 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL
ARTICLE EXTRACTS: New Threats, New Rules Revising the Law of War Over the past few years, the United States and its European allies have drawn closer–much closer than the debate over Iraq would suggest–in their views on the need for military force in responding to new security threats. The French and the British have increased their military budgets and both countries are acquiring additional aircraft carriers to extend their military reach, much as Washington has long urged them to do. The Franco-German proposals to the European Convention speak of using forces under European Union control to take military action to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. And all 19 NATO allies are now formally committed to exploring the value of missile defenses in protecting the alliance’s forces and population centers. That is not to say that Europe and the United States think alike on issues of defense and security. Most Europeans disagree with Washington as to when diplomacy should end and bombs start falling. But the major European countries have become distinctly more hawkish, even if their governments chose not to advertise their thinking at a time when millions of Europeans were demonstrating against the war on Iraq. However, there is one issue where differences between the United States and Europe persist, namely on the legitimate use of force under existing international law. The resulting tension is not new. The United States has a unique sense of global responsibility, and it has always sought to retain considerable leeway for action within the international institutional and legal framework that it helped create following the Second World War. Europe, whose postwar success was built on institutionalizing relations between former enemies, fears few things more than the collapse of the complex web of laws and institutions that bind the European Union and a return to balance-of-power politics in Europe and beyond. With the new U.S. preemptive strike doctrine put forward by the Bush administration and Washington’s “take it or leave it” attitude toward the United Nations, more and more Europeans are asking if the United States still believes, as they do, that international laws and institutions make the world a more stable and predictable place. *Tomas Valasek is the director of the Center for Defense Information, Brussels. The Start of a Beautiful Friendship? The United States and India Last May, Indian commandos and American Special Forces took part in a joint military exercise, “Balance Iroquois 02-1,” in the city of Agra, the home of the famed Taj Mahal. This was the first such endeavor between the two militaries in four decades. A few months later, in September 2002, American and Indian troops participated in exercise “Geronimo Thrust 02” at Fort Richardson and Elemendorf Air Force Base in Alaska. Subsequently, the navies and air forces of the two countries conducted separate joint exercises, “Malabar” and “Cope India 02.” The first involved flying operations, antisubmarine warfare, and replenishment at sea. The second was an air transport exercise between the Indian and American air forces. As joint military exercises go, these were of limited strategic significance. Their importance lay in the political realm. Not since the aftermath of the military debacle of the Sino-Indian border war of 1962, when there was a fleeting moment of Indo-U.S. defense cooperation, had Indian and American troops taken part in a joint military exercise. The Indo-U.S. relationship, which throughout the years of the Cold War was often contentious and sometimes turbulent, now appears more balanced. The choices policymakers in New Delhi and Washington make on a number of bilateral and global issues in the coming months are likely to decide which way the relationship will tip. A robust Indo-U.S. relationship could help promote stability in South Asia and its deeply troubled environs. Washington and New Delhi both have an interest in combating terrorism, avoiding war between India and neighboring Pakistan, and resolving the festering Kashmir dispute–all of which are inextricably linked–and in future strategic cooperation against a potentially revanchist China. *Sumit Ganguly is a professor of Asian studies and government at the University of Texas at Austin. This fall, he will become director of the India Studies Program and the Rabindranath Tagore Professor of Indian Culture and Civilization at Indiana University, Bloomington. Regional Issues in the Reconstruction of Afghanistan For much of the modern era, Afghanistan might credibly be defined as a large body of rocky land surrounded by neighbors who export their own conflicts onto its territory. Several networks have linked Afghanistan to a wider arc of conflict, or a regional conflict formation, stretching from Moscow to Dubai. Networks of armed groups, often covertly aided by neighboring states, link the conflict within Afghanistan to violence in Kashmir, Chechnya, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Networks