cases individuals are the targets
for change, the change itself pertains to two different levels: more positive ways of handling other
individuals versus handling other collectives. Still another possible distinction is between the political,
economic, and social status of peace education participants: racial or ethnic majority versus minority, conqueror
versus conquered, and perpetrator versus victim. Clearly, peace education for the weak and dominated is not the
same as for the strong and dominating (for important distinctions, see chapter 3 by Bar-Tal, this volume).
Whereas these and other distinctions are of great importance, I think that the sociopolitical context in which
peace education takes place supersedes the rest. It is the context that determines to an important extent (a) the
challenges faced by peace education, (b) its goals, and (c) its ways of treating the different subgroups of
participants. Thus, for example, a rough examination of peace education programs around the world
suggests that whereas regions of relative tranquility emphasize education for cooperation and harmony
(positive peace), promoting the idea of a general culture of peace, regions of conflict and tension emphasize
education for violence prevention (negative peace), greater equality, and practical coexistence with real
adversaries, enemies, and minorities. Whereas the former are likely to promote individual skills in handling
local, interpersonal conflicts, the latter are more likely to address perceptions of and tolerance toward collectives.
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Alternative – Reject
The ontopolitical act of rejection calls into question the negative peace worldview, prompting
alternatives
Burke 2 (Anthony, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of
New South Wales, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, “Aporias of Security”,
http://www.questia.com/read/5002461817?title=Aporias%20of%20Security, AD:
7/10/9)
However, I believe that, more than ever, we do need to ask what it is to be secure. Surely we no longer know
what security is--in that Platonic sense. Surely more than ten years after the end of the Gold War, after the
Clinton Doctrine and the destruction of the Twin Towers, after humanitarian and policy disasters in Indochina,
Africa, East Timor, the Middle East, and Central America, and after a growing body of humanist and critical
scholarship has questioned security's unity, discursive structure, and political implications, security no
longer possesses a credible wholeness. (1) This article begins from the premise that security's claims to
universality and wholeness founder on a destructive series of aporias, which derive firstly from the growing
sense that security no longer has a stable referent object, nor names a common set of needs, means, or
ways of being, and secondly, from the moral relativism that lies at the center of dominant (realist)
discourses of security that pretend to universality but insist that "our" security always rests on the insecurity
and suffering of another. While this article argues strongly that security has no essential ontological integrity, it
also argues that if the power and sweep of security are to be understood and challenged, its claims to
universality must be taken seriously. They underpin and animate sweeping forms of power, subjectivity,
force, and economic circulation and cannot be dismissed out of hand. Nor, in the hands of some humanist
writers--who have sought to think human and gender security in radical counterpoint to realist images of national
and international security--are such claims always pernicious. They have a valuable moral and political force that
undermines, perhaps unwittingly, the logocentric presuppositions of the realist discourses they question. Yet a
common assumption that security can be ontologically completed and secured does present a hurdle for
the kind of "ontopolitical" critique that we really need. (2) The answer is not to seek to close out these
aporias; they call to us and their existence presents an important political opening. Rather than seek to resecure
security, to make it conform to a new humanist ideal--however laudable--we need to challenge security as a
claim to truth, to set its "meaning" aside. Instead, we should focus on security as a pervasive and complex
system of political, social, and economic power, which reaches from the most private spaces of being to the
vast flows and conflicts of geopolitics and global economic circulation. It is to see security as an interlocking
system of knowledges, representations, practices, and institutional forms that imagine, direct, and act upon
bodies, spaces, and flows in certain ways-to see security not as an essential value but as a political technology.
This is to move from essence to genealogy: a genealogy that aims, in William Connolly's words, to "open us up
to the play of possibility in the present ... [to] incite critical responses to unnecessary violences and injuries
surreptitiously imposed upon life by the insistence that prevailing forms are natural, rational, universal or
necessary." (3)
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Alternative – Small Actions
Small acts of resistance are key to positive peace
Duncan 2 (Grace, Student of Peace and Conflict, School of Political Science and
International Studies, UQ, Winter, “Peace, Action and Consequences”,
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=9&hid=7&sid=fbf7951e-fa9b-4ac2-ba3b2c07e8326bd2%40sessionmgr2)
So the causes of this violence are personal as well as societal. Aaron has problems—his unemployment and
his family— but his reaction to those problems is far from inevitable. It can be argued that Aaron’s unhappiness
has led to this violence as much as anything else. Any action that would reduce his unhappiness, a simple act
of genuine kindness or compassion, would thus address this problem and contribute to positive peace.
Such an act would be barely visible to the world at large, yet its contribution would be more durable
because it goes closer to the source of the conflict. Clearly Aaron would not completely change his behaviour
because one person was nice to him, but such an action can feed into the psychological web of human society
and have ripple like effects. In this way, the action would be broad in its consequences and far less ambiguous
than those mentioned above. While its results would be difficult to see, they should not be ignored. Clearly, this
theory is a crude simplification of a complex situation, perhaps an oversimplification. It must be acknowledged
that not all levels of action are appropriate or possible in all circumstances, nor are they available to all
people. While ‘smaller’ actions can be undertaken by almost anyone, ‘bigger’ acts are reserved for those
with political power or influence. The ethical stance generated by this theory is not that an individual
should shun ‘bigger’ acts (if they are available to them), because of their ambiguity and short shelf-life, in
favour of ‘smaller’ interpersonal actions. It is that ‘smaller’ acts have ethical priority because of the relative
purity and durability of their consequences, and should not be compromised in pursuit of ‘big’ actions. They
should not be forgotten or judged less important simply because they are subtle and unspectacular and do
not occur in the more glamorous public or international spheres. People have different ideas about how
best to pursue peace and these, at times, seem irreconcilable. This paper has explained, through the device of
the continuum of action for peace, what I see as the connections and relationships between various types of acts
that have this aim. It has dealt with the fact that actions undertaken with purely altruistic motives can sometimes
have ambiguous results, particularly if they are ‘big actions, and especially if they lose sight of these connections
and of the ultimate aim of positive peace. The hypothetical example used is intended only as a thoughtexperiment. It would be the task of further study to show how such ideas are manifested in the real world.
