Defense and Security Studies Commons^™

Genocide Myopia: How Reframing Mass Atrocity Could Backfire, Sonia Cardenas

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The United States has long viewed genocide and mass atrocity as tragic, moral problems divorced from national interests. This may be changing under the Obama administration, with genocide and mass atrocity being reframed as problems to be solved pragmatically. Michael Abramowitz and Lawrence Woocher celebrate this “unprecedented breakthrough” in Foreign Policy, urging President Obama to follow up with specific measures: strategic military planning, interagency coordination, firm leadership, and concrete action on Darfur. Despite the promise of overcoming inaction and focusing on prevention, the new vision of genocide and mass atrocity Abramowitz and Woocher depict remains myopic. It is narrowly focused …

A Break From The Old Routine...., Todd Landman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Abramowitz and Woocher highlight a potentially significant shift in policy discourse in international relations with respect to humanitarianism and the prevention of genocide. For many years, the United States has suffered from the twin problems of the human rights “double standard” and “Catch-22.” On the one hand, particular countries have been seen as vital by the United States for intervention on humanitarian grounds even though many believed other geostrategic interests are at stake (e.g. Kosovo in 1999) and others have not (e.g. Rwanda in 1994). On the other hand, US intervention on humanitarian grounds can be criticized as heavy-handed or …

On Genocide And The National Interest, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In the second presidential debate, Barack Obama said, in response to a question about the crisis in Darfur, that “when genocide is happening, when ethnic cleansing is happening somewhere around the world and we stand idly by, that diminishes us. And so I do believe that we have to consider it as part of our interests, our national interests, in intervening where possible.” In a similar vein, Michael Abramowitz and Lawrence Woocher highlight how genocide is increasingly being seen as a security threat by the White House.

The Principled Case For Employing Private Military And Security Companies In Humanitarian Interventions And Peacekeeping, Deane-Peter Baker, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The possibility of using private military and security companies to bolster the capacity to undertake humanitarian intervention has been increasingly debated. The focus of such discussions has, however, largely been on practical issues and the contingent problems posed by private force. By contrast, this paper considers the principled case for privatising humanitarian intervention. It focuses on two central issues. First, is there a case for preferring these firms to other, state-based agents of humanitarian intervention? In particular, given a state’s duties to their own military personnel, should the use of private military and security contractors be preferred to regular soldiers …

Marten Zwanenburg On Killer Robots: Legality And Ethicality Of Autonomous Weapons. By Armin Krishnan. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. 240pp., Marten Zwanenburg

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Killer Robots: Legality and Ethicality of Autonomous Weapons. By Armin Krishnan. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. 240pp.

The Object Of Torture Is Torture: Extraordinary Renditions To Jordan And Human Rights In The War On Terror, Kat Mitchell

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Hassan Saleh bin Attash, a Yemeni national, was just seventeen at the time of his September 2002 arrest in Pakistan. The young man spent four days in a Karachi prison before being taken to a United States-run prison in Kabul, where he was held and allegedly tortured through the middle of September. He was then rendered to Jordan.

Hope Over Experience?, Cath Collins

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Writing about US human rights policy from the outside is always a disconcerting experience. All bets are off, and all assumptions are turned on their head. Assumptions from the South looking North are that, rhetoric aside, US interests rarely if ever feature human rights protection and promotion in first place. What’s more, they have very frequently featured the opposite: dirty tricks, torture and rendition were sadly familiar to students of Latin American history long before Guantanamo. The Clinton years went some way towards reining in the more blatant contradictions of the 1980s, but they also set in train the easy …

From Inspiring Hope To Taking Action: Obama And Human Rights, Stephen James

Human Rights & Human Welfare

While President George H. Bush spoke of a new world order, and his “misunderestimated” son mangled the English language at countless press conferences, with Barack Obama the USA now has a talented orator as a president. There is a new word order. But does the new and skillful rhetoric match the reality when it comes to human rights?

