Teddy Bears for Human Rights

Two Swedish ad agency employees--Thomas Mazetti and Hannah Frey--flew a small plane from Lithuania into Belarus last month and dropped 879 teddy bears with parachutes and human rights messages over various cities, including Minsk, the capital. This week, in response, Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus since 1994 and is called Europe's last dictator, fired the country's generals in charge of border security and air defense.

Belarus represses all forms of dissent and regularly jails those suspected of opposing the regime. Dissidents in the country have posed teddy bears on the streets of Minsk in silent protests against the Lukashenko regime. This, in fact, was the inspiration for the air drop undertaken by Frey and Mazetti.

Frey said, "Hopefully, we've made people more aware in the world and that there will be more people supporting Belarusian people."

For more on the air drop, see the Associated Press story here or the Los Angeles Times story here.  Mazetti and Frey's video appears below.

France Gets Serious

According to multiple sources, on July 19 French authorities seized the Paris home of Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue.  Obiang is the subject of a French arrest warrant issued in connection with a corruption investigation.

The home, a six-story mansion near the Arc de Triomphe, is estimated to be worth between 100 and 150 million euros.  Last year, eleven luxury automobiles were seized as part of the same investigation.

The arrest warrant and most recent property seizure came after Obiang failed to appear in response to a summons for questioning.  According to his attorney, "Mr. Obiang has judicial immunity as he is the vice-president of Equatorial Guinea and therefore could not attend the summons."  His appointment as vice president in his father's government came in May.

For more on the property seizure, see BBC News, Reuters, or AFP.

A Warning on Cyber Attacks

"Destructive cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure are coming."  This was Gen. Keith Alexander's warning to the Aspen Security Forum last week.  Gen. Alexander heads the National Security Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command.  He should know what he's talking about--although he also clearly knows how to grow a budget.

According to Gen. Alexander, efforts to hack into U.S. infrastructure systems increased 17-fold between 2009 and 2011.  However, the number of attacks for any given year were not provided.

A video of the interview with Gen. Alexander, conducted by NBC News correspondent Pete Williams, is available here.

The Arms Trade Treaty: A Postmortem

On July 2, representatives of 193 UN member states met in New York City for the UN Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty. The objective of the conference was to agree on the text of an international agreement that would provide for greater coordination among states in the regulation of trade in conventional weapons. On Friday, the meeting concluded without an agreement. The search for consensus was impeded by the reluctance of some of the biggest arms-trading states, including the United States, to see a treaty adopted.

Expectations for reaching an agreement ran high but were probably unrealistic given three key factors influencing the actual outcome of the negotiations.  First, the conference operated on the basis of a rule of consensus.  This meant that a single state could play the role of spoiler in the negotiations, both with respect to individual provisions of the treaty being considered and the final outcome of the negotiations.  Put differently, all participants had to accept the results in order for a treaty to be adopted.  Second, although most of the world's states were willing to sign on to rules that would make it more difficult to transfer weapons to governments that support terrorism or abuse human rights (and in fact many already adhere to domestic restrictions on arms sales to unsavory regimes), a few states profit greatly from their willingness to sell in a market made less competitive by the moral scruples of others.  The most important aim of a treaty to regulate conventional arms sales was to correct this flaw in the system, but the consensus rule meant that diplomatic pressure--shame, basically--rather than democratic processes would be required to prevent the unscrupulous from shutting down the negotiations.  Finally, one of the major players in global arms sales that also happens to be fairly scrupulous in its choice of customers--the United States--faced a significant domestic barrier to benign participation, much less effective leadership, at the conference.  As it did during the 2001 UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects, the American gun lobby said, in effect, "Go ahead, make my day" to all in the American political system who might have considered support for any form of regulation of the international arms trade.  On the eve of the conference's final day, a letter signed by 51 senators that expressed reservations about a potential treaty's effect on gun ownership in the United States--a matter explicitly and consistently excluded from treaty negotiations--was delivered to the White House and the Department of State.

Supporters of the ATT, as the treaty is called, were frustrated that the Obama administration broke with the consensus by claiming on the last day of the conference that more time was needed to reach an acceptable agreement.  The call for more time came after the conference had agreed on limits in the treaty designed to appease those in the United States with concerns about the domestic protection of gun ownership.  (These concerns were, in the first place, "irresponsible demagoguery" and addressed thoroughly in this issue brief from the Arms Control Association.)  It is not the first time that the United States has lobbied to weaken the substantive provisions of a major international agreement only to reject the final product after getting what it wanted.  (See the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.)

While the control of the American gun lobby over the United States Senate combined with the two-thirds majority vote required for treaty ratification makes U.S. participation in an agreement unlikely for the foreseeable future, the rest of the world seems certain to reach agreement on the Arms Trade Treaty soon.  A statement at the end of the conference, issued on behalf of over 90 participating states, called on the conference president, Ambassador Roberto García Moritán of Argentina, "to report to the General Assembly on the progress we have made, so that we can finalize our work."  Such a report is expected to give the UN General Assembly an opportunity to vote on the text of the ATT.  Under the rules of the General Assembly, a two-thirds majority vote would be needed to adopt the treaty and send it on to UN member states for ratification.  No veto would be possible.

As incredible as it sounds, the solution posed by the American gun lobby to the problem of gun violence outside the borders of the United States is the same solution offered for the same problem inside our borders:  more guns.  The putative right to own guns of any size or class is held by merchants of death to be more important than the very real right to life.  This, at least, seems to be the inescapable conclusion to be drawn from opposition to a treaty designed to curb arms sales to governments like those in Syria, Iran, Burma, and North Korea.

The London Olympics . . . and Gender

Whether legal or cultural, gender barriers--almost all of which cause women to be left out or otherwise disadvantaged, in case that needs to be said--remain all too common in the modern world.  My own university has never had a female president or provost; my college within the university has never been led by a female dean.  The United States, Mexico, France (etc., etc.) and 52 of the 53 countries on the African continent have never had a female president.  In spite of the remaining barriers, not just in education and politics but in business, the arts, religion, and many other fields, progress is occurring.  In this year that just happens to mark the fortieth anniversary of the adoption of Title IX, there will be more women than men representing the United States in the London Olympics.  That has never happened before.  And in the upcoming Olympic Games, every single country participating will do so with both female and male athletes.  That, too, has never happened before.

Three countries--Qatar, Brunei, and Saudi Arabia--had to overcome their long traditions of gender discrimination in order ensure that every team participating in the London Olympics has both male and female representatives.  Ironically (given what I said about my university), a Pepperdine student, Sarah Attar, will be half of the female contingent on Saudi Arabia's Olympic team.  A member of the women's track team at Pepperdine, Attar will compete at 800 meters in London.

