Deterring Pirate Attacks

According to several news sources (including USA Today), the sonic weapon used by the Seabourn Spirit to deter the Somali pirates who attacked the cruise ship in the Indian Ocean on Saturday was a long-range acoustic device (LRAD) originally developed for the U.S. Navy by American Technology Corporation of San Diego. The non-lethal weapon was designed to deter attacks on ships like the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, an attack that was carried out in a Yemeni port by suicide bombers who approached the Cole in a small boat packed with explosives.

LRAD permits broadcasting of messages or sounds (including ear-splitting noises) over long distances. Its use can cause permanent hearing loss at distances of up to 100 yards.

At present, the device is deployed on U.S. Navy ships operating in the Persian Gulf and as part of the force protection kits of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq. A number of cruise ships also carry the LRAD, which, because the sound it generates is focused in a particular direction, can be used without harming its operators or others not directly in the path of the sonic pulse.

"We Do Not Torture"

That, at least, is what President Bush said today. But consider some of the reactions his statement provoked:

The CNN story on Bush's remarks followed that line with these words:

Over White House opposition, the Senate has passed legislation banning torture. With Vice President Dick Cheney as the point man, the administration is seeking an exemption for the CIA. It was recently disclosed that the spy agency maintains a network of prisons in eastern Europe and Asia, where it holds terrorist suspects.

The BBC story reporting the comment also noted the following:

The White House has not confirmed Washington Post claims that the CIA set up a covert prison network in eastern Europe and Asia to hold high-profile terror suspects following the 11 September 2001 attacks.

About 30 detainees, considered major terrorism suspects, were held at these "black sites", although the centres have now been closed, the paper reported.

On Sunday, the United Nations' special rapporteur on torture urged European officials to conduct high-level investigations into the allegations.

USA Today stated:

U.S. interrogation practices have been under fire since news accounts in 2004 reported harsh tactics by U.S. interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and at detention facilities in Afghanistan. In a new case Monday, five Army Rangers were charged with abusing detainees in Iraq.

Over White House opposition, the Senate voted 90-9 last month to approve an amendment by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would ban the use of torture. Vice President Cheney has pushed for an exemption for the CIA.

That the news media now seem to be inclined to report a few facts along with the President's outrageous assertions is an encouraging sign. Equally encouraging is that fact that both liberal and conservative bloggers (below) are expressing outrage over statements like the President's.

Kevin Drum wrote:

Fine. Then shut down the black sites, tell Dick Cheney to stop lobbying against the McCain amendment, and allow the Red Cross unfettered access to prisoners in our custody. After all, if the events of the past four years had happened in any other country in the world--the abuse, the memos, the photos, the relentless opposition to independent inspections--isn't that the least it would take for any of us to believe it when that country's head of state declared "We do not torture"?

Andrew Sullivan said,

If that's the case, why threaten to veto a law that would simply codify what Bush alleges is already the current policy? If "we do not torture," how to account for the hundreds and hundreds of cases of abuse and torture by U.S. troops, documented by the government itself? If "we do not torture," why the memos that expanded exponentially the lee-way given to the military to abuse detainees in order to get intelligence? The president's only defense against being a liar is that he is defining "torture" in such a way that no other reasonable person on the planet, apart from Bush's own torture apologists (and they are now down to one who will say so publicly), would agree. The press must now ask the president: does he regard the repeated, forcible near-drowning of detainees to be torture? Does he believe that tying naked detainees up and leaving them outside all night to die of hypothermia is "torture"? Does he believe that beating the legs of a detainee until they are pulp and he dies is torture? Does he believe that beating detainees till they die is torture? Does he believe that using someone's religious faith against them in interrogations is "cruel, inhumane and degrading" treatment and thereby illegal? What is his definition of torture?

"And Now for Something Completely Different"

(As they used to say on Monty Python's Flying Circus.) Actually, it's not completely different. It's still all about the piracy thing. But the presentation is different.

Go here to take a look.

Some Data on Piracy

As you can probably tell, the recent account of pirates attacking a cruise ship off the coast of Somalia has captured my imagination. It's not because of some latent fascination with Blackbeard or Captain Hook. It has more to do with my concern that the spread of anarchy--from failed states to the high seas--has become a major source of insecurity in the world. Attacks on cruise ships (as well as cargo ships and fishing boats) are a manifestation of the problem.

At the risk of spending too much time and energy on what some may consider a back-page story, I want to pass along a bit of data on the incidence of piracy in the world. The following information comes from the International Maritime Bureau Piracy Reporting Centre, which collects data on piracy and armed robery aboard ships.

The total number of attacks on shipping dropped from 445 in 2003 to 325 in 2004. The greatest number of pirate attacks occur in the waters off Indonesia (including the Strait of Malacca, the Java Sea, and the Timor Sea); there were 121 attacks there in 2003, 93 in 2004. Rebels from Aceh have been known to hijack ships in the Northern Malacca Straits, but many recent hijackings have been the work of criminal syndicates.

While most acts of piracy are property crimes only, in 2004 there were 30 crew members murdered in attacks on shipping.

For maps showing the locations of reported acts of piracy in 2004, go here.

Illusions of Righteousness

"No nation, ours or any other, is well served by illusions of righteousness. All nations make decisions based on self-interest and then defend them in the name of morality."

--William Sloane Coffin

More on the Indian Ocean Pirates

The attack on a luxury cruise ship off the coast of Somalia yesterday was not the only act of piracy in those waters in recent months. The Russian newspaper Pravda reported two weeks ago that an International Maritime Bureau report documented twenty-three attacks in the area since March 15, 2005. One of the attacks resulted in the Hong Kong-based owner of a liquefied gas tanker paying hijackers $315,000 for the return of the ship after it was seized on April 10, 2005. In another attack on August 15, 2005, three fishing boats and forty-eight Asian fishermen were captured by Somali pirates. All are being held for ransom in Somalia.

According to Pravda, those engaged in piracy off the coast of Somalia are Somali rebels who use the proceeds of their raids to buy weapons.

Cheney's Defense of Torture

Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly makes some important points regarding Vice President Cheney's efforts to preserve the freedom to torture detainees in the "war on terror." He also points these comments from Andrew Sullivan concerning Cheney:

He's still furiously lobbying Senators to protect his right to torture. A man who avoided service in Vietnam is lecturing John McCain on the legitimacy of torturing military detainees. But notice he won't even make his argument before Senate aides, let alone the public. Why not? If he really believes that the U.S. has not condoned torture but wants to reserve it for exceptional cases, why not make his argument in the full light of day? You know: where democratically elected politicians operate.

As Drum concludes, "It's enough to make any decent human being puke."

That's about right.

Pirate Attack

Tomorrow's Observer reports that a luxury cruise liner sailing approximately 100 miles off the coast of Somalia in the Indian Ocean came under attack from pirates today. Men on two speedboats fired on the ship, the Seabourn Spirit, with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. The ship escaped from the two speedboats after attempting to ram one of them. One crew member suffered minor injuries from shrapnel. None of the 151 passengers was injured.

The McCain Amendment: An Update

Jeanne at Body and Soul offers a good, brief summary of where things stand regarding the McCain Amendment.

Our East European Gulag

Rosa Brooks, writing in today's Los Angeles Times, recounts the news from a Washington Post story published earlier this week about the CIA's use of secret detention facilities in Eastern Europe and questions whether America's values, which served the nation well during the Cold War, have survived the "war on terror." She writes,

During the Cold War, we thought we knew what distinguished us from our Soviet bloc enemies. We did not have a gulag; we did not imprison and torture our enemies. But the war on terror has distorted our national values. We have used some of the same tactics we once decried. The Soviet Union's legacy of terror lives on, its tactics embraced by some of our leaders. Vice President Dick Cheney continues to insist that the McCain amendment, which prohibits U.S. personnel from cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners, should not be applicable to the CIA.

We Americans have always had an inflated view of our nation's moral righteousness, but rarely has the gap been so dramatic between who we believe ourselves to be and who our actions show us to be in reality.

