Archive for month: February, 2016
Bush and Obama Pre- and Post-9/11: A Comparative Analysis
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by ks4150aA historical comparative analysis of President Bush and Obama’s strategies regarding al Qaeda, 9/11, and post-9/11 global security
By Emily DalgoOn September 11, 2001, 19 Islamic terrorists from Saudi Arabia and several other Arab nations associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four American aircrafts and carried out suicide attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. Two planes were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane struck the Pentagon outside of Washington, and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, its target unknown but suspected to be the White House or the Capitol Building in Washington. The attacks killed over 3,000 people, including more than 400 police officers and firefighters, and seriously injured over 10,000 others. The attacks on 9/11 triggered major U.S. initiatives to combat terrorism and were the basis for the Iraq and Afghan wars. On the night of 9/11, President George W. Bush gave an ominous address from the Oval Office in which he stated, “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”
The Build to September 11th
During Bill Clinton’s Presidency in 1998, the United Nations inspection agency withdrew from Baghdad in protest of Saddam Hussein’s unwillingness to cooperate with inspection measures. President Clinton then called on American Armed Forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq due to the belief that Hussein was harboring weapons of mass destruction (WMD); the President stated that Hussein’s reluctance to cooperate with inspections presented “a clear and present danger to the stability of the Persian Gulf and the safety of people everywhere.” The U.S. pledged to enact a long-term strategy of containment toward Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction, but at no point did the Clinton administration consider an operation specifically designed to overthrow Hussein’s regime.
In December of 2000, President Clinton told President-Elect George W. Bush that the biggest threat to be concerned with would be al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden. In January of 2001, soon-to-be Vice President Dick Cheney met with Pentagon national security officials to discuss Iraq; the Pentagon reported to Cheney that Saddam Hussein was contained and isolated, and that there was no need for any aggressive action against him, and that acting otherwise would “immediately engender strong opposition in the region and throughout the world.” However, the Bush administration did not agree with the Pentagon’s sentiments nor did it share President Clinton’s concern with al Qaeda. The Administration instead prioritized China’s increasing military power and the desire to oust Saddam Hussein from power. Former national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection, and counterterrorism in the Clinton administration Richard Clarke was appointed as a special advisor to the NSC by Bush and was startled at the lack of attention that was being placed on al Qaeda by the new Administration. He told his colleagues that the terrorist organization was “clearly planning a major series of attacks against us” and that they “must act decisively and quickly” against imminent attacks. The President’s advisors did not believe Clark’s warnings and said he was giving bin Laden “too much credit.” Throughout the summer months of 2001, the CIA repeatedly warned of imminent attacks by bin Laden on American facilities. On May 1, June 22, 23, and 25, intelligence briefs issued by the CIA warned of imminent attacks. Bush disregarded the warnings.
Strategy of President Bush
Immediately following the attacks, Bush and his advisors met with the CIA to discuss strategy. It was debated whether the focus moving forward should be on the destruction of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden or against terrorism more broadly. The CIA director of counterterrorism argued that the Taliban and al Qaeda needed to be jointly eliminated, due to the intricate entwinement between the two groups. The topic was continuously tabled, but finally, after continuous pressure from the President to develop a concrete plan of attack rapidly, a decision was made.
President Bush’s first objective in the wake of 9/11 was to topple the Taliban regime and attack al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Thus, Operation Enduring Freedom was the first initiative launched by the President. On October 7, 2001, the U.S., with assistance from Australia, France, and the United Kingdom, carried out air strikes on Taliban and al Qaeda targets in an attempt to stop the Taliban from harboring al Qaeda, and to stop al Qaeda from using Afghanistan as a base for operations. Due to the U.S.-led effort in Afghanistan, the Taliban was forced to relinquish power and the state was renamed the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. However, by the time the allied forces took over the capital, most high-ranking Taliban and al Qaeda officials had escaped to Pakistan. Within two years, Taliban forces launched a counteroffensive. Within five years, Bush had almost doubled the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan from 26,607 to 48,250.
His second goal was to oust Saddam Hussein, the 5th President of Iraq, in order to “prevent him from developing weapons of mass destruction” and to help Iraq create a stable democratic regime. The President and his advisors were set on the idea that Hussein was attempting to recreate the state’s nuclear program that had been eliminated after the Gulf Wars. The Bush Administration was desperate to make a connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, even though top CIA officials and International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) officials insisted that there was absolutely no evidence that Hussein was rebuilding a nuclear program, and that connections between Hussein and al Qaeda were weak. Bush, however, did not accept these claims and continued to press on in order to create a rhetoric that Hussein and al Qaeda were inexplicably linked, and that Hussein was an imminent threat to freedom and U.S. security. Perhaps a more truthful rationale for the Administration’s invasion of Iraq was the desire to democratize the region in order to enhance Israel’s security. Another interest that was severely under-articulated was the United States’ long-standing dependence on Persian Gulf oil. The Bush Administration believed that if Iraq were to have a nuclear weapon, Hussein would be in a position to gain control over a large segment of the world’s oil reserves. Eighteen months after the 9/11 attacks, Bush authorized the invasion of Iraq. The war against Iraq was extremely unsuccessful; it lasted much longer than estimated—formally ending in December 2011—and cost the U.S., Iraq, and the entire Middle East more lives and money than projected. Conflict in both Afghanistan and Iraq continued at the end of Bush’s second term in office, leaving Barack Obama with the remainder of two complicated, costly, and contentious wars.