Attar was born and raised in California but has both U.S. and Saudi Arabian citizenship.  Given the limited opportunities for women in sports in Saudi Arabia, going outside the Kingdom to find Attar or someone like her was one of the few options for bringing a woman onto the Saudi Arabian Olympic team.  (The other woman on the Saudi Arabian team, Wodjan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani, is from Saudi Arabia and will compete in judo.)

As this essay by Eman Al Nafjan points out, terrible discrimination against women persists in Saudi Arabia; giving in to the International Olympic Committee's threat to bar Saudi Arabia from participating in the Olympics hardly qualifies as a magnanimous gesture on the part of the royal family.  Nevertheless, from small beginnings great things sometimes emerge.  Just ask the 269 women on the U.S. team, most of whom are beneficiaries of a law called Title IX.

Torture from the Inside

Worth watching.

The French Arrest Warrant Appears

France has issued an arrest warrant for Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, vice president of Equatorial Guinea and son of the country's president.  (The existence of the warrant, previously concealed, was first reported in April.)  Obiang failed to appear for questioning as ordered in France's Biens Mal Acquis case in which it is alleged that millions of Euros worth of goods, including a lavish home near the Arc de Triomphe, were acquired with the proceeds of corruption.  Obiang is currently facing a civil action brought by the U.S. Department of Justice last fall that seeks to seize American property, including an estate in Malibu, and almost $2 million worth of Michael Jackson memorabilia, for the same reason.

Clinton Confronts a Legacy of the Vietnam War

Secretary of State Clinton is in Phnom Penh where she attended the just-concluded annual foreign ministers' meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).  Earlier in the week, she became the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Laos since John Foster Dulles visited in 1955.  In the interim, there was the Vietnam War.

Like Cambodia, Laos was a sideshow in the Vietnam War.  But that hardly means it was ignored.  In fact, on a per capita basis, there is no country in the world that has been bombed as much as Laos.  Because the Ho Chi Minh Trail passed through Laos and the Viet Cong used Laotian territory both as a refugee and as a source of supplies, the United States extended its massive bombing campaign to Laos.  According to testimony by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Scot Marciel before a subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in 2010, the United States dropped 2.5 million tons of bombs on Laos during the Vietnam War--more than were dropped on Germany and Japan, combined, during World War II.  Many of the bombs were cluster munitions with failure rates as high as 30 percent.

Even now, an estimated 300 people per year die when unexploded ordnance (UXO) explodes--because they stepped on unexploded submunitions from a cluster bomb, because they were trying to recover the valuable scrap metal from unexploded bombs, because they stepped on landmines--in short, because they were going about the normal activities of daily life in Laos.

Secretary Clinton met a survivor during a stop at an artificial limb center in Laos.  Phongsavath Sonilya, who lost both forearms and his vision when a cluster bomb exploded three years ago, had a message for the secretary of state.  The nineteen-year-old suggested that more needs to be done to halt the use of cluster munitions like the ones that contaminate many places where the United States has made war:  Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

There is a Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), an international agreement that prohibits the use, manufacture, stockpiling, and transfer of cluster bombs.  It was adopted in May 2008 and entered into force on August 1, 2010.  Seventy-four states have ratified the CCM, binding themselves to eliminate this particular weapon and to aid those countries, like Laos, that have suffered so much from its use.  The United States is not a party to the CCM.  No one could make a better case for why the United States should ratify the agreement than Phongsavath Sonilya did when he met Secretary Clinton.

Silverstein on Obiang

As usual, Ken Silverstein has Teodorin Obiang in his sights and is right on target.  As he points out in his New York Times op-ed today, there's more that the United States needs to do to make it difficult for dictators--and their families--to launder their ill-gotten gains here.

Carter on Obama

Nowhere in yesterday's New York Times op-ed does former president Jimmy Carter mention Barack Obama, but his lament concerning the failure of American leadership on human rights is clearly a shot fired across the bow of the current administration.  Not that the Obama administration bears sole responsibility for a situation in which, by President Carter's count, the United States now finds itself violating "at least 10" of the 30 articles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  The slide that began with the Bush administration's response to 9/11, according to Carter, "has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public."  We all bear responsibility.

Where American human rights policy is concerned, President Obama has much left to do to effect the change that he promised in the 2008 campaign.  In some cases (for example, the use of drones to carry out extra-judicial killings of suspected terrorists, some of whom have been U.S. citizens), he has adopted the misguided policies of the Bush administration so that change now requires a 180-degree turn.

President Carter was right to call the current administration to account.

Investing in Corruption

Having recently restructured the family business--the limited partnership known as Equatorial Guinea--Teodoro Obiang came to the United States seeking investors willing to funnel more money into his private bank accounts.  According to a government press release, "The government of Equatorial Guinea laid out the welcome mat in Houston Monday [June 11] for U.S. investments in information technology, telecommunications, fisheries, construction, agriculture and agroindustry, mining and hydrocarbons."

If, as the press release indicates, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) was indeed present at the event (along with Rep. Al Green [D-TX]), then an explanation is necessary.  On May 10, 2007, the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight, together with the Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, held a hearing under the heading, "Is There a Human Rights Double Standard?  U.S. Policy Toward Equatorial Guinea and Ethiopia."  In a statement prepared for the hearing  (see page 62), Rep. Jackson-Lee made the following comments:

     Mr. Chairman, I believe it is crucial that we practice what we preach.  In this country, we struggled to achieve democracy, fought for our own human rights, and we now call for the observance of these same values around the world.  Yet we persist in providing support to non-democratic regimes in exchange for their cooperation on strategic issues.
     Citizens of Equatorial Guinea do not enjoy the freedoms that we as Americans would believe to be crucial.  According to a Freedom House report, "the country has never held a credible election," and freedom of the press, as well as the rights of association, assembly, collective bargaining, and travel abroad are all limited.  Coupled with a lack of an independent judiciary, the nation's citizens have little constitutional or legal protection or recourse.

Rep. Jackson Lee should know that there have been no significant changes in Equatorial Guinea that would negate the validity of her statement since it was presented five years ago.  On the contrary, there has been another sham presidential election since then and members of the Obiang family are now subjects of corruption investigations in the United States, France, and Spain.  President Obiang may believe that Equatorial Guinea is "now considered a model country in African development," but this is true only if by "model country" he means one that illustrates what not to do to promote freedom and prosperity for ordinary citizens.