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Alternative – Solves Politicians/Elites
Gradualism is the only way to solve – preparing for conflicts brings them into existence,
dragging the world into a nuclear holocaust – politicians cannot solve, the alternative must
occur alone
Groten and Jansen 81 (Hubert and Juergen, Doctorate in International Studies and
Peace Lobbyist, “Interpreters and Lobbies for Positive Peace”, Journal of Peace
Research, Vol. 18, No. 2, Special Issue on Theories of Peace 175-181, Sage
Publications, http://www.jstor.org/stable/424209, A.D.: 7/9/09)
With regard to peace research as we know it, we may conclude that nothing can be done. This does not seem to worry peace researchers
unduly. As shown above, they have been allowed to settle down as a scholarly community, tolerated by the powers that be and by the public.
In addi- tion, the impact that critical peace research can make is largely reduced by political pressure that
faces the peace researchers with the alternative of either refraining from publishing any radical conclusions from their research or of
seeing public acceptance and public funds withdrawn. This dampens any enthusiasm, especially as there is no positive feedback to cheer one
up. This is because the rulers tolerate peace research, and the masses, the people who should be interested in it,
know nothing about it. Not raising their voices too high to avoid disturbing the peace is what peace researchers seem to have resigned themselves to. All this is happening at a point of history when the world is
poised on the brink of a holocaust; when the behaviour of man, under the influence of what Osgood calls 'psycho-logic',8 must be
qualified as par- anoid; when the spiralling arms race has been allowed to take on a frightening reality of its
own. This is happening when one of the leading German scholars and scientists, Carl F. von Weizsacker, who among other things has a
well-earned reputation as a peace researcher, is setting energetically about the task of propagating the need for nuclear shelters for the
people.9 He, too, seems to have resigned himself this time to yet another war taking its natural course - it
cannot be helped, it is all so human. After that war is over, we must sit down and seriously think about
preventing war. Now there is nothing we can do but construct shelters. Von Weizsacker surely knows that the speeding up of
civilian de- fence adds momentum to the spiralling con- flict as it makes war a working proposition again
in the minds of many. How can this suicidal folly be stopped? Our answer is gradualism. It makes suggestions that do not strain the social and political system or the individual too much. Its basic assumption, that
symbolic uni- lateral steps can prepare the way to qual- itative disarmament, ought to be taken up again. New thinking, though, has to be
added to gradualist theory where the addressees are concerned. So far the proponents of grad- ualism have been addressing themselves
mainly to politicians. But most of the politi- cians in responsible positions have many conflicting interests to take
care of and con- flicting pressures to respond to. What is more important, they are not so personally involved
since they are the ones who are least affected by the effects of structural violence, and they are well-cushioned against
the absence of positive peace. However, there is a small band of politicians who would be prepared to take up the cause of positive peace
provided they are given encourage- ment and continuous support by their voters. There is no support for a positive peace
policy from the dominant strata of society because they are not aware of the necessity of such a policy.
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A2: Positive Peace – Vagueness
We must move forward toward positive peace – attempts to define the goal are only
constructions of a flawed mindset
Groten and Jansen 81 (Hubert and Juergen, Doctorate in International Studies and
Peace Lobbyist, “Interpreters and Lobbies for Positive Peace”, Journal of Peace
Research, Vol. 18, No. 2, Special Issue on Theories of Peace 175-181, Sage
Publications, http://www.jstor.org/stable/424209, A.D.: 7/9/09)
'Peace is not merely the absence of war, collective violence or threats to use violence; the idea of peace must be rendered using
terms like 'justice', 'freedom', 'development', and 'solidarity'.'5 Expanding the concept of peace in this way does not make it any more
workable than does reducing it to a normative formula such as: peace is meeting man's basic needs or providing the minimum for
subsistence.6 The difficulties that arise when one tries to define peace are aptly summarized in the following words: 'All the attempts
at pro- ducing a comprehensive definition of what positive peace is must be seen in the light of the quest
for an all-embracing political system which as a minimum guarantees the survival of mankind and as its
maximum creates a social order in which the welfare and happiness of man are achieved.'7 Is it at all possible to
find a useful and practicable definition of positive peace? As it embraces both the road and the goal, both the method or process
and the aim, it would have to incorporate an analysis of present- day society and, at the same time, would have to
trace the picture of a new, just society. Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions. What we ought to be concerned
with cannot be a comprehensive definition but, rather, an analysis of the existing situation that would provide us with
the tools to start changing society. Another idea becomes es- sential here. This is democratization which, like positive peace, is
both the goal, i. e., a democratic society free from structural violence, and the road leading to it, i.e., a procedure that takes in the masses and
is supported by them. The goal can be named but it need not be defined. What matters is the process, the road
leading to it, the key to it, positive peace being the guideline . The idea then is not to use up one's energy trying to present