Strategy of President Obama
President Obama inherited the failed attempts to reform both the Afghan and Iraqi governments and to rid the Taliban of its power. By 2009, the Taliban had fled Afghanistan into neighboring Pakistan. Drug trade in Afghanistan had become a $4 billion business, and the Taliban used the money to fund its insurgency against the Afghan government and the occupying forces. Al Qaeda had also secured safe havens in Pakistani tribal regions. Obama’s first move was to send Vice President Joe Biden to Pakistan to meet with President Asif Ali Zardari to secure diplomatic ties with the government and to emphasize the important role Pakistan had in the Afghanistan conflict, which, unlike Bush’s Administration, was to be the Obama Administration’s focus. Zardari expressed concerns at the anti-American sentiment in the country, and said that helping the U.S. would create hatred toward the Pakistani government unless there was something in it for the people. He requested economic resources so that he could justify supporting the U.S. and Biden did not object.
The next stop was a meeting in Afghanistan with President Hamid Karzai. Karzai expressed that the Afghani people did not want Americans to leave the country because they were there fighting terrorism, but that civilian casualties were a concern. He stated that an additional 30,000 American troops would make the efforts more successful. Biden was hesitant. Obama’s first decision as president was to commission a sixty-day review of the Iraq war, since additional troops were likely to be needed in Afghanistan, and a drawdown in Iraq would be necessary to supply the additional forces. Obama called on advisors to come up with strategies for Afghanistan, because if more troops were needed in the country, he would need a set plan in order to validate further involvement. The debate went back and forth between sending an additional 17,000 troops or 30,000 troops, and Obama took the time necessary to hear from multiple sources about what the best plan of action would be. After several days to think on the final strategies, Obama approved the request for an additional 17,000 troops, knowing that without more Americans on the ground, the Afghan elections would probably not be possible.
In late March of 2009, Obama announced that the U.S. would help Pakistan battle al Qaeda, but Pakistan had to “demonstrate its commitment to rooting out al Qaeda and the violent extremists within its borders.” He also announced that the U.S. would send 4,000 troops to Afghanistan to train and enhance the Afghan army and police force, and that economic and social aid would be sent to the country.
Bush vs. Obama and Present Day
Several key differences between the Bush and Obama administrations can be noted at this point in the War on Terror timeline: President Bush was bent on ousting Saddam Hussein and focusing on Iraq rather than on Afghanistan. At the start of his Presidency, Obama made it clear that stabilizing Afghanistan and attacking the Taliban in neighboring regions would be the chief objective. Bush was also less receptive to information that went against his own personal beliefs about how the war should be fought, as well as what was truly happening in the region. No matter which senior official told the President that there was absolutely no evidence that a nuclear program was being reestablished in Iraq under Hussein, Bush and his advisors continued to push the discourse until it became accepted and acted upon. Obama, although reluctant to send additional troops into Afghanistan, listened to all opinions and encouraged dissenting voices at the table. In deciding how to continue in Afghanistan, Obama said, “I’m a big believer in continually updating our analysis and relying on a constant feedback loop. Don’t bite your tongue. Everybody needs to say what’s on their mind.” There was not as much pressure to act quickly under Obama; Bush was fixated on the idea of responding with concrete action within days of the attacks, but Obama was more determined to act with strategy and purpose, even if that meant a delay in action.
Although the experience of these wars has, obviously, been negative, and billions of dollars and thousands of lives have been lost since 2001 when the war began, retrenchment is not an option for several reasons and on several fronts. In regard to Afghanistan, stability will continue to decrease as U.S. forces decrease in the region. Total retrenchment would be the most extreme, and worst, scenario. In 2015 Afghan security forces, including local police, suffered a 70 percent increase in casualties compared to 2014. The average count of casualties per week currently stands at around 330. This increase in violence is directly related to the decrease of foreign aid and military services. The toxic combination of a new unstable government with leaders who have not yet been proven trustworthy, and the simultaneous withdrawal of U.S. troops is increasing the likelihood of a resurgent Taliban and potentially wasting years of war and the American lives lost during the conflict. The withdrawal at this critical yet sensitive time in Afghanistan’s move toward stabilization also provides the perfect breeding ground for ISIL to gain power and control. While difficult and messy war efforts that last longer and cost more than expected are not the ideal reality for any nation’s foreign policy, isolationist strategies would not bode well for the international community either. The globalized world is as interconnected as it is interdependent, and the United States’ deep involvement in all regions of the world is important and necessary. The capacity of that involvement, however, may change over time.