On Friday, Obiang met with representatives of four civil society groups that have been critical of his regime's record on human rights and corruption:  Human Rights Watch, Global Society, the Open Society Foundation, and Oxfam America.  The meeting was arranged by the State Department and the Woodrow Wilson Center.  The meeting was off the record, but going into it the four organizations had promised to "press Obiang to take concrete steps to increase public transparency, combat corruption, prioritize anti-poverty spending, cease political repression, enact judicial reforms, and permit domestic and foreign civil society activists and journalists to operate freely."  It is worth asking whether Rep. Jackson Lee and Rep. Green pressed Obiang in the same way on Monday.

In all likelihood, Obiang received some advice on how to handle human rights NGOs the night before his meeting.  Josh Rogin reports that Carlton Masters, the CEO of a firm called GoodWorks International (not, as its name might suggest, a non-profit), hosted a dinner party in Obiang's honor Thursday night.  Masters, a former banking executive, founded GoodWorks International with Andrew Young, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to represent American companies seeking to do business in Africa and the Caribbean.  The company was particularly successful in parlaying personal ties with former Nigerian dictator Olusegun Obasanjo into lucrative contracts for American oil companies.  (See this interesting story dated April 18, 2007, in the New York Times.)  In short, Masters' interest in Obiang is more pragmatic (read "profit-oriented") than principled.

No doubt the same can be said of Rep. Jackson Lee and Rep. Green, whose interest in potential contracts for Houston-based firms caused them to overlook the abysmal human rights record of the Obiang regime.

Flame

On Monday, the Russian computer security firm Kaspersky Lab identified what it said "might be the most sophisticated cyber weapon yet unleashed," a malware product dubbed "Flame."  The malware is known to steal data of all types, including voice and video communications, from infected computers.  It has been found on hundreds of computers in the Middle East with Iran leading the target list.

Kapersky's researchers believe Flame was developed by the same organization that created the Duqu and Stuxnet malware, which also attacked computers in Iran.  (Stuxnet is reported to have caused roughly one-fifth of the centrifuges then being used in Iran's nuclear enrichment program to malfunction.)  Its massive size (20 megabytes) has made it difficult for computer security experts to decipher all of its capabilities.

Symantec researcher Vikram Thakur said, "This is the third such virus we’ve seen in the past three years.  It’s larger than all of them. The question we should be asking now is:  How many more such campaigns are going on that we don’t know about?"

Taylor's Sentence

The Special Court for Sierra Leone has imposed a sentence of fifty years in prison for former Liberian president Charles Taylor.  Judge Richard Lussick, who delivered the sentence, said the crimes Taylor had committed were of the "utmost gravity in terms of scale and brutality."

For more on the sentence--and the trial as a whole--see the Open Society Justice Initiative's special website here.

The BBC or the Onion News Network?

In a segment last week on "News at One" about Amnesty International's criticism of the UN Security Council over its failure to take decisive action in the face of atrocities in Syria, the BBC displayed two logos:  the familiar candle encircled by barbed wire of Amnesty International and the bird atop a globe with a banner reading "UNSC" that represents the United Nations Space Command.  If you didn't know there was a United Nations Space Command, you probably haven't played Halo, a science fiction video game series owned by Microsoft.  There is no logo for the UN Security Council, which would normally be represented by the UN logo, a blue globe flanked by laurel branches.

Here's the offending segment:

For more, go here.

Presidential Power

A number of observers have lamented the extraordinary power over national security matters vested in the president of the United States since the rise of the national security state following World War II.  Garry Wills, in Bomb Power:  The Modern Presidency and the National Security State, puts too much emphasis on the nuclear dimension but nonetheless effectively traces many of the steps that have produced  the problem.  Andrew Bacevich, in Washington Rules:  America's Path to Permanent War, places the issue in the context of a consensus regarding the indispensability of American military might for world order.  The late Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., in War and the American Presidency, critiqued the way the Bush administration expanded presidential power while noting that the tendency was not unique to George W. Bush.  There are many other scholars who ask why power, once taken up by an American president to meet the immediate demands of a national security crisis, cannot be relinquished in the manner of Cincinnatus in ancient Rome.

Those who want to contemplate the problem as it relates to the Obama administration would do well to read the long article in today's New York Times about the ongoing hunt for suspected terrorists.

Free to Travel . . . and Return

Nobel laureate and opposition political leader Aung San Suu Kyi left Myanmar yesterday for the first time since 1988.  She arrived in Bangkok intending to visit Burmese refugees in Thailand but apparently neglected to inform Thai officials of her plans.

Before her departure from Yangon, Suu Kyi met with Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh to discuss Myanmar's ongoing political transition.  Singh delivered an invitation for Suu Kyi to deliver the next Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture.  The Times of India noted that the meeting represented a "course correction" for India's government, which had previously opted to deal with the military regime in Myanmar that had repeatedly confined Suu Kyi to house arrest while suppressing the country's pro-democracy movement.

Suu Kyi plans to travel to the U.K., Norway, Switzerland, and Ireland next month.  She will  address Parliament in the U.K., receive her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize in Norway, address the International Labor Organization in Switzerland, and meet with Bono in Ireland.

Reporting on Rights

On Wednesday, Amnesty International released Amnesty International Report 2012:  The State of the World's Human Rights.  Yesterday, the State Department released its 2011 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.  Both are valuable reports, but there are a few differences worth noting.

First, the State Department's report is more comprehensive, both with respect to the number of countries and the range of issues covered.  (Country Reports on Human Rights Practices covers "almost 200 countries" while Amnesty's State of the World's Human Rights covers 155.)  Topically, the State Department reviews state practices under seven broad categories:  (1) respect for the integrity of the person, (2) respect for civil liberties, (3) respect for political rights, (4) official corruption and government transparency, (5) government attitude regarding international and nongovernmental investigation of alleged violations of human rights, (6) discrimination, societal abuses, and trafficking in persons, and (7) workers' rights.  Amnesty's report focuses more on the civil and political rights that are central to its mission (including use of the death penalty), but individual country reports are not as formulaic as those in the State Department report.

There is one significant difference in the two reports that Americans should note.  The State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices contains no assessment of the human rights record of the United States; Amnesty's report does.  It is instructive reading for those with illusions of righteousness.

LOST Returns

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee began hearings on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (sometimes called the Law of the Sea Treaty, or LOST) yesterday with testimony from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey.  Secretary Clinton noted in her testimony that Republican and Democratic presidents, the military establishment, and American business interests have all supported ratification.  Moderate Republicans in the Senate favor ratification, but 26 conservative Republicans, led by Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, have signed a letter vowing to oppose the treaty if it comes to the floor for a vote.  Chair of the SFRC, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, has indicated that the treaty will not be brought up for a vote before the November elections.