Reciprocity

Milt Bearden, a former CIA operative, uses his experience working with the mujahidin during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan to explain why the United States ought to be extending the protections of the Geneva Conventions even to those detainees who are considered enemy combatants. It boils down to a concern for reciprocity, as this op-ed in today's New York Times notes.

More on Maher Arar

This post from February of this year describes the plight of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was taken into custody by U.S. officials at New York City's Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 and then rendered by the United States to Syria. When he was released a year later--without ever having been charged with a crime--Arar claimed that he had been tortured while in a Syrian prison. According to a report prepared by Stephen J. Toope, former dean of the McGill University School of Law, Arar and other Canadian citizens who were rendered to Syria by the United States were unquestionably tortured while in Syrian custody. Regarding Mr. Arar, the report states, "Although there have been few lasting physical effects, Mr. Arar's psychological state was seriously damaged and he remains fragile. His relationships with members of his immediate family have been significantly impaired. Economically, the family has been devastated."

Meanwhile, the United States Congress is still unwilling to condemn torture unequivocally, although in fairness it appears that an increasing number of Republicans in the House of Representatives are now willing to vote for the McCain Amendment to the defense appropriations bill.

[Via Body and Soul.]

Remembering the Holocaust

The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution (A/RES/60/7) yesterday that designates January 27 as an annual day of remembrance for victims of the Nazi Holocaust. The date chosen is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945 and is already observed in much of Europe (and occasionally at Pepperdine) as the Day of Remembrance.

The resolution, which was introduced by Australia, Canada, Israel, Russia, and the United States, had 104 cosponsors and was adopted by consensus. According to Israel's ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, this is the first resolution initiated by Israel to have been passed by the UNGA.

A Shift in the Wind?

"The Bush administration is embroiled in a sharp internal debate over whether a new set of Defense Department standards for handling terror suspects should adopt language from the Geneva Conventions prohibiting 'cruel,' 'humiliating' and 'degrading' treatment," according to a story in today's New York Times. Although those surrounding Vice President Dick Cheney, including David Addington who was appointed to be Cheney's chief of staff in the wake of Scooter Libby's indictment, continue to resist efforts to curb the administration's use of torture against terrorism suspects, a significant pushback seems at last to be occurring.

The Bush administration has been unwilling to listen even to friendly critics of its policies in the so-called "war on terrorism," but domestic and international pressure to renounce torture may at last be having an impact. At least those interested in adhering to international law and morality are finally able to debate the treatment of detainees.

Names and Faces

The number 2,000 was in the news last week, but it is important that we not forget the human beings behind the number. The New York Times has an excellent interactive site with photos and brief biographies of the 2,000-plus American soldiers who have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war in March 2003. Take a look and think of the costs of war.

Trick or Treat

I am a day late with this, but James Carroll's columns are always timely. Here, quoting St. Paul and Robert McNamara along the way, he moves from Halloween to the nature of evil to wars and their unintended consequences. Read what he has to say.

Einstein's Assessment

With this being the season for mid-term exams, I am reminded--and will be sure to remind my students--of a comment Albert Einstein once made. He was asked, "Dr. Einstein, why is it that when the mind of man has stretched so far as to discover the structure of the atom we have been unable to devise the political means to keep the atom from destroying us?" Einstein replied, "That is simple, my friend. It is because politics is more difficult than physics."

Let the CIA Do It

The New York Times reports in tomorrow's edition that Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA Director Porter Goss met with Senator John McCain last Thursday in an effort to get McCain to support language in the defense appropriations bill that would let the CIA do it. What, you ask, is it? Torture detainees, of course.

After the Senate passed the McCain amendment to bar the abuse of detainees (by a 90-9 vote) almost three weeks ago, the Bush Administration began lobbying Congress to preserve the ability of officials of the United States government to use torture as a means of interrogating suspected terrorists. Now it appears that effort has come to include a direct appeal from the Vice President to Senator McCain asking McCain to amend his own amendment so that at least the CIA could continue to torture prisoners.

McCain told Cheney and Goss no.

There was a time, believe it or not, when American presidents--both Republicans and Democrats--uniformly condemned torture. Now we have a president who is threatening to veto the defense appropriations bill if an amendment banning torture or one mandating an independent commission to investigate the torture of detainees is attached.

God have mercy.

Sixty Years

Today marks the sixtieth anniversary of the entry into force of the Charter of the United Nations. At a time when considerable attention is being devoted to the future of the U.N. (Ambassador Bolton floated the idea before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week of shifting from a system of mandatory assessments--dues--to a system of voluntary contributions to finance the Organization), I want to offer a few observations about the history of the Charter.

The majority of the work of drafting the Charter occurred prior to the conclusion of World War II. In fact, most of the preparatory work was done at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. during the fall of 1944. The Covenant of the League of Nations, on the contrary, was drafted entirely after the armistice ending World War I had been signed. More importantly, work on the Charter was almost completely dissociated from the diplomatic process of concluding World War II. In contrast, at Versailles in 1919, peace negotiations and negotiations for the creation of the League proceeded hand in hand and the League Covenant, in the end, was embedded in the three treaties of peace proffered to the Central Powers.

One reason work on the Charter was begun rather early was the tenuous nature of the war-time alliance. Significant differences of opinion among the American, British, and Soviet governments were apparent well before Germany's surrender. As Inis Claude noted in Swords Into Plowshares: The Problems and Progress of International Organization (4th ed., p. 65), "If the grand alliance for war was to be preserved as a grand alliance for peace, it seemed that there was no time to be lost."

Having secured agreement from the Allies on the basic outlines of the new United Nations Organization by mid-October 1944, the U.S. State Department was in a position to make an early push to gain public support for the Charter that would be signed at San Francisco on June 26, 1945. Almost two million copies of the Dumbarton Oaks proposals were distributed in the United States by the State Department. Speakers were sent all over the country to address civic groups and radio audiences in an effort to explain the proposed U.N. Again, the contrast with the League experience is instructive. As Woodrow Wilson lingered for months in Paris after World War I directing the negotiations that would produce the League Covenant, public support in the U.S. for any form of internationalism evaporated. Wilson's inattention to public opinion was a mistake that Franklin Roosevelt would not repeat.

In the end, the attention to public opinion paid off. On July 28, 1945, the United States Senate gave its consent to the ratification of the Charter by an 89-2 vote. President Truman communicated U.S. ratification on August 8 and, as we note today, the Charter entered into force on October 24.

The Human Security Report

A new report from the Human Security Centre at the University of British Columbia "shows that most forms of political violence have declined significantly since the end of the Cold War––and finds that the best explanation for this decline is the huge upsurge of conflict prevention, resolution and peacebuilding activities that were spearheaded by the United Nations in the aftermath of the Cold War."

For more about the report, see this site.

[Via America Abroad at TPM Cafe.]

Frontline: The Torture Question

The PBS series Frontline is examining the question of torture in the "war on terror" in a two-hour program entitled "The Torture Question." The entire program will be available here tomorrow. Interviews, photos, a panel discussion on torture, and other ancillaries are also available on the program web site.

Prosper Resigns

Pierre-Richard Prosper has resigned his position as United States ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, although not soon enough and not for the right reasons. Indeed, Prosper apparently went quietly without uttering a word of regret about the United States' long downward slide since 9/11 into the ranks of states known to employ torture.

So why did he resign? Like Alberto Gonzales before him, Prosper hopes to ride his success as an apologist for torture into the attorney general's office--the California AG's office in his case. Yesterday Prosper filed papers to run for the Republican nomination for attorney general in the 2006 primaries.

Explain Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Gardez, and Mosul, Mr. Ambassador. Explain your silence. Then think about running for elective office.

Arabic Speakers in the Diplomatic Corps

Anyone interested in the United States Foreign Service or in U.S. relations with the Arabic-speaking world should read former Foreign Service officer Jennifer Bremer's op-ed in today's Washington Post. Bremer notes that as of August 2004 there were only eight people in the U.S. Foreign Service who spoke Arabic at a 4+ or 5 level--the levels at which one might be expected to perform well if asked to speak before an agitated crowd or in an Arabic-language television interview.

