Download Chair: Erin O`Gorman –DND

“Intervention: Then What?”
Report Prepared by
Corey Levine
CCHS Fellow
CSDS/NPSIA
and
Ryan Coombes, Caolan Moore and Urmi Desai
CSDS/NPSIA
Report and Policy Recommendations from a Conference held at Carleton University,
Ottawa, October 3-5, 2003 and organized by the Centre for Values and Ethics in the
Philosophy Department and the Centre for Security and Defence Studies at the Norman
Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University.
December 15, 2003
Carleton University
Ottawa, Ontario
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Acknowledgments
Conference Rapporteurs were Ryan Coombs, Caolan Moore and Urmi Desai of the
Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University. This report is
written and edited by Corey Levine, Canadian Consortium on Human Security Fellow,
Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.
The organizers would like to thank the Speakers, Chairs and Lead Questioners for their
roles in the Conference. For their logistical support the organizers are grateful to the
Centre for Security and Defence Studies, Norman Paterson School of International
Affairs, and the Centre on Values and Ethics, Philosophy Department, Carleton
University.
This Conference was made possible through the financial assistance of the Canadian
Consortium on Human Security and the Centre for Security and Defence Studies at
Carleton University.
About The Centre for Security and Defence Studies
The Centre for Security and Defence Studies (CSDS) is internationally recognized for its
advanced research; conference, workshop and guest lecture programs; graduate and
undergraduate education; and public outreach programs on security and defence issues in
the Ottawa community and across Canada.
www.carleton.ca/csds
The Centre for Security and Defence Studies
The Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University
1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1S 5B6, Canada
Tel: (613) 520-6655 Fax: (613) 520-2889
E-mail: [email protected]
Director: David B. Carment
About The Centre on Values and Ethics
The Centre on Values and Ethics (COVE) in the Philosophy Department, Carleton
University engages in research about values and ethics, especially as they apply to issues
relating to policy questions in both the public and private sectors and disseminates the
results to practitioners and policy makers outside academia as well as to theoreticians.
www.carleton.ca/cove
Centre on Values and Ethics,
Philosophy Department, Carleton University
1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1S 5B6, Canada
Tel: (613) 520-2110 Fax: (613) 520-3962
Email: [email protected]
Director: Steven Davis
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Policy Recommendations
Background
A great deal has been written about interventions, about their justification, about their
extent, about their modalities, about whether it is justified for them to be undertaken
unilaterally or whether they require the imprimatur of the UN. What has not been
discussed as extensively is what happens after intervention.
There were three central, interrelated issues that the conference wished to address, ethical
issues, security, and development. However, the central questions of the conference were
moral: What obligations, if any, do intervening entities have post-intervention? What are
the obligations if any, of the entities (states, international and regional organizations,
defense alliances, etc.) to a state in which intervention has taken place?
The conference examined these obligations and what courses of action they justify
looking also at practical issues about what is possible given the conditions of the state in
which the intervention has taken place and the political and material ability of the entities
that intervene to meet whatever obligations they have. Lastly, the conference attempted to
relate the issues about post intervention to the increasingly recognized responsibility to
intervene as the question as to whether the post intervention obligations flow from the
initial obligation to intervene was explored.
The conference had three plenary speakers, one in each of the three areas on which the
conference concentrated: ethical issues, security and development. In addition to the
plenary speakers, there were seven panels, of two speakers each, which addressed these
three themes from a variety of perspectives.
Recommendations

The issue of resources is one of the most critical to consider – no intervention can be
successful without an adequate amount of resources – human, financial, material –
being committed. The greater challenge will be to keep up the substantive
contribution once the country has fallen off the political radar screen and there is a
temptation to pull out because of competing agendas internationally.

Local ownership is a laudable end or outcome but it is not necessarily a means.

Non-official actors (i.e. NGOs, media, churches) can play important roles in forgotten
intractable conflicts including: (i) publicizing conflicts through the media; (ii)
building local capacity for peacemaking by improving negotiation skills; (iii)
facilitating contact between influential, although not necessarily official, members of
the contesting parties; (iv) bolstering the official process by building support for
peace in the larger community. These are not tasks usually undertaken by major states
when they intervene diplomatically in other countries’ conflicts. They are, however,
well within the capacities and reach of middle powers, like Canada and Norway,
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small states and other official and non-official institutions which can act alone or in
collaboration with higher-profile efforts by larger states to build the conditions for
peacemaking in forgotten conflicts.

Conflict prevention initiatives should be a direct outcome of an understanding of why
states fail, and the critical role human agency plays in their failure.

The lessons of state failure is that intervention is best accomplished early in the form
of prevention, before a state has descended to the status of a failed one. There are
plenty of early warning indicators; it is early action that is the problem.

The people working on the ground should make the call of when intervention is
needed and what form it should take.

Intervention needs to be a collaborative undertaking with each country committing
committing to that aspect of a peacekeeping mission that plays to their strengths (eg.
Germans focus on prisons, Canada landmines and forensics, etc.)

Addressing conflict in its early stage is clearly due to the lack of political will, not a
lack of machinery. It is not that the international community cannot, but determining
when is the right time to enter a sovereign state is the problem so there is a need to
develop a political mechanism for dealing with conflict early.

There are five elements that need to be taken into account when planning
interventions: (i) there needs to be adequate financial, material and human resources
available; (ii) the intervention should be field driven in terms of deciding need and
therefore appropriate resources; (iii) recognize that intervention is political and invest
more in the use of diplomacy; (iv) intervention needs to be collaborative; (v) the
international community needs to be realistic about what can be achieved.

State failure is going to multiply not lessen. The international community ignores the
early warning signs and neglects these failing states until it is too late. Therefore, it is
critical to intervene on the early side of a conflict with an adequate amount of
resources to address the issues imposing the conflict.

Five goals of intervention in order to achieve political stability should be: (i)
expanding the security bubble; (ii) building early momentum; (iii) creating jobs as a
stabilizing force; (iv) decentralization and the devolution of power; (v) the
development of civil society as a building block for state-building.

Improving the development dimension of interventions is intrinsically interrelated to
doing the other facets of the intervention well.

Successful interventions are costly and challenging. However, the security, political,
humanitarian, and economic benefits of intervening effectively are far greater.
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
Democracy does not automatically come with intervention. Its not an export product:
it needs seeds and roots to grow and flourish. Therefore, it is critical not to hold
elections too soon after an intervention, as was the case in Bosnia, where the results
only served to legitimize the divisions created during the war and ethnic cleansing.

Before an credible post-intervention reconstruction and development can take place a
sustainable level of security must be achieved – thus, more emphasis and resources
need to be placed on demobilization, disarmament and reintegration policies and
programs as well as a focus more broadly on security sector reform including the
police, the judiciary and the military.
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PLENARY SESSION 1: The Future of Intervention
Chair and Lead Questioner: Don Hubert – Department of Foreign Affairs and
International Trade (DFAIT), Canada
Simon Chesterman - International Peace Academy, New York
"You, the People: Iraq and the Future of State-Building"
When the United Nations assumed primary responsibility for the intervention in Kosovo
1999, in typical UN fashion, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo was abbreviated to
UNMIK. This name is easy to pronounce in English; however, unbeknownst to its
creators, UNMIK means “enemy” in the Albanian language. This neatly highlights the
disconnect that often exists between international administration goals and realities on the
ground and ties into the current discussion of the UN’s role in Iraq.
In the period when the UN Mission in Kosovo was established, the UN was experiencing
a period of optimism. There were extraordinary expectations about what the UN should
and would do; its budget was greatly increased and its staff expanded. Further, the UN
was involved in activities beyond peace-keeping such as civil administration.
Quickly following on the heels of Kosovo, the East Timor crisis presented a situation in
which the UN could be utilized as a civil administrator, getting involved in such
functions as the judiciary, etc. but like Kosovo, there were many problems attached to the
UN as the executive administrator of a territory. One reason for this was that there was
still a high level of sensitivity vis-à-vis the issue of colonialism. The word “trusteeship”
was unworkable. Second, if the UN did pursue more involved post-conflict intervention,
it was feared that it would be over-run with demands for its help in this area. There is a
similar fear present in the current Iraq situation—a fear that the US will merely ask the
UN to pick up its pieces.
In past UN experiences, there have been three types of disconnect between the means
used to reach an end and the outcome itself. These problems can be termed as
inconsistent, inadequate, and inappropriate means.
First, inconsistency is demonstrated by the ill-named UNMIK mission. As an example of
this, the Ombudsman of the European Commission for Human Rights has condemned
UNMIK as being a violator of human rights itself. In Afghanistan, there are also a
number of inconsistencies. For example, given that taxes account for a minimal amount
of governmental revenue, less than 50%, how are costs being met? Illicit drug-running
may be one troubling source of the revenue. When the Rand Corp. evaluated the preconflict situation in Iraq for the US government, its conclusion was to abandon the idea
of implementing a democratic system as this never works in practice. It suggested that
the US should put good generals in command, instruct them to do their work, and then
walk away.
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The second problem, that of inadequate means, can be gleaned from a recent statement
made by President Bush where in outlining again the reasons for the intervention. he
promised that America would not leave Iraq and would work to improve the situation as
the US had done in Afghanistan. This is a deliberate attempt to downplay the
expectations of what kind of Iraq may emerge, post-conflict. Originally, no money was
budgeted by the US administration for the post-war reconstruction that is being spent in
Afghanistan; although this oversight was corrected later in Congress. Yet, the UN faces
bureaucratic restraints when trying to raise sufficient funds for missions. This limited
capacity is demonstrated by the security bubble reality of the Afghanistan mission where
there is a lack of security outside of Kabul.
The third problem is that of inappropriateness. In Bosnia, it appears that then US
President Clinton’s domestic election schedule determined when the post-conflict
elections in Bosnia were held. Though experience has shown that elections that are held
too soon after a conflict are not successful; a quick election was part of the Dayton
Accord. Moreover, peacekeeping personnel are not necessarily trained to run a country;
no one is trained to be a Minister of Education or Labour. Additionally, there is the
expectation that by merely putting international personnel alongside local personnel,
training is taking place and language barriers and the skills among international staff are
not taken into consideration.
Part of the solution to this requires clarity in strategic objectives, relationships and
commitment. In Bosnia, they suffer from a political morass of bodies. Part of the
problem is the key decisions that were made at the outset did not take into consideration
evolving realities.
In Kosovo, the UN is not incapable of functioning, but the US and Russia have allowed
Kosovo’s future to remain in limbo. There is an assumption that after a military
intervention, it is good to back away and give power back to the locals, which results in
poor outcomes. Ownership is a laudable end or outcome but is not necessarily a means.
Returning to the issue of the UN/US relationship, we find that there is some optimism. In
the US, nation-building is back on the agenda. The US now recognizes the danger of
failing states. Still the US appears to be more concerned about protecting US lives in
Afghanistan, which has led it to support warlords who are fighting the Taliban. This
form of ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) continually seems to afflict US foreign policy.
Some commentators have said that the worst outcome of the Iraqi situation would be a
new, prosperous Iraq. This would run the danger of setting a precedent for future US
interventions. Although the US did recognize the UN had a role to play after the invasion,
it still sees a very restricted role for the UN to perform deeds such as writing constitutions.
Yet, the US seems to realize that while it did not need the UN to get into Iraq, it needs the
UN to get out.
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Discussion
The discussion that followed focused on the US-UN relationship; alternatives to the UN;
the realities of US intervention; and the current situation in Iraq vis-à-vis the US and the
UN.
There is still no clear alternative to the stakeholder agenda in terms of intervention and
while prevention remains the best option, it is difficult to allocate money and troops to
prevention exercises due to domestic pressures.
The UN is flawed, but is better than anything else operating today within the international
community. There is always a danger that while a country is high on political agendas, it
is loaded with resources, but may easily be ‘dumped’ later when attentions wander to the
next ‘crisis’. In the end, there is a real danger that Iraq could end up the one thing that it
was previously not: a theocracy.
It is not clear that elections are needed quickly after a conflict. In Afghanistan, local
warlords applied pressure to get representatives into the governing body, which was seen
by the UN as local level buy-in to their initiatives. There is a science of constitutionalism
which puts forth two possible methods. One is proportional representation—populations
are converted into the proportional number of representatives. However, this encourages
ethnic politicking. A second method prefers to encourage vote-swapping; thus
bargaining must be used to form coalitions based on common policies, not ethnicity.
Instead of elections, transparency could be a principle focus. It is telling that the two
most successful cases of US action in foreign countries were those of Japan and Germany;
in both of these cases, the longest delay implementing elections occurred.
The US is going to the UN in Iraq because they are “clueless” about what to do in the
post-invasion period and see the UN as a rescuer. Is this the future of the UN? The US
will likely only intervene when international problems are tied to its security interests, but
will use the UN to off-set US monetary and troop contributions.
Yet the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” conundrum has plagued the US from
Bosnia to Iraq. Yet it is not wrong that the US is interested in protecting its own interests.
International aid policy, on the part of all donors, is not supply driven, but demand driven.
All states like their own NGOs to go in but this piece-meal approach to peace-building is
not coherent.
The split between the US and the UN in Iraq was clearer before. But the August 19th
attack makes it clear that this split is no longer as obvious on the ground. One reason
could be that the resistant forces want to make Iraq as difficult to govern as possible.
While the “honest broker” window may never have been open for the US, a once open
window is now closing for the UN.
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Fen Hampson – Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton
University, Ottawa
"Forgotten Conflicts and Intervention Choices"
While some conflicts grab headlines, others burn on without attracting significant
international attention. We need to think much more broadly about intervention strategies
and choices and utilize options such as diplomacy, mediation, track-two diplomacy and
varieties of “soft power”.
There are five kinds of “forgotten” conflicts: neglected conflicts, orphans, captives,
dependents, and wards of the system. These categories are flexible and respond to fluid
conditions within or outside the immediate conflict arena.
Neglected conflicts are the largest body of forgotten conflicts and often fail to make the
international radar screen. The recent, and in some cases ongoing, conflicts in Sri Lanka,
Rwanda and Nepal are good examples of this. Some conflicts do attract international
attention and serious assistance for their resolution, only to lose that third-party interest,
thus becoming orphans as third parties can become distracted, discouraged and incapable
of continuing their roles. Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Rwanda demonstrate this type of
forgotten conflict.
Captives are conflicts where outside parties play a determining role in the conflict. These
parties make it possible for the conflict to continue; they keep the goal of victory within
tantalizing reach, reduce the likelihood of a negotiated settlement, and trap the parties in a
conflict which cannot end without their acquiescence. This pattern of intervention lays at
the root of conflict in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Similarly, dependent conflicts suffer
from violence and instability in a neighboring country or region, although in these cases,
outside forces can extenuate a conflict without holding it captive or even fully intending
to have an effect on it. Additionally, private non-official groups can also hold a conflict
captive or make it a dependent.
Finally, there is a set of conflicts that are forgotten in the sense that they often end up as
wards of the system, adopted by an international institution, most often the United
Nations, because no one else wants them. However, the record for this is mixed and this
type of action strains the amount of resources available for dealing with multiple
demands, especially at the UN level.
Why don’t outsiders get involved?


