New Website by Anthony FEnton Options

[Emersberger]

First posts dealing with "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P)

[1] http://www.webofdemocracy.org/research/a_r...ut_r2p_fin.html

[2] http://www.webofdemocracy.org/research/the_r2p_lobby.html

[3] http://www.webofdemocracy.org/research/fou...p_annotate.html

[Emersberger]

The Economist [interspersed in red with info culled from http://www.webofdemocracy.org/research/a_r...ut_r2p_fin.html]

July 25, 2009
U.S. Edition

An idea whose time has come—and gone?;
Responsibility to protect

SECTION: INTERNATIONAL

LENGTH: 1361 words

DATELINE: New York


An idealistic effort to establish a new humanitarian principle is coming under attack at the United Nations.

[Right off the bat, the Economist assumes proponents of R2P must be idealists. Must R2P opponents be cynics?.]

GARETH EVANS, a former Australian foreign minister and roving global troubleshooter, makes a bold but passionate claim on behalf of a three-word expression which (in quite large part thanks to his efforts) now belongs to the language of diplomacy: the "responsibility to protect". In a recent book, he says there are "not many ideas that have the potential to matter more for good, not only in theory but in practice."

[ Is R2P being championed, as the Economist suggests, by lonely western idealists like Evans against huge odds?

Anthony Fenton says something quite different

"Since at least 2000, the R2P lobby and its Western donors have spent millions of dollars building a global advocacy network that has attempted to sway public opinion while trying to lay the groundwork for the 'operationalization' of this hotly contested 'norm' of 'humanitarian intervention' ..."

Details about the lobby, that substanciate Fenton's claims, are here

http://www.webofdemocracy.org/research/the_r2p_lobby.html ]


Like many people who labour to ensure that mass murder will never recur, he links his personal commitment to an early formative event: in his case, a visit to Cambodia on the eve of the massacres in which up to a quarter of the population died. For others, the spur was the genocide in Rwanda, pictured above; for others still, the killing of Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica in Bosnia.



[Many R2P proponents like to "agonize in public" (as the Economist puts it below) about Rwanda, but as Miguel d'Escoto Brockman pointed out at the UN

""Here, the unfortunate reality is that the absence of the doctrine was not what prevented the international community from acting in Rwanda. We could have acted, and our actions would have been fully lawful and in compliance with the charter, but we chose not to act... Do we have the capacity to enforce accountability upon those who might abuse the right that R2P would give nation-states to resort to the use of force against other states. The capacity to review and hold acocuntable those who violate international law or abuse their legal rights is fundamental to any functioning system."

This argument , like many others, is simply ignored by the Economist. ]

Whatever their motive, people of that cast of mind took heart from the moment in 2005 when the biggest-ever gathering of world leaders accepted the principle that they have a general "responsibility to protect" human beings from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity. In a delicate formula which Mr Evans worked hard to craft, it was agreed that this concept, now known as R2P, referred mainly to the responsibility of states for their own people. Only in certain extreme circumstances, when states could not or would not protect their own citizens, or were actively harming them, might others step in. The concept was carefully modified so as to avoid giving prickly sovereign states the idea that they were about to be invaded at will by moralising outsiders.

But to the dismay of Mr Evans and his friends, a coalition of governments and other sceptics now seems bent on unravelling all their delicate work. These naysayers have been busily sharpening their knives ahead of a debate at the General Assembly which was due to start on July 23rd.

The apparent campaign to sabotage R2P is taking place in defiance of Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, who earlier this year drew up a report that presents the concept in the most cautious and reassuring of tones. As he argued, there were several benign and uncontroversial ways in which R2P could be made more real. For example, by helping decent states protect their people; or by having an effective early-warning system to trigger constructive action when things start to go wrong (or in plainer terms, when states start to collapse). He says action, military or otherwise, by external powers is a last resort.

Such assurances have failed to convince critics of R2P, who are adamant that the whole idea is just a cover to legitimise armed interference by rich Western powers in the affairs of poor countries. One person who takes that view is Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, a Nicaraguan diplomat (and Sandinista priest-politician), who is now president of the General Assembly.