Take a look at the piece to gain some insight into America's problems in the Middle East and into the nature of language training for American diplomats as well.

[Via Washington Monthly.]

Human Trafficking: The Miniseries

The Lifetime cable network will air an original miniseries October 24-25 that addresses the issue of human trafficking in the United States. The two-part movie, entitled Human Trafficking, will star Mira Sorvino and Donald Sutherland as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Lifetime secured the cooperation of the Department of Homeland Security in making the film. Two nongovernmental organizations that deal with the issue of human trafficking--Equality Now and International Justice Mission--also contributed their expertise.

Today's New York Times notes that Lifetime has engaged a number of political issues in its programming over the past decade. With Human Trafficking, the network hopes to generate support for two anti-trafficking bills currently before Congress.

Presidential Power

Anthony Lewis, the distinguished former New York Times columnist, writes today about the responsibility of the Supreme Court to check the president's power as commander-in-chief. He says:

The framers of the Constitution, when they met in Philadelphia in 1787, feared concentrated power. In constructing a new federal government, they divided its powers among three branches: legislative, executive, judicial. The idea, as Madison explained, was that if one branch overreached, another would check it.

The Bush administration has often resisted checks on executive branch decisions taken under the heading of war power. In memorandums in 2002 and 2003 on the torture of prisoners, for example, the administration argued that the president could order the use of torture even if it was forbidden by treaty or by Congressional statute.

When those memorandums leaked out last year, the administration withdrew them. But Alberto Gonzales, who as White House counsel rejected objections to them, is now attorney general. And one of their principal authors, John Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, continues to argue forcefully for dominant presidential power. To hear him tell it, the framers constructed a political system on the model of King George III.

Lewis notes that the Supreme Court has rejected some of the Bush administration's claims of presidential authority, but he wonders--as all who care about the Constitution's carefully calibrated system of checks and balances should--how Chief Justice John Roberts and Harriet Miers, if she is confirmed to fill the vacancy created by Justice O'Connor's retirement, will vote in cases challenging presidential war powers.

Going Beyond Iraq

Tomorrow's edition of the Guardian (London) reports that President Bush had his sights on Saudi Arabia early in 2003:

George Bush told Tony Blair shortly before the invasion of Iraq that he intended to target other countries, including Saudi Arabia, which, he implied, planned to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Bush said he "wanted to go beyond Iraq in dealing with WMD proliferation, mentioning in particular Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan," according to a note of a telephone conversation between the two men on January 30 2003.

The note is quoted in the US edition, published next week, of Lawless World, America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules, by the British international lawyer Philippe Sands. The memo was drawn up by one of the prime minister's foreign policy advisers in Downing Street and passed to the Foreign Office, according to Mr Sands.

Certainly the mention of Saudi Arabia is surprising, but so is the concern expressed over Pakistani nuclear weapons given the "see no evil" policy adopted eleven months later when A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, was revealed to have sold nuclear secrets.

Iraqis Go to the Polls

The polls have opened in Iraq for a referendum on a new constitution. There is hope that approval of the new constitution will be peace and an opening for the withdrawal of American troops. On the other hand, some fear that this may mark the start of a transition from insurgency to civil war.

Elections in Liberia

Liberians went to the polls today to vote in their country's first elections since the end of a fourteen-year-long civil war. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, making a bid to become the first female president in Africa, was expected to finish behind 1995 world soccer player of the year George Weah. (Weah played for Chelsea and AC Milan.)

Situated in West Africa between Sierra Leone and Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia has a population of 3.5 million and a GDP per capita of $900. The nation was devastated by a civil war that ended in August 2003 when President Charles Taylor agreed to go into exile in Nigeria. The capital, Monrovia, is still without running water and reliable electricity.

Liberia was colonized by freed slaves from the United States. It declared its independence in 1847, but was not recognized by the United States until 1862.

For 133 years, Liberia was well established as a republic with a presidential system of government based on the American model. in 1980, Samuel K. Doe assassinated Liberia's president during a military coup. A second republic was formed in 1986 with Doe continuing as head of state until his ouster in 1989 by Charles Taylor. For the next fourteen years, civil war raged in Liberia. Plans for today's elections were made when Taylor's departure was negotiated in 2003.

Angela Merkel

Three weeks after Germany's parliamentary elections left the two major parties virtually even in the Bundestag, Angela Merkel has emerged as the new chancellor (as Germany calls its prime minister). Merkel, leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, will head a deeply divided coalition government.

Merkel will also be the first female chancellor in German history. Women have served as prime ministers in the United Kingdom (Margaret Thatcher, 1979-1990), Portugal (Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, 1979-80), Norway (Gro Harlem Brundtland, 1981, 1986-89, 1990-96), Yugoslavia (Milka Planinc, 1982-86), Lithuania (Kazimiera Danute Prunskiene, 1990-91, and Irena Degutiene, 1999), France (Edith Cresson, 1991-92), Poland (Hanna Suchocka, 1992-93), Bulgaria (Reneta Indzhova, 1994-95), Finland (Anneli Tuulikki Jaatteenmaki, 2003), Macedonia (Radmila Sekerinska, 2004), and Ukraine (Yuliya Tymoshenko, 2005). The generally ceremonial role of president has also been occupied by a woman in a number of European states, most notably the Republic of Ireland where Mary McAleese succeeded Mary Robinson, but women in political leadership is still the exception to the rule.

Nationalism's Nine Lives

Last month, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers--ICANN--created for the first time ever a top-level domain (TLD) for a cultural region. Except for the descriptive TLDs such as .com, .edu, .net, and so on, TLDs are generally abbreviations of the name of the country in which the web site is based. (A complete list of TLDs--although without interpretive information--is available here.) Catalonia (or Catalunya in Catalan, the language of the region) has become the first subnational region (or cultural community) to receive a TLD. Its TLD is, of course, .cat.

Catalonia is, depending on one' s perspective, either the Autonomous Community of Catalonia--one of the regional units of Spain--or a stateless nation of Catalan-speaking peoples in an area straddling the Pyrenees in northeastern Spain and southern France. ICANN took no position on the matter, but one can't help but wonder whether someday the TLD might be regarded as an essential element of statehood--or, in the case of Catalonia and future non-state TLD-holders, a precursor of statehood. One can imagine a future version of Article 1 of the 1933 Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States looking like this: "The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government; d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states; and e) a top-level domain name."

Orwell on Nationalism

"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."

George Orwell, "Notes on Nationalism," 1945

Zbig on "Suicidal Statecraft"

Zbigniew Brzezinski writes in today's Los Angeles Times of the dangers of America's "suicidal statecraft," a term Arnold Toynbee used in assessing the ultimate cause of imperial collapse. Although Brzezinski's brief survey of America's many foreign policy problems covers familiar terrain, his analysis is well worth reading.

An Ounce of Prevention

According to today’s New York Times, the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) is having difficulty raising $100 million from member states to pay for its efforts to slow the spread of avian flu in Asia. Vietnam’s attempts to address the avian flu epidemic have been cut back because insufficient funds are available to compensate farmers whose stocks of chickens are destroyed to prevent the spread of the disease. In Indonesia, the government has begun vaccinating rather than destroying chickens for the same reason. Although cheaper than culling infected flocks, this policy carries the risk of hastening mutations in the disease that might increase its virulence.

The failure of member states to fully fund FAO initiatives is particularly disturbing given the recent news that (1) the Bush Administration is now poised to spend billions of dollars to address the threat of avian flu spreading among humans in the United States and (2) some form of avian flu (although possibly not the Asian strain) has now been reported in Turkey and Romania. Helping the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization slow the spread of avian flu in Asia would be a wise investment for the United States.

John McCain, Enemy Combatant?

Wednesday night, by a vote of 90-9, the Senate approved an amendment to the Defense appropriations bill offered by Senator John McCain that would prohibit the use of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of any detainee in U.S. custody. It also mandates that the U.S. Army Field Manual be regarded as the authoritative guide for all military personnel concerning which interrogation techniques are lawful and which are not.

