CIAO DATE: 09/04

International Affairs

March 2004

• The Israeli-Palestinian Road Block: Can Europeans Make a Difference?  Rosemary Hollis

  Europe needs a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the sake of its own social harmony, and could reconfigure the calculations of the parties by inviting Israel to integrate into Europe's social, economic and security space in return for withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem. The idea would be to capitalize on the drive for separation that prevails in Israel and abandon an unrealistic policy that requires the Arabs to integrate Israel in the region. It is also time for Europe to face up to its own role in the problem and the solution, and demonstrate that anti-Semitism does not influence its policy.

• An Independent Palestine: The Security Dimension Robert E. Hunter and Seth G. Jones

  If negotiations produce an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict then a sovereign, independent Palestine may emerge. But what is required for it to succeed? Nothing is more important than the security of a Palestinian state-for itself, for Israel, and for the region: security trumps all else. In addition to the problem of dealing effectively with opposition to a peace agreement within Palestine or directed against it from outside, the nature and magnitude of the security challenge will depend in large part on three issues: the drawing of borders between Israel and Palestine-and whether they are porous or marked by a rigid line of barriers; whether Israeli settlements are withdrawn, or in part incorporated into Israel, perhaps through land swaps with Palestine; and what arrangements are made for Jerusalem. One answer is the creation of effective Palestinian military forces (in addition to police), but this course could be divisive; a second is the development of a series of Israeli-Palestinian confidence-building and share-security measures, including intelligence cooperation; a third is progress towards reducing external threats to Israel-Palestine, including success in Iraq and in defusing other Middle East problems. Most useful, however, would be the creation of an American-led peace enabling force, ideally modelled on NATO. This force would need to be agreed by both Israel and Palestine; it must be adequately staffed, trained and equipped; its duties and rules of engagement must make sense to all parties; and it must be part of a network of dispute-resolution and confidence-building measures in full partnership with Israeli and Palestinian authorities.

• The Peace Process and the Palestinians: A Road Map to Mars  Karma Nabulsi

  This article provides an analytical framework in which to understand the new approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict that has been developing over the last two years. It discusses this new agenda: how it operates, and what arenas it operates in. It looks at the ways this new approach is being implemented through various processes and common understandings by the officials, experts, diplomats, and academics who make up the international community involved in the Middle East Peace Process.

• The Iranian Nuclear Challenge  Wyn Q. Bowen and Joanna Kidd

  In December 2003 Iran signed an Additional Protocol to its Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Authority. The signing followed 18 months of mounting international pressure on Iran to prove its benign motives following revelations about past failures to declare work on uranium enrichment and plutonium separation-the two routes to producing nuclear weapons-grade material. Although Iran has strenuously denied having a nuclear weapons programme, both the United States and the European Union have been highly suspicious. However, their responses to Iran have shown a divergence in how to counter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The way forward on Iran will be influenced significantly by the extent to which the American and European approaches can be reconciled or otherwise.

• Strategic Reassertion in Russia's Central Asia Policy   Roy Allison

  President Putin has presided over a proactive, hard-headed and relatively effective Russian policy in Central Asia and the Caspian region since at least the summer of 2002, which aims both to support Russia's revival as an economic and military power and to help tackle at source new security challenges from the volatile south. In line with rising domestic nationalist thinking and the growing influence of officials with a security service or military background, Moscow has been searching for a rationale to support a more assertive policy in the region. Meanwhile, Russian and American views on the scope and conduct of the war on terrorism have diverged in important respects. Russia lacks an overall regional strategy for Central Asia, but is seeking to mesh together geopolitical, security and energy policy goals. It is seeking to reinvigorate its military-security influence in Central Asia under the banner of counterterrorism and at the same time has achieved long-term agreements for energy transit and purchases that make Central Asian states increasingly dependent on Russia in energy policy. Overall, a dynamic of competition is displacing the potential for cooperation between Russia and western states, especially the United States, in Central Asia. The prospects for a fully-fledged strategic partnership in the region are fading but the reality of security threats from Afghanistan and within Central Asia might eventually reconcile Moscow to a lower profile but long-term western strategic presence in the region.