of narcotics traffickers collaborating with armed groups, link Afghan poppy fields to global markets via Pakistan, Iran, and Central Asia. Networks of traders, more benignly, seek access to buy and sell their goods, even when profit requires avoidance of customs regulations. Cross-border social ties among the region’s various ethnic and religious groups underpin all of these networks. The conflict that gripped Afghanistan over the past 25 years was much more than a local or national power struggle and must be seen in its regional context if the project of reconstructing the country is to succeed. Recent reports indicate that covert state support for armed groups is on the rise, undermining not only the new government in Kabul but peace in the region. Unless regional actors see that they have a stake in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, this picture is likely to become bleaker. Seen from a broader perspective, therefore, incorporating trade and energy issues and narcotics interdiction into a reconstruction strategy may lay the basis for regional cooperation rather than continued regional conflict. * Barnett R. Rubin is director of studies and a senior fellow and Andrea Armstrong is a research associate at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University. Nigeria: Bellwether of African Democracy Nigeria is a riddle. With its 125 million inhabitants, it is Africa’s most populous nation, and given its abundant human and natural resources, it seemed destined to become a regional colossus. It didn’t happen. Seen from abroad, indeed, few countries have become so famous for all the wrong reasons. Television viewers know Nigeria as the country where some 200 people died last November in riots protesting their country’s hosting a Miss World competition (the pageant moved to London). In news columns, Nigeria is known as the land ranked for three successive years as the world’s second most corrupt country by Transparency International, a German-based monitoring group. On the World Wide Web, Nigeria is notoriously associated with spam e-mails headed “Urgent Reply” or “Confidential,” promising riches beyond belief to those gullible enough to supply confidential banking information, a scam garnering an estimated $100 million annually from mostly elderly Americans. Viewed closely, the puzzle deepens. Despite oil revenues of $280 billion over three decades, Nigeria seems trapped in a poorhouse, with most of its people earning less than a dollar a day, according to the World Bank. Since independence in 1960, Nigeria has tried five constitutions under twelve leaders, most of them soldiers. And yet, there remains in Nigeria a deep and widespread commitment to democracy. Should democracy succeed there, it will dramati-cally improve chances for democracy elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. Like its continental neighbors, Nigeria currently grapples with all the perplexities of self-rule. Now in its fourth republic since winning independence from Britain in 1960, Nigeria is once again heading into multiparty elections at the local, state, and national level. Its April elections will be the first to be organized by civilian authorities since the Fourth Republic was established on May 29, 1999. But unlike its sub-Saharan neighbors, Nigeria is not your typical African country. Before the advent in 1994 of majority rule in South Africa under Nelson Mandela, Nigeria was unrivaled as the dominant regional power, with respectable credentials in its decolonization efforts in the 1970s, and then in peacekeeping operations in Sierra Leone and Liberia in the 1990s. Today, even with South Africa as a partner in continental affairs, Nigeria provides the more credible litmus of democracy’s future in sub-Saharan Africa. Not only does Nigeria have a longer history of acceptable involvement in African affairs, but its economic and social conditions are more representative of the deplorable situation in other African countries than those in South Africa. Indigenous black Africans have dominated Nigeria’s social, political, and economic affairs since independence. By contrast, despite the recent political dominance of black South Africans, their country’s social and economic sectors continue to be dominated by whites. Thus by strengthening its own fledgling democracy, Nigeria can take the first step to fortifying the same impulse elsewhere. Yet success in Nigeria this fourth time around hinges critically on how well the country and its political class address the familiar demons that have wrecked democracy three times previously. It was the failure of past civilian administrations to organize credible elections that provided the proximate trigger for the abolition of democracy by the Nigerian military in 1966 and 1983. *O. Carl Unegbu is a Nigerian-born American lawyer and journalist. REPORTAGE The Dragon Still Has Teeth: Every Sunday, a Catholic church just off Nanjing Road, Shanghai’s busiest thoroughfare, throbs with worshippers. Elderly men and women pack the front