CIAO DATE: 10/02

Survival

 

 

Spring 2002 (Vol. 44 No. 1)

• Counter-terrorism, Armed Force and the Laws of War

  Adam Roberts is Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford University and Fellow of Balliol College. He is co-editor, with Richard Guelff, of Documents on the Laws of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

  In military operations involving action against terrorists, the relevance of the laws of war, often now called international humanitarian law, is problematical. The US-led 'war on terror', especially the use of armed force in Afghanistan, raises three questions. Is the law applicable to such operations? Should it be applied in situations different from what was envisaged in treaties? And are detainees 'prisoners of war'? A difficulty in applying the law is that governments usually view terrorists, like rebels in civil wars, as simply criminal. In the bombing in Afghanistan, the US has sought to observe the legal requirement of discrimination, but difficult issues are raised by the use of cluster bombs and the continued bombing after the Taliban regime's fall. As regards prisoners, US policy was ill-thought-out; and the perfectly justifiable classification of certain prisoners as 'unlawful combatants' should not mean that they are in a legal limbo. Treating the law cavalierly causes problems, especially for coalitions. The law, however imperfect, is irreplaceable.

• 11 September and the Future of Sino-American Relations

  Aaron Friedberg is Professor of Politics and International Affairs and Director of the Research Program in International Security at Princeton University. He is currently the Henry A. Kissinger Scholar in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress in Washington DC.

  While there is certainly reason to hope that the events of 11 September will lead to an improvement in Sino-American relations, there are at least three substantial reasons to doubt that, in the end, relations will really improve. On closer inspection, the war on terrorism provides at best a very limited basis for US-PRC cooperation. Moreover, despite some superficial improvements in the diplomatic climate, none of the persistent, underlying sources of contention between the two powers has been significantly altered or alleviated by the current crisis. Finally, and most importantly, in ways that could not initially have been foreseen, the events of recent months may actually end up intensifying the ongoing Sino-American strategic rivalry. The forces impelling the United States and the PRC toward continuing suspicion and competition are powerful and deeply rooted in their very different domestiv political regimes and in their positions in the international system. These competitive tendencies will not be easily offset or oversome, even by acts that all Americans and most Chinese acknowledge as crimes against humanity.

• South-west Asia after the Taliban

  Mohammed Ayoob is University Distinguished Professor of International Relations at James Madison College, Michigan State University.

  Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf deserves American support if he can demonstrate continued determination to divert his country from an extremist trajectory. Yet, in the long run, it is India and (perhaps less obviously) Iran - preeminent states in South Asia and the Gulf and natural status quo powers - that stand out as logical American partners. Iran may look like an unlikely partner, especially after US President George W. Bush's hard-line classification of the country, in his 30 January 2002 State of the Union address, as part of an 'axis of evil'. Yet, the American decision to renounce hopes for rapprochement with Iran - if that is indeed what has been decided - is misguided. The US should not neglect the strategic logic of increasingly converging interests between Washington, New Delhi and Tehran.

• The Taliban Papers

  Tim Judah is a freelance journalist based in London. In October-November 2001 he covered the conflict in Afghanistan, including the fall of Kabul, for the New York Review of Books, The Economist and the Observer.

  Pakistan played a key role in creating the Taliban, which then became its very own Frankenstein's monster. In the run-up to 11 September, debates raged at the heart of its foreign-policy establishment as it became increasingly clear to Pakistani officials that the Taliban were out of control and that Pakistan's attempts to influence the fundamentalist regime were failing. These anxieties are revealed in a set of Pakistani Foreign Ministry documents, providing a picture of Pakistani-Taliban relations for much of the year 2000 and up to June 2001. The documents, which were obtained in Kabul following the collapse of the Taliban, also reveal splits within the Pakistani administration, with the Foreign Ministry complaining that the Ministry of the Interior was undermining its policy of trying to curb the Taliban by letting what it openly described as 'terrorists' transit across and find safe haven in Pakistan.

• The Orphaned Euro

  Giorgio La Malfa is Chairman of the Finance Committee of the Italian Parliament and President of Italy's Republican Party. His most recent book, L'Europa legata. I rischi dell'euro (Europe bound: the risks of the euro), appeared in March 2000.

  There is a growing consensus that something is amiss with the European Monetary Union (EMU), although there is no agreement as to what exactly the problem is. The explanation is to be found in the EMU's constitutional circumstances. A monetary union without a political union contains a built-in source of weakness. The fact that the European Central Bank has no effective counterpart in a European government creates a vacuum around it, which is felt by markets and affects the bank's ability to assert true leadership. This constitutional and political weakness is at the heart of the euro's problems; yet it has been systematically side-stepped in the long run-up to the Maastricht Treaty and its implementation. The EMU will remain structurally weak as long as this imbalance between monetary and political union persists, and could even become the trigger for a serious European and international crisis.

• No Substitute for Consensus

  David P. Calleo is Dean Acheson Professor and Director of European Studies at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at The Johns Hopkins University. His latest book is Rethinking Europe's Future (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).

