Winning the peace
9-Nov-01
Charles Secrett writes:
Remember Clausewitz: ‘war has an inherent tendency to get out of control’. Bombing civilians will not win the war against terrorism. It will kick-start a spiral of revenge, and escalation. Any military action must follow the principles for a just war.
This means a precise and proportionate response to the original attack, following rules of engagement laid down in international law, and bringing those responsible before an international tribunal for justice.
Our main task should be to win the peace.
The first priority is to ensure sufficient aid reaches the freezing millions huddled across the North-west Frontier.
Second, the UK and other powers should resolve the inequalities of resource use, wealth and authority that divide Muslim and non-Muslim nations. The antidote to the religious poisons seeping through can only be found by the faithful, not outsiders. But outsiders can resolve underlying secular tensions, because they help cause them. Entrenched poverty, unfair trade and the geo-politics of oil have bred angry, suppressed communities throughout Muslim regions. Making good such injustices is the stuff of sustainable development and responsible, moral engagement.
Third we need to establish a resilient world order – see my contribution to ‘How should we feel about globalisation now?’
Charles Secrett is UK Director of Friends of the Earth
The Real War
12-Nov-01
Varad Pande writes:
I will try to address my views on this issue in two parts. First, is the ‘end’ to be achieved just? Second, are the ‘means’ just?
As far as the end is concerned – fighting terrorism, or the pursuit of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity – there is little disagreement. The problem arises in distinguishing terrorism from legitimate struggles for justice and human rights. So Israel condemns Palestinian extremists as terrorists while a sizeable section of the Muslim world considers them as jehadis (holy warriors). And Pakistan supports the separatist movement in Kashmir, calling it a legitimate struggle for self-determination, while India fights what it believes to be state-sponsored terrorism.
What about the means? Is bombing Afghanistan with the consequent collateral damage just? At the risk of inviting the chagrin of the ever-growing Anti-War Lobby (AWL), I shall argue – with four points - that the means being used are indeed just.
First, it is held that the war is unjust because the United States has double standards. This may well be a fair assessment of American policy. But just because the United States has covertly supported terrorism in the past, that does not take away its right to fight terrorism today. History cannot be used as a tool to condemn just actions of the present.
Second, it is said that the war is unjust because it is punishing the wrong people – innocent powerless civilians of an impoverished nation. True again. But civilian suffering has been endured in every war in modern history. If anything, there is a conscious effort in this war to minimize its civilian human impact. Moreover, the present war is necessary for the sake of the very civilians of Afghanistan who continue to suffer in silence under an undemocratic and unjust regime.
Third, it is argued that the war will further fuel anti-America sentiments in the already enraged Muslim world. Rather, it is an argument in favour of taking additional measures which would give credible signals that the US and its allies are not against the Muslims of the world, including more balance on the Arab-Israel conflict.
Fourth, the AWL say that the present war, merely tackles the symptoms of terrorism. Once again, I consider this an argument in favour of a long-term strategy to fight terrorism in addition to the present campaign in Afghanistan. This strategy must include measures to address the legitimate grievances of the underprivileged sections of humankind and fairer sharing the global fruits of prosperity. Multilateral bodies such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization must not be used as instruments to propagate western values or corrupting elites. They should be facilitators of a participatory, egalitarian and sustainable world order. This is the real war we all have to face.
Varad Pande is an economics graduate from Cambridge, UK and Delhi, India
Preventing global mob rule
26-Sep-01
Simon Burall writes:
There is only one legitimate global institution which can formulate a response to a global crime of this nature; the United Nations. This organisation has been doing much to promote dialogue between the different nations and to come to common agreement about ways forwards.
Almost immediately after the attack, the Security Council adopted resolution expressing the Council's readiness to take all necessary steps to respond to the attacks. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan released a statement condemning the attack, as did the General Assembly. A General Assembly resolution passed at the same time gives official voice to the world community’s response. All condemn the attack in the strongest possible language and pledge support for the international effort to track down and bring the perpetrators to justice. It is right that statements of international solidarity should be made in this global body as it is the voice of the UN which will be heard by countries finding it hard to support the action which is necessary.
The immediate responses by the General Assembly and Security Council follow important resolutions agreed in previous years. In particular, the Security Council agreed an important resolution in October 1999 in the fight against terrorism. This resolution refers to the 1994 General Assembly Declaration on Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism. In addition to these globally agreed statements on the solutions to international terrorism there are two important internationally agreed conventions.
The International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombingsobliges all signatory states to extradite, or try, any person who is suspected of bombing a third party state if adequate evidence is available. The International Convention on the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorismprovides a legal method of prosecuting those responsible for raising funds for terrorist activities even if they are not present in the country where the attack is planned or has been carried out.