Among the strongest reasons for non-intervention is the tradition of respect for
national sovereignty and the strong prohibition against interfering in the domestic
affairs of an independent state. This assertion of state control also bars non-official
organizations from being effective. Other reasons for non-intervention include:
it is difficult for outside actors to gain entry because one or more internal or external
power(s) prevent it;
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





the complexity of internal politics;
failed third party efforts leading to disengagement;
insufficient levels of violence to warrant intervention, or failing to meet the ICISS
(International Commission on State Sovereignty) test;
the international community judges that the conflict is containable;
stopping the conflict is less important to the interveners than other strategic objectives;
there is common sentiment by many outside actors that this conflict is someone else’s
problem.
What is to be done about forgotten conflicts?
The UN and other international organizations are in the forefront of rescuing these
forgotten conflicts. However, non-official organizations can play a number of different
roles. For example, a Catholic lay charity played a pivotal role in the negotiations in
Mozambique. Other important roles that non-official actors can play in forgotten
intractable conflicts include:




publicizing conflicts through the media;
building local capacity for peacemaking by improving negotiation skills;
facilitating contact between influential, although not necessarily official, members of
the contesting parties;
bolstering the official process by building support for peace in the larger community.
These are not tasks usually undertaken by major states when they intervene
diplomatically in other countries’ conflicts. They are, however, well within the capacities
and reach of middle powers, like Canada and Norway, small states and other official and
non-official institutions which can act alone or in collaboration with higher-profile efforts
by larger states to build the conditions for peacemaking in forgotten conflicts.
Discussion
There is an indication that intervention does work, or is at least starting to work, as more
civil wars have ended through negotiations in the 1990s than in the previous 200 years.
Much of the current framework is based on the principle of “just war.” They are tough
questions and the ICISS report on the responsibility to protect is both a political and a
moral statement. Intervention can make conflicts worse, so actors should be careful to
work with allies to make sure intervention works.
The ICISS report calls for military intervention in certain situations. But, if a conflict is
not considered significant, they should let it burn. NGOs are only effective though if
they are used strategically, working in combination with other actors, using their ‘soft’
power.
It is important to note that we should be skeptical about the ‘humanitarian’ justifications
for the current war against Iraq. Humanitarian motives were coincidental. We should
also examine political will in these situations.
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SESSION 1: Preventing Conflicts
Lead Questioner: John Cockell – DFAIT, Canada
Chair: Erin O’Gorman – Department of National Defence (DND), Canada
Robert Rotberg – Program on Intrastate Conflict, Harvard University
“Intervention and Peacebuilding as Prevention: Lessons from Africa and the
Developing World”
I am going to speak about two long standing projects: one on why states fail and the other
on peacekeeping. The lessons of our project on state failure are dramatic. One conclusion
of the project shows that there is a direct relationship between the decay of a state and
conflict. In addition, it shows that all conflict in the developing world can be linked to
human agency. Therefore, prevention must flow from an acknowledgement of why states
fail, and what role human agency plays. Human agency has transformed participatory
states into non-participatory states.
This shutting out of the marginalized or
disadvantaged groups leads to the conflict that we are trying to prevent. The conflict is
determined by the strength of the oppressor’s economic climate or misadventures and
intervention needs to take this into account.
Somalia is a failed state not due to linguistic, religious, or ethnic division, but rather
human agency and the top-down corruption and clan fighting. Siad Barre transformed
Somalia from a weak state into a failed one because he concentrated the power of the
state in his hands for the benefit of his clan. Thus Somalia’s collapse can be traced
directly to him.
Sierra Leone, under Shaka Stevens, from late 60s-90s, saw the same thing happen.
Ignoring the citizens of the state for his own political gain led to the formation of the
RUF and the civil war that followed.
The point of these two cases is that the civil wars did not arise primarily from peoples of
the states but from leaders who unleashed this force. In other words, both men destroyed
their respective states for their own egotistical purposes.
The lessons of state failure is that intervention is best accomplished early in the form of
prevention, before a state has descended to the status of a failed one. There are plenty of
early warning indicators; it is early action that is the problem. Clearly, if we were
conscious of how to organize preventive regimes or the UN or world order, we could
focus on these issues early enough and could take needed initiatives. The UN can help by
providing its good offices. Also, third party intervention such as the role Norway has
played in Sri Lanka can offer much in the way of useful intervention.
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Turning to the post-conflict phase it is more important for an intervention to be fast than
perfect. In addition, responses should be field driven. Unfortunately, many bureaucracies
do not want their ground people to make the call. However, they must trust their people
on the ground, and these people in turn must act quickly and decisively.
Intervention is a collaborative undertaking. The international community has come far in
the last decade. Respective members of the international community have learned their
strengths: Germans do prisons well, Canada does landmines and forensics well, and the
US likes muscle jobs but not door to door commitments. Recognition of these strengths
make action easier to sell in Western domestic populations. Burden-sharing is
developing, but the international community has not been able to produce a burden
sharing arrangement on Iraq, and this will be the most difficult obstacle to overcome.
Ultimately, intervention is going to messy. Intervention cannot put in place democracy
and economic stability that did not exist before.
Discussion
If political stability is a problem to begin with, how much of the action is elite-driven and
how much is a symptom of a weak state to begin with? Institutional weakness has
recently been emphasized by the UN Secretary General in a report which focuses on the
importance of making government take responsibility for structural weakness before
conflict might begin. Early action is emphasized, but not in the pre-conflict sense.
Addressing conflict in its early stage is clearly due to the lack of political will, not a lack
of machinery. It is not that the international community cannot, but determining when is
the right time to enter a sovereign state is the problem so there is a need to develop a
political mechanism for dealing with conflict early.
Weak states provide partial political goods to its citizens (education, platforms for citizen
participation, law and order, environmental programs). A failed state is not able to
supply these goods: roads, hospitals, economy, etc. are all in disrepair. A failed stated is
also noted by a lack of border security (state integrity). At UBC, a ranking system is
being developed in order to compare human security in a failed state vs. a weak state. A
failed state is, oversimplified, a barely functioning government. A collapsed state on the
other hand is a black hole into which things fall. Warlords take over in many failed
collapsed states, like in Somalia.
There is an element of human agency in civil war to be sure, but there is a global pattern
in place as well. Most civil wars take place in Africa, where you see most of the state
failure and phenomenal collapses. If human agency is at play, why is it worse in Africa?
There is a whole set of structural conditions that allow these bad leaders to emerge and do
so much damage. Bad leadership exists in Europe, but they are better constrained. You
will always have to put out fires in Africa if these organizational and structural problems
are not addressed. Malawi in 1993 was a successful early intervention by pushing
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Uganda out. However, there are many cases where early intervention worsened the
situation. The question is prescription. How can we intervene without weakening the
state’s ability to contain its violence? How can we intervene without fueling these civil
wars?
John Norris – International Crisis Group, Washington, D.C.
“Elements of a Successful Post-Conflict Intervention”
There are five elements that need to be taken into account when planning interventions:
First, there needs to be finances and resources available to create jobs post-conflict and
make changes on the ground.
Second, intervention needs to be field driven. Often, lip service is paid to advice from
the field. There needs to be greater trust in the advice of people on the ground.
Humanitarian aid needs to better match need, and the people on the ground are the most
capable of providing this information.
Third, acknowledge that intervention is political. People make money off of conflict and
intervention. To improve intervention we must realize and contemplate its realities.
Security is needed for meaningful reform. Also, there is a considerable lack of the use of
diplomacy.
Fourth, intervention should be collaborative. Different actors can bring different actions,
abilities and options to the table. Burden sharing also develops some effective
mechanisms. Iraq highlights a number of problems as it demonstrates the difficulties of
working unilaterally, as well as the desire of members of the international community to
shirk responsibility.
Finally, interventions will be messy. We should be realistic about expectations as
restoration and intervention are both difficult, especially when improperly implemented.
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SESSION 2: Defining Success
Chair: James W. Dean – Economics Department, Simon Fraser University
Lead Questioner: Peggy Mason – Norman Paterson School of International Affairs,
Carleton University
M. Ishaq Nadiri – Department of Economics, New York University
"Afghanistan: A Case for Assessing International Intervention & Cooperation"
In 1978 the USSR invaded Afghanistan, destroying its infrastructure and its human
capital. The US helped organize the jihad within Afghanistan with the help of Pakistan
but lost interest after the Cold War.
Had Bin Laden been surrendered to the US, Afghan women rights and human rights
would not be the prominent issues they are today in Afghanistan. These issues though
have become part of the larger issue of failing states which, as 9/11 demonstrated, can
have a profound affect on international security. There are many failing areas; and many
of them are in the African and Muslim world. In these areas, birth rates are sky-rocketing
and the majority of the population is young. Where is the economic growth to sustain
this? The answer is unclear, and the result has local unrest and emigration from these to
richer countries such as Germany.
The Afghan case is not going well and there is still much ground to cover to pull it out of
a failed state status, although, thanks to the UN and other actors, much starvation has
been avoided and steps have been made to increase the education level of the population.
But educational initiatives are not enough to address current problems and issues like
agriculture are being ignored. Afghanistan is a case of external forces having pull; first
with the Soviets, then the Taliban and now the US but in the process of rebuilding the
country, it is wrong to try to “stage” intervention and reconstruction. In this complex and
interdisciplinary process, you might be able to achieve security (and that is not happening
outside Kabul in any case) but where is the economic growth?
The solutions we are providing for Afghanistan are admirable but almost too late. We
should have started the political process while the bombing began. By now the political
spots have been taken and solidified. The Northern Alliance which entered Kabul during
the military campaign is now in power in the government and warlords are being funded
and courted to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda resistance.
Democracy is very expensive and it is hard to say whether or not it will work in
Afghanistan. There is no one way to solve state failure, or to rebuild failed sates.
Another problem also arises: should we constitutionalize the same divisions that brought
trouble in the first place?
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I believe state failure is going to multiply. We neglect these states and then attack the
issues after they have become a problem. The amount of aid we give is despicable. We
are suffering from internationalization. The international community must think about the
effects of well-intentioned initiatives. We can start by advocating for substantial
economic aid for failing states like Afghanistan.
Joseph Siegle – Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C.
"Changing the Definition of Success in Military Interventions"
I have been asked to talk today about the development challenges faced in interventions
and post-interventions. Unsurprisingly, this topic is inextricably linked to issues of
security. The scope for effective development in interventions is more strongly shaped by
security than any other single factor. There are all too many recent examples of this.
This is the post-intervention development environment of the early 21st century. The
better we understand this environment, the more effective intervention efforts will be.
Beyond insecurity, understanding the contemporary intervention context means explicitly
recognizing that nearly all recent interventions have occurred in failed states. This means
that the humanitarian and security crises we face in interventions are acute symptoms of a
deeper phenomenon: political disintegration. Whether they crumble from within, or from
external pressure, the political systems in these troubled states lack legitimacy. The
political institutions that exist are largely focused on perpetuating the cronyistic,
predatory, and criminal methods that are both a means and an ends of their rule. The state
has been effectively hollowed-out. Therefore, when an intervention is undertaken in such
contexts, we should recognize from the outset that this will necessarily be a state-building
exercise.
So what makes an intervention successful? The question cuts to the core of a fundamental
tension observed in recent interventions. Military and some political leaders frequently
want to define the objective of the intervention as narrowly as possible: “regime change,”
“securing a capital city,” “opening up corridors of humanitarian assistance.” This is
understandable. The more narrow the objective, the greater the extent to which its
attainment remains within the control of these actors. Narrow objectives are also
attractive in that they are seen to protect against “mission creep.” They reduce the risk of
getting bogged down and shorten the steps to an exit strategy.
Establishing a clear definition of success in interventions is imperative if we are to see a
more stable and peaceful world. At this juncture in history, collapsed or collapsing states
pose a persistent threat to international stability and are the most likely precipitants of
future interventions. This instability is typically manifest in civil conflict, which over the
past decade has comprised 9 out of 10 of the world’s armed conflicts. Civil conflicts –
and their tragic humanitarian and development consequences - nearly always arise in
weak, autocratic states. Furthermore, when left to fester, these conflicts spill over into
their neighbors. As we look over the horizon, it does not require great imagination to
envision situations in which new interventions will soon be needed – be they in Burma,
15
North Korea, Haiti, Zimbabwe, or elsewhere. Simply put, the problem of effectively
undertaking interventions is not going away any time soon.
Recognizing that political stability is the goal going into these interventions frames how a
whole series of related issues affecting development effectiveness are approached. Five of
the most important, in my view are:





