CIAO DATE: 11/03

Survival

 

 

Summer 2003 (Vol. 45 No. 2)

Articles

• The UN Security Council: Ineffective but Indispensable

  Mats Berdal

  In the run-up to war, neither key members of the UN Security Council nor senior UN officials did much to discourage the notion that the crisis over Iraq was presenting the Council with its 'moment of truth'. The crisis was shaped, aboce all, by the prism through which the United States views threats to its own and international security after 11 September 2001. Yet neither those threats, which are real and need to be taken seriously, not the stormy politics of Iraq at the Security Council in 2002 and 2003, should lead to the conclusion that the UN is destined to become irrelevant. That conclusion rests upon a basic misunderstanding of the UN's role in international peace and security. As the harsh realities of rebuilding Iraq become ever more apparent, as the long-term costs of the diplomatic debacle in New York in early 2003 filter through, and as the challenges posed by terrorism and the proliferation of WMD remain, interest-based calculations and principle both point to a return to the UN. This return would be based, hopefully, on a better recognition of the UN's strengths as well as its frequently deplored weaknesses.

• Law and the Use of Force After Iraq

  Adam Roberts

  Hard cases make notoriously bad law, and they also make a bad basis for asserting that there is no law. The US-led war against Iraq, and disagreements about it in the UN Security Council, do not mean that the twentieth-century attempts to subject the use of force to the rule of law have collapsed. In the Iraq crisis, the US and UK asserted a strong legal basis for their resort to force, namely, existing Security Council resolutions. More generally, both within the Security Council and beyond, a wide variety of grounds for intervention in states has been recognised in international practice. However, attempts to develop doctrines of pre-emption and humanitarian intervention have not commanded broad support, since most states will value the non-intervention norm. Disagreements between states on the legitimacy of certain uses of force remain serious and need to be addressed.

• Building the New Iraq: The Role of Intervening Forces

  Daniel L. Byman

  Occupying Iraq will be more difficult than conquering it. Intervening forces face a gamut of daunting tasks: ensuring order, ending Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction programmes, helping Iraqis build a power-sharing system, regorming Iraq's military and transforming the regional security environment. Even if all goes well, Iraq's many problems will take years to resolve. Coalition forces must prepare to keep a large (and expensive) troop presence in the country for many years. Success will require both the careful application of force and diplomacy. Most importantly, Iraqis must play a role to minimise charges of imperialism. Although the burden of occupation is heavy, shirking it will lead to disaster.

• New Imperatives for Israeli-Palestinian Peace

  Nomi Bar-Yaacov

  The best hope for Israeli-Palestinian peace lies in the 'Road Map', a peace plan put forward by the so-called Quartet, which is composed of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia. The Road Map calls for a commitment to a two-state solution, not only from the parties to the conflict but also from international actors. The key to the success or failure of the new plan lies in the degree of third-party involvement in advancing the implementation of the agreement and in monitoring and verifying it. In practical terms, the success of this endeavour will depend on constructive and bold US policy. US policy in forcing regime-change in Iraq was risky; a reversion now to risk-averse realism with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be fatal to the prospects of resolving it.

• The CIA as Middle East Peace Broker?

  Shlomo Shpiro

  Over the past 50 years, the CIA has acted as covert political facilitator in numerous Middle East policy initiatives. Working covertly and outside traditional diplomatic channels, it used its top-level contacts throughout the region to bring together Israelis and Arabs in key negotiations. Following the 1993 Oslo Accords, the CIA assisted and trained the nascent Palestinian Authority security services, in an attempt to create a viable Palestinian anti-terror force, a cornerstone of the Accords. The collapse of the Oslo process left the CIA as the only effective facilitator in the growing cycle of violence. Although it means risking its traditional intelligence-gathering function, the agency has a role to play in future Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation and in assisting PA reforms.

• An Eletive Partnership: Salvaging Transatlantic Relations

  James B. Steinberg

  The Iraq war clearly has had a sharply chilling effect on transatlantic publics' regard for one another. Whether the previous sense of solidarity can be restored in the future will depend on the policies that governments on both sides adopt in the crucial months to come. Developing a new, sustainable transatlantic relationship will require a series of deliberate decision on both sides of the Atlantic — a partnership of choice, not necessity. For the United States, this means avoiding the temptations, offered by out unprecendented stength, to go it alone in pursuit of narrowly defined national interests. For Europe, the new partnership will require a willingness to accept that the United States plays a uniquely valuable role as a leader in a world where power still matters, and that a commitment to a rule-nased international order does not obviate the need to act decisively against those who do not share that vision.