The media, in the UK certainly, is ignoring the role that the UN is playing in allowing the key players to talk to each other and find common agreement. By ignoring the role that the UN is playing, and could play in the future, it is deceiving the world that the military option is the only answer for justice and destroying terrorism.
The UN is the only truly legitimate international body; we must place it at the centre of any solutions we formulate to the crisis if we are to ensure that international law is adhered to and global mob rule does not prevail
Using the International Court of Justice
26-Sep-01
Steve Crossan writes:
Found out some more stuff which may be of interest. In particular - does anyone have a background in international law who knows more about this kind of stuff and can advise where this is naive/wrong/stupid?
As I said in a previous post, only the UN or UN agencies can ask the ICJ for an advisory opinion. But there's an interesting precedent. In 1994 the World Health Organisation asked the ICJ for an opinion on the question 'Is the threat or use of nuclear weapons justified in any circumstances'? The ICJ took 4 years to reach a split decision which was carried by the casting vote and ruled that it was not. Pretty political stuff. So there is at least one agency that has a history of acting in this way.
I've been trying to track down the email addresses of the executive board of the WHO. So far I've found 10 of the 32, including the director general, Gro Harlem Brundland. Interestingly, the current make up of the board has strong representation from academia and from the Arab world. What I don't know is whether there are any procedures for the ICJ to act more quickly than over 4 years - i.e. to make an emergency decision.
I also don't know whether it has any competence to rule over states such as afghanistan that are outside the united nations. Does international law even apply in these territories? Or is it the case that, legally, you can do what you want? In which case this whole approach is wrong and we should be concentrating on the moral and political arenas (as others are).
Steve Crossan is a computer developer and works for Steve runtime-collective.com
States who support anti-Western feeling put themselves in the firing line
26-Sep-01
Peter Presland writes:
I believe that this is likely to become the defining event of the 21st century.
The time for western judicial procedures and standards being used to combat terrorist threats is definitively at an end.
The anti-western bile that pours from the media of certain middle-eastern countries is at the root of the problem. Western populations have become accustomed to applying their own liberal standards to the judgement of countries whose own root motivation is the destruction of those standards and the societies that nurture them. Such behaviour is akin to that of a rabbit fawning before a stoat - thoroughly self-defeating. Enough is enough.
The States who permit and encourage this bile, and who harbour and give succour to anti-western terrorist organisations must be left in no doubt that, in so doing, they put themselves firmly in the firing line. They must change their world view or be treated as though they themselves were the terrorists.
The Arab world has a deeply entrenched and well-understood saying which is at the heart of their civic and governmental relationships: “The friend of my enemy is my enemy”. It is time for the West to announce their whole-hearted adoption of this principle.
Military action would be counter-productive
26-Sep-01
Paul Rogers writes:
1. The group responsible has engaged in detailed planning over many months and has substantial numbers of supporters with total dedication to its aims.
2. The group should be assumed to be operating in the context of a long-term strategy, and it should be assumed to have the near-term capability for further attacks, either using hi-jacking or some other method(s) with equivalent or greater effect.
3. The aims of the attack were to have an immediate and lasting effect on US financial military and political centres, and deliberately to incite a massive US military response.
4. The group will have prepared for the latter and will have dispersed its assets and key personnel. From its perspective, the most desirable US response would be widespread military action against training, logistical and other anti-US paramilitary facilities in several countries, together with direct attacks against the Kabul regime and possibly Iraq.
5. If the US takes any such action it will be precisely what the group wants - indeed the stronger the action the better. In its view, such action will serve to:
a) weaken the strong pro-US international coalition,
b) weaken the position of the more moderate elements of the Kabul
regime and,
c) above all, enable the group to recruit more support.
6. The group should also be expected to respond to such action with further paramilitary attacks in the US or against trans-national US interests or its allies. It should be anticipated that such a response would be at least as devastating as the recent attacks. It is less likely to stage immediate attacks in the absence of such a major US military response, as these would further isolate it.
7. Thus, vigorous military action by the US, on its own or in coalition, will be counter-productive, whatever the intense and understandable domestic pressures for such action.
8. Given the extent of the devastation and human suffering, support for the United States among its allies is far-reaching, and extends to a remarkable range of states.
9. The immediate response should be to:
a) develop, extend and cement this coalition,
b) base all actions on the rule of law,
c) put every effort into bringing the perpetrators to justice.