Expanding the Security Bubble;
Building Early Momentum;
Jobs as a Stabilizing Force;
Decentralization and Devolution of Power; and
Civil Society as a Building Block for State-Building.
By highlighting these topics, I am trying to underscore that interventions involve building
institutions. I realize this makes many people uncomfortable. Either it is too ambitious,
too presumptuous, or perceived as some form of neo-colonialism. Yet, if we recognize
that success is dependent on reconstituting failed states, then building viable institutions
is indispensable.
Approaching interventions comprehensively raises a number of general policy questions.
I’ll touch on just a few:



Resources: Undertaking more timely and comprehensive development operations
in conflict and post-conflict interventions will require a significant commitment of
resources.
Planning for Post-Interventions: One of the “advantages” of interventions is that
they allow for a certain degree of planning beforehand – a luxury not available in
most natural disaster situations.
International commitment: While there is a wide variance in the level of
complexity of interventions, it is important to acknowledge that the costs of
intervening effectively are high. This reality should enter into the debate about
whether or not to undertake an intervention in the first place.
In conclusion, the demands of conflict and post-conflict intervention are one of the
leading security challenges of our time. Improving the development dimension of
interventions is intrinsically interrelated to doing the other facets of the intervention well.
Successful interventions are costly and challenging. However, in my view, the security,
political, humanitarian, and economic benefits of intervening effectively are far greater.
16
SESSION 3: Ethical Dimensions in Intervention I
Chair: Peter Stockdale – Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee (CPCC),
Conflict Prevention Working Group
Lead Questioner: Rosemary Nagy – Law Department, Carleton University
Jacqueline Bhabha
"War's Aftermath: Human Rights Obligations Beyond Borders"
The international community is being pulled into the post interventionist situation to help
rebuild Iraq. Despite the removal of a universally loathed dictator, there is much to do.
Although we are not yet in a post-conflict situation in Iraq, winning the war was easier
than winning the peace will be. There was not much talk on what would happen after
military intervention. Whether or not it was an imperialistic intervention, we are not
prepared for what is happening in Iraq.
Democracy is not an export product: it needs seeds and roots to grow and flourish. In
terms of international law, there are clear set of international rules on what is meant by
intervention. War victims are safeguarded by international law as well civilians and
prisoners. Treatment of civilians in times of peace is also protected by international law.
The state has a responsibility to protect regardless of the ethnicity of the individual.
However extreme the situation, these rights can not be denied.
In addition to general instruments, there are specific tools and conventions that we must
follow. One example is the 1951 Refugee Convention. This states that the international
community is not to send back refugees if their life or freedom would be jeopardized. All
the states that are signatory to these conventions have a responsibility to uphold these
laws, yet what we see on the ground is different. Some states are more willing to take
responsibility for problems abroad but not at home. For example, in Britain, asylum
seekers (especially from targeted countries) are not fully receiving the benefits of these
laws.
Another example is children’s rights. UNICEF states that two million children have died
in war in the past decade and up to ten million suffer from the consequences of war.
Women and children constitute 80 % of refugees. They also have greater difficulty
reaching safety from zones of conflict.
I am focusing on this group because there is a consensus that something should be done
to protect children. But, in practice the situation is largely lacking. Canada has failed to
meet its child refugee targets and has also introduced new laws which make it more
17
difficult for child refugees to enter the country and in 2002 a new law was passed making
it easier for the Canadian government to detain refugee claimants.
In conclusion, policy makers must deal with the following problems. One is that many
children do legitimately seek refuge; and their numbers are increasing. We need to
change the framework of decision making away from an adult-centered concept. Second,
we need to be wary of penalizing children who travel alone. Paradoxically, those who
seem most vulnerable are also treated the worst by the country they are trying to
immigrate to. While Canada does not usually detain children, the US detains almost
5000 a year. This problem of punitive treatment is a world-wide problem.
Discussion
A number of questions were raised in the discussion that focused on immigration, state
failure and terrorism, such as the issue that refugees are now linked synonymously with
terrorists. It was noted that there was a lot of sympathy generated for Kosovo refugees for
a while, as well as for the Kurds during the Persian Gulf War and previously for the
Tamils but this changed in the post Sept.11 climate. There is a tension as our political
commitments fluctuate more toward security.
Different types of intervention do not make much difference to asylum seekers as their
lives are still at risk. Many refugees would return if the situation in their homeland made
it feasible to do so. Thus, in order to address the issue of refugees and stop the flow of
people across borders, the root causes of war must be addressed.
Terrorism and state failures are linked in the eyes of policy makers but seeing state
failure as linked to terrorism breeds a policy of select engagement. There are other
factors including attitudes towards culture and race which determine the link of
interventions to national self-interest; but at least it mitigates against isolationism.
There are situations when humanitarian intervention is needed, for example in Rwanda;
when intervention would incur far less casualties than non-intervention. And, delay in
some situations can be fatal. Intervention too, can also be very costly. Humanitarian
intervention is mandatory in some situations.
The discussion then turned towards legal rights and their ability to transfer over into
moral rights. For example, is torture ever justified? We don’t know that torture saves
lives, but we do know that those who are tortured will say anything. Morally, it is
unacceptable considering the level of sophistication and development of our society but
those who torture believe it produces positive results.
But if the right not to be tortured is fundamental, what is the responsibility to ensure it is
protected? The international prohibition on torture is directed at the state. But, it is
unrealistic to justify intervention based on torture, as every state has produced some kind
of torture.
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Judith Lichtenberg – Institute of Philosophy and Public Affairs, University of
Maryland, "Precedent and Example in the International Arena"
What is most troubling about U.S. foreign policy today is the example that it holds up to
the world and the precedent that it sets, conjoined with its disregard for the significance
of both example and precedent. The United States legislates, dangerously, for the whole
of humankind, while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge that role—thereby escaping,
as Jean-Paul Sartre says one cannot do, from its “complete and profound responsibility.”
Of course, states and their governments are not in every way analogous to individual
human beings. But in the most important respects, governments are agents whose actions
and policies have just the kind of precedential and exemplary significance that
individuals’ actions do—even more so, I shall argue, because of their inescapably public
nature.
Sartre’s claim that every agent legislates for all humanity derives from the “Categorical
Imperative,” Immanuel Kant’s fundamental principle of morality. According to Kant, an
agent ought to “act only according to that maxim by which. . .[one] can at the same time
will that it should become a universal law.”1 Kant captures something that goes deep in
our thinking about the moral requirements of conduct, and the same or similar
conceptions can be founded in a variety of other moral theories and systems. The
intuitive idea is that in deciding how to act, an agent must consider whether he would be
willing for everyone to act according to the same principle (Kant used the term “maxim”).
At the very least, unless an agent is willing to accept the universal adoption of his
principle of action, the action is impermissible.2 Universalizability should be understood
in terms of consistency: What’s right for me is right for anyone similarly situated.
Sartre makes the bolder point that whether we like it or not, whether we choose it or not,
in acting we inevitably legislate for all of humanity.3 My action sets an example; what I
do others will conclude that they may do too. Lying behind the universalizability
requirement is a postulate of human equality. No person can claim a privilege to act
1
Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, tr. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, 1959), p.421.
2
Kant intended the categorical imperative in a stronger sense. He believed that for some actions, “their
maxim cannot even be thought as a universal law of nature without contradiction”; for others,
although “this internal impossibility is not found. . .it is still impossible to will that their maxims
should be raised to the universality of a law of nature” (Ibid., p.424). These are very strong
claims, in keeping with Kant’s aim of establishing objective moral requirements. As many
commentators have argued, it doubtful that they can be met. A weaker, more subjective
interpretation that nevertheless has important implications for morality is the one given here,
according to which agents must assess the legitimacy of their actions by their willingness to accept
the universalized versions of the maxims that describe their reasons for acting.
3
The existentialists’ emphasis on the centrality of choice may seem to make this interpretation implausible.
But that conclusion fails to appreciate existentialism’s central paradox that the only thing you
can’t choose is not to choose; you have no choice but to choose. “Man makes himself. . .by the
choice of his morality, and he cannot but choose a morality, such is the pressure of circumstances
upon him” (“Existentialism Is a Humanism,” p. 306).
19
simply by virtue of who he or she is; no one can set himself or herself apart as a special
case. If I am justified in acting in a certain way it’s because of features of my situation
that, if possessed by others, would justify them in so acting as well. These “features of
the situation”—the phrases “anyone in the same circumstances” and “anyone similarly
situated” get at the same idea—are embodied in the principle or maxim implicit in one’s
proposed course of action.
Two questions immediately confront us. The first concerns the analogy between states
and individuals. Is it plausible to think that nation-states, or their governments, are moral
agents subject to the requirement of universalizability in the way we suppose individuals
are? The second, assuming we can make the analogy between states and individuals, how
do we identify the maxim or principle according to which a state acts? More specifically,
what is the maxim or principle that correctly characterizes the pre-emptive military
intervention characteristic of current U.S. foreign policy?
What principle does the U.S. government invoke or imply in its wars against terrorism
and against Iraq? Students of Kant know that identifying the relevant principle at work in
an agent’s proposed course of action is rarely easy. Here are several possibilities, in
increasing order of narrowness and specificity.
Principle One: States may engage in wars of conquest. This principle would represent a
giant step backward into barbarism and would violate the UN Charter. It would justify
Hitler’s launching of World War II and Saddam Hussein’s annexation of Kuwait. Clearly
this crude principle is not the one at work in U.S. foreign policy today.
Principle Two: States may engage in preventive wars against those who might
potentially attack them. This principle narrows the scope of the policy to preventive acts
against potential enemies. But the problem with Principle Two is that it actually makes
states into potential threats to each other by permitting preventive conquest of potential
adversaries. Principle Two would lead to perpetual international conflict.
Principle Three: States may engage in preventive wars against states possessing
weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This principle licenses pre-emptive attacks against
the United States, the world’s largest holder of nuclear weapons and poison gas. Clearly
it is not what the current Bush administration has in mind.
Principle Four: States may engage in preventive wars against rogue states possessing
weapons of mass destruction. The best definition of a rogue state is one that disregards
principles of world order and international law and launches aggressive attacks against
others, sometimes by covert means. The trouble with this definition is that once we show
ourselves prepared to conquer nations we dislike, we become a rogue state with WMDs—
hence a legitimate target of attack.
That is absurd, of course. We know we are not a rogue state—and we know that Iraq was.
But how do we argue the case to states suspicious of U.S. motives? Without some
20
neutral definition, “rogueness” is in the eye of the beholder. Who decides when another
country’s “elected” leader is really a dictator and a rogue?
Principle Five: Superpowers may engage in certain actions that other nations may not,
such as deciding which foreign regimes are rogue states and removing them. The central
question to this principle is whether the U.S. would be willing to accept Principle Five if
it were not a superpower. Clearly it would find Principle Five no more acceptable than
190 other states do at this moment.
Principle Six: The U.S. may engage in actions that other nations may not, such as
deciding which foreign regimes are rogues and removing them. According to this “antiprinciple,” a double standard—one for the United States and one for the rest of the
world—is the right standard, in keeping with “American exceptionalism. Throughout
history, realists remind us, the world’s superpowers have invariably written their own
rules; others go along because they have no choice. The U.S., according to this view,
does not need a general principle. Principle Six is not a principle but rather a
straightforward rejection of the Kantian and Sartrean standpoints from which we began.
But that is not enough to condemn it. Could this way of reasoning, and acting, be
justified? It depends at least in part on whether the Kantian and Sartrean standpoints
apply to anything other than individuals.
The question, then, is whether states can be moral agents subject to the demand that they
conform their behavior to the requirement of universalizability. If not, the foregoing
criticism of U.S. foreign policy is inappropriate and unjustified. Consider two general
arguments against the view that states can be moral agents. The first might be called the
anthropomorphism argument: To believe that states can be moral agents is to attribute
human qualities to nonhuman things. To be morally responsible requires, at the very
least, having a mind, and states do not have minds.
This argument is flawed on several grounds. We often hold collective entities, such as
corporations and agencies, responsible both morally and legally, although they too lack
minds. The anthropomorphism argument, if taken seriously, would not permit us to hold
any corporate entities responsible and would thus contradict important bodies of law and
common practice. The anthropomorphism argument is closely related to, and may
ultimately depend on, the claim of methodological individualism - only individuals exist
and all talk of corporate or group entities must be ultimately reducible to the language of
individual behavior.
The more familiar argument for the belief that states (or governments or regimes) are not