For more, see the Boston Globe coverage here, the New York Times story here, Secretary Clinton's statement here, and Secretary Panetta's statement here.

Preparing for the Transition

Reuters on Tuesday reported that Teodoro Nguema Obiang--Teodorín--has been appointed by his father to be "First Vice President in charge of National Defense and State Security."  The move is the clearest indication yet that the elder Obiang, who turns 70 on June 5, has chosen his oldest son to be his successor in spite of the legal problems he faces in France and the United States.

Teodorín's appointment was one of five made by presidential decree on Monday.  A government news release with information about each of the appointees is available here.

Anachronism

Today's Sovereign Monarchs lunch at Windsor Castle seems the very definition of "anachronism."

If only all in the group were figureheads, as is their host, Queen Elizabeth II.

Human Rights in Africa: Will South Africa Lead?

Last week, a South African court ruled that South Africa, under its International Criminal Court Act, has a legal obligation to investigate crimes against humanity and that, consequently, it must investigate officials from neighboring Zimbabwe who are suspected of having tortured opposition figures in 2007.  A group of Zimbabweans who fled to South Africa in the wake of election-related violence in 2007-2008 were among those who brought the case.

Peter Godwin, president of the PEN American Center, wrote in the New York Times earlier this week that the ruling "could cement South Africa's commitment to protecting human rights and broaden the application of universal jurisdiction."  He also notes, however, that South African authorities are reportedly planning to appeal the ruling in an effort to side-step the diplomatic problems that would accompany police investigations of Zimbabwean officials who travel to South Africa frequently for both official and personal reasons.

The court's ruling, as it ought to be, is based on principles of justice and the rule of law.  President Zuma's concern with the ruling, on the other hand, is for its possible political impact.  Zuma is currently acting as a mediator between political factions in Zimbabwe to try to ensure that the next national election will be free and fair.

False Start in the Mladić Case

The trial of Ratko Mladić, which began yesterday in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague, was suspended today due to errors in the prosecution's handling of evidence.  Both sides have conceded that the errors were clerical in nature, but the defense must be given time to review documents that have not previously been made available.  The judge in the case, Alphons Orie, has not indicated when the trial will resume.  Defense attorneys are asking for a delay of six months.

Mladić was the commander of Bosnian Serb (Republika Srpska) forces in the Bosnian War of 1992-1995.  He is accused of ordering two of the worst atrocities of that conflict, the 44-month-long Siege of Sarajevo, in which over 10,000 residents of the city were killed by random shelling from the surrounding hills, and the Srebrenica Massacre, the largest mass murder in Europe since the end of World War II.  He was indicted by the ICTY on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in 1995, but remained at large in Serbia until his capture on May 26, 2011.

In the first day and a half of the trial, before the suspension, prosecutors presented an overview of the atrocities committed in the war, previewing what will be their efforts in the trial to establish Mladić's responsibility as the commander of Bosnian Serb forces for those crimes listed in the indictment.  Videos of Mladić, including one from Srebrenica, were shown to supplement radio intercepts and narrative descriptions of evidence linking Mladić to the crimes.  In one clip he speaks directly to the camera saying, "We give this town to the Serb people as a gift.  Finally, after the rebellion against the Dahis, the time has come to take revenge on the Turks in this region."  (The "rebellion against the Dahis" refers to the Serbs' 1804 revolt against Ottoman rule.)

Although Mladić is 70 and frail, the critical role he played in the Bosnian War has made his prosecution especially important to those seeking justice for what happened in that conflict.  Prosecutors and victims alike must hope that the trial of Mladić does not play out like that of Slobodan Milošević, who died in prison without a verdict after having been on trial for five years.

The Two-Liter Light Bulb

I had not heard of this low-cost, low-tech solution to a problem affecting the roughly 1.5 billion people in the world living without electricity until Sandy showed me her upcoming presentation for the class she's taking on innovation.  (This video is part of that presentation.)

For more on this idea (and its application in Africa), see this report from VOA News.

(And, yes, some homes where these lights have been installed do have electricity, but it's not free, unlike these light bulbs.)

Indigenous Peoples: An Addendum

When I posted yesterday about the UN special rapporteur on indigenous peoples' rights and his assessment of the state of Native Americans, I hadn't seen Nicholas Kristof's column on the Oglala Sioux lawsuit against Anheuser Busch.  Kristof writes of the Sioux reservation, "Pine Ridge encompasses one of the poorest counties in the entire United States—Shannon County, S.D.—and life expectancy is about the same as in Afghanistan. As many as two-thirds of adults there may be alcoholics, and one-quarter of children are born suffering from fetal alcohol spectrum disorders." 

Alcohol is banned on the Pine Ridge reservation, where tribal sovereignty makes such a ban possible, but Whiteclay, Nebraska, a town of ten people just outside the reservation, has become a major distribution point for alcoholic beverages that are carried onto the reservation in violation of the ban.  Attorneys for Anheuser Busch and others have argued that the focus should be on individual responsibility, but this overlooks the fact that alcoholism is a disease and that tribal leaders on the Pine Ridge reservation are trying to deal with a public health disaster.

For more on the situation, see this recent article in the Washington Post.

Niebuhr--with Hair

I have to admit, Reinhold Bieber made me laugh.

(Thanks, Lora Walsh.)

The Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Americans generally view human rights abuses as problems that happen elsewhere.  The drama surrounding Chen Guangcheng's escape from house arrest and flight to the American Embassy in Beijing this past week--complete with front-page coverage in American newspapers--underscores the standard narrative that, when it comes to human rights, the United States is a beacon of hope in a dark world.  As a New York Times editorial put it yesterday, "We have little doubt of the Americans' commitment to Mr. Chen's safety and his cause."  And as if that weren't enough, the Times reminded its readers that "this episode is first and foremost an embarrassment for China and a glaring reminder of its abysmal mistreatment of its own citizens."

The Times' editorial board probably got it right about Chen and the American commitment to the cause of human rights in China, even if that commitment does sometimes give way before other considerations in the Sino-American relationship.  From what I can tell, however, the New York Times has not reported anywhere in its pages the conclusions of James Anaya regarding the failures of the United States to respect the rights articulated in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.  Anaya is the special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples.  His mandate, renewed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2007, is primarily to "gather information on alleged violations of the rights of indigenous peoples" and forward recommendations to the UN on means of remedying those violations.  At the conclusion of a twelve-day fact-finding trip in the United States, Anaya stated that "it is evident that more robust measures are needed to address the serious issues affecting Native American, Alaska Native and Hawaiian peoples in the United States, issues that are rooted in a dark and complex history whose legacies are not easy to overcome."