[The Economist did not even attempt to paraphrase another key argument that Brockman made

"We Nicaraguans have our own deeply ambiguois experience in this regard. When we challenged the paramilitary actions organized and founded and directed by the United States against Nicaragua in the World Court in the mid-1980's the Court surprised many when it ruled in Nicaragua's favor. But the real test came with the enforcability. Nearly two and a half decades after the judgement was rendered the actions that were judged to be illegal were never stopped. And not a penny of compensation was ever paid as had been ordered by the court. It would be appropriate to insist that nations meet their obligations under international law before giving them the opportunity to ignore or violate new legal obligations. For all these reasons I wonder whether we are ready for R2P."]



In a calculated snub to the idealists [again with that word]who tried to make the R2P idea nuanced and hence palatable, he says a more accurate name for the concept would be the "right to intervene" or R2I. Quite a number of countries might be persuaded to support a resolution diluting the commitment to R2P that was made by over 150 states at the UN summit in 2005. Possible backers include large and middle-sized powers of various ideological stripes—including India, Pakistan, Cuba, Sudan, Venezuela and Egypt. Some of these may try to induce smaller states in their neighbourhood to follow their sceptical line.

Supporters of R2P are complaining of a "surprise attack". They say Mr d'Escoto brought the debate forward by several weeks—to a snoozy period in late July. Conveniently enough, Mr Ban will not be around. On July 21st, before he left New York, Mr Ban made a short plea in R2P's defence, urging states to "resist those who try to change the subject or turn our common effort to curb the worst atrocities in human history into a struggle over ideology, geography or economics."


[Debates that aren't controlled by the R2P lobby are labelled "sabotage" and "attack"]

Meanwhile Mr d'Escoto scheduled an eve-of-debate discussion by a four-member panel in which Mr Evans was the only supporter of R2P—pitted against three sceptics, including Noam Chomsky, a linguist and veteran critic of American foreign policy. Ed Luck, who is Mr Ban's adviser on R2P, was allowed to make a statement, but only the panel members could take questions from member states.

[It is interesting to see a corporate media outlet like the Economist complaining about unfair debate at the UN (even though most will not have unfiltered access to that debate). Is the Economist attempting to balance things out here by burying the arguments that Chomsky made? Notice that nothing Chomsky said is quoted or even paraphrased.]

Rhetorically at least, opponents of R2P may be able to bolster their case by linking the concept with the more controversial notion of "humanitarian intervention"—which was used, in part at least, to justify the Anglo-American assault on Saddam Hussein's Iraq, along with the more formal argument based on the regime's alleged possession of illegal weapons.

Russia tried to turn the West's logic on its head when it claimed that its war in Georgia last August was an exercise of the "responsibility to protect" people against atrocities, in this case the residents of two breakaway regions of Georgia.

In fact, however tainted it may be, R2P is certainly not—to judge by a careful reading of its history—a mere ploy by rich and powerful countries to poke their noses into the affairs of small nations. Its origins are somewhat more interesting.

One of the first international bodies to endorse the concept, or a version of it, was the African Union, which emerged from the discredited Organisation of African Unity. The AU's Constitutive Act included a provision for "the right of the Union to intervene in a member state pursuant to a decision of the [AU] assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity." It cited a new principle of "non-indifference" to large-scale crimes.



As for the African UNion, it also voted for an investigation of the circumstances surrounding the US backed coup in Haiti in 2004. That idea went nowhere for obvious reasons. As Anthony Fenton said

"Simply put, and as this website is (partly) devoted to monitoring and disclosing, R2P could not have existed without the diplomatic maneuvering, significant funding, and power of the West beginning in the mid-1990's, irrespective of its later adoption by some non-Western countries and NGOs. "]

One of R2P's keenest sponsors was Kofi Annan, the Ghanaian who preceded Mr Ban as secretary-general. Mr Annan has agonised in public about the UN's failure in Rwanda, when he was head of un peacekeeping, and has argued that his success as a peace-broker in Kenya last year owed something to the existence of R2P as a moral instrument.


Meanwhile, America, far from dreaming up R2P as a crafty way of justifying imperialist adventures, was initially rather sceptical. Under the Bush administration, both the Pentagon and the State Department were intensely wary of signing up to anything that might bind them to take draconian action in the name of humanity.