moral agents is realism, or Realpolitik. Realism says that morality is irrelevant to the
conduct of states, and that moral criticism and evaluation are therefore also irrelevant.
Implicit in the realist thesis is an assumption about the motives of state actors. The
question of motive—in state action as well as in individual action—is a complex and
difficult one. How can we know an agent’s actual motives? Under what circumstances
is it reasonable to expect an agent (whether an individual or a state) to act against selfinterest? How do we factor into the moral equation the presence of multiple motives?
21
Yet, whatever their motives, the actions of states must be able to withstand moral scrutiny.
Our interest is not in the moral virtue of states but in the legitimacy of their actions and
policies.
Even if states are moral agents that must justify their actions, it might be argued that
states are not equal in the way that we suppose individual human beings are equal, and
that this inequality allows or even requires different standards for different states. These
different standards apply both to states as agents and to states that are acted upon.
But this claim is at best unclear and at worst untrue. We know that human beings are not
equal along any dimension that we can name: strength, beauty, intelligence, energy,
happiness, sociability, or accomplishment. Nor are they “morally equal” in the most
obvious meaning of that term: that is, equally inclined to morally acceptable motives or
behavior. Equal consideration or equal concern and respect does not imply that all people
should be treated the same, but rather that treating people differently requires providing
relevant reasons. What makes a difference relevant? Why should I be permitted to do this
and you not? Why should the U.S. be permitted to act in this way and other countries not?
We may despair of finding objective criteria of relevance. But the requirement that one
be willing for all to act on the principle underlying one’s own action is an excellent proxy.
It requires only that one answer in good faith. As John Rawls explains, each “will be
wary of proposing a principle which would give him a peculiar advantage, in his present
circumstances. . .. Each person knows that he will be bound by it in future circumstances
the peculiarities of which cannot be known, and which might well be such that the
principle is then to his disadvantage.”4
States, governments, and the peoples whom they govern are unequal in a variety of
respects, as are individuals. They differ in physical size, population, riches, power,
culture, and technological advancement. Perhaps most important for our purposes is that
some states are illegitimate, by virtue of the relationship that they have (or lack) to the
people within their borders. Although a democratic form of government is not a
necessary condition of legitimacy, some degree of popular support is.5 Illegitimate states
lack the rights of political sovereignty and territorial integrity international law and
custom normally accord states. Just as we may treat criminals, in light of their conduct,
differently from other people, so we may treat illegitimate states differently from other
states.
Even though differences between individuals justify differences in their treatment, still
there is a sense in which individuals possess some kind of inviolability that states do not.
What Michael Walzer calls the “legalist paradigm,” according to which states possess
rights to political sovereignty and territorial integrity, is on this critical view misguided
and mistaken. The legalist paradigm is enshrined in Article 2 of the UN Charter, which
4
John Rawls, “Justice as Fairness,” Philosophical Review 67, no.2 (April 1958), pp. 164-194.
5
For a discussion of this view see Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 3d ed. (New York: Basic Books,
2000), pp. 61-62.
22
asserts the “sovereign equality” of member states and their right to territorial integrity
and political independence. From the legalist paradigm it follows that states may do what
they like within their own borders, or at the very least that outsiders have no right to
intervene. But according to this critical view state sovereignty is, if not altogether an
illusion, at least an exaggeration. If this is so then the notion of states as entities like
individuals who are presumptively equal is also a mistake. How then can one make the
analogy on which this argument rests?
I agree with those who believe state sovereignty is overrated as a morally basic concept. 6
At best, state sovereignty is a useful proxy for the rights that a state (in effect, a
government or regime) holds in virtue of its relationships with those within its borders—
specifically, for the principle of nonintervention in that state’s internal affairs. The more
positively a regime is related to its people, the more it makes sense to say that state is
sovereign and possesses a right to non-intervention. A democratic state is more
positively related to its people, we may suppose, than an undemocratic state. But the
term “democratic” covers a multitude of possibilities that themselves vary in ways
relevant to sovereignty.
More fundamentally, the degree of a state’s sovereignty, and thus the extent to which the
principle of non-intervention holds with respect to it, depends upon how much the regime
reflects the ability of people within its borders to choose freely—or determine
themselves—consistent with the rights of others.
The highly public nature of international political and military action in contemporary
times provides a powerful reason to proceed with the greatest of care—a reason over and
above Kant’s purely moral one. Peoples and states around the world are suffused with
the ideas of equality, self-determination, and national pride. To assert one’s own
superiority and one’s rights to do what they may not is insulting and humiliating.
Speaking purely in terms of consequences and not principles, it is hard to see how good
can come of it.
No one likes to be confronted with another’s flagrant assertion of superiority, even if the
assertion is warranted. Countries are no different, and it has always seemed surprising
when U.S. leaders such as President George W. Bush think nothing of announcing that
the country is “the greatest nation on earth” within earshot of the rest of the world. At the
very least, it is bound to create animosity. Similarly, when Washington’s official policy
asserts that “Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from
pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United
States,”7 it’s not hard to see why other nations might object. That no one should be our
superior may be an acceptable aim; that no one is permitted to be our equal—as asserted
in the September 2002 “National Security Strategy”—is another matter.
6
See David Luban, “Just War and Human Rights,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 9, no. 2 (Winter 1980), pp.
160-181; and Allen Buchanan, Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations of
International Law (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
7
National Security Strategy of the United States of America, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss9.html.
23
“American exceptionalism,” an idea often credited to Alexis de Tocqueville, has been
defined as the view that “the United States was created differently, developed differently,
and thus has to be understood differently—essentially on its own terms and within its
own context.”8 The concept has been employed mostly to explain why throughout its
history the U.S. has not had a significant labor or socialist movement.9 Today, however,
U.S. exceptionalism seems to describe not so much the explanatory framework
appropriate to understanding the historical development of the United States, but the
moral rights it has arrogated to itself.
An argument for military action in places like Iraq that we have not considered invokes a
principle of what some call “humanitarian intervention.” A rough approximation of such
a principle might look something like Principle Seven: States may intervene militarily in
the affairs of other states to prevent or end severe and widespread violations of human
rights.
We did not consider this principle earlier because it was not, according to credible
accounts, the central reason for U.S. intervention in Iraq; rather it seemed to function as a
by-product or perhaps a secondary reason. Up until the war began, the arguments made
for intervention had to do primarily with U.S. national security and self-defense. More
recently, however, the argument based on Iraqi liberation has assumed greater
prominence as hard evidence for WMD and links to Al Qaeda has not materialized.
Few would disagree that Saddam Hussein was a brutal and repressive tyrant responsible
for gross violations of human rights. Two conclusions seem to follow: that the Iraqis
would be well rid of Saddam Hussein and that he has no right to rule Iraq.
Many liberals who favored military action in places like Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, and
Rwanda found themselves forced to refine their understanding of the principle of
humanitarian intervention when it came to Iraq. If Saddam Hussein was so bad, why was
war not justified to overthrow him? If liberal distrust of the Bush administration about
Iraq was justified, what did that say about the legitimacy of the principle of humanitarian
intervention? Was liberal hypocrisy at work in the decision about which oppressive
states to fight?
8
Byron Shafer, ed., Is America Different? (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. v. See Alexis
de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, volume II, (New York: Random House, Inc., 1970) pp.
36-7. “The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that
no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin, their
exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds
from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts, the proximity of Europe, which allows them to
neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand special causes, of which I have
only been able to point out the most important, have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the
American upon purely practical objects. . . .Let us cease, then, to view all democratic nations
under the example of the American people, and attempt to survey them at length with their own
features.” I thank Laura Hussey for directing me to this passage and for help on this section.
9
See Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism A Double-Edged Sword (New York: Norton,
1997).
24
At least two factors underlay the widespread doubts about humanitarian intervention as a
principle justifying war in Iraq. One had to do with motive, the other with the prospects
of success. These doubts too are intertwined. To answer this difficult question it is
helpful to examine the other source of doubt about the principle of humanitarian
intervention, which concerns the prospects of success.
Much has been written on this subject specifically about Iraq, and many people have
argued that winning the war was the easiest part of the undertaking. Probably the two
biggest problems cited are the inherent difficulty of imposing democracy, liberty, and
respect for human rights from outside, and the negative effects of U.S. intervention on the
beliefs and attitudes of people in Iraq and elsewhere in the region, and beyond. It is
probably still too early to say whether or to what extent these fears will be borne out
sufficiently to undermine any potential positive effects of intervention.
Nonetheless, the agent must have weighed the risks and costs of intervening against the
benefits and must have been warranted in concluding that the benefits outweighed the
risks. That in turn requires a firm commitment on the part of the agent to ensure that the
risks of failure do not come to pass. So, for example, if one’s aim were to bring
democracy to a region where democracy has not existed, a long-term commitment to
nation-building would seem to be required.
Even if a state would be well rid of its leader and even if he has no right to rule (certainly
true of Iraq and Saddam Hussein, respectively), it does not follow that all things
considered it would be sensible to intervene militarily to bring about the dictator’s
downfall and other desired outcomes. An enormously significant factor is the will of the
people in whose country one is proposing to intervene. In the paradigm case of justified
intervention, oppressed or persecuted people seek help from sympathetic outsiders to help
determine their destiny. Of course, when people are sufficiently oppressed and
persecuted, they will not necessarily be able to communicate their wishes freely, making
it difficult to discern their will. But a central question must always be whether the people
inside desire the involvement of outsiders. If they do not, the term “humanitarian
intervention” will be highly suspect.
These considerations help to bridge the gap between the two concerns raised by critics of
such humanitarian intervention, motive and probability of success. We should not judge
the legitimacy of a state’s action based on its motives, but its motives will inevitably
figure indirectly into the principles that characterize its actions.
In light of these remarks, a better principle than Principle Seven would be Principle Eight,
which adds a crucial clause: States may intervene militarily in the affairs of other states
to prevent or end severe and widespread violations of human rights, when they have very
good reason to believe that the benefits of intervention will outweigh the costs. In
addition, the agent must have good reason to believe the benefits will outweigh the
costs—an objective condition that must be satisfied.
25
This statement of the principle is attractive partly because it avoids the need to inquire
directly into the motives of agents while building in the relevant questions in an
appropriate way. If the U.S. had good reason to believe that the benefits of intervention
outweighed its costs (and assuming we could reach agreement on the meaning and truth
of this claim), it would have been justified in invading Iraq, whether or not humanitarian
intervention was its motive. Principle Eight both Kant’s question, and Sartre’s: What if
everybody did that? What if everybody saw you doing that?
Discussion
The discussion centered on the motivations of actors and the outcomes of their actions.
Sincerely believing something doesn’t mean that it is a good reason to believe. In
domestic law sincere belief is not the same as reasonable belief but success does serve to
justify some beliefs. Kant believed that you had to be clear on the principle you were
acting on: this can be applied to both the personal and national front. Distinguishing the
justification of actions from the actions of the agent is an interesting question: you can be
a good person and screw up all the time. But, it is a morass to distinguish.
The concept of the ends justify the means is an oversimplification. First, it is very
difficult to know what state’s motives are. Second, states act primarily in their own selfinterest.
26
SESSION 4: Ethical Dimensions in Intervention II
Chair: Francine Fournier – ex-Under Secretary General of UNESCO
Lead Questioner: Robert Fullinwinder – Institute of Philosophy and Public Affairs,
University of Maryland
David Copp
“Cultural Relativism and Post-intervention Decisions”
This talk will focus on a pattern of reasoning that implies that it is amoral for a culture to
impose its goals on a culture that may reject them. Differences of opinion seem to rest on
cultural differences. However, there is no relatively neutral position in which to evaluate
moral frameworks. So, must we tolerate all kinds of frameworks? Can we accept
culturally sanctioned violence?
In the post-intervention period, is it permissible for the intervening state to impose goals
that are unpopular in the local population? We see this in Iraq, Japan and North America.
The intervener may want to put a stop to cultural practices for various reasons—not
necessarily moral or religious. But it is important not to exaggerate culture: culture is not
monolithic or static, they change all the time. Many cultures don’t believe that women
have the same rights as men. There are also differences in ways of life and expectations.
The ethical ideas of the intervening power reflect the goals of power: so, why is the
intervener’s culture more special? Intervening powers have had to deal with changing