Although his formal recommendations have not yet been drafted, Anaya suggested that lands taken from Native Americans should, in some cases, be restored.  The Black Hills of South Dakota, the ancestral home of the Oglala Sioux, were specifically mentioned.  "I'm talking," he said, "about restoring to indigenous peoples what obviously they're entitled to and they have a legitimate claim to in a way that is not divisive but restorative."

Official policies toward Native Americans were shameful in the nineteenth century (as when the U.S. Congress in 1877 passed a law unilaterally reversing concessions made to the Oglala Sioux in an 1868 treaty), but they haven't been much better in the twenty-first century.  Many Native American communities suffer from poverty, unemployment, suicide, and alcoholism rates that far outpace national averages.  The reasons are not hard to see.  From the perspective of those outside the United States, the fundamental problem is a long history of human rights abuse.

World Press Freedom Day

In 1993, the United Nations General Assembly designated May 3 as World Press Freedom Day to underscore the importance of a free press as a foundation for freedom of expression and other human rights.  The date marks the anniversary of the Declaration of Windhoek, the work of the participants in the UN/UNESCO Seminar on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press in 1991.  As the Declaration proclaimed, "the establishment, maintenance and fostering of an independent, pluralistic and free press is essential to the development and maintenance of democracy in a nation, and for economic development."

 On the eve of World Press Freedom Day, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a special report on the "10 Most Censored Countries," the first such report since 2006.  Topping the list are Eritrea, North Korea, and Syria.  Eritrea was cited for its extensive and oppressive government-imposed controls on all media in the country.  North Korea, which was ranked first in 2006, also imposes strong centralized control over all news coverage, but the CPJ notes that the Associated Press has been permitted to open a bureau in Pyongyang this year.  Syria jumped from ninth to third on the list due to its efforts to impose a news blackout on the country as the government of Bashir al-Assad attempts to suppress widespread opposition to his rule.

Here's the complete list:

1. Eritrea
2. North Korea
3. Syria
4. Iran
5. Equatorial Guinea
6. Uzbekistan
7. Burma
8. Saudi Arabia
9. Cuba
10. Belarus

The CPJ report says this about the ten countries on the list:

The 10 most restricted countries employ a wide range of censorship techniques, from the sophisticated blocking of websites and satellite broadcasts by Iran to the oppressive regulatory systems of Saudi Arabia and Belarus; from the dominance of state media in North Korea and Cuba to the crude tactics of imprisonment and violence in Eritrea, Uzbekistan, and Syria.

One trait they have in common is some form of authoritarian rule. Their leaders are in power by dint of monarchy, family dynasty, coup d'état, rigged election, or some combination thereof. . . .

Lagging economic development is another notable trend among heavily censored nations. Of the 10 most censored countries, all but two have per capita income around half, or well below half, of global per capita income, according to World Bank figures for 2010, the most recent available. The two exceptions are Saudi Arabia and Equatorial Guinea, where oil revenues lead to much higher per capita income than the global level.  But both of those countries are beset by vast economic inequities between leaders and citizens.

UPDATE:  Amnesty International offers a way to take action on behalf of some of the many journalists who have been imprisoned for independent reporting in states with heavy press censorship.  Go here and take a few minutes to help the cause of press freedom.

Split or Steal

From a British game show called Golden Balls, here's a great illustration of the prisoners' dilemma:

(Via NPR's Planet Money.)

Private Empire

Private Empire:  ExxonMobil and American Power by Steve Coll is being released today.  Coll is the author of Ghost Wars:  The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, which won a Pulitzer Prize.  Private Empire promises a look inside what may be the most powerful corporation on the planet.

Coll will be discussing the book in Los Angeles at the Petersen Automotive Museum (6060 Wilshire Boulevard) at 7:30 p.m. on May 10, thanks to Zócalo.  (The talk is free, but reservations are requested.)

For a sense of what to expect (from the book and the talk), here's part of the Zócalo description:

Put aside that the annual revenues of ExxonMobil exceed the GDP of Norway.  It only overstates the power of Norway.  In fact, in many oil-rich nations, ExxonMobil exercises more sway over day-to-day policy and economics than the United States government.  It also spends more on lobbying in Washington than almost any other company.  In short, ExxonMobil has a huge influence on the United States and the world.  And yet we know almost nothing about it.  What goes on inside the black box?

Dwight Garner reviewed Private Empire in the New York Times last Thursday.

The New Ethics & International Affairs Blog

A new blog connected to Ethics & International Affairs, the journal of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, has launched.  We can expect links to book reviews and selected full-text articles from the journal, announcements, and broad, informed discussions of the kinds of ethical issues that fill the pages of the journal.  Be sure to check it out.

The Charles Taylor Verdict

Charles Taylor, a former warlord who was president of Liberia from 1997 to 2003, has been convicted on eleven counts of war crimes by the Special Court for Sierra Leone sitting in The Hague.  In a trial that began in 2006 and that, over the years, included lengthy testimony from Taylor and over a hundred other witnesses concerning conflict diamonds, amputations, and cannibalism, prosecutors sought to link particular war crimes in Sierra Leone’s civil war to Taylor without written orders or testimony putting him at the scene of the crimes.  They were able to do so using intercepted communications and testimony from Taylor’s radio operators.

Taylor was a high-ranking member of Samuel Doe’s government in Liberia following the 1980 coup that toppled William Tolbert.  In 1983, he was dismissed from the government and charged with having embezzled Liberian government funds.  He fled to the United States where, on May 24, 1984, he was arrested and charged with laundering the funds that had been embezzled through an American bank.  He escaped from prison sixteen months later—with help from the CIA, according to his own testimony at trial—and made his way to Libya where he gained support from Muammar Gaddafi.

Eventually Taylor traveled to Cote d’Ivoire where he formed the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) and attacked Liberia in an effort to unseat Doe.  A rival organization eventually deposed Doe, but the civil war continued in the form of an ethnic conflict wrapped up in a struggle to control natural resources.

Elections were held in Liberia in 1997 following the conclusion of the war a year earlier.  Taylor won the election with 75 percent of the vote (using, among others, the campaign slogan “he killed my Ma, he killed my Pa, but I will vote for him”).  As president of Liberia, he supported the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel force in the civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone, allegedly by supplying arms for diamonds.  It was his engagement with the RUF that prompted his indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Sentencing in the case has been set for May 3.