pews, straining to hear the prayers. Younger families, including some recent converts, gather near the back of the building, chatting about upcoming social events and fraternizing with the priests. By noon, the church becomes so crowded that its members spill out into the adjacent courtyard. The church scene seems to reflect a vibrant religious and social revival in China, which since the Communists took over had followed a policy of state atheism, destroyed thousands of places of worship, and banned virtually all group gatherings. In some respects, it is an accurate picture. China began to liberalize its economy in the early 1980s; since then, civil society–independent social groups, religious groups, and other organizations–which was moribund in Maos’s time, has flourished. Moreover, civil society appears to operate with fewer constraints than in the early 1990s, after the Tiananmen clampdown. The security services have become less willing to target openly religious believers, labor organizers, or anyone else Beijing perceives as a threat to its authority. Yet in many respects, the Shanghai church scene is misleading. What many Chinese–and many foreign observers of China–have not realized is that Beijing’s strategy for repressing civil society has become more subtle. Instead of publicly suppressing all religious organizations, political dissidents, or ethnic minorities, Beijing has begun playing groups off each other, sanctioning a few mainstream organizations while quietly but harshly repressing those that challenge state authority. Unfortunately, the media, nongovernmental organizations, and governments in the West and in the democratic parts of Asia appear unwilling to examine China’s backsliding on human rights. In fact, as China becomes an increasingly important market and a more powerful force in global organizations, they seem more and more willing to buy Beijing’s rosy portrayal of its human rights record. *Joshua Kurlantzick is foreign editor of The New Republic. He previously covered Asia for U.S. News & World Report and The Economist. ADVOCACY Women’s Rights and Security in Central Asia In the aftermath of September 11, the United States is once again making allies of countries that violate human rights–as it did during the Cold War–this time in the name of fighting terror. But in so doing, Washington ignores the crucial tie between human rights and U.S. security interests. As human rights advocates point out, countries that consistently violate human rights are frequently less stable and more of a threat to peace than countries where rights are protected. When citizens cannot express their opinions, when they experience arbitrary treatment at the hands of an unjust legal system, when they lack basic opportunities for political participation, opposition is more likely to erupt in violent fashion. Repression may appear on the surface to be an effective method of maintaining stability, but it is just as likely to promote instability. Since September 11, the five culturally Islamic former Soviet republics of Central Asia–Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan–have emerged as important partners in the struggle against terrorism, despite records of serious human rights abuses. Yet in setting aside concerns about human rights generally, the United States is jeopardizing the support of a key group that could aid its antiterrorism efforts in these countries: women. Women’s rights have not always been part of the larger human rights discourse. Human rights advocates long overlooked the fact that women’s needs can differ from and even collide with traditional concepts of human rights–as for example, where protecting religious freedom means condoning religious practices that involve subordination or mistreatment of women. This has begun to change, however, and women’s rights to education, employment, political participation, freedom from violence, and equal treatment under the law have been codified in human rights treaties. Yet while policymakers have occasionally recognized the link between stability and human rights generally, they have been slow to recognize the more specific relationship between women’s rights and a stable society. Washington needs to recognize that promoting women’s rights can further U.S. security interests and lay the groundwork for long-term resistance to terrorism. Central Asian women, in particular, have historical reasons to oppose religious extremism. Authoritarian Central Asian leaders, meanwhile, have so far tolerated women’s rights activities to a greater degree than demands for more general political and civil rights, perceiving women’s concerns as less threatening to their own power. Yet throughout Central Asia, poverty, political repression, and a resurgence of traditionalism are keeping women out of the fight against terrorism and even pushing them into the arms of fundamentalists. As women’s rights advocates who have worked for nongovernmental organizations implementing programs to aid women in Central Asia, we believe that it is essential for