The amendment, which is opposed by the Bush Administration and by Duncan Hunter, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, must survive a House-Senate conference committee to have even a chance of becoming law. Furthermore, President Bush, who has yet to veto a bill, has threatened to veto the entire Defense appropriations bill if it comes to him with the McCain amendment attached.

Has Senator John McCain, who flew combat missions in Vietnam and was held by the North Vietnamese in the Hanoi Hilton, become an enemy combatant? Sadly, yes--at least according to those who espouse the concept of "lawfare."

What is lawfare? According to the Council on Foreign Relations, it is a "strategy of using or misusing law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve military objectives."

Like terrorism, lawfare is a form of asymmetric warfare in which the weak, seeking a comparative advantage that cannot be found on the traditional battlefield due to the overwhelming military superiority of their opponents, resort to unconventional means of waging war. But while terrorists attempt to sow fear and destruction by blowing themselves up, their allies on the lawfare front do the same thing by filing motions and passing amendments requiring respect for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Rather than "Death to America!" the lawfare warrior announces his presence with the words, "May it please the Court."

Absurd? Absolutely. But that hasn’t prevented the concept of lawfare from being carried from the fevered imaginations of wingnuts to the halls of the Pentagon and the West Wing.

In March of this year, a new edition of the National Defense Strategy for the United States of America was issued by the White House. In its description of security threats facing the United States there was this line: "Our strength as a nation will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak using international fora, judicial processes, and terrorism."

I teach a course called "International Organizations and Law." My course was transformed by that statement in the National Defense Strategy. It went from being a routine (although richly rewarding and hugely entertaining) Political Science offering to being a training ground for subversives. (I've just informed the class of this fact and have told them that they can still get out if they want to.)

Just think, if I had assigned The Anarchist's Cookbook along with Inside the UN and Carter, Trimble, and Bradley's International Law, we'd have the anti-American trifecta.

But maybe the wingnuts are on to something. There is, after all, a certain logic--and even some historical continuity--to the view that lawfare is indeed something to worry about.

Can law be used as a political weapon? Can it be used to weaken one’s political opponents? Ask Bill Clinton. Indeed, there's a delicious irony in the fact that some of those who most fear the use of lawfare in the war on terror are the same ones who perfected it in the war on Clinton.

But (to get back to Senator McCain and the other 89 senators who voted to end the deliberate ambiguation of torture) we're witnessing lawfare against the Bush administration, aren't we? Yes, and it's about time, because those who fight on the side of law are defending American values.

A Blogger on Blogging

Henry Farrell of George Washington University discusses the pros and cons of academic blogging here in The Chronicle of Higher Education. For my part, I'm generally in favor of it.

[Via Daniel Drezner.]

Flanigan Withdraws

It wasn't his unwillingness to condemn torture that did it, but Timothy Flanigan is out as President Bush's nominee to fill the number two position at the Department of Justice.

The Christian Coalition's Favorites

The nine senators who voted last night in favor of the continued use of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody and in favor of continuing to keep U.S. military personnel in the dark regarding which interrogation methods might result in a court martial deserve special mention. Here they are:

• Wayne Allard (R-CO) -- 100%
• Kit Bond (R-MO) -- 100%
• Tom Coburn (R-OK) -- NR
• Thad Cochran (R-MS) -- 100%
• John Cornyn (R-TX) -- 100%
• James Inhofe (R-OK) -- 100%
• Pat Roberts (R-KS) -- 100%
• Jeff Sessions (R-AL) -- 100%
• Ted Stevens (R-AK) -- 83%

The percentages to the right of each name are the Christian Coalition's ratings for 2004. A rating of 100% indicates a perfect convergence between the Christian Coalition's position on key issues and the senator's voting record. (Tom Coburn is unrated because his term in the Senate began in 2005.)

There's something very wrong with this.

A Stand Against Torture

The Senate voted tonight to approve an amendment to the defense appropriations bill that would prohibit cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of anyone in U.S. custody and make the U.S. Army Field Manual the standard for determining which interrogation methods are legal. The Bush Administration has threatened to veto the defense appropriations bill if the language barring torture, which passed by a 90-9 vote, is not removed before final passage. Removal of the amendment, unfortunately, is possible as Senate and House versions of the bill will have to be reconciled in a conference committee. The House has not yet expressed the same concern over torture.

Sen. John McCain, who was tortured by his North Vietnamese captors during the Vietnam War, sponsored the amendment. His statement on the Senate floor is well worth reading.

There were, of course, a handful of administration loyalists who opposed Sen. McCain's long overdue proposal. According to Reuters, "Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions opposed the amendment, saying the Pentagon has disciplined those responsible for abuse. 'It just galls me that we have people suggesting that this was a policy of our Army,' he said."

Sessions is entitled to be outraged. The policy of abusing detainees came from the White House, not the Army.

Economic Analysis from Langley

US firms are at or near the forefront in technological advances, especially in computers and in medical, aerospace, and military equipment; their advantage has narrowed since the end of World War II. The onrush of technology largely explains the gradual development of a "two-tier labor market" in which those at the bottom lack the education and the professional/technical skills of those at the top and, more and more, fail to get comparable pay raises, health insurance coverage, and other benefits. Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households. (Italics added.)

Which liberal commentator is this making the claim that technological developments in the United States have made the rich richer while everyone else gets left behind? Paul Krugman of the New York Times? Lefty historian Howard Zinn? Maybe Senator Ted Kennedy?

Nope. The statement comes from the most recent edition of the CIA World Factbook.

[Via Holly Sklar and Common Dreams.]

Lawrence of Arabia's Advice

This, from Washington Post columnist David Ignatius about a week ago, is interesting:

DOHA, Qatar -- Posted on a bulletin board at Centcom headquarters here is a 1918 admonition from T.E. Lawrence explaining what he learned in training Arab soldiers: "It is better to let them do it themselves imperfectly than to do it yourself perfectly. It is their country, their way, and our time is short."

That quote sums up an important shift in U.S. military strategy on Iraq that has been emerging over the past year. The commanders who are running the war don't talk about transforming Iraq into an American-style democracy or of imposing U.S. values. They understand that Iraqis dislike American occupation, and for that reason they want fewer American troops in Iraq, not more. Most of all, they don't want the current struggle against Iraqi insurgents, who are nasty but militarily insignificant, to undermine U.S. efforts against the larger threat posed by al Qaeda terrorists, who would kill hundreds of thousands of Americans if they could.

Perhaps we are, in fact, approaching the endgame in Iraq.

Sputnik and Arms Control

On this date in 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first man-made satellite--Спутнйк (Sputnik, meaning "fellow traveler" or "satellite"). The basketball-sized sphere created a panic in national security circles and a firestorm of recriminations in American domestic politics. Three years after the first Sputnik launch, John F. Kennedy defeated Richard M. Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections in history thanks in part to public concern over a non-existent "missile gap."

The launch of Sputnik suggested to American military strategists that the Soviet Union might have rockets with sufficient throw-weight to deliver nuclear weapons to the continental United States. Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) would have flight times of approximately 30 minutes as opposed to the six to eight hours that bombers flying over the Arctic Ocean might be expected to take to reach their targets. Furthermore, the possibility of defending against ICBMs was nil. (Fifty years and billions of dollars' worth of ballistic missile defense research later, it remains uncomfortably close to nil.) The strategic impact of the Sputnik launch, therefore, was to accelerate the move toward nuclear deterrence based on the development of an assured second-strike capability (known as "Mutual Assured Destruction," or MAD). Albert Wohlstetter, in a seminal article entitled "The Delicate Balance of Terror" published in Foreign Affairs in January 1959, said, "The notion that a carefully planned surprise attack can be checkmated almost effortlessly, that, in short, we may resume our deep pre-Sputnik sleep, is wrong and its nearly universal acceptance is terribly dangerous."