people with a pic- ture of what may be in store for them but to prepare the way, advancing by small steps, taking first things
first. Of course providing a clear analysis of the existing situation is more than many peace researchers ever do; but this is not sufficient in
itself. It is, however, equally insufficient to point to a utopia . Doing first things first also implies that critical peace
research cannot be 'neutral' or 'objective' in the sense that it appeals to all and sundry in bland scientific terms. It has to take sides. It
has to prepare action. This means first of all realizing that there is nobody eagerly waiting for recipes or in- structions from peace
research. Critical peace researchers have to under- stand that their aims are not the aims of the people
dominating society. What critical peace research has to offer can only be put into practice with the help of those
people who are most seriously affected by the absence of positive peace. Only they can initiate and implement
any policy that com- bats structural violence. It is not to the rulers of society that positive peace appeals; it is
to the dispossessed and oppressed that the value and the chances of positive peace must be proved. However, they are not
aware of the terms' structural violence' and 'positive peace' that have so far been re- served to academic
circles, as jargon, and to a few privileged people, as esoteric knowl- edge
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A2: Aff Alone Doesn’t Solve
A movement towards positive peace is a prerequisite to solving all harms – even a small
transition solves the most intense impacts of structural violence
Barash 0 (David P., Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington,
“Approaches to peace: a leader in peace studies”, Oxford University Press, 2000,
http://www.questiaschool.com/read/111756263?title=Approaches%20to%20Peace%3a%20%
20A%20Reader%20in%20Peace%20Studies, AD: 7-10-9)
It is important to be against war. But it is not enough. We also need to be in favor of somethingsomething positive and affirming: namely, peace. Peace studies is unique not only because it is multidisciplinary
and forthrightly proclaims its adherence to values, but also because it identifies positive visions of peace as
being greater than the absence of war. The positive peace toward which peace studies strives may be, if
anything,even more challenging than the prevention of war. It is a variation on what has been called the dog-car
problem. Imagine a dog that has spent yars barking and running after cars. Then, one day, it catches one. What
does it do with it? What would devotees of peace do with the world if they had the opportunity? This is not a
useless exercise, as before any future can be established, it must first be imagined. And moreover, unlike our
hypothetical car-chasing dog, the establishment of positive peace is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon. The
movement toward positive peace is likely to be halting and fragmentary, with substantial success along
certain dimensions, likely failures along others. On balance, the project is formidable, nothing less than a
fundamental effort to rethink the relationship of human beings to each other and to their shared planet.
If war and its causes are difficult to define- and this is assuredly the case- the positive peace is even more
elusive. (It can even be dangerous, since disagreements over what constitutes a desirable peace can lead to war.)
Earlier, we briefly considered just war doctrine. The conditions for a just peace are no less strenuous or
important. The relevant issues include- but are not limited to- aspirations for human rights, economic
fairness and opportunity, democratization, and what, specifically, is desire, or how much emphasis to place
on each goal. The pursuit of positive peace nonetheless leads to certain agreed principles, one of which is a
minimization of violence, not only the over violence of war, but also what has been called structural
violence a condition that is typically built into many social and cultural institutions. A slave-holding society
may be at peace in that it is not literally at war, but it is also rife with structural violence. Structural
violence has the effect of denying people important rights such as economic opportunity, social and
political equality, a sense of fulfillment and self-worth, and access to a healthy natural environment.
When people starve to death, or even go hungry, a kind of violence is taking place. Similarly, when human
beings suffer from diseases that are preventable when, they are denied a decent education, housing, an
opportunity to play, to grow, to work, to raise a family, to express themselves freely, to organize
peacefully, or to participate in their own governance, a kind of violence is occurring, even if bullets or
clubs are not being used. Society visits violence on human rights and dignity when it forcibly stunts the
optimum development of each human being, whether because of race, religion, sex, sexual preference, age,
ideology, and so on. In short, structural violence is another way of identifying oppression, and positive
peace would be a situation in which structural violence and oppression are minimized. In addition, social
injustice is important not only in its contribution to structural violence, but also as a major contributor to
war, often in unexpected ways. For many citizens of the United States and Europe, as well as privileged people
worldwide, current lifestyles are fundamentally acceptable. Hence, peace for them has come to meant the
continuation of things as they are, with the additional hope that overt violence will be prevented. For
others- perhaps the majority of our planet- change of one sort or another is desired. And for a small
minority, peace is something to fight for! A Central American peasant was quoted in the New York Times
saying “I am for peace, but not peace with hunger.”