cultures throughout history.
Bernard Williams discusses the anthropologist’s heresy: cultural relativism. He
illustrates skepticism about moral belief. All cultures are equal, relatively speaking.
Post-modernism tells us that there are multiple incompatible perspectives and the desire
to create norms has devastating consequences because it creates suffering and leaves
other opinions out. So, can we have objective truth in any reality? But there are patterns
that can be found in every culture with regards to the taking of human life.
I want to use anthropologic data to build a philosophical and then ethical framework. So,
what counts as a culture? Most societies are pluralistic: these contain many groups,
without restriction of size; they are a group of people who share a basic moral outlet. Set
this aside.
Culturally-based disagreement does not support cultural relativism. Ruth Benedict
applies scientific method: assign no preference or priority to any culture. A stubborn
relativist may embrace relativism about science, but this is a Trojan horse. But there is a
27
culturally based disagreement about relativism itself which supports cultural moral
relativism about cultural moral relativism. Cultural moral relativism is true. Period. But,
if there’s no relative truth, it has no application in ethics. Moral diversity does not imply
relativism.
Does toleration flow from cultural relativism? If our moral framework judges another
moral framework to be evil, then it is true, relative to our culture. Therefore, it is not
naturally peaceful. So, toleration is not promoted by relativism. Toleration, then, must
be at odds with the cultural framework intended for reform. If we want to be tolerant, we
have to cut off cultural relativism. Relativism doesn’t allow for intervention. If we say
that a power should be tolerant, period, then we have to reject relativism.
Ethical relativism is in conflict with the idea that all cultures should be tolerant of others.
Is cultural/moral diversity a good reason to be tolerant? This brings in critical judgment:
if someone disagrees with you, it doesn’t mean you have to reconsider your own view.
When is a disagreement with others evidence that we are wrong. We are reasonable to
accept a person’s judgment if it is reasonable to trust their judgment. Ethical matters are
no different from moral matters. If someone expresses something to us that does not fit
in with our beliefs, we may reject it with good reason.
A pluralistic society has a number of different groups with different views. Cultural
diversity does not mean that we have to doubt our judgments about situations we are
familiar with. There isn’t a prohibition on judging a foreign culture—just against
ignorant judgment, both morally and knowledgably.
There are a few examples that prove my point. The first of these are the Allies after fall
of Nazi Germany. The idea that imposing powers should not bring forward goals that
would be rejected by local cultural is not warranted. For example, the outside powers
imposed (or upheld) the belief that the Holocaust was wrong.
Another example is female genital mutilation (FGM). The fact is that FGM is practiced
in 28 African countries and other places with varying forms. It is viewed as morally
acceptable in cultures where it’s practiced. Is it wrong to put a stop to it?
Discussion
The discussion centered on whether we should support interventions and reject moral
relativism. There is no doubt that cultures change for moral reasons, yet if we reject
moral relativism, what truths are we basing our decisions on? In effect, where do we
obtain absolute truths? Absolute truths are general principles that we derive culturally
from dialogue and discussion and that we generally hold to be true.
It is generally believed in our society that people should be allowed to practice their own
religion, and I believe that that’s a correct principle to go by. In view of certain religious
views though, some engage in various practices that violate other rights that we believe
(eg. torture). Then there is a conflict between two rights that we take very seriously.
28
Matters of expediency rather than cultural relativism produce hands-off views as it’s
difficult to change cultural norms. Some oppose humanitarian intervention on the basis
of cultural relativism.
Judith Kumin – United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
“Refuge Repatriations: A View from UNHCR”
The title of this conference segment is “Ethical Dimensions in Intervention”. One of these
dimensions is certainly the extent to which intervention makes it possible for refugees to
return home in a safe and dignified manner, and for independent agencies to be present to
support and monitor this process.
The international agency with primary responsibility for refugee repatriation is the Office
of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Along with other humanitarian
organizations, the UNHCR faces considerable challenges – both practical and ethical -- in
helping refugees to return home in the aftermath of conflict.
At the outset let me say that of course neither refugee repatriation nor engagement in
situations of armed conflict is new to the UN refugee agency. UNHCR doctrine has long
identified repatriation as the most desirable solution to any refugee problem, even though
it was not until the 1990s that the global political situation allowed for a real focus on
repatriation. And throughout the agency’s history, it has been obliged to work to a greater
or lesser degree either in or on the fringes of situations of armed conflict and political
violence – North Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s, South America in the 1960s,
South East Asia in the 1970s and southern Africa in the 1980s, to give just a few
examples.
But the post Cold War shift away from exile, asylum and resettlement as the politically
correct solutions to refugee problems, and the increased focus on refugee repatriation
entailed a dramatic expansion in UNHCR’s activities in the countries of origin of
refugees, rather than in neighboring countries of asylum. This shift is clearly evident in
the agency’s expenditure. In 1975, UNHCR spent just 1% of its budget on repatriation.
Last year the corresponding figure was over 33%.
At the same time, the operational environment changed dramatically at the end of the
Cold War. Forms of armed conflict and political violence have diversified, and outside
intervention in one form or another has been a factor in a surprising number of countries
where UNHCR is currently promoting, implementing or planning refugee repatriation,
for instance in Afghanistan, Bosnia, East Timor, Eritrea, Kosovo, Liberia, Sierra Leone,
Somalia and last but not least the example that preoccupies all of us: Iraq.
The involvement of powerful external military actors has raised to a new level the already
tricky question of whether and how humanitarian agencies can retain their neutrality. And
as attacks on aid personnel have become more frequent and more intense. The tragic
bombing of the UN Headquarters in Baghdad on August 19th has pointedly and
poignantly raised the stakes for UN and other aid agencies expected to operate in a highly
29
dangerous environment where humanitarian space is limited, where local public support
is questionable, and where it is difficult or impossible to establish a dialogue with those
armed elements who oppose the international community’s presence.
I will come back to this theme. But let me first highlight the changing nature of
UNHCR’s role in refugee repatriation operations.
Before the end of the Cold War, UNHCR’s repatriation operations tended to follow a
fairly standard paradigm: an independence struggle came to an end, a peace agreement
was concluded, exiles were invited to come home and a formal amnesty was usually
proclaimed to bolster the confidence of those going back. The post-independence return
of refugees to Algeria, Zimbabwe and Namibia followed this model, for example. In
such operations UNHCR’s role was rather limited: to verify that individuals were
returning of their own free will and to provide transport and some basic assistance – an
approach known within the organization as “a cooking pot and a handshake”.
During the 1990s, however, a series of factors emerged which led the organization to
abandon this narrow approach to repatriation, and to become much more engaged in the
reintegration of those going back, as well as in the resolution of tensions between the
returnees and those who had stayed behind.
What was behind this expanded role? Although it is a well-established principle that
refugee repatriation should take place on a voluntary basis and in safety and dignity,
many – perhaps most -- repatriations over the past decade have taken place in less-thanideal circumstances, frequently involving some degree of duress. Sometimes return is
indirectly induced by a deterioration of conditions in the country of asylum, sometimes it
is more overtly compelled. But in most cases over the past 12 years, where refugees have
returned en masse, it has been to unstable situations where they face insecurity on several
levels: physical and material, clearly, but legal, social and psychological insecurity as
well. In the context of today’s conflicts it has become obvious that the success or failure
of the reintegration of former refugees can determine whether post-conflict stability is
reinforced, or is undermined. One need only think of the bombing of houses of returnees
in Bosnia and Herzegovina to discourage minority ethnic groups from coming back to
their villages, for example.
The linkage between the reintegration of former refugees and post-conflict stability led
the UNHCR to focus not just on transport of returnees and basic relief assistance, but on
how to balance pressures for speedy return against the likely sustainability of return, and
to insist that donor governments fill the gap between humanitarian aid and development
assistance. And because of the nature of the post Cold War conflicts, programs to support
reconciliation between former enemies, often between those returning and those who
stayed behind, also have become paramount.
Finding ways to promote reconciliation, or at least peaceful coexistence, is difficult
enough. External intervention, even if it is widely considered legitimate, adds another
30
dimension to the challenges faced by the humanitarian community. Let me outline just
two issues in this context.
First of all, external intervention inevitably poses the question of how to preserve
humanitarian space in a highly politicized and militarized context? What relationship
should humanitarian agencies – especially those of the UN system -- maintain with the
different forms of international military forces now active in the same operational
environments? Is there a middle ground between being co-opted and being rendered
irrelevant?
Some observers have noted that during the 1990s there was a growing convergence
between humanitarian, political and military action. Is this trend desirable? Should it be
reversed? Can aid agencies avoid being instrumentalized in this new environment? One
observer has called this the “moment of truth” for the humanitarian enterprise.
Whether and how the neutrality and independence of humanitarian action can be
preserved is a subject which preoccupies the entire aid community today. Clearly, UN
agencies will have a different approach to this question than nongovernmental agencies
Since the early days of organized humanitarian action there has been tension between the
stated objective of neutrality and the manipulation or politicization of humanitarianism.
This tension is not new to the UNHCR, which after all was a child of the Cold War. But
it has taken on a new dimension, especially as the security of humanitarian workers has
increasingly been threatened.
More and more frequently, humanitarian actors are asking themselves: Under what
circumstances can (or should) we refuse to be present? The question of withdrawal is
more difficult for UN agencies than for our non-governmental partners. For example,
when Médecins sans Frontières pulled out of eastern Zaire in the mid 1990s, the then-UN
High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata said she could not do the same because
she had a mandate from the international community. Staying or leaving becomes an
impossible dilemma for UN agencies when the context is one of UN-mandated military
action justified by humanitarian reasons. In such situations there is a risk of division
between operational humanitarian organizations and human rights advocacy groups
which may be exploited by states and other parties involved in the conflict.
Ultimately, the answers lie not in more armored vehicles, barricades and armed guards,
but in improving the overall political environment. The United Nations – and particularly
operational agencies like UNHCR – cannot operate from a fortress. Our strength lies in
our ability to communicate with the people who need us, to work through local
authorities, and to build up local capacities.. Internal guidance issued in May within the
UN said that a “clear distinction must be maintained at all times between the functions
and roles of UN humanitarian personnel and those of the …. Occupying Power”. But the
attack on the UN building in Baghdad in August makes it clear that the effort to maintain
this distinction did not succeed.
31
On this point Larry Minear has written: “The Iraq crisis has thrown an overdue spotlight
on the soft underbelly of the humanitarian enterprise. For NGOs, it is time to re-examine
what it means to be genuinely nongovernmental. For the UN’s humanitarian apparatus, it
is time to insulate life-saving and life-protecting operations from global political
crosscurrents. Only then will the international humanitarian enterprise be able to perform
effectively its altogether critical tasks.”10
To conclude: the return and reintegration of former refugees has for a long time been one
of the most important items on the international humanitarian agenda. It has more
recently appeared on the agenda of political and military decision-makers. With the rising
frequency of intervention, the question of how repatriation contributes to the peacebuilding process in war-torn societies is now inextricably linked to how political, military
and humanitarian actors work together. On this it seems to me that we are only at the
beginning of our learning curve.
Discussion
One of the motivations behind UN policy is the basic human right of return. To what
extent is this an aspiration, and to what extent is this a human right? In particular, the
Israel/Palestine conflict involves the right of return and how does this reflect the UN’s
mandate and belief in this right?
UNHCR excludes Palestine because it is under another division of the UN. In other
contexts, you can only really talk about exercising the basic right to return if there is a
free choice.
Internally Displaced Persons: they are on the rise and no organization is tasked to look
after them. Since the cold war there has been a decline in the number of refugees and an
increased number of IDPs. I think it’s because of the increased desire by the states to put
up borders. State sovereignty is a large barrier to dealing with this issue. There have
been attempts to create norms surrounding this issue, but it is still soft law. There was a
campaign launched a number of years ago to create an agency for IDPs, but nothing has
come to fruition. There is also the interesting question of when are people no longer
considered IDPs.
10
Larry Minear, “A Moment of Truth for the Humanitarian Enterprise,” Foreign Policy in Focus, July 9,
2003.
32
PLENARY SESSION 2: From the Short Term to the Long Term
Chair: Michael Koros – Canadian International Development Agency
Lead Questioner: Mira Sucharov – Department of Political Science, Carleton University
William J. Garvelink – US Agency for International Development (USAID),
Washington, D.C.
“Post Interventions: Relief and Development Obligations and Operational
Realities”
USAID has moved beyond humanitarian assistance since the cause of crises is largely a
failure of governance. Therefore, this presentation will focus on interventions and
humanitarian emergencies.
Intervention is defined as: when a government (s) involve itself in the affairs of another
state to solve a humanitarian crisis. It’s a process. The motivations for US interventions
are largely to assist a population in need and to further US foreign policy objectives, part
of which is helping people in need.
There are four categories of interventions:




Humanitarian intervention;
Diplomatic intervention;
Humanitarian intervention with military support;
Military interventions with the aid of humanitarian assistance
There are also four categories of obligations that must be carried out simultaneously
when it comes to disaster relief:




to provide the emergency humanitarian assistance that is required;
to address the institutional failures of government;
to disarm and re-integrate combatants (DDR);
security.
The use of each category will depend on the nature of the emergency. A limiting factor is
the willingness of the government to cooperate. For example, in Zimbabwe the
government is not interested in making any big changes, and few are forced upon it.
Humanitarian assistance also needs to include human rights and the targeting of
vulnerable groups. The role of the military in all of these elements is to provide security.
33
None of these other things can happen without security. The military should have a
limited role in any humanitarian intervention which should be limited to security for a
short time. It also should be confined to certain areas and to the demobilization process.
Military is very good at a number of very specific things.
You have to provide assistance according to internationally accepted standards. For
example, no leaving the people worse off then when you started is key. Creation of an
artificial humanitarian economy, therefore, becomes a problem—especially when you
want to leave.
Obligations and the operational realities of these obligations:







Planners have objective ways to decide which emergencies they will respond to and
where the funds will go. Then the government intervenes with directions making it
very subjective. This can be a frustrating reality.
A lot of institutions are out of sync and have different and competing goals and
priorities.
Political will just doesn’t exist. It is easy to commit, but staying power is very
difficult. Often too, the US feels like they are left to do it on their own.
Because of new terrorism legislation, countries sponsoring terrorists will be
prohibited from getting development assistance from the US. There are a number of
other laws making giving humanitarian assistance to these countries very difficult.
Timing: development assistance takes a year to be approved—the World Bank is even
slower—but responding to emergency assistance needs to be fast which makes it hard
to plan for crises and emergencies.
The US military: they don’t go on peacekeeping missions and have a different
mindset about military operations. They also do not understand humanitarian aid
agencies and NGOs.
Early intervention: if you can intervene early, you are better off. Choose the
conflicts you want to get involved in and get involved early.
For all that, complex emergencies are not a new thing. Military, NGOs and government
agencies are working together a lot better. It’s important to understand what you are
doing when you intervene.
Discussion
A large part of the discussions centered on the role of civil society. Part of a long-term
exit strategy has to do with creating civil societies.
In terms of linking military with other kinds of aid work, this is a complex issue that has
mixed results. With the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan, they
represent a slippery slope down the path to the blurring of military operations and
humanitarian assistance. Yet, they are not seen as an effective tool for carrying out either
mandate. They cannot provide security and the reconstruction assistance that’s provided
is limited.
34
SESSION 5: Third Parties and Intervention
Chair: Colleen Duggan – International Development Research Center, Ottawa, Ontario
Lead Questioner: David Long - Norman Paterson School of International Affairs,
Carleton University
Peter Stockdale – Conflict Prevention Working Group, Canadian
Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee (CPCC)
"Clash of Cultures: Institutional Alienation after Intervention, or
Discovering Strange Bedfellows when the Bed's Upturned"
This paper is about how values and beliefs affect outcomes, rather than a consideration of
what ethical action should be. Like many of you here, I was schooled in comparative and
international politics. And whether the professor was left or right, the message was a
Western materialist one which said, “interest inexorably drives politics”. I will not
contend that interest has no effect on politics. But, I do think that values and beliefs
matter and they cause political outcomes, even if traditionally you have rarely heard these
words either uttered or muttered in classes of comparative and international politics. Take
our policy regarding whether we were to join our historical American and British allies in
the war in Iraq. Our values and beliefs ruled that outcome. Can anyone seriously argue
that our present economic and political interests and trajectory drove us to join with the
Russians, Chinese, Germans and French?
In my opinion, values and beliefs have a powerful effect on political outcomes, in part
because the perception of interest, especially common interest, is so powerfully affected
by them.
Let us take the case of post-intervention East Timor. Here the United Nations has been
playing a key role in the post-conflict development of the country. We can be grateful
that relative peace has been established. However, of course, that intervention is not value
free. Its’ officials speak largely with the small Portuguese-speaking elite. There is little
conversation with non-Portuguese-speaking “ordinary people.” This affects the kind of
future that East Timor is creating. A recent Quaker analysis of the situation concluded
that the dominance and patronage of the UN reinforces long-standing patterns, perhaps
located in the Portuguese colonial period.11 Thus The values, beliefs and world-view of
UN staff are having a profound effect.
Since the Battle of Solferino in 1859, after which the Red Cross was created NonGovernmental Organizations have been playing a role in working with the military to
limit the scale and nature of the catastrophe of conflict. This role has become evermore
Committee for Conflict Transformation Support, CCTS Newsletter 13, “The interplay of domestic,
regional and international forces in post-conflict peacebuilding, Report of a seminar held on 10th May at
Friends House, 173-177 Euston Road, London N1 1RG,” http://www.c-r.org/ccts/ccts13/seminar.htm
11
35
evident and important. However, it is an uneasy alliance. Let us examine the present
reasons for that unease. This unease is rooted in the differing beliefs and mandates of the
military and NGOs. This causes both the military and NGOs viewing each other with
suspicion – their belief systems are different.
There is a related intercultural disconnect between governmental and military
organizations, on the one hand, and their civil society counterparts, one the other,
including international NGOs. It is also true of the civil society organizations in post
intervention countries. Often, they are rooted in popular movements, many of whose
organizational structures are incipient. We have seen this among the Shia in Iraq. Their
organizational structures were explicitly torn apart by the Saddam regime. This is not
unique to Iraq however. Post-intervention states are characterized by the presence of
social and political movements, suddenly legitimated in the post-conflict society, with
what appear to be curious structures and behaviours from the standpoint of traditional
bureaucratic organisation. Consequently, while they may represent the best
organizational structures in those countries, and in the case of Iraq founded on different
roots than the Saddam government and therefore worth courting, they are fundamentally
also a popular movement, and must follow their adherents’ beliefs. Therefore, in the case
of Iraq, such a movement cannot respond simply to American military command; no
decision is final in a social movement, even if Shia alienation with aspects of Western
civilization and Iraqi nationalism didn’t make open co-operation either unpalatable or
fatal.
Clare Harkin at DfID wrote to his Australian colleague in October 2001 about militarycivilian tensions in the following way, “The humanitarian community is quite naturally
sensitive to any perceived compromise to their principles and the pros and cons of using
mil resources have to be weighed carefully. Although it is changing here, some in the
military are still not aware of, or understand, those sensitivities and consequently view
the NGO/UN world with a measure of disdain.”12 These kinds of patterns are reproduced
in hosts of third parties across the world.
Even within similar organizations based in the same country, created at the same time,
with similar roots, alienation between organizational cultures can have serious outcomes.
Getting relations right can not be left to chance in battlefields littered with bloody limbs
and broken hearts. This requires focus, and there has not been enough.
“What is to be done?” I shall be brief.
Organisations intending to deploy abroad, and in particular their logistical components,
need to understand and discuss the essential characteristics of the organisations and
institutions they work with, certainly on key matters like ethical hot buttons, how
decisions are made, and how they conceive their respective roles. Needless to say, the
staff in those local organizations who have to deal with them, whether CSOs,
administrators or military need to gain the same kind of understanding. Identifying, in the
classic negotiation format, areas of common interest is a good starting point, but is not
12
Clare Harkin, DFID to S Darvil, AUSAID, Memo, EMA9800 334/000/001, 22 October 2001, 4.
36
enough. Otherwise, when parties react differently to the same change, misunderstandings
about why one party acted in one way, and another party in another way will certainly
result, leading to poor coordination in circumstances that can’t afford the luxury. And
such understandings are particularly important to the denizens of middle-powers, who
must know how operate effectively to have any impact at all, but it is also important for
those Americans who must manage the imperium.
Discussion
The discussion focused on values in that values mean different things to different people
on a wide range of issues. Mixing this broad spectrum together creates a complex
problem.
Coordinating between the civil and military is an important problem, but is integration
always the answer? Perhaps we should think of it in term of division of labour instead.
Isn’t it the moral obligation of elected government to act in the interest of its country? So
is there a difference between morals and interest in this case because NGOs are not pure:
they also have interests they are pursuing and are not working out of moral values alone.
Yet it is important to understand NGOs as being less institutionalized and closer to belief.
They have organizational interests, but because they are less institutionalized they act
differently than formalized more bureaucratic structures.
I would suggest that we have not gotten interests right regarding intervention. There are
a number of interests, and we have to get these interests right. I think we can do this by
working on the political economy of intervention.
Christiane Berthiaume
"Human Rights: Start With A Good Breakfast In The Morning"
My talk is focused on hunger. As the African’s say, “a hungry man is an angry man.” It
kills many people every day as well as the creativity and productivity of people. The lack
of economic productivity and development is a root cause of crisis.
Eight hundred million people go to bed hungry every night. We produce enough food to
feed everyone. People are hungry because they are poor and they are poor because they
are hungry. Therefore, there is a dual mandate: help hungry people in emergency
situations and also those involved in development programs.
Before we can go into a famine area, we have to analyze the situation. For example,
North Korea asked for help and would not let our group in to help administer; they
simply wanted us to give them food. In 2002, the budget of the WFP was 1.8 billion
dollars. We fed people in 82 LIFD (low income food deficit countries). Sixty percent of
the budget comes from the US followed by the EU; Canada is fifth. The money is
37
largely earmarked to certain countries as some people have no other means to survive but
our food.
Some crises are over-funded, while others are under-funded. We receive donations in
actual food but also in cash and we deliver many of the basics that are rich in vitamins.
The WFP has 9,000 staff, with over 1,000 international. We also work quite closely with
NGOs.
Clearly, one of the most important factors is the logistical plans of actually delivering the
food. Food is brought in by whatever means possible. Moreover, because many of our
recipient countries are in conflict, WFP personnel are often a target in foreign countries.
One of our strongest policies is that we give no food if we have no access. We feed a
large number of people in North Korea. They often employ a number of schemes to
make sure the food is well distributed. In Zimbabwe, they were told to stop delivering
foods if you see any irregularity.
It is also important to target women. Refugees move in groups and communities.
Women are often not involved in trade or politics, and because of this inequality, they
can help make sure that food gets to the people that need it. It also starts many children
