Sticks and Stones: Living with Uncertain Wars

Shaping a New World

This page intentionally left blank 219 The final cluster focuses on global responsibilities to protect and how to deal with the growing phenomenon of failed states, among them those most poor and purported to be the most likely sources of terrorism. Global institutions relating to these matters fail us, and while a considerable portion of the blame can be attributed to the unwieldy, inefficient, and bureaucratic nature of these institutions, nation-states tend to make global declarations and then pursue narrow sovereign state interests. We speak globally, act parochially—even when it is in the perceived interests of all to act together in the face of a perceived threat, such as climate change. And this is essentially true with regard to problems such as massive income and wealth disparities between North and South, the marginalization of Africa, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the problems represented by increasing numbers of failed states. The old rules governing nation-states are outmoded, the concept of the sovereignty of the nation-state has run its course, but the isms that underpin it are rooted in our institutions and resilient in our identity. Cornelio Sommaruga, Ram Damodaran, Robert Jackson, and Gwyn Prins discuss, one month before the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, the forms that global challenges might take in the context of an evolving globalization. They emphasize the norms being established for both international humanitarian and military intervention in conflicts that erupt in sovereign states, thus signaling a post–Cold War paradigm shift in the UN’s conception of its role in keeping the peace. Although the UN Charter expressly declares the sanctity of the principle of nonintervention, the UN has, in recent years, begun to set limits on that sanctity. The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) sets out the principles for international military intervention in failed, about to fail, or rogue states where conflict is about to erupt or has already erupted: the right intention, the last resort, proportional means, and reasonable prospect. Most important, the ICISS was unambiguous in two regards: the principle of nonintervention yields to the principle to protect and with intervention comes the principle to rebuild. Thus, one of the major consequences of our interdependence is the recognition that a threat to peace must now include the “feared adverse international consequences of civil conflicts involving humanitarian catastrophes.” But no intervention can occur unless it has the sanction of the Security Council. Robert Weiner examines how the UN has tried to adapt to a post–Cold War era, and now to a post 9/11 era. It was poorly equipped to do either. He notes the dichotomy in the UN Charter—although the UN was created to prevent war, member states could not agree that there should be a permanent UN international army, thus requiring it to 220 SHAPING A NEW WORLD improvise ways to deal with wars. Peacekeeping—never mentioned in the charter— had to be invented. Weiner proposes that for the UN to become a viable instrument for the prevention of conflict, it will have to democratize the Security Council, which continues to reflect a Cold War composition, and develop a flexible military peacekeeping capability that will enable it to prevent conflicts from developing and escalating out of control. But the problem dogging UN peacekeeping operations is that “member states . . . are not yet ready to surrender their sovereignty over the troops that they contribute to UN peacekeeping operations, which would be entailed in the creation of a UN standing or more permanent type of force.” Brian Urquhart and Michael Glennon discuss other forms of inertia—the failure of the international community to agree on the best way to handle relatively new threats like large-scale terrorism or nuclear proliferation, rogue states, or even humanitarian intervention. The larger the UN, the slower its ability to respond to imminent crisis. Darfur attests to endemic inertia. Without the authority to intervene in a timely way, the UN will continue to remain a primarily deliberative body, without clout other than moral suasion, which is worth less after the Volcker Commission’s report on the Iraq Oil for Food scandal revealed a degree of breathtaking corruption among senior officials. The UN looked hard at the reforms it would have to implement to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century but balked at taking the...