[ The Bush admin was unusually brazen in flouting international law and even scorning its allies. That the Bush Admin only "initially" opposed R2p (by the Economist's own account) is even more reason to be weary of it.]

Indeed, R2P was a part of a much broader 2005 reform of the United Nations that George Bush first sought to weaken, then only reluctantly accepted. And to this day, there are voices on America's political right that remain profoundly sceptical about the idea of costly pledges to wage wars in the name of protecting people from inhumanity.

Barack Obama's administration, with its internationalist instincts, is clearly a lot more comfortable with notions like R2P. The President, during the Group of Eight summit in Italy in July, made some supportive noises; and his UN ambassador, Susan Rice, made a more impassioned speech in defence of R2P last month, soon after visiting Rwanda.

But if R2P is no Western plot, it may not be the perfect way to ward off dreadful acts of mass murder either. Perhaps its greatest drawback is also one of its touted merits: that it is so carefully crafted to conform with the current UN charter, which makes the Security Council the most important arbiter of war and peace.

["Mass murder" is already against international law. Brockman addressed a key question the Economist evaded.

"Will the doctrine...more likely enhance or undermine respect for international law? To the extent that the principle is applied selectively in cases where public opinion in [Permanent] 5 member states support intervention as in Darfur and not where it is opposed, as in Gaza, it will undermine law."


I would only add that is isn't even "pubic opinion" in the permanent member states that is decisive, but elite opinion.]


All attempts to reform the membership of the council, which gives America, Russia, China, France and Britain the privilege of permanent seats and vetoes, have failed. So critics of R2P may well use the argument that five victors of the second world war should not have the crucial say as to when coercion may be used.

[Until that reform happens why risk giving them more arbitrary power? ]

An angry, inconclusive General Assembly debate will not doom R2P. But it risks reinforcing the rift between an assembly that is perceived as representing poor, small and weak countries, and a council on which powerful, or once-powerful, countries have a disproportionate say.

[The preception is quite accurate.]

And that would be seen in many quarters as sad and ironic, because, in the words of one R2P supporter, it is the "South that needs R2P the most."

[If R2P offered nothing to the Western powers they wouldn't be pushing it any more than they push the AU's idea about investiigating the 2004 coup in Haiti. Do you really want to end bloodbaths? Start enforcing the laws that already exist.

Belgian theoretical physicist and philosopher, Jean Bricmont, also present at the UN debate, stated

"The UN Charter is very well-written yet its still violated by the powerful. And of course...whatever norms are introduced are going to be violated by the powerful because there's no political effort to limit the powerful."]



******

A Real Debate about R2P, Finally
ResearchThe R2P Lobby »

Chalk one up for the anti-'humanitarian-imperialists.'




Tuesday, July 23, 2009 may go down as an epic day in history. Since its contested adoption at the UN's World summit in 2005, the R2P doctrine's well-funded lobbyists have by and large insulated themselves from scrutiny and have generally evaded debates with their detractors. At last, the tables were turned, as the UN General Assembly got to hear a real debate about the real danger's that the doctrine's implementation poses. The world's leading R2P advocate, Gareth Evans, was pitted against one of the world's leading anti-imperialist intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, along with one of Africa's greatest post-colonial authors, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Belgian theoretical physicist and philosopher, Jean Bricmont.




Since at least 2000, the R2P lobby and its Western donors have spent millions of dollars building a global advocacy network that has attempted to sway public opinion while trying to lay the groundwork for the 'operationalization' of this hotly contested 'norm' of 'humanitarian intervention' that many, especially those most familiar with the history of colonialism and neo-colonialism, have good reason to be skeptical of.




Thanks in large part to the support of powerful 'middle power' state's such as Canada, and the support of private U.S.-based liberal philanthropic organizations and think tanks, R2P was able to move "from policy journal to policymaking over the space of a few years."




Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was among the most vocal critics of R2P when it was foisted on the UN General Assembly and adopted (without a vote) in the Summit Outcome Document of September 15, 2005.