• The End of Atlanticism

  Ivo H. Daalder

  Atlanticism — in which American and European foreign policy centres around the transatlantic alliance — has ended. Other concerns, both global and local, and different means for addressing them have now come to the fore. Nothing in the new structure of relations preordains an end to the transatlantic cooperation and partnership. The future course of relations will be determined above all by America's policy towards Europe and the Atlantic Alliance. Wise policy can help forge a new, more enduring strategic partnership, through which the two sides of the Atlantic cooperate in meeting the many major challenges and opportunities of our evolving world together. But a policy that take Europe for granted, that routinely ignores or even belittles European concerns, may force Europe to conclude that the costs of continued alliance outweight its benefits.

• Bush, China and Human Rights

  Rosemary Foot

  Has Sino-American cooperation after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 resulted in a reduction in the Bush administration's attention to China's human-rights record? The US designated the 'East Turkestan Islamic Movement', operating from Xinjiang, as a terrorist movement, and is said to have overlooked stepped-up Chinese oppression in the province. Washington also failed to sponsor a condemnatory human-rights resolution at the UN in April 2003. However, the administration will find it difficult — for reasons rooted in politics, legislation and values — to downgrade the human-rights issue. Using rhetoric rather that material sanctions, the US continues to press for certain specific improvements. The US message to China is that, while they already hold some interests in common, it will take a sharing of values to cement the relationship.

• The New Great Game in Central Asia

  Rajan Menon

  Greater Central Asia — the region consisting of the five Central Asian states, plus Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Xinjiang, and Afghanistan — has been strategically transformed. American strategic interests in Central Asia, marginal before the 11 September terrorist attacks, have suddenly become substantial. To continue the campaign against terrorism, the United States retained the Central Asian bases it acquired to destroy the Taliban. Central Asia's authoritarian governments are determined to deepen American involvement — as a safeguard against militant Islam and Russian hegemony. Russia is understandably anxious about the deployment of American troops on its southern periphery. Newly ensconced in a turbulent region, the United States faces the perennial problem of the powerful: preventing engagement from culminating entrapment.

Book Reviews

• The Barbary Plague: the Black Death in Victorian San Francisco

  Marilyn Chase. New York: Random House, 2003. $25.95/£16.11. pp 276

  Elizabeth Prescott

• Islam and democracy: the failure of dialogue in Algeria

  Frédéric Volpi. London: Pluto Press, 2003. £14.99. 168 pp

  George Joffé

• Driven by drugs: US Policy toward Colombia

  Russell Crandall. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002. $19.95. 193 pp

  Linda Robinson

• Blood on the Doorstep: The Politics of Preventive Action

  Barnett R. Rubin. New York, The Century Foundation Press, 2002. $18.95. 256 pp

  David Chuter

• A Public Peace Process: Sustained Dialogue to Transform Racial and Ethnic Conflicts

  Harold H. Saunders. Basingstoke: Macmillan/Palgrave, 1999. £35.00. 328 pp

  Roland Paris

• The United States in the Asia-Pacific since 1945

  Roger Buckley. Cambridge University Press, 2002. £16.95. 258 pp

  Michael Yahuda

• The Chechen Wars. Will Russia Go the Way of the Soviet Union?

  Matthew Evangelista. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2002. $19.95/£14.50 (pbk). 244 pp

  Dmitri Trenin

• Cooperative Threat Reduction, Missile Defense, and the Nuclear Future

  Michael Krepon. New York and London: Palgrave, 2003. £35. 295 pp

  Christoph Bluth

• Humanitarian Intervention

  J.L. Holzgrefe and Robert O. Keohane (eds). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. £18.95. 350 pp

  John Mackinlay

• Being America: liberty, commerce and violence in an American world

  Jedediah Purdy. New York: Knopf, 2003. $24. 352 pp

  Parag Khanna