10. The longer-term response should be to:
a) greatly improve intelligence and co-operation,
b) substantially strengthen international anti-terrorism agreements,
c) analyse, understand and then seek to reduce the bitter and deep-
seated antagonism to the United States in South West Asia and the
Middle East from which these actions and groups have arisen.
11. The group responsible welcomes and seeks military confrontation. It is more fearful of being brought to trial, a process that is likely to weaken it, both in the near and long term, far more than direct military action.
Paul Rogers is Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University and is openDemocracy’s International Security Editor. A consultant to the Oxford Research Group. The second edition of his book Losing Control has just been published by Pluto Press.
We need a better understanding of terrorist groups
26-Sep-01
Lloyd J Dumas writes:
On Tuesday, terrorists finally succeeded in doing what they had tried and failed to do before - bring down the twin towers of New York City's World Trade Center. The same man who was convicted of masterminding the 1993 Trade Center bombing also was convicted of a failed 1995 plot to hijack and destroy a dozen American airliners in the same day.
This time, the terrorists managed to knit pieces of both those plots together to devastating effect. To put the magnitude of this week's tragedy into sharp relief, State Department data show that more than 14,000 international terrorist incidents occurred from 1968 to 2000. In all of those incidents throughout the world, fewer than 10,000 people died.
We have paid an awful price. What lessons are we to learn? For one, like it or not, the fact is that all the billions of dollars we have poured into high-tech weaponry - B-2 bombers, nuclear missile submarines and F-22s - didn't and can't prevent or defend us against a devastating terrorist attack. At the very least, we must pull our heads out of the Cold War and face the changed character of the real threats to our physical security.
National missile defense, too, has very little to offer us. No ‘rogue state’ that wishes to cause us terrible pain will launch one or two long-range missiles against us. Long-range missiles are too expensive, too complex and, in the hands of unsophisticated states, too likely to fail. They also are far too easy to trace to their point of launch. We saw on Tuesday how vulnerable we are to much simpler, cheaper and more effective means of attack. And how much more difficult it is to determine who is responsible.
Our own technology has made us more vulnerable. The primary weapons used to cause such horrifying damage in Tuesday's attacks were our own high-tech jumbo jets, loaded with fuel. Had the terrorists decided to crash one of those jets into a nuclear power plant, there is a very good chance we now would have an American Chernobyl on our hands. The only way to fight terrorism effectively is with a combination of improved intelligence, greater international cooperation and a far better understanding of the character of terrorist groups. We perhaps have become too reliant on advanced electronic technologies to intercept messages and break through encryption schemes.
It may be time to pay more attention to low-tech, on-the-ground means of information gathering, such as using people to infiltrate groups that we have reason to believe are engaged in terrorist activity.
All terrorist groups use the same reprehensible tactics - killing and injuring innocent people to capture the public's attention and to spread fear and alarm. That is what makes them terrorists. But not all terrorist groups are equally likely to commit acts of mass murder on the scale we have just experienced.
For example, groups with well-defined, rational and limited political goals - goals such as political independence for their people - are likely to limit the violence they commit. If they overdo it, they will undercut any chance they have of winning enough public support to achieve their objectives.
Groups with vague ideological goals, driven by motives that aren't rational - such as ancient traditional hatreds and violence-prone doomsday religion - are much more dangerous. For them, revenge for past injury or the desire to hasten Armageddon make violence on a massive scale not only thinkable but even attractive. Such groups require very close scrutiny.
In all of this, there are two things that we always must keep in mind. Lashing out blindly with our military might, because we are angry and afraid, risks killing more innocent people and accomplishing nothing. And allowing any significant compromise of our civil liberties, because of our fear and need for security, will undermine everything this country stands for and will hand the terrorists of the world a greater victory than they ever could dream of achieving on their own.
Lloyd J Dumas is a Professor of political economy, Texas University.
Base all actions on the rule of law
26-Sep-01
Dr Scilla Elworthy writes:
The best immediate service the British government could render to the U.S would be to help extend a supportive coalition worldwide to bring the perpetrators of the attacks to justice, basing all actions on the rule of law. Bin Laden is reported to have made extensive efforts to obtain fissile materials, so there should be no question of granting a licence to the Mixed Oxide Plant at Sellafield. The spread of plutonium in the form of MOX fuel increases the risk of nuclear terrorism to an unacceptable extent.
As a longer term measure, the Prime Minister could persuade Mr Bush that treaties, agreements and other instruments of multilateral co-operation are a more productive way of dealing with violence than the unilateral path the Bush administration had been following. The US now desperately needs its friends and allies; undermining the Kyoto treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the International Criminal Court is not the way forward.
Breaking the Cycle of Violence diagram pixel
Dr Scilla Elworthy is the Director of the Oxford Research Group