The Security Paradox

Speaking at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government last week, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described changes in the security environment and how these are affecting defense planning.  Of particular note in the speech was his description of what he calls the "security paradox," which is the notion that although war has become less likely, "destructive technologies are available to a wider and more disparate pool of adversaries," including individuals and other non-state actors.  The result, he concludes, is that our more peaceful world is also more threatening.  In this and other respects, Gen. Dempsey's analysis echoes many of the points that Dan Caldwell and I make in Seeking Security in an Insecure World.

Gen. Dempsey began by noting the importance of the way we conceptualize the security environment.  "How we think about security, about the security environment, carries important consequences for our nation and for me, particularly for how we build our military."  This, it seems to me, is a far cry from the more traditional assumption that there are objective facts--about power, geography, and national interests, for example--that guide policy in the realm of national security.  Carrying the point further, Gen. Dempsey said, "Our own inertia can blind us to new truths standing right before our eyes. Our preconceived notions can obscure the weak signals of impending change and those are the most important signals."

 

Addressing the "security paradox," Gen. Dempsey noted that ballistic missiles have become part of the arsenals of mid-level powers, that bombs made of fertilizer can destroy mine-resistant military vehicles, and that cyber attacks capable of crippling a society can be launched by an individual.  "What truly concerns me as chairman is that these lethal and destructive technologies are proliferating in two directions.  They're proliferating horizontally across advanced militaries in the world, and they're proliferating vertically, down to non-state actors, especially insurgents, terrorist groups and even transnational organized crime.  As a result, more people have the ability to harm us or deny us the ability to act than at any point in my life.  And that's the security paradox."

(A video of Gen. Dempsey's talk is available here.)

An Arrest Warrant for Teodorin

Reuters reports that a French prosecutor has approved the request of two investigating magistrates for an international arrest warrant targeting Teodorin Obiang, the son of Equatorial Guinea's long-time dictator.  Obiang is accused of corruption in connection with his ownership of a lavish estate and millions of dollars worth of luxury goods in Paris.

Obiang's father told an interviewer this week that his son, the country's minister of agriculture and forestry, has earned his money from the forestry and road-building enterprises he owns.  Teodorin's spending, however, has been more in line with what one would expect from involvement in Equatorial Guinea's much more lucrative oil industry.

Arms Control: History, Theory, and Policy

Arms Control:  History, Theory, and Policy has just been published by Praeger Security International, an imprint of ABC-Clio.  The two-volume work contains thirty full-length essays by twenty-nine different authors including some of the most noteworthy experts in the field.  There are also thirteen biographical sketches of individuals who have made significant contributions to disarmament and arms control efforts, from Bertha von Suttner to Thomas C. Schelling and Jody Williams.

Among the essays are "Strategic Arms Control since World War II" by Jeff Larsen, "NGOs, Social Movements, and Arms Control" by Jeff Knopf, "Israel, Iran, and the Arms Control Paradox in the Middle East" by Brent Talbot, and "Dilemmas of Arms Control and Cybersecurity" by Chris Demchak.  My own contributions are an introduction entitled "Arms Control's Third Era" and an essay on "Arms Control and International Law."  My co-editor Paul Viotti contributed essays entitled "A Template for Understanding Arms Control" and "Arms Control and European Security During the Cold War."

For more information, click on the book cover beneath the blog archive on the right.

Preparing for a Cyber Attack

The New York Times has just published a report on a threatened attack by Anonymous on the Domain Name System and the countermeasures that have been taken to thwart it.  The story provides a good look at what goes on behind the scenes (and the screens) of the Internet on a regular basis.

A Warrant for TNO's Arrest

Reuters is reporting this morning that two French judges have sought an international warrant for the arrest of Teodoro Nguema Obiang, the playboy son of Equatorial Guinea's dictator, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.  According to the story, "The two judges, Roger Le Loire and Rene Grouman, consider there are grounds to suspect that Teodorin Obiang, who is agriculture minister in the small oil-rich central African country, acquired real estate in France by fraud."

The story cites an unnamed judicial source.

Le Loire and Grouman are the investigating judges in the BMA case that has targeted corruption in Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Congo-Brazzaville.  In 1998, Le Loire issued an international arrest warrant for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and in 2001 he issued a summons tor Henry Kissinger, then visiting Paris, to testify in court about American involvement in Operation Condor.  (The summons, delivered to Kissinger at his hotel, was ignored as the U.S. State Department suggested to the French that such requests should be submitted through official channels.)

Ethics Beyond War's End

Georgetown University Press has just published Ethics Beyond War's End, a book based on papers presented at a conference hosted by Georgetown in April 2010.

The book, edited by Eric Patterson, includes contributions from a number of leading just war theorists including Michael Walzer, James Turner Johnson, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Brian Orend.  My own chapter--"A More Perfect Peace:  Jus Post Bellum and the Quest for Stable Peace"--begins with Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's observation that "the legitimate object of war is a more perfect peace."  Sherman's statement, which echoes the emphasis that both Aristotle and Augustine placed on ending wars in a way that would secure peace, should prompt us to rethink the idea of a war to end all wars.   It is not a utopian objective.  World War II, after all, was the war to end all wars in Western Europe, thanks in part to the careful steps taken to create "a more perfect peace" than that which had been created after World War I.  Notwithstanding talk of intervention in Syria or a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, the great goal of laying interstate war to rest actually seems to be within reach.  Getting the peace process right when wars do occur is, I believe, an important part of ending not just particular wars but war in general.

Over the course of the past decade, the concept of jus post bellum has gone from being a possibility broached by a few isolated thinkers to a widely accepted element of just war theory that has attracted the attention of a broad spectrum of scholars and practitioners.  Ethics Beyond War's End makes it clear that thinking about justice after war is essential, but that no consensus yet exists on the ethical principles that should guide that process. 

Lubanga Convicted

Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, the leader of a Congolese rebel group who stood accused in the International Criminal Court of recruiting and deploying child soldiers, has been found guilty.  Lubanga was the first suspect taken into custody by the ICC, in 2006, and now becomes the first to have a verdict rendered.  This is also the first time an individual has been tried before an international court for war crimes involving the use of child soldiers.

This brief film produced by the Open Society Justice Initiative and WITNESS offers an overview of the case against Lubanga and the trial prior to the rendering of the verdict, which occurred today at The Hague.

For more on the issue of child soldiers, see Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, the Child Soldiers Initiative, or Child Soldiers International.