• The Long Sunset of Strategic Partnership: Russia's Evolving China Policy  Bobo Lo

  The strategic partnership between Moscow and Beijing is arguably the greatest Russian foreign policy achievement of the post-Soviet period. In just over a decade, the relationship has grown from a barely civil interaction to one of political and strategic convergence and flourishing economic cooperation. Once divisive issues such as border demarcation and Chinese 'illegal migration' into the Russian Far East have been largely defused, while bilateral trade has tripled during the past four years. Nevertheless, despite these successes, the strategic partnership remains fragile and vulnerable to bilateral and international developments. A negative historical legacy, enduring cultural prejudices and strategic suspicions, and even commercial disagreements threaten, over time, to undermine many of the gains of the recent past. In the transformed global environment after 9/11 there are signs that Moscow is rethinking its approach towards China as part of a more general evolution in Russian strategic calculus in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. China's emergence as the next super-power, the spectre of increased Sino-American tensions, the changing balance of power between Moscow and Beijing, and rival agendas in Central Asia all have the potential to rekindle once dormant political differences and security fears. Although the breadth of common interests means there is no early prospect of confrontation, the much-vaunted Russia-China strategic partnership may be giving way to a growing strategic divergence.

• Right-Sizing International Criminal Justice: The Hybrid Experiment at the Special Court for Sierra Leone   Beth K. Dougherty

  In the decade since their establishment, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) have made great advancements in the development of international criminal justice. Nonetheless, the ad hoc tribunals have been roundly criticized for their expense, inefficiency and slowness. When the Security Council decided to set up a court for Sierra Leone, it wanted to find a new model. The hybrid Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) is an effort to right-size international criminal justice: it has a pared-down budget, tightly focused mandate, limited time of operation, and a lack of institutional links to the Security Council. The negotiations over these issues led to repeated clashes between the UN Secretary General and the Security Council, with the Security Council consistently favouring a more modestly sized court. The SCSL has much to recommend it but its promise is shadowed by the paltry resources available to it. In its efforts to avoid creating another over-sized tribunal, the Security Council swung too far in the other direction. The lofty goals of ending impunity and providing justice demand more than a court on the cheap.

• Just War or Ethical Peace? Moral Discourses of Strategic Violence After 9/11  Anthony Burke

  Against the commonly held view that morality implies a critique or restraint of strategic violence, this article analyses a range of moral discourses that have been deployed to support the war on terror, including its extension to Iraq. It analyses the ambiguity between legal and extra-legal responses in Bush administration rhetoric and policy, and critically surveys the humanitarian costs-in civilian life, instability and suffering-sustained during the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

  This article places just war theory, in particular, under extended critical scrutiny, and finds its formalized system of moral rules and concepts-particularly civilian immunity and proportionality-deeply flawed in the light of actual US war-fighting strategies. By insisting on the acceptability of unintentional killing (as opposed to an alternative concept such as avoidable harm) just war theory may actually expose civilians to mortal danger and liberate war rather than morally restrain it. In the light of the flaws of current moral discourses on strategy, the article concludes by developing 'ethical peace' as an alternative conceptual framework that seeks to create a genuinely universal moral community in which it is never, in principle, legitimate to secure one group of citizens by placing others in moral danger.

• Review articles: Theorizing Military Intervention  Patricia Owens

  Argument and change in world politics: ethics, decolonization and humanitarian intervention. By Neta Crawford

  The purpose of intervention: changing beliefs about the use of force. By Martha Finnemore

  Agency and ethics: the politics of military intervention. By Anthony F. Lang Jr

  A number of theory-driven books have recently appeared on the subject of military intervention. The three under review in this article are timely in explicitly associating past colonial practice with more recent military adventures. Yet each author seems to suggest that colonial (and decolonization) practices actually reinforce the humanity of the West and the validity of recent 'humanitarian' justifications for war rather than expose much that is unseemly about contemporary interventionary practice. What is the source of this apparent paradox? One answer can be found in the theoretical framework of each book. Notwithstanding the extent to which the authors have sought to be self-reflective concerning power and critical of the International Relations mainstream, all offer legitimizations for imperial/humanitarian war in wide and problematic ways.