Some point out that the R2P's implementation would subvert the inviolability of state sovereignty clause in the UN Charter. But Chomsky, Bricmont, and Ngugi, did not defend sovereignty "in the abstract." Rather, as Bricmont said, expressing one of the fundamental reasons to be wary of R2P, "The UN Charter is very well-written yet its still violated by the powerful. And of course...whatever norms are introduced are going to be violated by the powerful because there's no political effort to limit the powerful."




During the 2006 World Summit, with war raging and bodies piling up in the Middle East and elsewhere, President Chavez famously held up a copy of Noam Chomsky's book, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance; Chavez referred to Chomsky as "one of the most prestigious American and world intellectuals," as he appealed for a renunciation of U.S.-led Empire, "the greatest threat looming over our planet."





Fast-forward nearly three years to July 23rd, 2009. At the invitation of UN General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, Chomsky appears with Bricmont (author of Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War), and Ngugi, in front of the UN General Assembly for an informal debate on R2P. Pitted against Evans, a former Australian Foreign Minister and longtime head of the 'pro-interventionist' International Crisis Group, a three-hour dialogue with the General Assembly ensued, followed by a one-hour press conference featuring the panelists.




In his short preamble to the dialogue, d'Escoto Brockmann laid out some 'benchmark questions' regarding the matter of R2P's implementation:




1) "do the rules apply in principle and is it likely that they will be applied in practice equally to all nation-states, or in the nature of things is it more likely that the principle would be applied only by the strong against the weak."




Commenting, d'Escoto Brockmann said "no system of justice can be legitimate that by design allows principles of justice to be applied differentially."




2) "Will the doctrine...more likely enhance or undermine respect for international law? To the extent that the principle is applied selectively in cases where public opinion in [Permanent] 5 member states support intervention as in Darfur and not where it is opposed, as in Gaza, it will undermine law."




He added:





"Given the extent to which some great powers have recently avoided the strictures of the charter in resorting to the use of force and have gone out of their way to denigrate international law as being an impediment to both national policy and justice there is little reason to doubt that endorsement of R2P by the general assembly will generate new coalitions of the willing, crusades such as the intervention in Iraq led by self-appointed saviors who arrogated to themselves the right to intervene with impunity in the name of overcoming nation-state impunity."




3) " Is the doctrine of R2P necessary and, conversely, does it guarantee that states will intervene to prevent another Rwanda?"




"Here, the unfortunate reality is that the absence of the doctrine was not what prevented the international community from acting in Rwanda. We could have acted, and our actions would have been fully lawful and in compliance with the charter, but we chose not to act... Do we have the capacity to enforce accountability upon those who might abuse the right that R2P would give nation-states to resort to the use of force against other states. The capacity to review and hold acocuntable those who violate international law or abuse their legal rights is fundamental to any functioning system."




Citing his own country's history of fending off an R2P-like invasion during the 1980's and early 1990's, d'Escoto Brockmann added:




"We Nicaraguans have our own deeply ambiguois experience in this regard. When we challenged the paramilitary actions organized and founded and directed by the United States against Nicaragua in the World Court in the mid-1980's the Court surprised many when it ruled in Nicaragua's favor. But the real test came with the enforcability. Nearly two and a half decades after the judgement was rendered the actions that were judged to be illegal were never stopped. And not a penny of compensation was ever paid as had been ordered by the court. It would be appropriate to insist that nations meet their obligations under international law before giving them the opportunity to ignore or violate new legal obligations. For all these rteasons I wonder whether we are ready for R2P."




Significantly, d'Escoto Brockmann, like Chomsky and the other panelists would also concede, stressed that the spirit of R2P - ending genocide and mass atrocities- "is and should remain an important aspirational goal."




Nevertheless, with an implicit nod to the power and influence of the R2P Lobby, d'Escoto Brockmann argued that discourse surrounding R2P "is too important an issue to be left to narrow specialists, those who have made it a profession and an industry." This sentiment was later echoed in the press conference by Jean Bricmont, who said, "You see...the whole [R2P] discourse is completely biased by this pro-intervention philosophy."




In his closing statement, Bricmont called R2P "a new norm that, in practice, will give more power to Great Britain and the United States to intervene in the internal affairs of other states."