off with a large handicap. Women work very hard but get served last. Commitment to
women is very important and very serious and thus, is one of the WFP’s key priorities.
WFP is involved in emergencies and development. In Iraq, they are feeding the entire
population—the first time they have ever done this. There used to be the oil for food
program; the money from the oil was used to buy food and bring it into Iraq for
distribution. This stopped when the war began, but now they want to restart the program.
They hope this is only a temporary measure.
Emergencies are also a major concern of the WFP. There are more weather emergencies
than man-made ones: Hurricanes, droughts and floods. Many countries are not faced to
deal with these catastrophes. The development aspect of the program is in decline; we
have gone from 75% of our budget going toward development in the 1960s to 13% this
year. Donors have been asked to respond to more emergencies than before. We had all
the money we asked for in two weeks, but now it is much more difficult to get money for
Afghanistan.
We also have a food for work program: paying people with food for work (e.g. building
trees or building roads for food). There are also donor countries who ask a lot of
questions about development. The more I work in countries, the more I think we need to
educate people. Millions of children do not go to school or when they do go to school, it
is on an empty stomach. Feeding kids at school does work; it gets kids to school and also
pushes back the age of marriage and lessens the number of kids they have. In Pakistan,
they begin to give rewards to children for coming to school that support their parents and
families.
38
Food feeds the body and the mind. AIDS is also very dangerous. It attacks active people.
How will students learn if teachers are dying? South Africa is losing two generations
because kids have to go home to take care of their siblings because their parents are sick
or dying. What is the link between food and AIDS? The first medicine is food. It will
not solve the problem, but it will help by keeping people alive and giving them strength.
It is a bleak picture, but there is hope. We have earlier warning systems, and there has
been no mass starvation since 1994. We have had a number of significant achievements,
but they are not enough.
39
SESSION 6: The Economics of Intervention: Theory and Evidence
Chair: John M. Curtis – DFAIT
Lead Questioner: Maureen Molot – NPSIA, Carleton University
Jay Drydyk – Depart of Philosophy, Carleton University
"Ethical Norms for Reconstruction"
The central question of this presentation is: “Of the ethical norms that have emerged in
the last 50 years of peace-time development, which if any apply to the sort of postconflict reconstruction that has become so prevalent in the past ten years?”
It is ironic that what has now become the central development institution—the World
Bank—began as a facility for post-conflict reconstruction. After a decade, it turned its
attention from Europe to the third world and its emphasis shifted from research to
development and endured forty years of ethical scrutiny. The irony is that, now that
many of these norms have been adopted as development bank policy norms for peacetime
development, we are once again thrown back to dealing with post-conflict reconstruction.
The question is: should the policy norms that emerged from the debates over peacetime
development apply as well to postwar reconstruction?
One is a norm of equity or justice, and the other is a norm of democratic freedom. They
are not entirely uncontroversial, but they enjoy considerable support. They arise from
experience of two ways in which development, and development projects, have at times
been ethically problematic. Specifically, there have been two broad ethical concerns:
projects meant to alleviate the poverty of some caused the impoverishment of others; and
development that is too often done to people, rather than by them, for themselves.
From this, two principles will be explored:
Principle One: Development ought not to impoverish people. This notes the beginning of
the recognition that “development” and “growth” are not synonymous. The need for
Principle One also arose from resistance to the social impacts of development projects.
After years of debate and struggle, development banks have responded with attempts at
self-regulation – recognizing that this general principle needs to be followed.
Principle Two: Development ought to be carried out by means of people’s active, free
and meaningful participation in it, to the greatest extent feasible, consistent with equity.
The point here is that development should not be conceived as something that is done to
people. Rather it ought to be a process in which people actively participate. Further, the
point about equity says it is not permissible to use mechanisms of participation to hijack a
development process in order to seize or preserve privilege or advantage. This
40
purposefully vague principle had already been given formal recognition in a number of
ways. In the past 20 years it was carried into the policy books of development banks,
including the World Bank, and a much stronger version of the principle has been
articulated by the World Commission on Dams.
Two different standards will be used to express the same principle. First, there is the
Gold Standard which is defined as: Demonstrable public acceptance of all key decisions
achieved through agreements negotiated in an open and transparent process conducted in
good faith and with the informed participation of all stakeholders. Second is the Base
Metal Standard: A development project that puts stakeholders at great risk of
impoverishment ought to consult with those stakeholders in planning and carrying out
means of mitigation.
The main question, then, is whether these two principles are binding on us in cases of
post-war reconstruction, as well as peace-time development.
Applied to reconstruction, Principle One could be restated as Principle 1R:
Reconstruction projects ought to be designed so as not to cause further impoverishment.
Therefore, if potential impoverishment can be foreseen, mitigation measures should be
planned.
One objection to applying this principle in post-war reconstruction is that in a post-war
setting you simply cannot delay in getting the infrastructure working again. Waiting for
mitigation plans will be inequitable because it can keep many more people in a state of
impoverishment resulting from the conflict.
The second principle is more controversial and can be restated as Principle 2R:
Reconstruction ought to be carried out by means of people’s active, free and meaningful
participation in it, to the greatest extent feasible, consistent with equity.
Are there reasons why the principle of participation should not apply to post-conflict
reconstruction? The ethical concern here is that protracted negotiations can delay
effective restoration of essential services. One counter-argument is that democratic and
individual human rights values can be seen as barriers to mobilizing the whole society for
development. However, Amartya Sen notes that democratic practices provide protection
against maldevelopment nightmares by bringing development needs and misdeeds to
light more quickly
Ultimately, the end to be served by participation schemes is that more people achieve
more control over more aspects of their lives that matter most, especially, in the context
of reducing post-war impoverishment risks.
A few qualifications for the Gold Standard are as follows: (a) Restoration of essential
services and infrastructure needs to proceed no matter how much or little participation is
achievable in the local social and political circumstances;(b) Achieving participation is a
“duty of virtue”, which means (i) doing nothing to achieve participation is wrong, and (ii)
41
to achieve less good participation is ethically inferior to achieving more and better
participation; (c) Participation is better, in the reconstruction context, insofar as it give
more people more control over reducing post-war impoverishment risks.
This raises a further question: What sort of organization is best suited to managing
reconstruction in ways that meet these norms? These are matters in which you have
much greater experience and expertise than I, so I leave this for you, and look forward to
your comments.
A.R.M. Ritter – Department of Economics, Carleton University
"US Intervention in Latin America: The Cuban and Chilean Cases ReConsidered"
Although there have been a number of US interventions in Latin America, this
presentation will explore a two of them: Cuba and Chile.
Cuban case: The US was the occupying power of Cuba from its beginnings. Castro
coming to power was originally supported by the US, but was quickly broken with the
radicalization of the Castro regime. This was followed by direct action in the form of the
Bay of Pigs invasion which was unsupported and had little success. There were also
various assassination attempts on Castro. The embargo on Cuba continues as the current
official stance of the US is to harden its policy against Cuba. There have been mixtures
of hard and soft policy towards used towards Cuba with mixed effects.
Consequences of US policy toward Cuba: the policy has strengthened Castro, allowing
him to portray himself as a picture of Cuban nationalism; it has allowed Castro to silence
political opposition; it has intensified the radicalization of the regime; and the embargo
has hurt the Cuban economy in various ways, but it also pushed Cuba towards the Soviets.
Chilean case: The US promoted a coup in the early 1970s. Its policy was to apply
economic pressure on Chile. The US also supported extremist parties, funded strikes, and
blocked funds going to Chile. They wanted to prevent the emergence of another Cuba as
well as to protect their commercial interests in the region. Was the coup caused by US
intervention? Some say yes, others no. Personally, I think it is very likely that coup
would have occurred in any case.
What would have happened if a coup hadn’t taken place? It’s hard to say, but a number
of outcomes are possible, although, it should be said Chile has been regarded as a good
performer in South America since approximately 1990.
Although, a number of interventions like Chile and Grenada have turned out well, they
did not turn out so well for a number of other Latin American countries. Columbia, for
example, is in the midst of a 30 year civil war. But it should be kept in mind that the US
is the only state acting to ensure that terrorist groups in Columbia do not come to power.
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Although I condemn US intervention, there have been a number of situations where it did
not turn out so poorly for the countries in which they intervened.
Discussion
In Latin America there has been a lot of pressure to liberalize economies to produce some
of the stability that was lacking in the hemisphere for a very long time. It would be good
to see some discussion about liberalization and the extent to which it has increased both
impoverishment and equity.
Transition economies often have governments moving away from high control by
governments to more liberalized economies. But, how do you promote change when
people don’t trust their neighbors? How do you get people to participate? Should trust
have to come first? Should change come from whom? Who should take the lead in
making these changes? Right now international institutions are taking the lead and we do
not see big changes in developing countries.
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SESSION 7: Lessons of Intervention
Chair: B. Herbert-Copley – IDRC
Lead Questioner: Jean Daudelin – Norman Paterson School of International Affairs
Stephen Stedman – Centre for International Security and Cooperation,
Stanford University
"Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements"
Why do some peace agreements succeed and others fail? To explore this, I will discuss a
larger study exploring a sample of sixteen conflicts and their interventions. I have chosen
pretty liberal definitions of success, partial success and failure, and have rated conflicts in
a number of different ways.
It is hard to establish best practices. The definition of success becomes very ambitious
when there is no state.
Inequity of troops in conflict: As can be seen in a comparison of Kosovo and the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), resources matter. Kosovo receives much
more support in terms of overall funding and personnel support, even though its
population and land mass is much smaller than that of the DRC. Clearly, where the
conflict takes place will have an effect on the amount of effort invested in the conflict.
What priorities would you want, considering limited resources and attention? I would
recommend demobilization and local capacity building.
There are a number of overall trends that can be indicative of the kinds of intervention
that takes place. For example, the worst region for response time of the UN is Asia.
African wars have to go on longer than European wars, which get attention very quickly.
But if you are going to do intervene, it is important to do it right. This requires the right
amount of commitment and resources.
Dane Rowlands – NPSIA
"Does Official Development Finance Promote peace?"
I want to try and draw together some of the big strands of thought that I think underlies
the topic of this conference, as these parallel the evolution of my own research interests.
The three big strands deal with development, conflict, and intervention. In doing so I will