Emily Dalgo is a student in the School of International Service and College of Arts & Sciences class of 2017. She can be contacted at ed6563a@student.american.edu.
All views expressed are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the World Mind or of Clocks and Clouds.
Violence in the Schoolhouse: The State of Corporal Punishment
/1 Comment/in Uncategorized /by ks4150aIn the 21st century violence is still used to punish youth in America, with terrible consequences
By Jeremy Clement
Corporal punishment was the preferred method to keep America’s students in line for much of American history. Paddling, spanking, and other forms of violent punishment have slowly been replaced by other techniques such as positive reinforcement. However, today corporal punishment still exists in many American schools, with disastrous consequences for youths, families, and the United States as a whole. These consequences range from mental and physical harm to children, a tarnished international image, harm to families, and a discriminatory punishment system.
Where Does Corporal Punishment in American Schools Stand Today?
Corporal punishment has existed for many centuries. It was used in the Middle Ages to punish school children and until 1948 was used in Britain to punish minor criminal offenders. Some infamous examples of corporal punishment include the flogging of Christ and the use of flogging by the British navy during the 18th century.
The good news is that corporal punishment is on the decline. During the 2006-2007 school year 223,190 students received corporal punishment in comparison to approximately 1.5 million students in 1976. However, nineteen states (shaded red in Figure 1 below) still allow corporal punishment.
Why Should The U.S. Ban Corporal Punishment?
Aside from the more obvious arguments against corporal punishment, such as the negative effects on children’s ability to learn and so on, the administration of corporal punishment has discriminatory factors associated with it. Table 1 below outlines some striking statistics. Overall, African Americans disproportionately receive twice the amount of corporal punishments that their percentage of school population would suggest. It is hard to convince young African American students to behave in school when they are unfairly administered corporal punishment by their discipliners.
Table 1: Corporal punishment minority statistics
Demographic |
% of School Population |
% of Corporal Punishment Victims |
Disabled |
14% |
19% |
African-Americans |
17.1% |
35.6% |
Texas Disabled Statistics |
10.7% |
18.4% |
Disabled students also bear an unfair burden. One study showed that in Tennessee disabled students are twice as likely to be paddled as their peers. This is especially true for students on the autism spectrum, since their disability interferes with their ability to follow what would otherwise be considered appropriate social behavioral norms.
Aside from the discriminatory nature of corporal punishment, the negative effects on children are severe and sometimes irreversible. A study by the Brookings Institution revealed that students who are subject to corporal punishment at a young age are more likely to abuse drugs or alcohol. These students are also more likely to imitate such abuse later in life through domestic violence or emotionally abusive relationships with their children. The study claims that these students “may learn to associate violence with power or getting one’s own way.” Children who are punished physically—regularly or severely—are more likely to develop mental health issues later in life.
Corporal punishment can be physically devastating for children as well. According to Time magazine, “[t]he Society for Adolescent Medicine has documented […] severe muscle injury, extensive blood-clotting (hematomas), whiplash damage and hemorrhaging” in cases of corporal punishment. These gruesome injuries have sometimes caused parents to give up jobs to homeschool their children, thereby negatively affecting students’ family lives. Not to mention that these injuries unnecessarily contribute to skyrocketing healthcare costs when they require medical attention.
The effects that corporal punishment has on students boil down to one simple fact: in the United States of America—one of the most developed and democratic states in the world—one of the only groups of citizens who can be beaten legally are school children. This, of course, exhibits a terrible confusion of our priorities.
The last reason for banning corporal punishment is the simple fact of embarrassment. Over 70 nations worldwide have laws that explicitly prohibit corporal punishment in schools. The United Nations has criticized countries that still allow corporal punishment saying that “there is no doubt that corporal punishment is a violation of children’s rights under the Convention on the Rights of the Child because it is constitutive of violence that causes . . . suffering.” That the U.S. has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child is further proof of its negligent policy towards children. Therefore, the U.S. should A) ratify the Convention, and B) respect its basic obligations towards its citizens under the age of 18.
If Corporal Punishment Were to Be Banned, How Would We Do It?
A simple answer would be for schools to just stop doing it. No law requires schools to paddle or hit children. However, with that route being perhaps too far away, legal action seems necessary.
States without specific regulations prohibiting corporal punishment could amend their laws to define it and outlaw it. These states should take a similar route as Iowa and New Jersey, for instance, both of which ban the practice in both public and private schools. As Figure 1 showed, the states in which corporal punishment still lingers are typically more conservative states. This is not a coincidence, Republicans in general tend to view the practice more favorably. So all else being equal, passing laws in these states will be theoretically more difficult than passing laws in more left-leaning states that do not already ban it.