Chomsky concluded his portion of the dialogue by putting to rest an assertion made earlier by a German delegate that he had omitted reference to the actual R2P by conflating it with 'humanitarian intervention':




"The general principles of R2P that don't seem to me controversial...The question that is controversial is how the right of forceful intervention is interpreted, and, as I mentioned, that is controversial, there's difference of opinion, and also, in general, how it's going to be implemented. So will there be, in fact, an implementation of R2P right now that takes account of protected populations - a specific responsibility of the United Nations - who are being subjected to gross violations of fundamental human rights? Will it be applied to protect the children of the world in particular the children of southern Africa alone, who are dying daily at the rate of Rwanda, not for a hundred days but every day, and its getting worse because of [the] refusal of Western countries to do anything. So will the R2P apply to that? In fact, it's always the selectivity and the implementation that is at issue..."




The most prominent of the 'protected populations' Chomsky was inferring is Palestine. In the post-dialogue press conference, a reporter asked Chomsky if and how he thinks R2P can be applied to R2P in Gaza:




"It's very simple, it doesn't apply. It doesn't apply because of...the U.S. is backing the destruction of Gaza so therefore R2P doesn't apply; it's very simple...And it's not just Gaza, it's also the West Bank. In fact in the West Bank...read the New York Times, they're very upbeat about the fact, as they put it, Israel finally has a legitimate partner for peace, maybe, in the Palestinian Authority. Why? Because of a big achievement. During the attack on Gaza, which was a U.S.-Israeli attack, not an Israeli attack; it was a U.S.-Israeli attack on Gaza, during that attack there was concern that there might be protests in the West Bank, but they were put down; they were put down by an army run by General Keith Dayton, U.S. General; trained and armed by Jordan and Israel, which is imposed in order to control the population of the West Bank."




During the attack on Gaza last January, I interviewed the UN's Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territories, Professor Richard Falk. Falk was also a contributor to the ICISS' original R2P project. A few weeks before Israel began it's attack, Falk denounced the "collective punishment" being meted out against the Palestinians and said that "an urgent effort should be made at the United Nations to implement the agreed norm of a 'responsibility to protect' a civilian population being collectively punished by policies that amount to a Crime Against Humanity."




During the assault Falk reasserted this, "If not in relation to the population of Gaza I don't know where [R2P] would be applicable." Falk analysis concurred with Chomsky's. He added:




"R2P is subject to the political will of the powerful sovereign states, the powerful members of the United Nations, especially the U.S., and it just reinforces the understanding that geopolitics is primary and takes precedence over international law in those cases where the interests of the most significant members of the UN are engaged. And this is certainly an example of that and invites criticism of the UN as being subject to this geopolitical discipline, and [being] appropriately accused of double standards, of applying international law to the weak but excepting the strong consistent with the impunity that the leaders of powerful countries have while weaker leaders are prosecuted for their criminal conduct. So it's part of the reality of international politics at this stage I think."




Where Chomsky differs from Falk is on the matter of [so-called] "double standards." Said Chomsky during the post-dialogue press conference:




"They're not double standards; they're the single standard of maximizing power and wealth and privilege, and that applies in different ways in different times. So Palestine is particularly significant for the United Nations because these are protected people under the Geneva Conventions. So it's like the Iraq sanctions, which were in fact administered by the Security Council. So yeah, those are real responsibilities by the United Nations..and to answer your question about why nothing can be done, it's because the United States and its allies don't want anything to be done."




Chomsky and Bricmont provided a laundry list of historical 'R2P-like' interventions carried out by imperial powers (they could have mentioned Afghanistan's recent transformation to an R2P-like occupation under Stanley McChrystal's 'population-centric' COIN approach). Many of the General Assembly's R2P-friendly delegates were uncomfortable with Chomsky, Bricmont, and Ngugi's constant drudging up of history.




Perhaps the most telling exchange of the day took place in the final stages of the press conference. Evans was trotting out one of the usual suspects that is used to justify R2P (Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Kosovo - as Bricmont said " These events are put together because they can always be blamed on lack of interventions, but nobody's asking what the disastrous effects are of interventions.") - in this case Kosovo.