The UN Special Rapporteur and Pfc. Manning

Juan Mendez, the UN special rapporteur for torture, has concluded that the United States subjected Pfc. Bradley Manning to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment.  Manning is the soldier who was arrested on May 29, 2010, in Iraq and accused of leaking classified documents to Wikileaks.  According to Mendez, Manning's solitary confinement for 23 hours a day over the course of  the11 months after his arrest constituted a violation of Article 16 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.  The article states:

1. Each State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture as defined in article I, when such acts are committed by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. In particular, the obligations contained in articles 10, 11, 12 and 13 shall apply with the substitution for references to torture of references to other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

2. The provisions of this Convention are without prejudice to the provisions of any other international instrument or national law which prohibits cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment or which relates to extradition or expulsion.

Mendez indicated that Manning's treatment might have constituted torture, but this could not be determined with certainty without an interview with Manning in private, something the U.S. government refused to permit.

Kony

Two weeks ago, the name didn't mean anything to most people.  Now it does--at least among those who are engaged with social media in some way.  And while there are many reasons one could criticize Invisible Children or the "Kony 2012" video--inefficient use of donated funds, inaccurate or misleading information in the film, general naivete--it is impossible to argue with the tremendous success the film and the organization have achieved in getting people to talk, post, tweet, and think about an indicted war criminal who remains at large in Central Africa.  As I write, the number of views on YouTube is over 74 million--almost 4 million more than when I checked yesterday; a Google search for "Kony" returns over 4 million web pages; and the film has been mentioned by White House press secretary Jay Carney, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, and ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo--not to mention many celebrities.  Let's be clear about one thing:  the most exacting scholarly research, the best-written books or journal articles, the most compelling television news pieces, and the most important court filings don't get this kind of attention--especially not in the demographic the Kony 2012 campaign has targeted.

Rather than add to the outpouring of commentary, I simply want to provide links to a few items, some of which are critical and some of which are laudatory.  All, I think, make valid points.

Michael Wilkerson, blogging at foreignpolicy.com, offers a number of criticisms of the Kony 2012 campaign and concludes by hoping the repressive government of Yoweri Museveni in Uganda isn't strengthened by anti-Kony efforts.

Robert Mackey's post on "The Lede," a New York Times blog about the news, reports that many Africans have concerns about the campaign, including Teju Cole's suggestion that it represents another instance of  the "White Savior Industrial Complex."

Alex Abad-Santos, on the Atlantic Wire, looks at Invisible Children's finances.

Nina Wegner, on the Huffington Post, focuses on what's good about Kony 2012.

Sean Carton, on the marketing site Click Z, avoids the policy and financial questions, stating, "'Kony 2012' is probably the best primer on how to use social media to raise awareness ever created."  He goes on to analyze what has made the campaign so successful.

Earrings on a Hog

Former Texas agriculture commissioner, author, lecturer, activist, and raconteur Jim Hightower often says "you can put earrings on a hog, but it won't hide the ugliness."  Teodoro Obiang, dictator of Equatorial Guinea for the last three decades, has expended considerable time and effort--not to mention millions of dollars--to burnish his image.  After four years of controversy, part of the effort succeeded yesterday as the executive board of UNESCO voted 33 to 18 (with 7 abstentions) to accept a donation from Obiang to establish the UNESCO-Equatorial Guinea International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences.

Supporters of the award on the executive board included representatives of African states, China, India, Russia, and Brazil.  European members, the United States, and others voted "no" on accepting the donation for the award.  Representatives from Europe and the United States have consistently opposed the award on the grounds that (1) the money being donated is apparently from Equatorial Guinea's public treasury, in spite of the fact that the country has serious unmet public sector needs, and (2) the abysmal human rights record of the Obiang regime makes it inappropriate for a UN body to accept such a donation.

Earlier this week, the UNCAC Coalition, a network of over 300 NGOs, issued a letter to UNESCO on the subject of the prize.  In part, the letter reads:

The UNCAC Coalition strongly opposes the establishment of this award, funded from the public treasury of Equatorial Guinea and yet named after its long-term head of state. As we already communicated in 2010, we believe that the award and its endorsement of Mr. Obiang are fundamentally contrary to the spirit and principles of the United Nations, as well as to UNESCO’s constitutional goals. President Obiang heads a country that has been ranked by Transparency International as among the most corrupt in the world, whose government is known for well-documented brutality and whose citizens live in poverty despite the country’s oil riches. In more than 30 years of government, Mr. Obiang has missed the opportunity to use oil revenues, and other sources of government income, to improve the life of the people in Equatorial Guinea or even to make transparent what those revenues are.

Freedom House, which has named Equatorial Guinea among the "Worst of the Worst" in terms of civil and political rights, opposed the award, as did a coalition of seven civil society organizations including the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de España, Association Sherpa, the Committee to Protect Journalists, EG Justice, Global Witness, Human Rights Watch, and the Open Society Justice Initiative.  Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “The UNESCO-Obiang prize is irreversibly tainted by its association with the repression and high-level corruption of President Obiang’s government.”

Obiang seems to have overcome the pressure exerted by Western democracies and human rights NGOs by framing the issue as a matter of Africa against the West.  The New York Times quoted Zimbabwe's UNESCO representative, David Hamadziripi, to this effect: “We believe that the decision we’ve just taken will send a very important message, that a lot of good comes out of Africa, and that Africa can and does contribute in international cooperation and is not just a recipient of the good will of others.”

Score one for the dictators.

A Short Film for International Women's Day

Via the World Bank and the One Day on Earth organization's 11.11.11 project:

Rushworth M. Kidder (1944-2012)

Rushworth M. Kidder, long-time reporter and columnist for the Christian Science Monitor and founder of the Institute for Global Ethics (IGE), died on Monday.  He devoted much of his life to ethics education.

My primary connection to his work came through a slender volume he published in 1995 called How Good People Make Tough Choices.  Even though it was not geared toward foreign policy debates, its simple framework for working through ethical dilemmas provided a solid introduction to ethical decisionmaking for my Ethics and International Politics course.  Kidder argued that an ethical dilemma involves a "right vs. right" choice, in contrast to what he called moral temptations that involve choices between right and wrong.  Ethical dilemmas, he believed, tend to fit one of four paradigms:  truth vs. loyalty, individual vs. community, short-term vs. long-term, or justice vs. mercy.  He classified the options for resolving ethical dilemmas using three categories:  rules-based ethics, ends-based ethics, and care-based ethics.  Simple, certainly, but helpful for that very reason.

For a more complete obituary, see the Bangor Daily News article here.

Meeting the MDGs

During the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, world leaders agreed to a set of objectives to be met by 2015.  These Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were designed to address seemingly intractable development and human security issues.  In spite of the global economic recession that began in 2008, the goal of cutting in half the number of people living in extreme poverty has been met ahead of schedule,according to new data from the World Bank.

