CIAO DATE: 02/2011
Volume: 24, Issue: 4
Winter 2010
The Responsibility to Protect: Growing Pains or Early Promise?
Edward C. Luck
The ever-expanding literature on the responsibility to protect (RtoP) could now fill a small library. The number of graduate theses alone devoted to the topic has been nothing less than staggering. RtoP's contribution to both conceptual thought and policy planning concerning how to prevent genocide and other mass atrocities, therefore, is beyond question. But RtoP was not envisioned as an academic or planning exercise. Nine years after the principle was first articulated by the independent International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) and five years after it was refined and adopted by the 2005 World Summit,1 some are beginning to ask whether, where, and how the concept has made a difference in terms of international and state policy and, more important, in terms of preventing such horrific crimes in the first place. Understandably, many of these early assessments are skeptical. As the official charged with developing the conceptual, political, and institutional elements of RtoP for United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, I have followed this growing assessment literature with keen attention. One of the more thoughtful and constructive contributions to this genre appeared in a recent volume of this journal.2 In ''The Responsibility to Protect—Five Years On,'' Alex J. Bellamy provides a balanced, cogent, and—as the following suggests—provocative analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of RtoP as a policy tool.
The Politics of Carbon Leakage and the Fairness of Border Measures
Robyn Eckersley
The article critically examines domestic political concerns about the competitive disadvantages and possible carbon leakage arising from the introduction of domestic emission trading legislation and the fairness of applying carbon equalization measures at the border as a response to these concerns. I argue that the border adjustment measures proposed in the emissions trading bills that have been presented to Congress amount to an evasion of the U.S.'s leadership responsibilities under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). I also show how the "level commercial playing field" justification for border measures that has dominated U.S. domestic debates is narrow and lopsided because it focuses only on the competitive disadvantages and direct carbon leakage that may flow from climate regulation while ignoring general shifts in the production and consumption of emissions in the global economy, which have enabled the outsourcing of emission to developing countries.
Common Health Policy Interests and the Shaping of Global Pharmaceutical Policies
Meri Koivusalo
In order to achieve more ethical global health outcomes, health policies must be driven by health priorities and should take into account broader health policy requirements, including the needs of specific national health systems. It is thus important to recognize that the division of interests in key policy areas are not necessarily between the priorities of rich and poor countries, but between (1) pharmaceutical industry interests and health policy interests, and (2) national industrial and trade policy interests and public health policies. I argue that these issues are not solely the concern of developing countries because the diminishing national policy space for health in pharmaceutical policies presents a challenge to all governments, including rich ones.
Implementing the Responsibility to Protect: Where Expectations Meet Reality
Jennifer Welsh
Responsibility to Protect: The Global Effort to End Mass Atrocities, Alex J. Bellamy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), 249 pp., $70 cloth, $25 paper. The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All, Gareth Evans (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2008), 349 pp., $37 cloth, $20 paper. Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Who Should Intervene?, James Pattison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 284 pp., $95 cloth. In June 2010 intercommunal violence exploded in Kyrgyzstan's southern cities of Osh and Jalalabad, resulting in the dramatic scene of thousands of ethnic Uzbeks fleeing their homes to avoid persecution by groups of ethnic Kyrgyz (allegedly backed by government troops). Reports of arson, rape, and other atrocities were widespread, accompanied by varying accounts of the number of civilians killed.1 The response to the persecution and displacement followed a pattern that we have seen before: calls for urgent international action by nongovernmental organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group, followed by a muted response on the part of international organizations (in this case, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the United Nations Security Council). While both Russia and the United States were active in supporting efforts to organize humanitarian assistance to those affected by the violence, neither state was prepared to tackle the political and logistical challenge of deploying military forces to the region to protect civilians.2
"The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality" by Ayelet Shachar
Anna Moltchanova
In this provocative volume, Ayelet Shachar puts forward an account of birthright citizenship as analogous to inherited property, and proposes a birthright privilege levy on citizenship inheritance that citizens of affluent countries should contribute to alleviate global inequalities of wealth and opportunity. By drawing an analogy with property inheritance, Shachar questions a widespread intuition that citizenship assignment based on birth is unproblematic. The recipients of political membership in prosperous and politically stable societies, she notes, inherit a valuable bundle of rights, benefits, and opportunities. Since the place of one's birth is a circumstance beyond one's control, birthright citizens of a well-off society have a duty to transfer some of their chance gains to those who were born in a society with greatly diminished life opportunities.
"Genocide: A Normative Account" by Larry May
Roger Smith
This new book from Larry May is not a study of genocide, but rather an attempt to draw attention to the conceptual and practical difficulties and ''puzzles'' of conceptualizing and prosecuting genocide under international law. May also argues for expanding the list of groups that are protected under international law against genocide to include gender, culture, and language in addition to race, ethnicity, religion, and national origin. The book's central thesis, however, is that genocide is not ''the crime of crimes,'' and that it differs little from various crimes against humanity. May reminds us that under international law genocide does not necessarily even involve killing, and he goes on to ask why it should be regarded as worse than other crimes committed systematically against civilians. Since genocide is about the destruction of groups, not individuals, what is special about groups, and what is the ''unique harm'' that genocide involves as a result of the destruction of a group?
"Women and States: Norms and Hierarchies in International Society" by Ann E. Towns
Shirin Saeidi
This new work by Ann Towns is an intelligent and timely addition not only to the field of International Relations but also to interdisciplinary scholarship that is interested in the relationships between the status of women, state behavior, and approaches to global governance. Women and States has two primary objectives. On a theoretical level, it claims that international norms, in addition to creating policy convergence, generate social hierarchies and rankings among states. The study uses empirical data to show that state approaches to global governance and the making of social distinctions explicitly incorporate the political status of women to achieve different national interests. These forms of social and cultural distinction, as the book goes on to demonstrate, affect the making of international order. Firmly situated within and contributing to constructivist studies of international relations, Towns's work relies on extensive and multilingual primary and secondary archival research to substantiate these core claims.
“When meaning is drawn from killing,” observes Timothy Snyder, “the risk is that more killing would bring more meaning.” Although Nazism and Stalinism are ostensibly separated by an ideological gulf, this brute fact binds the human nightmares unleashed by both. As Snyder notes, both Stalin and Hitler saw themselves as victims of an international conspiracy—for Stalin, the threat was capitalist encirclement and infiltration; for Hitler, it was the cosmic menace of the Jewish people—which thus justified the wanton slaughter of millions of innocent people according to a logic of self-defense. For both men, killing became self-justifying, leading to more murder, and more death.