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A2: Aff Alone Doesn’t Solve
Positive peace is a process – We’re the necessary first step
Bilgin 5 (Pinar, Assistant Professor, Ph.D, International Politics and Security,
University of Wales, “Regional Security in the middle East: A Critical
Perspective”, 2005,
http://www.questia.com/read/108556832?title=Regional%20Security%20in%20the%20Mid
dle%20East%3a%20%20A%20Critical%20Perspective, AD: 7/10/9)
As an analytical move, broadening security entails questioning the military-focused security agendas of Cold War
Security Studies and calling for opening up the agenda to include other non-military threats. In making this move,
students of critical approaches to security have followed in the footsteps of Peace Researchers who, from the 1960s onwards, had gradually
widened their conceptions of peace and violence. Distinguishing between 'negative' and 'positive' peace, John Galtung argued that peace
defined as here by the absence of armed conflict is 'negative peace'. 'Positive peace', maintained Galtung, means the
absence of not only direct physical violence but also indirect (and sometimes unintentional) 'structural violence' - that is, those
socio-economic institutions and relations that oppress human beings by preventing them from realising
their potential. Galtung (1969, 1996) also emphasised that to attain 'positive peace', it is not enough to seek to
eliminate violence; existing institutions and relations should be geared towards the enhancement of dialogue,
cooperation and solidarity among peoples coupled with a respect for the environment. It is also worth noting here that for Galtung
(1996:265) peace is not a static concept; it is rather a process (as with security and emancipation for students of critical
approaches to security; see Booth 1991b; Wyn Jones 1999). Building upon Peace Researchers' broadening of the concepts of violence and
peace that took human beings as the referent, students of critical approaches to security broadened security to include in Ken Booth's words - 'all those physical and human constraints which stop them from carrying out what they
would freely choose to do' (Booth 1991b: 319; Booth 1999b: 40). Such constraints may include human rights abuses,
water shortage, illiteracy, lack of access to health care and birth control, militarisation of society,
environmental degradation and economic deprivation as well as armed conflic t at the state- and sub-state level.
Accordingly, the purpose behind broadening security, from a critical perspective, is to become aware of threats to
security faced by referents in all walks of life and approach them within a comprehensive and dynamic framework cognisant of the
interrelationships in between. Understood as such, broadening security does not simply mean putting more issues on
governments' security agendas, but opening up security to provide a richer picture that includes all issues
that engender insecurity. In other words, although the broadening of governmental security agendas is an offshoot of broadening
security, it is not its main purpose. After all, the US Central Intelligence Agency also broadened its agenda in the 1990s (Johnson 1993), but
sought to address them through its traditional practices.
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A2: Positive Peace = Violence/Revolt
Positive peace precludes the possibility of violence or revolution
Groten and Jansen 81 (Hubert and Juergen, Doctorate in International Studies and
Peace Lobbyist, “Interpreters and Lobbies for Positive Peace”, Journal of Peace
Research, Vol. 18, No. 2, Special Issue on Theories of Peace 175-181, Sage
Publications, http://www.jstor.org/stable/424209, A.D.: 7/9/09)
Peace research is called upon to break this doubly vicious circle. It can do this if it takes its central concept, peace, more
seriously. Only then will it take itself seriously. And only then will it accept its responsibilities to the
people. To do this, it has to come down from its academic pulpit . It is here that the concept of 'positive peace' comes in.3
'Positive peace' is central to a peace re- search that claims to be a critical social science. When peace research started some twenty years ago
there were the 'armers', who aimed at controlling military conflicts by calling for arms, and new arms at that; and there vere the 'disarmers'.
This distinction was not sufficient. Only when Johan Galtung broke down the narrow concept of violence as personal, direct violence by
introducing the concept of 'structural violence' could peace research develop into a critical social science. Those social scientists that have
opted for critical peace research believe that structural violence is present wherever man is deprived of his
potentiality by the working of the very structure of society itself . So this kind of violence is produced by the
structure of society and it, in turn, supports this structure. According to this concept, any social injustice is
structural violence. Direct, per- sonal violence is but one aspect of this violence. Starting from this concept, Dieter Senghaas
developed his concept of 'organized peacelessness'. Critical peace research is more radically critical of society and
considers a 'peace' policy that advocates deterrence as not only too limited but also as preserving the social status
quo characterized by structural violence. This does not mean, however, that critical peace research, on a continuum of
possible policies, is placed firmly at the end advocating revolution. On the contrary, it rules out revolution as this implies
the use of direct violence. So on this continuum peace research stops short of revolution; it equally rejects the policy of
deterrence as a means not capable of bringing about positive peace. This does not mean, however, that it does not take
into account short and medium-term approaches as well. It has to in order to reach its addressees. At this point a somewhat closer inspection
of the category central to peace research, positive peace, is called for. Positive peace can only be achieved in the absence of
structural violence and the violent structures that go with it. Positive peace is social justice.
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A2: Positive Peace = Authoritarianism
Positive peace resists authoritarianism
Potter 4 (Nancy Nyquist, PhD in Rhetoric from the University of Minnesota,
“Putting Peace into practice”, pg. 14-15,
http://books.google.com/books?id=uQ4Ab7drluQC&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=%22negative+peace%22+%22
positive+peace%22+%22inseparable%22&source=bl&ots=JyUFsQfWT3&sig=LtO877TxxXq2bEOC_aGIbd7_
kU0&hl=en&ei=WRRZSpChF4XcsgOZ5OCZCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4, A.D.:
7/11/09)
The language of positive peace is quite compatible with the democratic spirit and is diametrically opposed
to authoritarian traditions. Since the language of positive peace resists monologue and encourages dialogue,
it fosters an approach to public policy debate that is receptive rather than aggressive and meditative rather
than calculative. The language of positive peace is not passive in the sense of avoiding engagement; it is pacific
in the sense of seeking to actively build lasting peace and justice. In this sense, while the language and
practice of positive peace facilitates the continuation of politics rather than its abandonment, it also elevates
diplomacy to an aim for cooperation and consensus rather than competition and compromise. The language
of positive peace provides a way of perceiving and communicating that frees us to the diversity and openendedness of life rather than the sameness and finality of death that results when diplomacy fails and war
ensues. The language of positive peace, by providing an alternative to the language of war and the language
of negative peace, can introduce into public policy discourse shared social values that express the goals of
a fully politicized and enfranchised humanity.