The Statesman's Dilemma: Peace Or Justice? Or Neither?, Henry Krisch

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Just as I sat down to comment on President Obama and human rights, I glanced today's (November 19, 2009) The New York Times and found several opinion essays-careful in fact, thoughtful in tone, reasonable in argument-critical of Obama's approach during his recent visit to China toward Chinese human rights violations (mainly concerning Tibet but including also imprisoned lawyers, internet censorship, and persecution of Falun Gong.) The essayists considered various tactics for exerting American pressure on China regarding human rights. Common to all of them was a tone of rueful admiration for the political and diplomatic skill with which China fended …

Change We Can Believe In?, Katherine Hite

Human Rights & Human Welfare

We were warned to temper our high hopes for a bold new Obama era of human rights. After all, President Obama would have “a lot on his plate”: a serious economic crisis, high unemployment, over forty million people without health insurance, “two wars,” global volatility. But it’s very hard not to be dismayed by some of the continuities from the Bush to the Obama administration, as well as by some Janus-faced policy decisions with damning human rights implications. When it comes to US-Latin America relations, such decisions include: professing support for progressive immigration reform while expanding regressive anti-immigration measures; claiming …

December Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

Obama's speech to the United Nations General Assembly (September, 2009).

and

Does Obama believe in human rights? By Bret Stephens. The Wall Street Journal. October 19, 2009.

A Human Rights-Oriented Approach To Military Operations, Federico Sperotto

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Counterinsurgency is the dominant aspect of US operations in Afghanistan, and since ISAF—the NATO-led security and assistance force—has assumed growing security responsibility throughout the country, it is also a mission for the Europeans.1 The frame in which military operations are conducted is irregular warfare, a form of conflict which differs from conventional operations in two main aspects. First, it is warfare among and within the people. Second, it is warfare in which insurgents avoid a direct military confrontation, using instead unconventional methods and terrorist tactics.

© Federico Sperotto. All rights reserved.

This paper may be freely circulated in electronic or …

Looking Forward, Backward, Or Just Away?, Chandra Lekha Sriram

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The declassification and leaking of the so-called “torture memos” only supplements much which was already publicly well-known, but has offered a fresh opportunity to frankly debate American values, in particular its commitment to the rule of law, its own constitution, and international human rights and humanitarian law obligations to which it has committed itself, and which the Supreme Court has confirmed are part of domestic law. It is a shame, therefore, that the debate has been so stunted, diverted by the red herring of Dick Cheney’s rantings, and the apparent willingness of a segment of the population to accept, first, …

Let Us Not Become The Evil We Deplore, Rebecca Otis

Human Rights & Human Welfare

On 14 September 2001, Representative Barbara Lee (CA-D) voted against the House bill that granted President Bush the authority to use force in response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. As the sole person to vote against the bill (by a margin of 420-1), Lee was roundly vilified as a “traitor,” a “coward, and even a “communist.” Later that day, as the only voice of dissent on the House floor, Lee delivered a speech to justify her position. Famously, she said to the elected representatives of our country, “As we act, let us not become …

Righting Past, Present And Future Wrongs, Rhona Smith

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Three legal issues are raised by the centerpiece of this month’s Roundtable: Does the legal definition of torture include “enhanced interrogation techniques”? What are the legal responsibilities of a State when torture is committed by its agents? and What should the State do now to prevent future violations of human rights? In other words, one must characterize the actions of the past, ameliorate the damage in the present, and prevent a recurrence in the future.

June Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means.” by Mark Danner. The New York Review of Books. April 30, 2009.

Response To Mark Danner’S “The Red Cross’ Torture Report: What It Means”, Charli Carpenter

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Danner’s NY Review of Books treatise on torture calls our attention to many significant issues, but in his key argument he is critically wrong.

Torture—And Our Broader Understanding Of Human Rights, Mark Gibney

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Like most other human rights scholars, I am appalled at the idea that those people in the Bush White House who designed the administration’s policy on torture (but calling it something else) will in all likelihood go unpunished. In my view, the law is clear on this matter: those who directed and/or carried out torture must be held accountable for their actions. However, rather than focusing on the issue of accountability, I will use the issue of torture to make a broader point about how we have come to conceptualize the extent and scope of a state’s human rights obligations.