In April 1960, Henry Kissinger argued in Foreign Affairs that "the advantage of surprise can be overwhelming." He was not alone in this view. The fear of surprise attack fostered by the Sputnik launch (filtered through memories of Pearl Harbor) was soon combined with a growing suspicion that the security dilemma and action-reaction processes in international affairs loomed large in the Cold War. What followed was much concern about "the reciprocal fear of surprise attack," to use Thomas Schelling's term. Schelling put it this way in The Strategy of Conflict, a book published in 1960:

If surprise carries an advantage, it is worth while to avert it by striking first. Fear that the other may be about to strike in the mistaken belief that we are about to strike gives us a motive for striking and so justifies the other's motive. But, if the gains from even successful surprise are less desired than no war at all, there is no "fundamental" basis for an attack by either side. Nevertheless, it looks as though a modest temptation on each side to sneak in a first blow--a temptation too small by itself to motivate an attack--might become compounded through a process of interacting expectations, with additional motive for attack being produced by successive cycles of "He thinks we think he thinks we think . . . he thinks we think he'll attack; so he thinks we shall; so he will; so we must."

Did you follow that?

Mutual assured destruction, in other words, wasn't enough because it wasn't inherently stable. Stable deterrence was the goal. The action-reaction processes had to be managed so that fear, rather than leading to an outcome that neither side wanted, would lead to caution on both sides. Arms control (which is not the same thing as disarmament) was therfore developed as a tool for managing the strategic nuclear arms race (of which the October 1957 Sputnik launch was a part) in an effort to escape the tensions inherent in a world full of ICBMs armed with nuclear weapons.

The Iraqi Special Tribunal

With the trial of Saddam Hussein scheduled to begin in three weeks, a new blog--Grotian Moment: The Saddam Hussein Trial Blog--has been created by the Cox International Center at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law. A number of experts on international criminal law including former U.S. Ambassador for War Crimes Issues David Scheffer and former Chairman of the UN Security Council's Commission to Investigate War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia Cherif Bassiouni are participating. The expert commentators have thus far been responding to questions such as "Should Saddam Hussein be exposed to the death penalty?" and "Did the Anfal Operations constitute genocide?"

The blog also provides links to a number of key documents including the Geneva Conventions, the English translation of the Iraqi Special Tribunal Statute, and the Iraqi Criminal Procedure Code.

[Via Opinio Juris.]

The Ex-Chaplain's Book

James Yee, a Muslim and a former Army chaplain who served at Guantánamo Bay, has a new book coming out this week in which he claims that Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the commander of the military detention center, regularly incited guards to abuse prisoners. Yee also says in the book that he regularly heard accounts of detainees being abused during interrogation sessions. The Department of Defense continues to insist that cases of abuse at Guantánamo were isolated occurrences.

Private Security Companies

You won't find all of the world's private security companies on the web, but many do advertise their services in that way. Here's a sampling of what's available if you need to hire an army:

Blackwater USA

Cubic Corporation

Diligence, Inc.

DynCorp International

Genric

Global Risk International

ISI Iraq

Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI)

Northbridge Services Group

Sumer International Security (SIS)

Triple Canopy, Inc.

Vinnell Corporation

Mercenaries

Because the subject of private security firms came up at the very end of class on Tuesday, this seems an opportune time to fulfill a promise made many weeks ago to say a few things about mercenaries and modern war.

*****

Mercenaries have been around for almost as long as recorded history, but the term "mercenary" is one that the current purveyors of privatized military services would prefer never to see or hear again. They believe it conjures up all sorts of negative images, none of which are applicable to them. It’s not entirely clear, though, why they think the negative images shouldn’t be associated with what they do. The best explanation is that "private security firms" are commercial enterprises and, like other businesses, they understand the importance of public perceptions. Just as the companies that haul your trash are far more likely to say they’re in "waste management" rather than "garbage" or "trash collecting," so hired guns prefer to call hemselves "security consultants" rather than "mercenaries."

The fact of the matter is that "security consultants" go to war zones, engage in many of the same military activities that state-supported armies engage in, take and inflict casualties, and generally do it all with a high degree of expertise. But it is not military service. While those who perform their jobs well may earn bonuses from the corporation, they are not awarded Purple Hearts or Bronze Stars from a grateful nation.

Of course, an All-Volunteer Force, which the United States has had since the end of the Vietnam War, means that most of those in the military services are also there for the money. This is abundantly clear from the distinctly lower-class cast of the ranks of enlisted men and women and the fact that military recruiters do better during a recession. For most people, the military is a job, one that is far better when no war is going on. Glory and honor, the thanks of a grateful nation, the pride that comes with wearing the flag and a military insignia on one’s shoulder--these things, for most people, are secondary to merely having a job.

So, if it is out of the question to return to a draft that would make military service a matter of duty crossing class boundaries--not to mention filling the ranks so that soldiers, rather than Halliburton employees, could once again be expected to cook meals and clean latrines--why shouldn’t the military contract out many of its functions? If members of Special Operations Forces who have retired from active duty are having trouble finding jobs back home that make use of their hard-earned skills doing things like jumping out of helicopters, planting bombs, or entering secure buildings unnoticed, why not encourage them to form "private security companies" and return to war zones in the employ of the United States Government (although in a somewhat different capacity)? Is the idea that soldiers fight for their country rather than for themselves a romantic notion left over from the heyday of the nation-state?

To some extent it is. When the country goes to war for reasons that do not touch on its vital interests, it might as well use mercenaries. Perhaps that’s why private security firms have been more pervasive in America’s war in Iraq than in its war in Afghanistan.

(UN peacekeepers, incidentally, are something of a hybrid of state and private militaries. States essentially "rent" troops and equipment to the UN for peacekeeping missions. Some states--Fiji, for example--have been known to seek out opportunities to rent their military forces to the UN as a means of earning a bit of money for the state.)

One of the problems with "hired guns" is that waging a war of choice (rather than a war of necessity) is easer for a democracy if there are no body counts and flag-draped coffins returning home. Mercenaries don’t get that kind of treatment. We don’t grieve the deaths of Blackwater employees--nor do we even hear about those deaths unless something exceptional happens.

Wars employing mercenaries are the next best thing to covert wars for those concerned about public opinion. And that’s a bad thing in a democracy where we ought to be waging wars of necessity only--wars that, because the defense of the state and its values are truly at stake, will be supported by a majority of the citizenry.

A prediction: As the United States begins its pullout from Iraq--and it’s only a matter of time at this point--Pentagon contracts to private security companies will increase. Many of the troops will come home, but tens of thousands of Americans without uniforms will continue to wage war in Iraq.

Another Apologist for Torture

Timothy E. Flanigan, President Bush's nominee to be deputy attorney general, will soon be confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate. Like Alberto Gonzales, his former boss in the Office of the White House Counsel and his future boss at the Justice Department, Flanigan likes to play word games when the subject of torture arises.

Yesterday, the Washington Post condemned Flanigan's evasions in response to Senate Judiciary Committee questions and noted their effects in an editorial:

Like Mr. Gonzales, he has piously repeated the administration's insistence that it does not engage in torture. Yet, also following the administration's disgraceful line, he has refused to say that conduct just short of torture--which is banned by treaty and is a stain on American honor--is either illegal or improper when inflicted on foreigners overseas.

Mr. Bush has promised that all detainees will be treated humanely. Yet, when asked how he would define humane treatment, Mr. Flanigan declared that he does "not believe that the term 'inhumane' treatment is susceptible to a succinct definition." Did the White House provide any guidance as to its meaning? "I am not aware of any guidance provided by the White House specifically related to the meaning of humane treatment."

Mr. Flanigan could not even bring himself to declare particularly barbaric interrogation tactics either legally or morally off-limits. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) asked him about "waterboarding," mock executions, physical beatings and painful stress positions. Mr. Flanigan responded: "Whether a particular interrogation technique is lawful depends on the facts and circumstances," and without knowing these, "it would be inappropriate for me to speculate about the legality of the techniques you describe." And he reiterated that "inhumane" can't be coherently defined.

Lynndie England has been sentenced to three years in prison for her role in the Abu Ghraib scandal. Joshua Claus has just been sentenced to five months in prison for his role in the murder of a man known as Dilawar in Afghanistan. And yet Timothy Flanigan, who can't say what constitutes "inhumane" treatment of detainees--not even when an honorable soldier like Capt. Ian Fishback needs guidance after the President has declared the Geneva Conventions to be inapplicable--is about to become the deputy attorney general of the United States.