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Positive Peace Good – Solves Root Cause (1/2)
Positive peace resolves the underlying causes of conflicts and violence- facilitates the
development of relationships which restore and preserve community values and needs. We
should be encouraging the government to pass policies of peace and justice
Sandy and Perkins 1 (Leo R and Ray, Co-Founder of Peace Studies at Plymouth State College and teacher of
philosophy at Plymouth State College, “The Nature of Peace and it’s implication for peace education”, online
journal of peace and conflict resolution 4.2,
http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/jus/jus/ENGSEMJ/v08/undervisningsmateriale/IL%20&%20HR/Topic%202%20%20Reading.pdf, 2001, AD:7-10-9)
Positive peace, in contrast, is “a pattern of cooperation and integration between major human groups....[It]
is about people interacting in cooperative ways; it is about social organizations of diverse peoples who
willingly choose to cooperate for the benefit of all humankind; it calls for a system in which there are no
winners and losers--all are winners; it is a state so highly valued that institutions are built around it to
protect and promote it” (O’Kane, 1991-92). It also “involves the search for positive conditions which can
resolve the underlying causes of conflict that produce violence” (Woolman, 1985, p.8). The strategies used
for this purpose are called “associative,” and they are characterized by “a high level of social interaction
[which] enables more rapid resolution of conflict by providing maximum contacts through which solutions
may arise” (Woolman, 1985, p.8). Woolman also describes the sort of social reorganization that would provide
the best opportunity for real peace. Essentially, he espouses Galtung’s idea of smallness and decentralization
of power and authority. Thus, “small scale social organization offers a better environment for
encouragement of local autonomy, participation, and high levels of inter-group interaction. Big countries,
corporations, and institutions are generally regarded as negative structures because they are prone to
depersonalization, excessive centralization of decision-making, and patterns of center-periphery
exploitation.” Gene Sharp (1980) in his Social Power and Political Freedom adroitly elaborates these points.
The condition of smallness does much to reduce feelings of anonymity and powerlessness. It also facilitates
the development of relationships which can restore and preserve community values and spiritual needs
which “should take precedence over the materialism that is so central to Western culture.” (Woolman,
1985, p.12). Consistent with these approaches, Reardon (1988) places global justice as the central concept of
positive peace and asserts that “justice, in the sense of the full enjoyment of the entire range of human
rights by all people, is what constitutes positive peace” (p.26). In a similar vain, Trostle’s (1992) comprehensive definition
of peace clearly places it within a positive context: “[Peace is] a state of well-being that is characterized by trust, compassion, and justice. In
this state, we can be encouraged to explore as well as celebrate our diversity, and search for the good in each other without the concern for
personal pain and sacrifice. ... It provides us a chance to look at ourselves and others as part of the human family, part of one world.” The
role of the individual peacemaker from this perspective would involve people who, “. . . work toward promoting a world in which nonviolent
interaction and social equality are the norm. . . . Individuals of conscience should work to create a “trickle
up” theory. . . .by starting at the grassroots level to encourage corporate leaders, political figures, and
government officials to establish policies promoting peace and justice. This includes not only participating
in government by voting, etc., but also standing against a government that does not operate in the best
interest of global harmony.” (Trostle, 1992) A peacemaking government would require “a system of nonmilitary national service (to). . . include the Peace Corps and exchange student or “exchange citizen” programs.
. .as well as the duty of largely developed nations to share technology and surpluses of any kind with those
countries in need and less developed” (Trostle, 1992). Offering another broad positive view of peace is
MacLeod (1992) who defines it as, an awareness that all humans should have the right to a full and satisfying
life. For an individual this means developing his own and his loved ones’ potential growth, and for reaching out
to his neighbors to help assure that they have the same chance. For communities, this means developing fair
regulations for living together, and encouraging programs that will enhance fellowship among its many diverse
elements. For nations, this means encouraging its citizens to strive for enhancement of a benign attitude toward
all elements of their own society and toward all other nations. Towards an adequate definition It is difficult
not to see in these “positive” approaches to the definition of “peace” radical implications for a
reorganization of our society and, indeed, our entire world. There is no denying that a positive conception
of peace along the lines suggested by Galtung, Sharp, Reardon, et al. would involve fundamental changes on
the level of the individual psyche and the nation-state as well. At both levels genuine peace requires the
advent of a new self-lessness, a willingness to see our fellow humans as our brothers and sisters, and--as
the traditional religions have always counciled-- to love them as we love ourselves. But besides this
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subjective component of each individual’s altruistic love, there must be justice which depends on the right sort of
social organization. This is Reardon’s point. It is also implied by Trostle’s “state of well-being ... of global
harmony ... part of one world.” The suggestion here is that, at the very least, a state of (genuine) peace is
something beyond what can be achieved by the traditional system of sovereign nation-states. The problem,
of course, is that this system lacks a system of workable law, each state being the ultimate arbiter of
whether it will wield force in its pursuit of national interest or not. Without workable world law it’s hard to
see how there can be justice, and so, peace, in its true sense. The world federalists have expressed this point
succinctly but powerfully: “There can be no world peace without international justice; no international
justice without world law; and no effective world law without institutions to make, interpret and enforce
it.”3 And the world federalists may be right when they make this requirement of enforceable world law a sine qua non for the abolition of
the age-old institution of war itself. Certainly Albert Einstein thought so when he declared that “Peace is not merely the absence of war but
the presence of justice, of law, of order--in short, of government” (Einstein, 1968). In conclusion, we believe that a proper definition of
“peace” must include positive characteristics over and above the mere absence of belligerence. Rather, it must include those positive factors
that foster cooperation among human groups with ostensibly different cultural patterns so that social justice can be done and human potential
can freely develop within democratic political structures. And this--promoting social justice/freedom by democratic means--will almost
certainly require more “selfless” concern at all levels: at the personal level, more brotherly love; and at the international level, less narrow
national self-interest-- a goal which we believe will require a diminution of the current system of nation states and the gradual emergence of
a world community self-governed by world law. In this way, a truly peaceful world will be a world where war has been made impossible--or,
at least much less likely--by a new community where people not only see themselves in their hearts as part of one human “family,” but
where, in (political-legal-moral) reality, they really are part of such a “family.” Lessons for peace education Finally, what do these insights
about the definition of “peace” mean for peace makers, and peace educators generally, in the 21st Century? We think they mean first that
peace makers must stress that the long range goal of peace education should be the elimination of war as a
method of resolving disputes. Reardon (1988) anticipated this when she said that “peace education must
confront the need to abolish the institution of war” (p.24). To date there has not been a widespread perceived need to do so.