The Moral High Ground In An Age Of Vulnerability, Tyler Moselle

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Mark Danner’s New York Review of Books piece on torture in conjunction with John Nichols’ comment on the Bush administration, outline moral, legal and political problems related to the global war on terrorism and the ascendancy of the American imperial presidency. Most people seem to be repulsed by the idea of torture but are not morally committed enough or fully dedicated to prevent it from being employed to defend their way of life. Torture is a policy decision predicated on fear, self-defense, and vulnerability in an age of globalized insurgency: one way to respond is to take the moral high …

Myths, Reasonable Disagreement, And A League Of Democracies, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The United States ' election in 2004 was based on a number of foreign policy myths. Three of the most obvious were:

• The war in Iraq was necessary as a response to the threat of international terrorism. As a result, the world is now a safer place;
• The institutions of the UN are corrupt and do nothing but restrict American power;
• Al Qaeda and international terrorism more generally are extremely significant threats to American national security

Human Rights And The 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, Brent J. Steele

Human Rights & Human Welfare

There has been a vivid tendency this year by the conventional keepers of Washington wisdom to explicate the two presidential candidates' foreign policy views using old frameworks of "hawk" and "dove." Not only is this binary wrong, it fundamentally obscures some rather ironic potentials for how each candidate, if elected president, will focus upon human rights in their foreign policy. McCain's neoconservative view of the world is founded upon the Wilsonian call for democratization-culminating in what he terms a "League of Democracies." To use a concept that Arnold Wolfers first coined, and one which Joshua Muravchik has proffered as well, …

Speak Softly...With Everyone You Can, Todd Landman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

From the Monroe Doctrine to the Bush Doctrine, United States foreign policy has been predicated on the assumption that somehow it knows what is best for the rest of the world. Monroe feared a potential encroachment from Russia and meddling in the "American" Hemisphere by the European powers and issued what originally appeared as a modest statement about resistance to intervention by any other country than the United States . Ironically enforced by the British Navy at that time, the Monroe Doctrine went far beyond its modest beginnings to set a precedent for the development of U.S. foreign policy. The …

America As An Ordinary Nation, William F. Felice

Human Rights & Human Welfare

For decades, scholars of international relations have called attention to the limits of American power. For example, in 1976 Cornel University Press published America as an Ordinary Country: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Future , edited by Richard Rosecrance. As the title indicates, Rosecrance's book analyzed the impact of the economic, military, and foreign policy setbacks of the 1970s on U.S. power. Suddenly the U.S. seemed less the powerful, "indispensible" leader and more the vulnerable, "ordinary" country unable to control external forces lashing the society's economy and foreign policy. These insights led many scholars to call for a reassessment of …

November Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Foreign Policy Myths Debunked." The Nation. October 6, 2008.

Japan's Missile Defense, Norifumi Namatame

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For some years, Japan has pursued its own missile defense system in cooperation with the United States. The Japanese government claims that the missile defense (JMD) program is purely defensive and will not pose a threat to other countries. JMD may seem justified by North Korea's development of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. However, neighboring states regarded it as a sign of military ambition and revival of Japan's prewar militarism. The development and deployment of JMD could have grave implications for regional and global security. This dissertation focuses on these implications, domestic and international political considerations and the future direction …

The Usa Patriot Act, Toni Panetta

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The events of September 11, 2001 serve as the origin of the United States’ War on Terror as popularized by the Bush administration. Previously, American strategies to combat terrorism focused on attacks against its interests abroad, and support for other governments’ efforts to curb terrorist acts within their own boundaries. However, September 11 revealed vulnerability to violence by non-state actors within U.S. borders. In response, the United States reshaped its anti-terrorist strategies to prevent future attacks by targeting terrorists, foreign and domestic, known and potential.