The End of Poverty

I have finally begun reading The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffrey D. Sachs. It is compelling, just as I expected it to be given the subject and the author's credentials.

What I had not expected to find was a compelling foreword by Bono--not that I wasn't aware of his passion for Africa and his gift for oratory. This passage--referring to the fact that 15,000 Africans die of preventable or treatable diseases each and every day--was particularly arresting:

This statistic alone makes a fool of the idea many of us hold on to very tightly: the idea of equality. What is happening in Africa mocks our pieties, doubts our concern, and questions our commitment to that whole concept. Because if we’re honest, there’s no way we could conclude that such mass death day after day would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else. Certainly not in North America, or Europe, or Japan. An entire continent bursting into flames? Deep down, if we really accept that their lives--African lives--are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out. It’s an uncomfortable truth.

Perhaps we have come to the point where we must be prepared either to embrace the end of poverty or to cast off our belief in equality. Of course, there is not likely to be any help in ending poverty from the many Americans who stopped believing in equality a long time ago.

The Last Abu Ghraib Conviction

Private Lynndie England today became the ninth American soldier convicted in the Abu Ghraib scandal. England, who was photographed smiling and pointing at naked Iraqi prisoners and holding a leash attached to one, now faces up to nine years in prison.

Just as in two prior trials and five prior plea bargains related to the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Private England's trial failed to answer the most important question: How high up the chain of command did responsibility for the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib go?

Prisoner Abuse and Revenge

Abusing Iraqi prisoners is not just bad for America's image abroad. It also threatens the security of the United States. Why? Because it fuels a desire for revenge. That desire can persist undiminished for years. Laura Blumenfeld quotes a Bedouin saying in her book Revenge: A Story of Hope: "If a man takes revenge after forty years, he was in a hurry."

Mahatma Gandhi may have been right when he said, "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind," but many in the world haven't accepted this view. When Blumenfeld asked a Christian Albanian how his nation's fixation on revenge squared with Christ's admonition to turn the other cheek, the Albanian laughed and replied, "In Albania we have 'Don't hit my cheek because I'll kill you.'"

The humiliation of torture or other degrading treatment is not easily forgotten. Many who experience it and live to tell about it--and many others who simply hear of it--are likely to desire revenge. And that guarantees a generation or more of anti-American terrorism.

More Evidence of Prisoner Abuse

According to a story in today's New York Times, American soldiers in Iraq have been routinely abusing prisoners.

Three former members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division say soldiers in their battalion in Iraq routinely beat and abused prisoners in 2003 and 2004 to help gather intelligence on the insurgency and to amuse themselves.

The new allegations, the first involving members of the elite 82nd Airborne, are contained in a report by Human Rights Watch. The 30-page report does not identify the troops, but one is Capt. Ian Fishback, who has presented some of his allegations in letters this month to top aides of two senior Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, John W. Warner of Virginia, the chairman, and John McCain of Arizona. Captain Fishback approached the Senators' offices only after he tried to report the allegations to his superiors for 17 months, the aides said. The aides also said they found the captain's accusations credible enough to warrant investigation.

Human Rights Watch reports that prisoners were subjected to extremes of hot and cold, sleep deprivation, and stress positions. Chemical substances were sometimes reportedly used on prisoners' skin and eyes. On one occasion, a soldier broke a prisoner's leg with a baseball bat.

One of the soldiers (apparently Capt. Fishback) whose testimony Human Rights Watch used to compile its report on prisoner abuse stated, "I thought that the chain of command all the way up to the National Command Authority [President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld] had made it a policy that we were going to interrogate these guys harshly. . . . We knew where the Geneva Conventions drew the line, but then you get that confusion when the Sec Def [Secretary of Defense] and the President make that statement [that Geneva did not apply to detainees] . . . . Had I thought we were following the Geneva Conventions as an officer I would have investigated what was clearly a very suspicious situation."

It is time for Congress to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate all allegations of prisoner abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo.

Lord of War

Lord of War, starring Nicholas Cage as an international arms dealer and Ethan Hawke as the Interpol agent who tries to arrest him, begins tomorrow. The film has attracted the attention of Amnesty International, which has a web page devoted to it. Amnesty works with a number of NGOs, including the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), to try to curb international arms trafficking.

More on the film later--after I've had a chance to see it. Meanwhile, you can see the trailer here.

Katrina and NOLA's Prisoners

Add this, from a Human Rights Watch press release issued today, to the many institutional failures that occurred in the wake of Hurricane Katrina:

As Hurricane Katrina began pounding New Orleans, the sheriff's department abandoned hundreds of inmates imprisoned in the city’s jail, Human Rights Watch said today.

Inmates in Templeman III, one of several buildings in the Orleans Parish Prison compound, reported that as of Monday, August 29, there were no correctional officers in the building, which held more than 600 inmates. These inmates, including some who were locked in ground-floor cells, were not evacuated until Thursday, September 1, four days after flood waters in the jail had reached chest-level.

"Of all the nightmares during Hurricane Katrina, this must be one of the worst," said Corinne Carey, researcher from Human Rights Watch. "Prisoners were abandoned in their cells without food or water for days as floodwaters rose toward the ceiling."

This is yet another facet of a national disgrace.

HIV/AIDS and International Security

Laurie Garrett of the Council on Foreign Relations will be participating in a national conference call tomorrow. Her topic is the threat posed by HIV/AIDS, a subject Dan Caldwell and I address in Seeking Security in an Insecure World. Here's a brief excerpt from the book:

HIV/AIDS is recognized as a clear and present danger. By the end of 2004, approximately forty-two million people worldwide were living with HIV/AIDS and twenty million had died from the pandemic. Since the disease was first identified just over twenty years ago, seventy million people have been infected. Three million people died of the disease in 2004 alone. Ninety-five percent of those infected with HIV are in the developing world, almost thirty million in sub-Saharan Africa alone. Every day, eight thousand people worldwide die of HIV/AIDS, and every day there are fourteen thousand new cases, over half of them among people under twenty-five years of age. Within two decades, HIV/AIDS will have surpassed all other diseases, including smallpox, as the most prolific killer in history. An official of the U.S. National Intelligence Council has noted that AIDS "has already killed more people than all the soldiers killed in the major wars of the twentieth century, and equals the toll taken by the bubonic plague in 1347. The bad news about AIDS is that unless something is done in the near future, we’re on a trajectory for things to get much worse." The World Bank estimates that an additional forty-five million people will have become infected with HIV/AIDS in the 2002–10 period.

Hurricanes and Global Warming

As Hurricane Rita gathers strength from the unusually warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, some are finally beginning to consider the impact of global warming on tropical storms. Hurricanes intensify over warm water and weaken over cooler water. The oceans, like the atmosphere, have experienced a net increase in temperature as a consequence of global warming. But can we really predict whether global warming will produce more Category 5 hurricanes than we've experienced in the past?

Climate change scientists tend to be reluctant--and cautious--predictors. Most prefer not to make predictions without a great deal of observational data. Insurers, on the other hand, never have the luxury of waiting for all the data to come in before making predictions. Their profitability depends on the predictions they make about the risks they've assumed. And on the relationship between hurricanes and global warming, insurers are now making some interesting predictions.

Consider this exchange in onearth, the quarterly magazine of the Natural Resources Defense Council--an exchange that was in print before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast:

Q: I've just lived through another hurricane season in Florida. Is it true that global warming could increase my insurance?

A: Scientists believe that global warming is making hurricanes and tropical storms more destructive, so as damage claims increase, it's likely that insurance will be more expensive, and perhaps more difficult to obtain. Over the past three decades, sea surface temperatures have risen, and today's average storm has higher wind speeds and lasts longer than those of the 1970s. Temperature isn't the only factor that controls storm frequency and intensity, but warmer water pumps more energy into the storm system, so its effect is pretty hard to ignore. Insurance industry risk analysts are just beginning to factor global warming into their assessments. Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurance company (an insurer of the insurance industry, in other words), believes that global warming is already taxing the insurance industry. Insured disaster losses totaled $44 billion last year--an industry record. Some say insurers are simply looking to global warming as an excuse to raise insurance rates; that increased coastal development is partly to blame. The Assocation of British Insurers predicts that global warming is likely to increase the worldwide cost of major storms by as much as two thirds over the next 75 years.