Establishing the need is a challenge that lies ahead. But, secondly and at least equally important, our reflections about the nature of peace
also suggests that the abolition of war will require more than the mere cessation of hostilities among peoples--not that that would be bad if
we could get it. The problem is, as we saw earlier, that we probably can’t get it without a radical reconstruction of
interpersonal and international relations along the lines suggested by our earlier examination. And paramount
among these relations are the ideas of social justice and world law. The importance of these ideas in successfully
pursuing the quest of abolishing war is, we think, an equally important implication for the future of peace
education. Of course, the quest for peace and the abolition of war will be a long one requiring us to dig
deeper into the very depths of the human and institutional psyches which lead “civilized” peoples to resort
to force and, hopefully, to find and build the elusive “peace”. This quest requires that we teach for peace
and not just about peace.
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Positive Peace Good – Solves Militarism
Pursuit of positive peace minimizes “structural violence”, an inherent condition of injustice
that is a major contributor to oppression and war
Barash 00 (David P., Professor of Psychology, University of Washington,
“Approaches to Peace: A Reader in Peace Studies”, 2000,
http://www.questia.com/read/111756263?title=Approaches%20to%20Peace%3a%20%20A%20
Reader%20in%20Peace%20Studies, AD: 7/9/9)
The pursuit of positive peace nonetheless leads to certain agreed principles, one of which is a minimization of
violence, not only the overt violence of war, but also what has been called “structural violence,” a
condition that is typically built into many social and cultural institutions. A slave-holding society may be at
“peace” in that it is not literally at war, but it is also rife with structural violence. Structural violence has the
effects of denying people important rights such as economic opportunity, social and political equality, a
sense of fulfillment and self-worth, and access to a healthy natural environment. When people starve to
death, or even go hungry, a kind of violence is taking place. Similarly, when human beings suffer from diseases
that are preventable, when they are denied a decent education, housing, an opportunity to play, to grow, to work,
to raise a family, to express themselves freely, to organize peacefully, or to participate in their own governance,
a kind of violence is occurring, even if bullets or clubs are not being used. Society visits violence on human
rights and dignity when it forcibly stunts the optimum development of each human being, whether because of
race, religion, sex, sexual preference, age, ideology, and so on. In short, structural violence is another way of
identifying oppression, and positive peace would be a situation in which structural violence and
oppression are minimized. In addition, social injustice is important not only in its contribution to structural
violence, but also as a major contributor to war, often in unexpected ways. For many citizens of the United
States and Europe, as well as privileged people worldwide, current lifestyles are fundamentally acceptable.
Hence, peace for them has come to mean the continuation of things as they are, with the additional hope that
overt violence will be prevented. For others – perhaps the majority of our planet – change of one sort or another
is desired. And for a small minority, peace is something to fight for! A Central American peasant was quoted in
the New York Times as saying “I am for peace, but not peace with hunger.” There is a long tradition
suggesting that injustice is a primary cause of war. The French philosopher Denis Diderot, for example, was
convinced that a world of justice and plenty would mean a world free of tyranny and war. Hence, in his 18 thcentury treatise, the Encyclopedia, Diderot sought to establish peace by disseminating all the world’s technical
information, from bee-keeping to iron forging. And, of course, similar efforts continue today, although few
advocates of economic and social development claim that the problem of violence can be solved simply by
spreading knowledge or even by keeping everyone’s belly full.