The New York Times reports:

For the first time since the World Bank started keeping statistics in 1981, poverty fell in every region of the world on a three-year timeframe. In sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion of the population living in extreme poverty fell below 50 percent for the first time. And between 1981 and 2008, poverty fell to just less than a quarter of the developing world’s population from more than half.

Another of the MDGs--cutting in half the number of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015--has also been met according to data jointly reported by UNICEF and the World Health Organization.

Getting the State Right

In his 1940 essay "Why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist," Reinhold Niebuhr argued that one of the problems with pacifism is that by avoiding the anarchy of war it gives those, like Hitler, who would impose tyranny through war (or the threat of war) a free pass.  Those concerned with justice, Niebuhr suggested, must oppose both anarchy and tyranny.  "The political life of man," he wrote, "must constantly steer between the Scylla of anarchy and the Charybdis of tyranny."

Niebuhr's essay appeared as Nazi Germany was extending Hitler's tyranny over vast stretches of Europe.  Britain was enduring an aerial assault and the United States was, as yet, committed only to the sale of weapons to anti-Nazi forces.  Niebuhr's concern, at least in this essay, was for international anarchy--war--and international tyranny--conquest--rather than for internal manifestations of anarchy and tyranny.  But his observation about steering between the two extremes seems especially relevant, in a world moving beyond war, to the problems that remain within states.

The state, it seems, is a difficult thing to get right.  It must ensure order, on the one hand, while protecting freedom, on the other.  Put differently, it must apply sufficient constraints--that is, it must be strong enough--to eliminate anarchy without going so far as to impose tyranny.  In our time, Somalia has been the prime example of a state incapable of governing its own territory effectively so as to eliminate anarchy.  But it is not the only one.  Following soon after the end of the Cold War, the phenomenon of state failure appeared so widespread that some began to separate the cases into the categories of weak states, failed states, and collapsed states.

At the other end of the spectrum lies North Korea, which is likely not only the most secretive but the most repressive contemporary state.  Anarchy is hardly the problem in North Korea, but life is no better there--and perhaps much worse for many people--than it would be in a collapsed state.

Human rights are possible only in the passage between "the Scylla of anarchy and the Charybdis of tyranny."  Democracy, in fact, appears in the middle, although not at a single, fixed point between anarchy and tyranny.  States that allow for a full range of human rights appear at various points along the spectrum of state authority, but are never too far from the center.

Perhaps we can call this "the Goldilocks problem" in international politics.  Some states are too hard, some are too soft, but others are just right.  Or at least close enough to "just right" for human rights to flourish.

"What's Wrong with Bomb First and Think Later?"

From Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times today:

Oh, Barack.

You want to analyze the cost and consequences of war before you go to war?

Such a snob. Such a green eyeshade rejection of the red-hot Bush doctrine.

What’s wrong with bomb first and think later? That worked fine in Iraq. Or not.

Meet the Band

After last night's nightmare involving metal scraping against bones--yes, I got my teeth cleaned yesterday--I probably didn't need to start the day with a video of small drones teaming up to play the James Bond theme.  (It's the third video embedded in the article--the one labeled "Vijay Kumar:  Robots that fly . . . and cooperate.")

This--the use of autonomous drone swarms--is one of the more important new developments in military robotics.  And by that I don't mean we'll soon see military bands replaced by quadrotors playing specially modified musical instruments at inaugural balls.  Instead, consider the current challenge posed for the International Aerial Robotics Competition:  Teams must design a flying robot capable of silently entering a building through a window, finding a designated office inside, locating and taking a USB flash drive from a desk, and replacing the flash drive with another that looks like it.

That's what I'd call a practical application.

SCOTUS and the ATS

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court issued a new order in the case of Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, which was heard last Tuesday.  The order requires that new briefs be filed by both sides on this issue:  "Whether and under what circumstances the Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1350, allows courts to recognize a cause of action for violations of the law of nations occurring within the territory of a sovereign other than the United States."  The case will be reargued in the 2012-2013 term.

This unusual step by the Court raises the possibility that cases arising under the ATS could be limited to those occurring on the territory of the United States or in nonsovereign spaces (res communis), such as the high seas.  This, in turn, would essentially mean the end of international human rights litigation in U.S. federal courts.

For more on this, see Lyle Deniston's commentary on SCOTUSblog and John Bellinger's take over at Lawfare.

"Too Much Loose Talk of War"

Amid increasing pressure to draw "red lines" that would trigger an American military response to Iran's nuclear program, President Obama yesterday addressed AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee).  While affirming the strength of U.S.-Israeli ties and his commitment to preventing Iran from building nuclear weapons, the president pushed back against Republican presidential candidates who have argued for a more aggressive policy toward Iran and against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's efforts to get the United States to promise military action if the Iranians fail to meet certain preconditions.

Here are the key paragraphs from the speech:

Iran’s leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.  And as I have made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.

Moving forward, I would ask that we all remember the weightiness of these issues; the stakes involved for Israel, for America, and for the world.  Already, there is too much loose talk of war.  Over the last few weeks, such talk has only benefited the Iranian government, by driving up the price of oil, which they depend on to fund their nuclear program.  For the sake of Israel’s security, America’s security, and the peace and security of the world, now is not the time for bluster.  Now is the time to let our increased pressure sink in, and to sustain the broad international coalition we have built.  Now is the time to heed the timeless advice from Teddy Roosevelt:  Speak softly; carry a big stick.  And as we do, rest assured that the Iranian government will know our resolve, and that our coordination with Israel will continue.

Amir Oren, writing in Haaretz, said this of President Obama:  "No one who knows Washington and its ways could mistake the subtext of his words. A strong commitment to Israel? Assuredly. Capitulation to the dictates of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?  Not a chance."  For his part, Prime Minister Netanyahu, in Canada to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper before continuing to Washington for today's meeting with President Obama, praised the president's statements asserting support for Israel's right to defend itself and opposition to Iran's efforts to build nuclear weapons.

Tom McCarthy of The Guardian describes how American electoral politics complicates the tense relationship between Obama and Netanyahu:

If Netanyahu decides he doesn't need Obama to hit Iran--or that the threat to Israel is too great to wait--then all bets suddenly are off.  What if instead of Mitt Romney the president suddenly faces a reelection fight involving a new war in the Middle East, expensive gas, U.S. casualties and a new economic dive--plus Mitt Romney (or Rick Santorum)?  Netanyahu knows that Obama knows that Netanyahu knows this.