Foreign Courts and John Roberts

This brief essay by law professor Ann Althouse provides a gentle rebuttal to those (including John Roberts) who believe that American judges should never cite foreign legal precedents. The larger question, of course, is whether the American exceptionalism that motivates such isolationist views might be misguided, but for now it's worth simply enjoying Althouse's encomium for an open mind and a liberal education.

Preemption--with Nukes

The role of nuclear weapons in the military posture of the United States is often ignored in the post-9/11 world. It shouldn't be, especially not as long as the Bush Administration continues to believe that preemption is a reasonable strategy for the United States.

On September 11, Walter Pincus reported in the Washington Post that the Pentagon's draft revision of nuclear weapons doctrine (Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, March 15, 2005) allows military commanders to request the use of nuclear weapons to preempt WMD use by states or terrorist groups against the United States. Such a policy, if adopted, would marry the considerable risks associated with all preemptive uses of military force (including those relating to Iraq and faulty assumptions regarding active WMD programs) to the international revulsion that would inevitably accompany the first-use of nuclear weapons. The international community would regard the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003 as absolutely right and proper in comparison with preemption using nuclear weapons.

Others apparently agree. Yesterday Pincus reported that the Pentagon is having second thoughts about the change in nuclear doctrine after members of Congress and others expressed alarm following the first Post story on the topic.

Photos of Our Nuclear Landscape

In a forthcoming post, I plan to discuss the role that the American nuclear arsenal may soon come to play in the Bush Administration's "war on terrorism." Before doing that, however, I want to offer an opportunity for you to get reacquainted with that arsenal. It has been out of the spotlight since 9/11 when, suddenly, attention shifted from the nuclear weapons that we know are out there (in American, Russian, Chinese, and other stockpiles) to those that we fear might be out there.

The United States maintains over 6,000 active nuclear warheads in its stockpile (along with 4,200 additional inactive warheads), according to Natural Resources Defense Council estimates. To see what many of them look like, go to nukephoto.com, a strangely beautiful collection of photographs. The site describes itself this way:

nukephoto.com is the only comprehensive source for independent photographs of U.S. nuclear weapons. It is an exclusive collection produced by Paul Shambroom for his project "Face to Face with the Bomb: Nuclear Reality After the Cold War."

Granted unprecedented access by military officials, Paul has photographed in twenty states and the South Pacific between 1992 and the present. These images reveal in startling, intimate detail the missiles, warheads, bombers, submarines, and command centers that make up the U.S.'s far-flung nuclear infrastructure. They depict both historic Cold War-era weaponry shortly before being mothballed and new warhead designs and missile defense prototypes that may be deployed well into the twenty-first century.

Look at the photos and remember what once was--and may again become--the greatest threat to human security.

Reviewing Bush's UN Speech

Today the Los Angeles Times assessed George W. Bush's address to the UN General Assembly yesterday. It's good for democracy when newspaper supply the facts that corroborate or, in this case, refute the claims made by our leaders.

The Leaders

With world leaders gathered at the United Nations this week for the 2005 World Summit, this might be a good time for a photo quiz. Can you name the leaders pictured in the following photos? (Or, in the case of the last photo, can you identify the world leader writing a note about needing a bathroom break?)

Answers are posted in the comments.

Bolton Likes It

The United Nations General Assembly today approved a draft document to be adopted by 149 world leaders attending the 2005 World Summit, which begins tomorrow in New York. The Guardian (London) describes the document this way:

This final draft, to be presented to the leaders for publication on Friday, fell far short of ambitious proposals for an overhaul of the UN which was set out earlier this year by Kofi Annan, the secretary general.

Development campaigners expressed disappointment at the lack of progress on aid, debt and, particularly, trade. Ambassadors at the UN, who have been engaged in tortuous negotiations for weeks, made one final push yesterday to find consensus but soon abandoned the attempt.

According to the story, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton "said he was pleased with the final draft."

Commentary from Singapore

Tom Friedman, commenting on Katrina from Singapore in tomorrow's New York Times, quotes Straits Times columnist Janadas Devan:

Today's conservatives differ in one crucial aspect from yesterday's conservatives: the latter believed in small government, but believed, too, that a country ought to pay for all the government that it needed.

The former believe in no government, and therefore conclude that there is no need for a country to pay for even the government that it does have....[But] it is not only government that doesn't show up when government is starved of resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn't show up either, sacrifice doesn't show up, pulling together doesn't show up, "we're all in this together" doesn't show up.

Governments can impose order in society from the top down or they can foster community. It is undoubtedly more difficult to foster community than it is to impose order, but the difference between the two modes is what separates freedom from tyranny.

Carlos and Katrina

Yesterday, while waiting for a board meeting to begin in the offices of El Rescate, I had a nice conversation with a man named Carlos. Carlos works with Comunidades, an organization of Salvadoran immigrants who fund development projects in their hometowns back in El Salvador. With considerable pride, Carlos told me about the school that had been established in his hometown of Cacaopera to teach people to make clothes for export. Fifteen sewing machines costing $120 each, he said, have been purchased in an effort to provide job opportunities for some of the people in the community.

Carlos was obviously a man with a big heart, but even knowing that, I wasn't prepared for what he told me about Comunidades' current project. Comunidades is now raising money to donate to the relief effort in New Orleans. Even though El Salvador is among the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, even though it suffered through a decade-long civil war, and even though it has suffered major devastation from earthquakes and hurricanes in recent years, Salvadorans in Los Angeles are turning their attention from the needs of their own hometowns to the needs of Americans along the Gulf Coast. I couldn't help but think of the widow's mite--and the dissatisfaction Christ expressed with those who have so much but give so little.

In answer to the question I posed in yesterday's post, the United States gives a little over 0.1 percent (0.16 percent, to be precise) of gross domestic income in official development assistance each year--a penny, a nickel, and a dime for every $100 of national income.

The 2005 World Summit

The 2005 World Summit begins at the United Nations on Wednesday. The meeting of world leaders is designed to provide an opportunity to take stock and renew the commitment of the international community to the Millennium Development Goals.

In tomorrow's New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof fires a shot across the bow of the world's leaders for their failure to address global poverty. He points out that the recently released Human Development Report "notes that the U.S. and other rich countries seem unwilling to provide a total of $7 billion annually for the next decade to provide 2.6 billion people with access to clean drinking water," an investment that "would save 4,000 lives a day" at a cost that is "less than Europeans spend on perfume--or than Americans spend on cosmetic surgery." The report also notes that "annual world spending to fight AIDS amounts to three days of military expenditures."

This might be a good time to ask how much money the government of the United States contributes each year in overseas development assistance. As a percentage of gross domestic income, is it closest to

• 2 percent?
• 1 percent?
• 0.1 percent?
• 0.02 percent?

You can find the answer in Kristof's column--or you can check back here tomorrow.

Since 9/11

It has been four years since the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01.

• Osama bin Laden remains at large.
• Al Qaeda has become an amorphous, difficult-to-track movement.
• Afghanistan has been conquered but remains unstable.
• Iraq has been conquered but has become unstable.
• The United States has begun torturing prisoners.
• FEMA has become a national embarrassment.
• North Korea has become a nuclear-weapons states.
• Iran has moved closer to becoming a nuclear-weapons state.
• The United States is, arguably, less secure than it was in 2001.

Those who take comfort in the fact that the 9/11 tragedy has not been repeated should recall that Al Qaeda or its subsidiaries have attacked Madrid, London, Bali, Riyadh, Istanbul, and Casablanca since 2001.