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Racism
Imperialism is grounded in racism and strips countries of their culture
Narobi ‘86.[James, Professor of NHU, “Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African
Literature”. July 6th, 2013 London:Heinemann Kenya, New Hampshire http://www.swaraj.org/ngugi.htm ]
For these patriotic defenders of the fighting cultures of African people, imperialism is not a slogan. It is real; it is
palpable in content and form and in its methods and effects. Imperialism is the rule of consolidated finance capital
and since 1884 this monopolistic parasitic capital has affected and continues to affect the lives even of the
peasants in the remotest corners of our countries. If you are in doubt, just count how many African countries
have now been mortgaged to IMF — the new International Ministry of Finance as Julius Nyerere once called it. Who
pays for the mortgage? Every single producer of real wealth (use-value) in the country so mortgaged, which means
every single worker and peasant. Imperialism is total: it has economic, political, military, cultural and
psychological consequences for the people of the world today. It could even lead to holocaust. The freedom for
western finance capital and for the vast transnational monopolies under its umbrella to continue stealing from
the countries and people of Latin America, Africa, Asia and Polynesia is today protected by conventional and
nuclear weapons. Imperialism, led by the USA, presents the struggling peoples of the earth and all those calling
for peace, democracy .and socialism with the ultimatum: accept theft or death. The oppressed and the exploited
of the earth maintain their defiance: liberty from theft. But the biggest weapon wielded and actually daily
unleashed by imperialism against that collective defiance is the cultural bomb. The effect of a cultural bomb is to
annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle,
in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of
non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland. It makes them want to
identify with that which is furthest removed from themselves; for instance, with other peoples’ languages rather than
their own. It makes them identify with that which is decadent and reactionary, all those forces which would stop
their own springs of life. It even plants serious doubts about the moral rightness of struggle. Possibilities of
triumph or victory are seen as remote, ridiculous dreams. The intended results are despair, despondency and a
collective death-wish. Amidst this wasteland which it has created, imperialism presents itself as the cure and
demands that the dependant sing hymns of praise with the constant refrain: ‘Theft is holy’. Indeed, this refrain sums up
the new creed of the neo-colonial bourgeoisie in many ‘independent’ African states. The classes fighting against
imperialism even in its neo-colonial stage and form, have to confront this threat with the higher and more
creative culture of resolute struggle. These classes have to wield even more firmly the weapons of the struggle
contained in their cultures. They have to speak the united language of struggle contained in each of their
languages. They must discover their various tongues to sing the song: ‘A people united can never be
defeated’Colonialism dehumanizes individuals of all races
Hardt and Negri 2k
[Michael and Antonio, Political Philosopher and Literary Theorist at Duke University, Political
Philosopher, “Empire”, page 129]
The work of numerous authors, such as Jean-Paul Sartre and
Franz Fanon, who have recognized that colonial representations and colonial sovereignty are
dialectical in form has proven useful in several respects. First of all, the dialectical
construction demonstrates that there is nothing essential about the identities in struggle.
The
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White and the Black, the European and the Oriental, the
colonizer and the colonized are all representations that
function only in relation to each other and (despite
appearances) have noreal necessary basis in nature, biology,
or rationality. Colonialism is an abstract machine that
produces alterity and identity. And yet in the colonial
situation these differences and identities are made to
function as if they were absolute, essential, and natural.
The first result of the dialectical reading is thus the
denaturalization of racial and cultural difference. This does not
mean that once recognized as artificial constructions, colonial identities evaporate into thin air;
they are real illusions and continue to function as if they were essential. This recognition is not
a politics in itself, but merely the sign that an anti colonial politics is possible. In the second
the dialectical interpretation makes clear that
colonialism and colonialist representations are grounded in a
violent struggle that must be continually renewed. The European
place,
Selfneeds violence and needs to confront its Other to feel and maintain its power, to remake itself
continually. The generalized state of war that continuously subtends colonial representations is not
accidental or even unwanted—violence is the necessary foundation of colonialism itself. Third,
posing colonialism as a negative dialectic of recognition makes clear the potential for subversion
inherent in the situation. For a thinker like Fanon, the reference to Hegel suggests that the Master
can only achieve a hollow form of recognition; it is the Slave, through life-and-death struggle, who
has the potential to move forward toward full consciousness. The dialectic ought to imply movement,
but this dialectic of European sovereign identity has fallen back into stasis. The failed dialectic
suggests the possibility
of a proper dialectic that through negativity will move history forward.
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Ethics
Imperialism destroys ethics by valuing security risks over collateral damage
McNally 6 (David, Professor of political science at York University “The new
imperialists – Ideologies of Empire” Ch 5 Pg 92) JL
Yet, even on Ignatieff ’s narrow definition, in which human rights are about
stopping unmerited cruelty and suffering, the crucial question is how we are to
do so. What if some means to this ostensible end – say, a military invasion –
can reasonably be expected to produce tens of thousands of civilian casualties
and an almost certain breakdown in social order? Ignatieff ’s doctrine of human
rights provides absolutely no ethico-philosophical criteria in that regard.
Instead, he offers a pragmatic judgement – and a highly dubious one – that only
U.S. military power can be expected to advance human rights in the zones
where “barbarians” rule. But note: this is an utterly ad hoc addition to his
theory. In no respect can it be said to flow from any of his reflections on
human rights per se. Moreover, others proceeding from the same principle of
limiting cruelty and suffering have arrived at entirely opposite
conclusions with respect to imperial war. Ignatieff ’s myriad
proclamations for human rights thus lack any demonstrable tie to his
support of empire and imperial war. This is convenient, of course, since the
chasm between moralizing rhetoric and imperial advocacy allows Ignatieff
to pump out empty platitudes as if these contained real ethical guidance.