• Asia's Continuing Crisis

  William Overholt is a Senior Fellow at Harvard University's Asia Centre. Previously he served over 16 years as Chief Economist and strategist for three major investment banks, based in Hong Kong and Singapore. He is the author of five books, including China: The Next Economic Superpower (London: Weldenfield & Nicholson, 1993).

  The hyper-growth economies of Cold War Asia were, to varying degrees, based on wartime mobilisation systems in which the government seized control of much of the capital flow and directed it into those industries that seemed to be the foundation of national power - steel, shipbuilding, cars, petrochemicals - and into those firms that seemed most loyal to the cause of national power. The common outcome was excessive government control over the use of capital. This provided initial strategic advantages and later vulnerabilities. Initially, governments were able to channel funds towards vital basic industries that were short of capital. But later, the same policies wasted capital on such a vast scale that whole sectors and whole banking systems risked collapse. The resulting regional crisis is crippling old leaders and opening opportunities for new ones. For the foreseeable future, China, a small and backward but decisively managed economy, is increasingly acknowledged within Asia as the region's leader - not loved, to some extent feared, but respected. Japan, with a huge and modern but mismanaged economy, has become the sick man of North-east Asia.

• Beijing's Oil Diplomacy

  Amy Myers Jaffe directs the energy research program at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University. She is co-editor of the book Energy in the Caspian Region: Present and Future (New York: Palgrave, 2002). Steven W. Lewis is Senior Researcher in Asian Politics and Economics at the Baker Institute, and a lecturer in Asian Studies at Rice University. His research is on decentralisation, deregulation and privatisation, with a recent publication, 'What Can I do for Shanghai? Selling Spiritual Civilization in Chinese Cities', in Stephanie Hemelryk Donal, et al (eds), Media in China: Consumption, Content and Crisis, (Richmond: Curzon, forthcoming spring 2002).

  China's quiet shift to net oil importer status in 1993 marked a forced departure from the Communist Party's three-decade experiment in self-sufficiency and opened the possibility that China could, some day, be as vulnerable as other industrial nations to unexpected events affecting global oil markets. Being a net oil-importer should, logically, bring China's interests closer to those of the oil-dependent West. In 1990, China abstained when the US mobilised an international coalition to drive Iraqi troops from Kuwait. A future crisis, after China has become a major importer, might elicit a more supportive stance. But the change to Chinese interests and orientations also poses challenges for the West: in effect, the industrialised oil-consuming countries of the US, Europe and North-east Asia must convince an ambitious, energy-hungry China that secure supply for all requires a cooperative foreign policy. So far, unfortunately, China is taking a different tack.

• Asia's Digital Challenge

  Yoichi Funabashi is a columnist & Chief Diplomatic Correspondent for the Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo, Japan).

  For much of the late twentieth century, the twenty-first was anticipated as the coming 'Asian Century'. Japan's economic woes and the broader financial crisis of 1997-98 put a dent in those expectations. The information revolution adds another complication; because of it, Asian economic development in this new century is likely to resemble a disorganised game of leapfrog. The information revolution makes 'leapfrogging' possible because it alters the conventional categories of 'developed', 'developing', and 'underdeveloped' nations. Rapid technological change can push yesterday's losers forward, and burden some more 'advanced' economies with the weight of yesterday's technological infrastructure. In social terms, a pernicious 'digital divide' is emerging. The significant growth in computer ownership and usage has been concentrated within certain income levels, educational backgrounds, demographic groups and geographical areas. This digital abyss is a daunting problem for India, China and Japan, despite their governments' continuing efforts to keep up with and exploit the opportunities offered by information technology.

• AIDS and International Security

  P. W. Singer is a Olin Post-Doctoral Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution.

  While the security threat of the AIDS epidemic is a commonly accepted assumption, it remains little understood. There is a growing and dangerous dynamic of interaction between the disease and warfare. AIDS threatens to weaken militaries, fragile state institutions and international peacekeeping, as well as creating demographic changes, all of which make war more likely. At the same time, the disease has a multiplier effect on conflicts' costs. War creates an environment in which the disease is not only more easily spread, but also in which the virus itself may morph and become even more dangerous. This mutual dynamic of a global disease, with violent political implications, strengthens the call for serious action.

• Clinton, Bush and Plan Colombia

  Russell Crandall is the MacArthur Assistant Professor of Political Science at Davidson College, North Carolina. He is the author of Driven by Drugs: United States Policy Toward Colombia (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, forthcoming 2002).

  The Colombian government and people are losing patience with a pease process that has produced few tangible results and a guerrilla group that does not seem inclined to play by the rules of war. Any moves by the next president toward more aggresive military actions against the FARC will be applauded in Washington. In the post-11 September era, Washington has little patience for the FARC's bad faith at the negotiating table, growing involvement drug trafficking and increasingly brutal rural and urban activities. Yet, before the Bush administration decides to make any major moves in Colombia, it would do well to first incorporate lessons learned from Bill Clinton's Colombia policies, especially the vaunted $1.3 billion Plan Colombia programme. If it is not careful, the Bush team could end up committing the same errors in the war on terrorism as the Clinton administration did in the war on drugs.