The federal government could use its spending power to incentivize schools or state governments to ban the practice. A program similar to Race to the Top or to a statute such as Title IX where schools will lose funding if they do not abide by prohibitions on corporal punishment could be effective. Alternatively, and to the benefit of those in the disabled community, Congress could introduce an amendment to the Americans with Disabilities Act that specifically protects disabled students from corporal punishment in schools. If a lawsuit arose that claimed that corporal punishment constituted child abuse, and was thus unconstitutional, the Supreme Court could overturn its 1977 ruling that allowed corporal punishment via the “Trop” standard which allows for evolving standards of decency in America society or another similar mechanism.
Regardless of which legal or social path is taken to end corporal punishment in American schools, it needs to be done quickly. Hundreds of thousands of students are affected every year and this practice is clearly detrimental to society.
Jeremy Clement is a student in the School of International Service class of 2019. He can be contacted at jc5160b@student.american.edu.
All views expressed are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the World Mind or of Clocks and Clouds.
You Don’t Know What ISIS Wants
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by ks4150aInstead of focusing on what we think ISIS wants, we need to focus on what the U.S. wants
By Kevin Michael Levy
In August of 2014, James Foley, an American journalist, became the first American casualty in the current conflict with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) . Executed by beheading in a propaganda video distributed to a global audience via YouTube, Foley would quickly become a common name in foreign policy circles. His brutal execution would catalyze a strong American response which has surpassed, according to a report from CNN in early December of 2015, 20,000 missiles and bombs fired from American ships, warplanes, and drones, according to a report from CNN in early December, 2015. Within the American political scheme, there is a near unanimous fervor suggesting that a fight must be taken to ISIS in Iraq and Syria. In his final State of the Union Address, President Obama asked Congress to pass a new Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to provide legal grounds to wage war against ISIS, and some Republican leaders, like Speaker Paul Ryan, have agreed. Naturally, there is disagreement on how that fight should take shape; Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opposes an AUMF, but still believes that there should be a robust military response to the ISIS threat. But there has been an unusual development occurring in the rhetoric surrounding America’s response to ISIS. It has appeared that, overnight, politicians across the globe became experts in counterterrorism, psychoanalysis, and Islam. Since joining the fight against ISIS, Americans across the nation have become worried that our actions might be exactly what ISIS wants us to do. ISIS, a vast network of fighters that has assembled supporters from West Africa to the Caucuses, is a complex organization with many goals and desires. We do not know their intentions, and shaping U.S. policy on ideological prejudices prevents realistic policy discussions from taking place.
We must wonder, how do so many people have such a firm grasp on what terrorists located over 6,000 miles away from the United States desire? Countless media pundits have written opinion pieces in dozens of respectable newspapers and journals claiming to know what ISIS wants and exactly how they want to achieve their goals. Politicians have begun to claim that their political opponents are potential allies to the terrorist group. An article ran in liberal news blog ThinkProgress entitled “Trump’s Muslim Ban Is Exactly What ISIS Wants.” Several days later, Democratic presidential frontrunner and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated in the December, 2015 Democratic debate that Republican frontrunner Donald Trump was “becoming ISIS’s best recruiter” and that “They are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.” Aside from Politfact’s conclusion that Secretary Clinton’s statement was purely false, they raise important points regarding the ongoing rhetoric used to discuss ISIS. President Obama urged the nation during his State of the Union to not buy into the belief that ISIS “[does] not threaten our national existence. That is the story ISIL wants to tell.” Senator Ted Cruz, a leading Republican candidate for President, issued a statement in November 2015 after the deadly attacks in Paris, France that left over 100 dead and over 300 seriously injured, that ISIS “will not be appeased by outreach or declarations of tolerance,” advocating a much more forceful avenue against the terrorist group. There are many conflicting opinions as to what ISIS truly wants, and while this debate rages on, the capacity for American leadership in the efforts against ISIS fades.
In response to cries of racism and Islamophobia, Queen Rania of Jordan said in March of 2015 that there was “nothing Islamic about [ISIS].” This is rhetoric repeated in the U.S. by throngs of people, tending to be on the American political left. Following Queen Rania’s logic, attempting to find the long-term goals of the new “State in Iraq and Syria” should be relatively simple. All states, at some level, have the inherent goal to perpetuate their own existence and provide for (at least some of) their people. This non-Islamic state has done a relatively poor job at that theologically bereft goal through its rejection of participation in the international order. A modern state would interact with other states by establishing embassies and attempting to achieve diplomatic recognition. Although ISIS has actually begun minting new coins to replace America’s “capitalist financial system of enslavement” according to a piece in Vice News, coupled with a vast bureaucracy governing issues from leisure to education as detailed in a December, 2015 profile in the Guardian, it has not attempted on any level to engage with the world resembling any level of modernity. If the motivations of ISIS were absolutely devoid of Islamic theology, however unreflective it is of mainstream Islamic theology, the established Islamic State should then resemble any modern state.