policymakers to recognize and capitalize on the role women’s rights can play in advancing democratization and promoting greater security. In the following discussion, we will focus on Uzbekistan, a key partner in Washington’s antiterrorism campaign, although our argument holds true for all the former Soviet Central Asian republics. *Belinda Cooper is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, and the coauthor of a report on domestic violence in Uzbekistan for a USAID-sponsored project (2000). Isabel Traugott, an attorney, was a gender specialist for the American Bar Association’s Central and Eastern European Law Initiative in Central Asia in 2000-01. RECONSIDERATIONS What the Poets Thought: Antiwar Sentiment in North Vietnam Hoang Cam is 82. His well-worn jacket and the black beret set jauntily over his wispy white hair afford little protection against the relentless, cold drizzle of a Hanoi winter. He walks slowly, with a cane. But Hoang Cam is not about to surrender to old age. Keenly aware that he is the last survivor of a band of poets and writers known as the “humanist literature movement,” which challenged Hanoi’s Communist orthodoxy in the 1950s and 1960s and were quickly suppressed, he is at work on his memoirs. It is a story all but unknown not only in the West but also among Vietnamese of younger generations, and it deserves a wider hearing if history is not to impose a one-dimensional, militaristic image over the remarkably cerebral, essentially humanistic society of North Vietnam. In Hoang Cam’s story, and those of countless intellectual contemporaries now dead, lie answers to some puzzling ques-tions about why so many great writers and thinkers in a country where literary and scholarly attainment ranked higher than anywhere in Southeast Asia did not openly protest as Hanoi’s Communist leaders squandered three generations of precious human capital on a succession of wars: against the French, the Americans, Cambodia, and, defensively, China. Now able to talk more freely about those times, veterans of war and repression–or their surviving families–recall long years of official isolation intended to abort any potential antiwar movement or political opposition before it could form. It may seem hard to imagine now, but long before satellite television and the Internet, even basic reporting from the front during the American war, or honest accounts of life in the south, could be, and were, routinely and easily suppressed in the north. There was no way to make contact with the “third force” of antiwar intellectuals and students in South Vietnam, short of chancing a letter routed through Paris, and probably censors. “Everybody had to write about the war with revolutionary optimism so that more people would send their sons,” said Vu Bao, an acclaimed novelist and short-story writer who served in the American war as a communications specialist. “When we went south, we saw a lot but kept it in our hearts. Nobody could really discuss the war then–though now everybody does, and they wonder how we could have sacrificed so many people. In the war, when we talked about how many died, we were told to write that they were wounded. But the night my own son went to the battlefield, I said to myself: ‘You have to write in a different way about this war.’ When your son goes to the field of death, you learn how precious human life can be. That changed my way of writing.” *Barbara Crossette, the author of several books on Asia, was the chief New York Times correspondent in Southeast Asia from 1984 to 1988. She recently spent a month in Vietnam, beginning in mid-December 2002. The Invention of Pakistan How the British Raj Sundered Think of an Islamic country of plenary importance to Washington whose military leaders are notorious for their determination to acquire nuclear weapons, a country that has flouted international sanctions and promoted violence across its frontiers. So prevalent is local anti-Americanism that its voters last October awarded provincial power to radicals vowing to expel U.S. forces from border areas that shelter al-Qaeda chieftains who had fled from Afghanistan. To be sure, the paragraph above does not express the whole truth about Pakistan, nor is it so intended. But it is inarguable that Pakistan’s disorders have infected much of its region, and that the human and political costs of Pakistan’s creation constitute the greatest failure in the unraveling of the British Empire. Pakistan is the archetypal imagined community, the offspring of precipitate partition; its frontiers are porous, its polyglot population exceptionally diverse. Its chief claim to unity is Islam, on which its authoritarian rulers have relied, inordinately. This has contributed to three wars and a nuclear confrontation with India–chiefly arising from the unresolved dispute over Kashmir–as well as the violent birth of Bangladesh in 1971. A melancholy forgotten casualty has been the Red Shirts, a nonviolent, democratic, and secular liberation movement that once dominated the Pashtun areas on Pakistan’s North-West