The Cover

Katrina, the Environment, and Human Security

The following observation from Seeking Security in an Insecure World (due out in early December) has, sadly, been validated by Hurricane Katrina:

Climate change, like virtually every other environmental threat, will affect the poor much more than it will the rich. The poor are, in many instances, dependent on the very resources and economic activities that are most likely to be affected by climate change. Subsistence agriculture, for example, may be affected in some regions by prolonged drought and in other regions by an increase in the number and severity of violent storms. Either drought or flooding can be devastating to communities living close to the margin of existence. Flooding, of course, is likely to be a particularly acute problem for people living in low-lying coastal areas, among them roughly seventy million Bangladeshis. However problematic and unpalatable many of the solutions will be, wealthy states (and wealthy individuals) will be able to purchase a measure of security against environmental threats, security that will simply be unavailable to many in the world. To put it bluntly but accurately, the rich will be able to buy their way out of many aspects of the problem.

There is nothing prophetic about this statement (which was written eight months ago). It merely describes what has happened over and over again in cases of environmental catastrophes.

A Stone for Bread

"When the logic of history hungers for bread and we hand out a stone, we are at pains to explain how much the stone resembles bread."

--Aldo Leopold, "The Land Ethic" (1949)

Revelations in New Orleans

James Carroll and Nicholas Kristof both describe some of what Katrina's aftermath should tell us about our country.

Environmental Refugees

According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), at the beginning of 2005 there were 19,200,000 people "of concern" to the agency--refugees, asylum seekers, stateless persons, internally-displaced persons (IDPs), and previously displaced persons still requiring assistance. The UNHCR, following the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, counts as "refugees" only those persons who have left their own country due to a well-founded fear of persecution. There are, of course, other reasons why people may feel it necessary to leave their homes to seek security elsewhere.

The disaster (part natural, part anthropogenic) in New Orleans has produced a million or more "environmental refugees." To see refugees of any kind in the United States is shocking, but it is not unprecedented. In the 1930s, three million people left Oklahoma to escape the catastrophic environmental collapse that produced the "Dust Bowl."

What makes America's refugees different from those we occasionally glimpse in sporadic news reports from Chad, for example, where thousands of Sudanese have fled in an effort to escape genocidal campaigns in Darfur, is the character of the accommodations we offer our refugees. Rather than erecting tent cities as the Red Cross and the International Rescue Committee have done in Africa, America is housing its refugees inside the symbols of its wealth: its domed sports stadiums. In Houston, it was a spare domed stadium, the Astrodome, that was first pressed into service as a camp for environmental refugees. In the Astrodome, in Reliant Stadium, and in New Orleans' own Superdome, people too poor ever to even hope to be able to buy tickets on the fifty-yard line find themselves sleeping on cots at midfield.

The incongruity of people who have lost all of what little they ever possessed sleeping in arenas where people with six-figure salaries go to watch athletes with seven- and eight-figure salaries is startling. And while Americans' outpouring of assistance to the flooding victims in New Orleans is gratifying, we must not congratulate ourselves on our generosity without first asking what people in other parts of the world are asking about us: How did we ever become so complacent about such poverty in the midst of such wealth?

Off to D.C.

While I hope to post occasionally from the American Political Science Association annual meeting in Washington, D.C. beginning on Thursday, a very busy schedule of meetings and events may make that impossible. If so, I'll plan to catch up on Labor Day.

The Bolton Watch

Suzanne Nossel at Democracy Arsenal offers an early assessment of John Bolton's work at the United Nations. Reed Hundt, writing at TPM Cafe, says Bolton's ultimate aim is the destruction of the United Nations.

(Via Political Animal.)

The Sources of Bush's Foreign Policy

Francis Fukuyama has a thoughtful op-ed in tomorrow's New York Times. It addresses questions concerning domestic sources of American foreign policy that were part of the discussion in POSC/INTS 344 today.

The Beginning of the Bolton Era . . .

. . . and the end of diplomacy. That, at least, is what Steve Clemons (citing Anne Penketh) sees in this post at Talking Points Memo.

Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of The Washington Note, follows Bolton more closely than Bolton's moustache does. He reported yesterday that Bolton is in the process of gutting the draft document for the Millennium Summit in September, apparently without the approval of his superiors at the State Department. In other words, it sounds like we're already witnessing Bolton's widely reported inability to play nicely with others or even stay in the yard where the adults can watch him.

So now I face a very practical problem as I prepare my syllabus for the International Organizations and Law course that I begin teaching next week: Should I include the usual information about the United Nations or should I assume that Bolton will have dismantled the institution by the time I get to that point in the semester?

More Lethal than War

In a comment on this recent post, Elizabeth Obenchain wrote:

Though an intellectually complex and bureaucratically complicated endeavor, I think that the threat of global pandemics such as avian flu or BSE, similar to environmental degradation, deserves to be examined within the scope of "national" security. These non-traditional threats are not only dangerous and destructive as single entities; they are by nature inter-related with the causes of failed states, which, as many of your recent posts would argue, are fast becoming the breeding grounds for fundamental global insecurity in the traditional sense.

I absolutely agree. Of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (and here I allude to the highly figurative portrayals of War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death rather than to a premillennial interpretation of the passage in the sixth chapter of Revelation where the imagery appears), Pestilence has always been more destructive than War.

In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides describes an epidemic in 430-29 BC that killed a quarter of the Athenian army. In 1351, the Vatican put the number of bubonic plague deaths in Europe since 1347 at 23,840,000, or roughly a third of the continent's population. When the Spanish explorer Cortez reached the New World in 1519, there were an estimated 30,000,000 Amerindians in Central Mexico. Fifty years later--largely as a consequence of the smallpox virus brought by the Spaniards--the indigenous population of the region was only 3,000,000. Finally, the Spanish influenza that swept the world in 1918-19 killed approximately 100,000,000 people--six times the number that died in World War I and almost twice as many as died in World War II, the deadliest conflict in human history. (Incidentally, these examples are drawn from Chapter 6 of the forthcoming Seeking Security in an Insecure World. Dan Caldwell and I argue--as Elizabeth did--that disease is a prime example of why we need to widen the security agenda.)

How to widen the security agenda without making the term "security" meaningless is, of course, a problem. The term is important (and not to be abused) because attaching it to a social problem typically insures that lots of money will be thrown at the issue. Where infectious disease is concerned, I have no problem "securitizing" the issue. After all, every single day, 8,000 people die of HIV/AIDS. In many countries, HIV/AIDS deaths have significant impacts on education, health care, and even national security. Both President Clinton (in April 2000) and Secretary of State Powell (during his confirmation hearings) have called HIV/AIDS a "national security threat," so perhaps we're almost there when it comes to widening the security agenda to its proper dimensions.

This is, frankly, a topic that I have neglected on this blog. I'll try to say more about it in the coming weeks.

Robertson Apologizes

You wouldn't know it if you got your news from Pat Robertson's CBN.com, but Robertson has apologized for his comment on Monday advocating the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. The apology came after Robertson told his television audience that his meaning had been misinterpreted on Monday.

To their credit, many evangelicals condemned Robertson's original comments. The World Evangelical Alliance stated, "Robertson does not speak for evangelical Christians. We believe in justice and the protection of human rights of all people, including the life of President Chávez."

Incidentally, Executive Order 12333, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, states, "No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination." This federal ban on assassination remains in effect, although CIA director Porter Goss, during his confirmation hearings earlier this year, expressed his belief that it does not apply to terrorists.

"Take Him Out"?

Fortunately, the U.S. State Department has taken a tough stand, calling the comments "inappropriate." (Yes, you may have detected some sarcasm.) But why aren't conservative Christians lining up to repudiate what Pat Robertson said yesterday?

In case you weren't watching "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcast Network yesterday, Robertson said the following about Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez:

"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability."

"We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator," he continued. "It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

Predictably, Venezuela has reacted angrily. Robertson's comments make the United States look bad and they complicate diplomatic efforts to keep Venezuela's oil flowing to the United States rather than to China. (In 2004, Venezuela--at 1.3 million barrels per day--was the fourth leading supplier of U.S. crude oil imports.) But worse, Robert's comments make Christianity look bad. The failure of those in the Religious Right to repudiate Robertson's remarks lends further support to the view that their concerns are ideological rather than religious.