Concrete moral choices, involving historical study and calibrations of
real human risk, never enter the equation. So, Ignatieff can drone on
about the world being a better place without Saddam, never so much as
acknowledging the cost of this result: some 25,000 Iraqis killed as a
result of armed conflict since the start of the U.S. invasion, and probably
more than 100,000 dead as a result of all the consequences of the U.S. war.24
Nowhere does he offer any kind of calculus for determining if these tens
of thousands of deaths are ethically justified. Instead, banalities about
being rid of Saddam are offered up without even countenancing the scale of human
suffering that Ignatieff ’s preferred course of action – war and occupation –
has entailed. But then, Ignatieff shows little regard for ordinary people in the
zones of military conflict. His concern is for the security of the West and of
the U.S.A. in particular. Ruminating about America’s new “vulnerability” in the
world, for instance, he writes, When American naval planners looked south from
the Suez Canal, they had only bad options. All the potential refuelling stops –
Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea and Yemen – are dangerous places for American
warships. As the attack on the U.S.S. Cole made clear, none of the governments
in these strategically vital refuelling stops can actually guarantee the safety
of their imperial visitors.25
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Indigenous Rights
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Imperialism deteriorates the culture of indigenous people
Galeota 2004 [Julia, The Humanist, Article “Cultural Imperialism: An American Tradition”
http://www.thehumanist.org/humanist/articles/essay3mayjune04.pdf]
In his 1976 work Communication and Cultural Domination, Herbert Chiller defines cultural imperialism as: the
sum of the processes by which a society is brought into the modern world system, and how its dominating
stratum is attracted, pressured, forced, and sometimes bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or
even to promote, the values and structures of the dominant center of the system. Thus, cultural imperialism
involves much more than simple consumer goods; it involves the dissemination of ostensibly American
principles, such as freedom and democracy. Though this process might sound appealing on the surface, it masks
a frightening truth: many cultures around the world are gradually disappearing due to the overwhelming
influence of corporate and cultural America. The motivations behind American cultural imperialism parallel the
justifications for U.S. imperialism throughout history: the desire for access to foreign markets and the belief in
the superiority of American culture. Though the United States does boast the world’s largest, most powerful
economy, no business is completely satisfied with controlling only the American market; American corporations
want to control the other 95 percent of the world’s consumers as well. However, one must question whether this
projected society is truly beneficial for all involved. Is it worth sacrificing countless indigenous cultures for the
unlikely promise of a world without conflict? Around the world, the answer is an overwhelming “No!” Disregarding
the fact that a world of homogenized culture would not necessarily guarantee a world without conflict, the
complex fabric of diverse cultures around the world is a fundamental and indispensable basis of humanity.
Throughout the course of human existence, millions have died to preserve their indigenous culture. It is a
fundamental right of humanity to be allowed to preserve the mental, physical, intellectual, and creative aspects
of one’s society. A single “global culture” would be nothing more than a shallow, artificial “culture” of materialism
reliant on technology. Thankfully, it would be nearly impossible to create one bland culture in a world of over six
billion people. And nor should we want to. Contrary to Rothkopf ’s (and George W. Bush’s) belief that, “Good and evil,
better and worse coexist in this world,” there are no such absolutes in this world. The United States should not be able
to relentlessly force other nations to accept its definition of what is “good” and “just” or even “modern.” Fortunately,
many victims of American cultural imperialism aren’t blind to the subversion of their cultures.
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Terrorism
Imperialism encourages fundamentalism which leads to terrorist organizations.
Gagnon 12
[Jean, Honorary Research Fellow, Centre for Greater China Studies, “Journal of South Asian
Development”, “The Taliban Did Not Create the Taliban, Imperialism Did”, vol. 7 no. 1]
Sir Karl Popper’s (2002) method of historicism has been neglected in the analysis of the
radicalization of Afghanistan’s society in the form of the Taliban. Popper’s historicism is the idea
that the past may allow the forecasting of the future by understanding the state of the present in
by analyzing periods
of imperialism—those eras of social injustice, violence and
oppression—it is seen that such imperialism led to radical
fundamentalism, as many had no choice but to lash out. The
push to strenuous religious identity, heavily laden with
violent tactics, was the natural response of peoples trying
to maintain their identities and collective destiny from
imperial domination. Furthermore, as evidence continues to
show, most often those individuals that are first to
radicalize are the poorest of the poor, the dispossessed, or
those who have experienced violent injustices. Using Popper’s method,
it is possible to explain how imperialism breeds radicalism
(using Afghanistan as an example) and as such provide some general
one specific line of historical inquiry. It is argued herein that
recommendations to swing the pendulum in reverse so as to minimize radical behavior. This article
has implications for international relations, foreign policies and aid.
Nuclear technology is easily accessible to terrorist groups, enabling them to
inflict maximum damage.
O'Neill 97 from the Institute for Science and International Security
[Kevn, Editor at the Institute for Science and International Security, “The Nuclear Terrorist
Threat” http://www.isisonline.org/publications/terrorism/threat.pdf]
The proliferation of nuclear weapons or radiological
dispersal devices to terrorist groups is perhaps one of the
most frightening threats to U.S. security. Nuclear materials,
technologies and know-how are more widely available today
than ever before. Small quantities of both fissile materials
and highly radioactive materials, sufficient to manufacture a
radiological dispersal device, are actively traded on the
black market. A nuclear detonation by a terrorist group would
likely result in an unprecedented number of casualties. In
contrast, a radiological dispersal attack would probably be
less violent, but could significantly contaminate an urban
center, causing economic and social disruption. Both types of
attacks would have significant psychological impacts on the
entire population.