Frontier. It was here that the zealous new members of the provincial assembly paused to pray last October for Mir Aimal Kasi, the Pakistani who had just been executed in America for killing two CIA employees in 1993 at the agency’s main entrance in Langley, Virginia. Where did it all begin? My own sense is that it originated in a misbegotten faith in partition. Outwardly, partition seems a pragmatic means of splitting the difference, thereby honoring the principle of self-determination and separating antagonistic peoples. Yet on closer inquiry, with rare exceptions, the postcolonial and post-Communist division of countries into separate states has uprooted millions of people, fomented internecine wars, degraded the citizenship of trapped minorities and perpetuated ancient grievances, closing both minds and frontiers. Give or take a little, this has been true of Pakistan, Kashmir, Ireland, Palestine and Cyprus, as well most recently of former Yugoslavia. *Adapted from The Dust of Empire, by Karl E. Meyer (A Century Foundation Book). Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by arrangement with PublicAffairs, New York. All rights reserved. Karl E. Meyer is editor of World Policy Journal. BOOKS The Lion and the Lamb Realism and Liberalism Reconsidered
These two books, each a capstone in the author’s scholarly career, form a natural counterpoint to one another. Each claims fidelity to one of the two opposing visions–of realism and of liberalism–that dominate the contemporary study of international politics in American universities. They stand, therefore, in ripe philosophical antagonism. Both are preoccupied with the lessons to be learned from the past two centuries, with Mandelbaum insisting on the epochal significance associated with two great revolutions–the French and the Industrial–that have profoundly shaped the modern world, and Mearsheimer focusing on the history of warfare and great power competition since 1792. Though focused mainly on the past, both insist that their respective eschatologies tell us vital things about the world to come. One would think, on first inspection, that these two scholars were easily gauged. Mearsheimer, of the University of Chicago, is the blood-and-iron man, approvingly quoting Bismarck on the need to keep Germany’s boot on the Poles forever, indecorously pointing to various acts of aggression in the past 200 years that bear out his thesis that states are committed to expansion and to the maximization of their power. Mandelbaum, of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, on the other hand, is of the peace, prosperity, and disarmament school, propounding a liberal theory of history that emphasizes the progressive marginalization of the role of force in human affairs. Mandelbaum thinks it is the ghost of Woodrow Wilson, not the defeated “offensive realists” of the past two centuries, whose ideas are now in the saddle and ride mankind. Thus drawn, the contrast between liberalism and realism will seem familiar, redolent perhaps of the disputes between Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, Jefferson and Hamilton, Locke and Hobbes, or Grotius and Machiavelli. The oddity is this: in the Iraq debate, the blood-and-iron man, Mearsheimer, is of the Peace Party; and the peace, prosperity, and disarmament man, Mandelbaum, is of the War Party. Over the past months, Mearsheimer has spoken eloquently and persuasively against the war on Iraq, upholding the continuing validity of deterrence and condemning as unnecessary and dangerous the Bush administration’s new doctrine of preventive war (misnamed the “strategy of preemption”). As if in sublime concordance with the “peace, love, and dope” school that he likes to make fun of in his lectures, he has also recommended the doing of good works in the Arab world so as to diminish the hatred of the masses against us. Mandelbaum, by contrast, applauds the new liberal order that neoconservative hawks seek to implant in the Middle East. In order, he says, to “defend, maintain, and expand peace, democracy and free markets,” the central purpose of American power in the new millennium, the United States must “strengthen peaceful foreign policies, democratic politics, and free markets where they are not securely rooted–above all, in Russia and China–and install them where they do not exist at all, notably in the Arab world.” It is an interesting question, indeed something of a riddle, whether our two authors are contradicting themselves–whether Mandelbaum ought not, on his own liberal premises, harshly condemn the exercise of imperialism, and whether Mearsheimer, if he were really true to “offensive realism,” should not welcome the exploitation and deepening of America’s hegemonic position that would ensue from a successful war with Iraq. Are they or aren’t they? *David C. Hendrickson is professor of political science at Colorado College. His Peace Pact: The Lost World of the American Founding has just been published by the University Press of Kansas.
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