De-Islamizing ISIS has several pointed political goals, chief among them, to disaffiliate the 1.6 billion global Muslim population from the several tens (or hundreds) of thousands of extremely radicalized fighters in ISIS-held territory. This goal is unabashedly noble in intent; however, its adherents practice a veiled form of Islamic apologism. Shadi Hamid with the Center for Middle East Policy headquartered in Washington, D.C., wrote in a November, 2015 Op-ed, “There is a role for Islamic apologetics – if defending Islam rather than analyzing it is your objective…. But if the goal is to understand ISIS, then I, and other analysts who happen to be Muslim, would be better served by cordoning off our personal assumptions and preferences.” Hamid makes a sound point; it seems that those who caution against potential actions against ISIS seem to have their own political preferences line up with “what ISIS wants.” For example, a non-interventionist who opposed both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars likely believes that anti-Muslim rhetoric is what ISIS wants, whereas an American right-winger possibly believes that accepting 10,000 refugees fleeing Syria is a form of capitulation and will allow for ISIS elements to slip into the United States undetected. Both perspectives tend to fail to listen to actual ISIS rhetoric which often focuses on Islamic scripture and tradition from the 7th and 8th centuries. While it is true that Dabiq, ISIS’s English-language magazine, does often share snippets of American politician’s speeches in its regular section “In the Words of the Enemy,” it barely amounts to a footnote in the larger context of ISIS propaganda.
Radical movements in the past few decades have shared an unintended unholy alliance with the philosophical left. Bits and pieces of videos created by al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden share much of the same rhetoric as used in post-colonial scholarship, focusing fire on the imperialist powers of the global West, for example by noted scholar Noam Chomsky. Academics and bloggers have hounded on the messaging that people should be wary of viewing Muslims as the enemy as it potentially only feeds into ISIS’s supposed rhetoric. Proponents of this ideology are often those who believe that calling ISIS by its Arabic equivalent Daesh. The final issue of Dabiq in 2015 was titled “Just Terror,” showcasing that brutal terrorists likely do not pay attention to what names they are called in American media, since they seem to be quite content with being viewed as terrorists.
America’s military responses to external threats should be informed by experienced military and counterterrorism experts. People often overestimate themselves when it comes to complex geopolitical issues. The sketch comedy show, Saturday Night Live, has mocked ISIS several times, but recently poked fun at the uninformed American understanding of ISIS. In its 2015 Thanksgiving episode, cast member Aidy Bryant played Aunt Kathy, the blissfully unaware family member who claims to have “seen an ISIS” in the grocery store and is very grateful that her governor rejected Syrian refugees, who are all supposedly “ISIS in disguise.” We all have an Aunt Kathy in our families. We likely listen to an Aunt Kathy-like figure from the left on television being interviewed on MSNBC or as the stock-liberal on Fox News. My own mother stated her belief that ISIS did not want Americans to go to Times Square for New Year’s celebrations so that we might live in fear. The newly elected Mayor of Philadelphia Jim Kenney claimed that the January 9th attack by a self-professed ISIS supporter on Philadelphia Police Officer Jesse Hartnett had nothing to do with Islam and “does not represent the religion in any shape or form or any of the teachings.”
For the past several years, Americans have been hearing an uninformed or semi-informed debate take place around “what ISIS wants” as it becomes muddied, it seems more like what “America wants.” Sun Tzu teaches us that it is crucial to “know your enemy,” but he believed that it was equally important to know oneself in order to win battles. The politicized rhetoric over ISIS’ desires prevents a thoughtful policy discussion from taking place. Our political leaders should take measured actions without regard for “what ISIS wants,” as it is likely untrue and otherwise irrelevant to American interests in the region. ISIS propaganda videos have professed a basic ISIS belief that America and other Western powers want to initiate another round of crusades in the Holy Land: a claim that most Westerners would dispute. But as scary as it may be, we should come to terms that we do not “know what ISIS wants” short of what they tell us. And so far, they have told us that their goal is singular: to establish an Islamic caliphate. In 2016, ISIS-watchers should make a collective resolution to stop wasting time discussing the (non)theological aspects of the terrorist organization and return to proposing sound policies to defeat another one of America’s enemies.
Kevin Michael Levy is a student in the School of International Service class of 2016. He can be contacted at kl1077a@student.american.edu.
All views expressed are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the World Mind or of Clocks and Clouds.
The Tragedy of NGOs: A Faustian Perspective on Human Rights Activism
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by ks4150aPoetic Thinking about Human Rights NGOs and Their Critics
By William Kakenmaster
I feel as if I’d drummed into my brain
the wealth of human knowledge all in vain.
I finally stand back, only to find
no new-born power rising in my mind.
Not one hair’s breadth is added to my height,
nor am I any nearer to the Infinite.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust
International relations (IR) is typically considered a social science, but it can learn a lot from thinking poetically. Here, I strive to adopt a lesson from poetry in order to explain some of the actions and criticisms of transnational human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
According to German folklore, the philosopher-scientist Faust exasperatedly sells his soul to the devil as his attempts to discover the universe’s truths fail to reveal any deeper meaning in his scholasticism. The deal gives Faust limitless knowledge and worldly pleasures. In early versions of the legend, Faust delves into a life of sin with the devil as his servant only to discover that, at the end of their agreement, he has been irrevocably corrupted, and is dragged to hell. The legend is meant to metaphorize those who sacrifice their principles for their ambitions.