Speculating whether or not a certain massacre was "sufficient to trigger the [75-day bombardment] response that was triggered by the international community" Chomsky then interrupted Evans, saying, "See that's an interesting question... in 1999 at the same time in East Timor twice that number of people were killed." Except in this case, illustrating the point that he reiterated over and over again throughout the day, "the reaction of the United States, Britain, and [pointing at Evans] Australia was to increase its support for the aggressors." [Emphasis added]




To this, all the flustered Evans could muster was, [almost shouting] "don't let's play the numbers game when we're talking about atrocities."




For this exchange alone, the 2009 R2P debate is almost certain to go down in the annals as one of Chomsky's finest performances. Even when directly called out, Evans offered no substantive response to either Chomsky or Bricmont:




Chomsky: "I think the main difference between Mr. Evans and me on this point is that we just see a different world. I don't see anything changing. We talk about Rwanda, that's nice, it was somebody else's crime. Is anybody doing anything about Eastern Congo? It's much worse than Rwanda, but no, nobody's doing anything about it and we know why..."




Playing off the theme of dismissing Chomsky's historical analysis, Evans charged that he held "a rather dark and jaundiced view of human nature, political nature, and the possibility of progress... I don't think we should be quite as jaundiced and unhappy about everything as some people seem to be."




Chomsky disagreed, arguing that his optimism is merely "differently focused." Bricmont then jumped in and succinctly juxtaposed the two intellectual camps:




"[T]he difference between the two worlds of Mr. Evans and myself is that I look at the real world and real relationships of forces in the world and Mr. Evans lives in a paper world where things are written on paper very precisely with all the guidelines and all the norms, etc. The UN Charter is very well-written yet its still violated by the powerful. And of course..whatever norms are introduced are going to be violated by the powerful because there's no political effort to limit the powerful. That's as simple as that."




All told, the R2P Lobby was likely shaken by finding the shoe on the other foot. As mentioned above and illustrated by the historical record, they are used to being in the dominant, largely unopposed position, and much prefer to evade direct confrontation with their critics (or, as it were, history).


(In the bizarro world, the Economist - who, to their credit, were one of the only major news agencies to report on the debate - proved Chomsky's repeated general point about the press's ignorance of such matters, accusing d'Escoto Brockmann (or, as Reuters put it, "the radicals") of a well-organized "campaign to sabotage R2P," while ignoring the relative pervasiveness of the R2P Lobby, which they've never seen fit to report on.)


In the final minutes of the informal dialogue, one of the members of the 'Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect' (GCR2P), Thelma Ekiyor of the George Soros-funded West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI), argued that "R2P is certainly not a Western norm." This is something that R2P's advocates often claim albeit with flimsy substantiation. Likewise, writing in the Huffington Post, two of R2P's Canadian godfathers, Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock, fallaciously argue that "D'Escoto Brockmann, a professed R2P sceptic, appears to be throwing neutrality to the wind by organizing the events in such a way that a vocal minority will dominate the debate."


After Evans' (and, by extension, the entire R2P Lobby's) intellectual drubbing at the hands of the "vocal minority," it will be interesting to see if they can muster a more serious response to what are otherwise reasonable criticisms of what Bricmont terms the real-world "relationship of forces."


Simply put, and as this website is (partly) devoted to monitoring and disclosing, R2P could not have existed without the diplomatic maneuvering, significant funding, and power of the West beginning in the mid-1990's, irrespective of its later adoption by some non-Western countries and NGOs.


As d'Escoto Brockmann put it::


"Recent and painful memories related to the legacy of colonialism give developing countries strong reasons to fear that laudable motives can end up being misused once more to justify arbitrary and selective interventions against the weakest states. We must take into account the prevailing lack of trust from most of the developing countries when it comes to the use of force for humanitarian reasons."


The fate of R2P is still undetermined and the debates - which will hopefully be more open now - will continue. As one who has been closely following the doctrine's evolution for many years, my sense is that July 23, 2009, for whatever concrete impact it may or may not have on global affairs, was a watershed moment in its history. Kudos to d'Escoto Brockmann for organizing the event and for providing space for just the type of debate to take place that has been lacking for so long in the UN.


Note: all of the UN's Webcasts can be viewed here.