• Book Reviews: Online publication date: 1-Apr--2004

  International Relations theory
  Dictionnaire des relations internationales. Edited by Marie-Claude Smouts, Dario Battistella and Pascal Vennesson

  International ethics
  Between anarchy and society: trusteeship and the obligations of power. By William Bain

  Global prescriptions: gendering health and human rights. By Rosalind Pollack Petchesky

  International law and organization
  Encyclopedia of the United Nations and international agreements. Third edition. Edited by Anthony Mango and Edmund Jan Osmanczyk

  Conflict, security and armed forces
  Winning modern wars: Iraq, terrorism and the American empire. By Wesley K. Clark

  Global disorder: America and the threat of world conflict. By Robert Harvey

  Politics, democracy and social affairs
  The Cambridge history of twentieth century political thought. Edited by Terence Ball and Richard Bellamy

  The breaking of nations: order and chaos in the twenty-first century. By Robert Cooper

  After communism: perspectives on democracy. Edited by Donald R. Kelley

  International and national political economy, economics and development
  Towards a new paradigm in monetary economics. By Joseph E. Stiglitz and Bruce Greenwald

  Governing global trade: international institutions in conflict and convergence. By Theodore H. Cohn

  The new economic diplomacy: decision-making and negotiation in international economic relations. By Nicholas Bayne and Stephen Woolcock

  Energy and environment
  Crude power: politics and the oil market. By Oystein Noreng

  Firms, governments and climate policy: incentive-based policies for long-term climate change. Edited by Carlo Carraro and Christian Egenhofer

  History
  Lyndon Johnson and Europe: in the shadow of Vietnam. By Thomas Alan Schwartz

  Nixon's shadow: the history of an image. By David Greenberg

  The Labour governments 1964-1970, volume two: international policy. By John W. Young

  The United States, Western Europe and the Polish crisis: International Relations in the second Cold War. By Helene Sjursen

  Iron hulls, iron hearts: Mussolini's elite armoured divisions in North Africa. By Ian W. Walker

  Europe
  European migration policies in flux: changing patterns of inclusion and exclusion. By Christina Boswell

  Swiss foreign policy, 1945-2002. Edited by JŸrg Martin Gabriel and Thomas Fischer

  German foreign policy: navigating a new era. By Scott Erb

  The formation of Croatian national identity: a centuries-old dream? By Alex J. Bellamy

  Suits and uniforms: Turkish foreign policy since the Cold War. By Philip Robins

  Russia and the former Soviet republics
  Central Asia: aspects of transition. Edited by Tom Everett-Heath

  The new great game: blood and oil in Central Asia. By Lutz Kleveman

  Sub-Saharan Africa NŽgrologie: pourquoi l'Afrique meurt. By Stephen Smith

  L'Afrique au secours de l'Occident. By Anne-CŽcile Robert

  From principles to practice: indigenous peoples and protected areas in Africa. Edited by John Nelson and Lindsay Hossack

  Asia and Pacific
  Financial reform and economic development in China. By James Laurenceson and Joseph C. H. Chai

  China and the world trading system: entering the new millennium. Edited by Deborah Z. Cass, Brett G. Williams and George Barker

  Modernizing China's military: progress, problems, and prospects. By David Shambaugh

  Chinese warfighting: the PLA experience since 1949. Edited by Mark A. Ryan, David Michael Finkelstein and Michael A. McDevitt

  Nuclear North Korea: a debate on engagement strategies. By Victor D. Cha and David C. Kang

  North America
  The great unravelling: from boom to bust in three scandalous years. By Paul Krugman

  Fear's empire: war, terrorism and democracy. By Benjamin R. Barber

  A trading nation. Canadian trade policy from colonialism to globalization. By Michael Hart

  While Canada slept: how we lost our place in the world. By Andrew Cohen

  Latin America and Caribbean
  Globalization and development: a Latin American and Caribbean perspective. Edited by JosŽ Antonio Ocampo and Juan Martin

  The political economy of emerging markets: actors, institutions and financial crises in Latin America. By Javier Santiso

  Is geography destiny? Lessons from Latin America. Edited John Luke Gallup, Alejandro Gaviria, and Eduardo Lora

  Latin America's wars: the age of the Caudillo, 1791-1899. Volume one. By Robert L. Scheina

  Latin America's wars: the age of the professional soldier, 1900-2001. Volume two. By Robert L. Scheina