IR, along with other social sciences, asks why questions that determine causal mechanisms and how questions focused on constitutive explanations, to borrow from Alexander Wendt’s phrasing in Social Theory of International Politics. In that sense, I ask how the moral authority for human rights activism is constructed by NGOs and how their theoretical critics reinterpret such supposed moral authority. I argue that such organizations are best understood through a Faustian perspective. NGOs balance concerns over adhering to their principles or their ambitions when it comes to human rights; and their critics recognize this. Criticisms of NGOs suggest that the human rights bar has been set too high, causing NGOs to be seen as irrelevant on the one hand, or as hypocrites on the other. The tragedy is therefore that human rights NGOs have painted themselves into a corner, in terms of their authority. By lambasting states’ conduct in the human rights arena, any cooperation NGOs have with states seemingly sacrifices their principles for their ambitions. Until the world’s human rights NGOs devise a strategy by which to convincingly propagate their ideals without acceding to the pressures of governmental cooperation, they will be fighting a two-front war.
Ambitions and Principles
Central to an understanding of their authority is the balance that NGOs give to their commitment to independent human rights monitoring and governmental interactions. NGOs’ take their independent, impartial reporting—as exemplified by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch—to be their primary source of authority when it comes to human rights activism. Both organizations cite these as their core principles in their governing documents. While the principles which govern the most successful NGOs seem somewhat clear, balancing those with their ambitions to expand their member-base and bind more governments to human rights conduct is less so.
In 2011, former Hillary Clinton aide—Suzanne Nossel—was appointed Executive Director of Amnesty International with a commitment to internationalism and a belief in the US’ ability to reassert Liberal principles in IR. Nossel also defended preventive war as a way to enforce human rights obligations in other countries, which contradicts international legal obligations to secure UN Security Council authorization. Eventually, Nossel resigned from Amnesty International. Nossel notably demonstrates the ways in which human rights principles stand in opposition to NGOs’ ambitions: in order to promote and enforce liberal values of human rights, Amnesty International drew on government experience and military might.
One might further point to the increasingly professionalized trend of human rights activists and NGOs that strives to establish a firmly defined set of “shared values” as evidence that human rights discourses constitute principles and ambitions as opposing interests. Along with the movement’s professionalization and the codification of a shared value set comes an exclusion of contending interpretations and theories of human rights. In other words, to realize the movement’s growing professional ambitions, NGOs invariably narrow the scope of what human rights are, thereby sacrificing at least some activists’ principles. (The reader should be clear that by no means do I wish to philosophize on human rights in this article, but rather merely seek to identify and contextualize the contradictory interests of NGOs to either professionalize and uniformly propagate human rights standards, or endorse alternative sources of human rights justification.) By accepting, for instance, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the world’s principal source of human rights, Amnesty International’s statute limits debate over the extent to which economic and social rights equally constitute basic human dignity. In cases like Nossel’s and the professionalization of human rights, principles that underpin NGOs’ authority—independence, impartiality, and broadly defined human rights standards—diverge from ambitions related to enforcing human rights through force, interacting freely with governments, and creating a shared understanding of human rights.
But, how does the above discussion of NGOs’ ambitions and principles relate to Faust, and, more importantly, why should anyone care? Recall the once-idealistic Faust who, with his commitment to intellectualism, makes no headway and—increasingly disillusioned—forms a pact with the devil, thus abandoning his convictions. Indeed, this is Goethe’s lesson. In the prologue, the reader learns of God’s challenge to the devil: “Try to seduce his soul from its true source […] and if things do not go quite as you planned, / admit, with shame, among those souls that you would devour / are some that can’t be moved, even by you, / from the good they dimly, stubbornly pursue.” Faust’s entire role is predicated on his eventual decision between his principles and the temptations of ambition. NGOs similarly constitute their interests in maintaining their principles or fulfilling their ambitions, to the extent that they cannot realize both. We should care about this divide because it helps explain how, in the way that human rights discourses have been constructed, critics target NGOs from more conservative Realist perspectives, as well as more left-leaning Marxist, and Constructivist perspectives. It is worth noting that I deliberately exclude Liberalism from this analysis due to its general acceptance of NGOs—Liberals tend not to criticize NGOs, and I seek to explain NGOs critics. Therefore, I focus on Realism, Constructivism, and Marxism. However, and in spite of Liberalism’s NGO optimism, when a significant portion of the world’s population seems in favor of human rights, but several IR theorists doubt their main proponents’ normative value, IR has a significant question to answer.
Realist Critics
Human rights NGOs endure staunch criticism from Realist theorists who argue in terms of state-systems, material capabilities, balance of power, and security dilemmas. According to a 2002 interview with John Mearsheimer at the University of California, Berkeley, “there is not much place for human rights and values in the Realist story.” At least three theoretical assumptions clarify why human rights NGOs have little place for Realists. First, Realists claim that states’ material capabilities make them the principally legitimate actors in IR as opposed to NGOs’ supposed moral authority on human rights. Second, Realism holds that states pursue their interests defined in terms of power as opposed to things like human rights. Third, according to Realists, the absence of a supranational, centralized authority makes enforcing human rights untenable, and thus, their place in IR practically irrelevant.
The arguments against Realism are well-known, but few seek to explicate Realism’s relationship to NGOs. In Faust, the main character is unsatisfied with his studious life and its lack of insight into any improvement for humankind. As Goethe puts it, Faust’s “laborious studies only show that / Nothing is the most we ever know.” Moreover, Faust laments his scholarship’s inability to find “a way to improve or convert Mankind.” Faust’s commitment to learning is hence undone by the realization that it does not reveal any deep or practical insights. Discipline and studying claim a higher standard of conduct for Faust, but end up betrayed as the main character doubts their substantive ability to fulfill his life’s ambitions.
Realists take a similar stance on human rights. In The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, Mearsheimer writes on the American public’s general “proclivity for moralizing” politics and IR. In opposition to baseless political moralizing, Realists like Mearsheimer “tend not to distinguish between good and bad states” because all states pursue power in the international system. We can extrapolate the implications for NGOs from Mearsheimer’s argument with a quick parallel to Faust. In the German legend, the principles of scholarship and studiousness lacked substance like the Realist claim that distinctions between good and bad states (e.g., those states committed to human rights and those that are not) lack substance for IR theorizing. Realism tells us that states attempt to accumulate power and material capabilities and that they likely will not pursue human rights principles unless they advance a state’s power ambitions. Hence, for Realists, believers in human rights—and certainly human rights NGOs—delude themselves into believing that human rights reveal theoretical or practical wisdom for IR.
Faust sets too high of expectations for an erudite life’s ability to glean some quotient of meaning in the world, then doggedly abandons his principles because of their inability to lend insight into the universe. For Realism, NGOs similarly set their hopes too high for human rights. States, as the main actors in IR, pursue power over morals, making NGOs irrelevant and clearly unauthoritative.
Marxist and Constructivist Critics
NGOs also face criticism from Marxists who claim that their interaction with government policymakers betrays the anti-establishment principles NGOs were founded on, and Constructivists who argue that NGOs are a biased project to promote the Western, Liberal monopoly on human rights.
In his 2012 article, “The Contradictions of Human Rights Organizations,” Samuel Farber argues that NGOs provide legitimacy and support for governmental and intergovernmental agencies that they seek to hold accountable to contemporary human rights norms. According to Farber, “the world of NGOs and their supporting foundations is not self-contained,” because their implicitly liberal bias “blinds them to the political and socioeconomic context of the countries they report on.” Rather than tearing down the system as they may have originally sought to do, say Marxists like Farber, NGOs have betrayed their anti-establishment principles.
Noted scholars Makau Mutua and Stephen Hopgood offer two unrelated by similarly constructed arguments. In Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique, Mutua suggests that there are explicit, direct links between human rights norms and Western, Liberal principles. The abstract and seemingly apolitical nature of NGOs’ “universal” truths hides the deeply political reality of the human rights power struggle. In a similar but slightly unrelated vein, Hopgood’s Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International unpacks the internal structure of Amnesty’s moral authority on human rights and their method for consolidating that authority. Hopgood ultimately finds that Amnesty International mirrors a religious organization’s belief in an objective moral authority for human rights and its ethos devoted to voluntarism, individualism, practicality, self-discipline, self-effacement, and moral import.
Essentially, the way that the human rights movement developed has betrayed its purpose for all of these critics. For Farber, NGOs were designed to be anti-establishment, yet now rely too heavily on governmental support. For Mutua, NGOs succumb to overly narrow Western conceptualizations of human rights, thus reconstructing a discursive power struggle that privileges the Liberal democratic system. For Hopgood, Amnesty International represents one example of an organization that has drifted from its roots towards a mission-oriented quasi-religious global operation.
Each argument presupposes a certain principled standard towards which NGOs strive. For Marxists, NGOs lost sight of their original, anti-establishment purpose, much in the same way that Faust sold his soul, therefore “exploiting everything [he] thought of worth” (Goethe’s words). For Constructivists, NGOs’ privileging of Western human rights is Faustian in the sense that human rights ideals, like the ideals of scholarship and enlightenment, constitute an overly-narrow and unfulfilling human rights theory. No wonder NGOs betrayed their principles for their ambitions as “[n]ot one hair’s breadth is added to [their] height.” Faust’s scholarly principles, like claims to universal human rights, do not imply any intrinsic higher moral authority, only the primacy of Western, Liberal norms.
Conclusions: Fighting Two Fronts
IR scholars ought to look beyond more traditional forms of knowledge in the discipline. As Professor Patrick Jackson asks: must international studies be a science? There is an immensely diverse and varied way of interpreting the world around us, whether scientific, poetic, or otherwise. Lessons taken from the poetry of German folklore, for example, shed light on the interactions between human rights NGOs and their contemporary theoretical critics across the political spectrum.
I began with the premise that IR can learn from poetic knowledge like Goethe’s. From this premise, I advanced a Faustian perspective of human rights NGOs and their critics which holds three principles. First, NGOs construct both their principles (e.g., western, liberal human rights) and ambitions (e.g., independence of state actors which they endeavor to hold accountable) that stand in opposition to one another. Second, NGOs’ independence and impartiality justifies their authority for human rights monitoring and advocacy. Third, by adopting a stringent standard of states’ compliance to narrowly-defined human rights, NGOs make it difficult to pursue their ambitions without sacrificing at least some of the movement’s principles, thus inviting Realist, Marxist, and Constructivist critiques.
Faust crammed his head full of knowledge in vain. Woefully unsatisfied by his scholastic principles, he sacrificed them for ambition and pleasure. Human rights NGOs and their critics demonstrate the same lesson. By adhering to a strict narrative of human rights and claiming a monopoly on independent monitoring, NGOs set themselves up to be cast as either ineffective idealists bent on moralizing the international system, or as hypocrites betraying the principles they set out to realize. As of right now, human rights NGOs face a two front war from both conservative Realists and left-leaning Marxists and Constructivists. Unless they can rectify the disparities between realizing their principles and ambitions, the world’s NGOs will continue to fight such a two front war.
While critics wage war against NGOs, however, we ought to remain wary of the assumption that human rights principles are mutually exclusive of organizational ambitions. To some it would seem that NGOs’ assertive—or downright aggressive—strategies for naming and shaming countries in the global South that violate human rights advances neither their ambitions nor their principles. For few will continue to support an NGO so harshly critical of so many international actors. And furthermore, few would contend that asserting human rights by force—as in Nossel’s advocacy for preventive war—genuinely constitute a principled stance on human rights. NGOs’ critics must recognize that support for human rights is on the rise across national, racial, ethnic, religious, and other lines; they do have a place in the story of IR, and they are not simply monopolized by anti-establishment politics or a sinister Western, Liberal order. NGOs, however, must recognize that human rights have the power to stand on their own. We do not need to professionalize the human rights movement. We do not need a single standard of human rights. We do not need violent enforcement of human rights. We do not need to sacrifice our principles for our ambitions.
William Kakenmaster is a student in the School of International Service class of 2017. He can be contacted at wk6344a@student.american.edu.
All views expressed are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the World Mind or of Clocks and Clouds.
Ukraine’s Debt to Russia: Efficient Breach Vindicated
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by ks4150aInternational legal remedies for Ukraine’s debt to Russia
By Paul Jeffries
Russia has had quite a year. The Kremlin’s militaristic gallivanting has become a staple of this year’s news cycle, with perhaps its most pugnacious acts of hostility being those involving Ukraine. While Russia’s armed harassment of Ukraine has received the lion’s share of the media’s attention, it is its financial badgering with respect to sovereign debt that may prove to be most harmful of all to the bedeviled nation.
In this article, I endeavor to explicate briefly Ukraine’s sovereign debt dispute with Russia, with an eye towards arguing how Ukraine might make use of different international legal remedies to exculpate itself from its regrettable situation. One of the most discussed of these remedies is the legal notion of “odious debt,” and many—most prominently Georgetown University Professor Anna Gelpern and Newsweek’s Anders Åslund—have argued that the “odious debt” legal remedy is Ukraine’s golden ticket out of repayment. I will argue that the legal grounds for the use of the “odious debt” solution are shaky at best, but that rather “efficient breach” is the optimal legal remedy for Ukraine in this case. On the first day of 2016, Russia formally began legal proceedings against Ukraine over the non-payment of their $3 billion debt, as reported by the Financial Times. This issue will now come down to a courtroom battle, and to understand the legal implications of this dispute, we need to understand its history.
The story behind Ukraine’s sovereign debt to Russia is convoluted. The Economist called it “the world’s wackiest bond.” Ukraine has had many issues with external debt as of late. In August of 2015, Ukraine finished negotiations with numerous creditors (primarily investment houses) over Ukraine’s international bonds, altogether valued at around $18 billion. These renegotiations included a slashing of 20% of the bonds’ principal on average, as well as postponement of repayment until 2019. Even in August, Russia’s immediate rejection of these terms adumbrated the growing conflict brewing today over the $3 billion bond that Ukraine was due to pay Russia on December 20th, 2015.
The bond in question was issued in December of 2013. Listed on the Irish stock exchange, the bond was clearly backed by spurious motives. As the Economist’s Christmas double-issue summarized:
The bond was essentially a bribe to Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s now-ousted president, who was dithering between European and Eurasian integration. Senior Ukrainian officials say that the government itself never saw the money; most probably it was spirited out of the country by Mr. Yanukovych’s cronies.