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be making some rather broad generalizations, and I do so deliberately in the hope of
provoking some debate. It seems fitting to end a conference of this sort by offering a
larger menu of debatable items from which you will hopefully find something to provoke
your own interventions.
I want to start by making an observation about how thinking about development has
evolved and showing how these also apply to conflict and intervention. The first point is
that development is a process, not an event. This might seem obvious to us today, but if
you think back thirty or forty years, I’m not sure it would not have been more typical to
think of development as an event.
Even if you think of explicitly dynamic accounts of development, such as Rostow’s five
stages of growth, there seems to be an implicit idea that at some point a society passes
into the fifth stage of self-sustaining growth, when they become a fully “developed”
entity. This notion lives on to an extent in certain institutional divisions: which countries
are eligible for loans from the concessional IDA pool at the World Bank, or a PRGF from
the IMF, which are not. In effect we still seem to be struggling with our apparent need to
categorize social, economic and political conditions and to treat individual cases in their
compartments, rather than seeing them as part of a continuum. a similar sort of
transformation has occurred in how we look at conflict.
Conflicts are not isolated events, they are not ends in and of themselves, and they range
along a spectrum that might include riots at one extreme and nuclear destruction at the
other. While I think we are all comfortable thinking about conflict in this more flexible
manner, I still detect some inability to fully incorporate these more continuous features of
conflict into our models and analyses. Here I rely on Keen’s discussion of the political
economy of war, which he contrasts to the “bureaucratic” and the “irrational” models of
conflict and war.
The same observation probably also applies to intervention. It, too, is a process, a means,
and has a variety of manifestations that are arrayed along a spectrum from apathetic
aloofness, through a variety of political and economic sanctions, to Chapter 7 or
unilateral military interventions. Again, we are probably all comfortable with the
fuzziness of the concepts and activities that characterize intervention. But I sense again
that the broader research community and public are unaware, or at least uninterested, in
the nuances of intervention.
This long overdue marriage clearly has a lot of prejudices to overcome. Conflict really is
still generally thought of by mainstream development economists as an outlier. How
many of us, myself included, routinely throw out observations of developing countries
involved in civil war when we do our studies? Sure, it might be because there is no data
of interest: how many countries engaged in civil war faithfully and punctually deliver the
requisite statistics to the World Bank or the United Nations?
But I think there are even deeper reasons why countries in conflict tend to be discounted
in many studies. Surely war or extreme instances of conflict are aberrations along the
45
path of development, despite the statistical evidence that clearly shows that in some
regions of the world conflict is the norm, not the exception? Nor is the removal of war
torn countries from a study hard to justify intellectually. After all, does it make sense to
try and calculate the returns to investment in education when the students have all been
press-ganged into a militia, and schools have become makeshift morgues?
But conflict and development are closely intertwined processes, and we cannot think of
conflict as an interruption along a trajectory of development, like some semi-colon in the
run-on sentence of a nations history. Rather the two are jointly influenced, I won’t say
co-determined, by the social, political and economic conditions that circumscribe the
actions of individuals and groups. Indeed conflict is inherent and present in all societies,
and it is the level of development that largely determines its capacity to intermediate
conflict without resorting to violence.
But the interactions are complex. Given a set of initial conditions within a country there
are a multiplicity of paths by which a society might evolve, each involving different rates
of economic development and different levels of conflict.
Intervention, then, might be seen as the instrument by which outsiders attempt to
influence which path a country will evolve along. I want to remind you of the obvious,
which is that post-conflict activity is only part of the spectrum of interventions, processes,
that include pre-conflict, intra-conflict, and what we might call extra-conflict acts by third
parties. With the term “extra-conflict” I am trying to come up with a way of
distinguishing interventions that are not taking place within an atmosphere of imminent
conflict, but rather would include things such as “normal” foreign aid. Again, though, we
should be careful to think that there is such a thing as “extra-conflict”, since in one sense
conflict is always present, and violence is perhaps always a possibility, if a more remote
one in some happy cases.
So what principles might we wish to apply to the intervention that occurs after a military
intervention? I want to suggest that these principles should be the same as any other
intervention. Post-military intervention assistance, or post-war assistance, should have as
its primary target and its primary constraint the presence of lingering or latent violence.
But this evaluation should also apply to pre-conflict and extra-conflict intervention.
First, all assistance should be conditioned on a conflict-risk assessment that involves both
conflict fore-casting and early warning. In some cases it might be easy, but in others it
will be more difficult. I am reluctant to burden assistance programs with yet one more
assessment to carry out, one more delay in disbursement, to join the list of environmental,
gender, and other assessments required before a project can take place. But I can only
think of how many millions, or billions, of dollars of assistance have been wasted by the
destruction of war. What remains of the development assistance poured into Sierra
Leone prior to its civil war?
Second, all assistance needs to be far more selective. almost all major donors (bilateral
and multilateral) spread their assistance dollars around like some optimistic Johnny
46
Appleseed, hoping that a few plants take root (hopefully before the auditor general starts
looking too carefully into expenses). This will be hard, as assistance agencies have
proven understandably reluctant to abandon anyone. But I am not saying abandon some
countries. The attempt to condition development finance on governance reform, for
example, though not very successful to date, shows promise. Governance is, of course, a
critical element in the mediation of conflict. Governments that have poor governance
structures are also unlikely to have good prospects for avoiding violence why spend
money on infrastructure in a country that might very well fall into war later on? With aid
dollars being scarce, surely they can be better spent. Instead countries with poor
governance and a reluctance to reform might be limited to immediate humanitarian
assistance, or for projects that have proven durable in the face of war, if any such thing
exists.
Here I want to point out a downside to such a principle. Development and conflict are
linked in a complex system. Who is to say that a bit of infrastructure, some technical
assistance, or some other project or program might not tip the balance sufficiently to
allow a weak system to cope with conflict violence successfully?
A third principle might be a sort of development finance Hippocratic oath of “do no
harm”. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence with varying degrees of persuasiveness that
suggests that some aid programs contribute to the emergence of violence. The
contribution might be through policy conditionality that does not adequately account for
social tensions in a country, or through the provision of resources to fight over. Greater
political economy analysis to identify the winners and losers of different assistance
programs is surely a pre-requisite for assuring more efficiency.
A fourth principle might be to identify more clearly the rationale or moral that drive our
desire to intervene, as these will undoubtedly affect our activity. There is a great danger,
that some intervention policies are time-inconsistent. That is to say they come in two
parts that ex ante are jointly desirable, but for which the incentives to carry out both parts
change as the first part is executed. Intervention based on self interest may suffer from
this most clearly. Intervention that is motivated by an affective reaction to others might
be safer. Let me finally suggest that the just as our understanding of development and
conflict have become more sophisticated and connected, we might also profit from
thinking about intervention and post-intervention activity in a wider context. When we
attempt to influence a conflict, we are by definition affecting the process of development,
and vice versa. An awareness of both in concert will be useful.
Discussion
Have we yet learned the lessons of post-war reconstruction as I am not sure if there is
such a link between resources and success but rather what kind of intervention is taking
place.
47
Should we not focus on controlling external factors rather than internal ones? How do we
know that the outcome is a product of the intervention or not? Thus, in terms of resources,
we need to look not just at the resources per se, but also their relation to coercive strategy.
Rwanda is the greatest tragedy of all the cases that have been explored as it would have
been very cheap to prevent.
The reality may be that resources may be finite, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t have
sustainable peace building intervention.
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“Intervention: Then What?”
October 3 - 5
102 Azrieli Thetre
Carleton University
Ottawa, Ontario
Conference to be held in 102 Azrieli Theatre, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario
Map: http://www.carleton.ca/cu/campus/
Friday, October 3, 2003
Registration
6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
7:00 pm - 7:15 pm
Welcoming Remarks
Mike W. Smith, Dean, the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, Carleton University
PLENARY SESSION 1: 7:15 pm – 9:45 pm – The Future of Intervention
Chair and Lead Questioner: Don Hubert – Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT),
Ottawa, Canada
7:00 pm - 7:45 pm plenary
Speaker: Simon Chesterman – International Peace Academy, New York, New York
Topic: "You, the People: Iraq and the Future of State-Building".
7:45 pm - 8:30 pm plenary
Speaker: Fen Hampson – Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University
Topic: "Forgotten Conflicts and Intervention Choices"
Discussion 8:30 pm - 9:30 pm
Saturday, October 4, 2003
Registration
8:00 am - 9:00 am
Coffee and Muffins
8:30 am – 9:00 am
SESSION 1: 9:00 am - 10:30 am - Preventing Conflicts
Chair: Erin O’Gorman – Department of National Defence (DND), Ottawa, Canada
Lead Questioner: John Cockell – Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada
9:00 am - 9:30 am paper
Speaker: Robert Rotberg – Program on Intrastate Conflict, Harvard University
Topic: “Intervention and Peacebuilding as Prevention: Lessons from Africa and the Developing World.”
9:30 am - 10:00 am paper
Speaker: John Norris – International Crisis Group, Washington, D.C.
Topic: “Elements of a Successful Post-Conflict Intervention”
Discussion 10:00 am - 10:30 am
49
Break
10:30 am - 10:45 am
SESSION 2: 10:45 am - 12:15 pm - Defining Success
Chair: James W. Dean – Economics Department, Simon Fraser University
Lead Questioner – Peggy Mason – Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University
10:45 am - 11:15 am paper
Speaker: M. Ishaq Nadiri – Economics Department, New York University
Topic: "Afghanistan: A Case for Assessing International Intervention & Co-operation".
11:15 am - 11:45 am paper
Speaker: Joseph Siegle – Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C.
Topic: "Changing the Definition of Success in Military Interventions"
Discussion 11:45 pm - 12:15 pm
Lunch Bakers Grill
12:15 pm - 1:15 pm
SESSION 3: 1:15 pm - 3:15 pm – Ethical Dimensions in Intervention I
Chair: Peter Stockdale – Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee (CPCC), Conflict Prevention
Working Group, Ottawa, Canada
Lead Questioner: Rosemary Nagy - Law Department, Carleton University
1:15 pm – 1:55 pm paper
Speaker: Jacqueline Bhabha – University Committee on Human Rights, Harvard University
Topic: "War's Aftermath:Human Rights Obligations Beyond Borders"
1:55 pm – 2:35 pm paper
Speaker: Judith Lichtenberg – Institute for Philosophy and Public Affairs, University of Maryland
Topic: "Precedent and Example in the International Arena."
Discussion 2:25 pm 3:05 pm
Coffee Break
3:05 pm - 3:45 pm
SESSION 4: 3:45 pm - 5:45 pm – Ethical Dimensions in Intervention II
Chair: Francine Fournier ex-Under Secretary General of UNESCO in charge of the Social Sciences and
Humanities section, ex-President, Human Rights Commission of Quebec
Lead Questioner: Robert Fullinwider – Institute for Philosophy and Public Affairs, University of Maryland
3:45 pm - 4:25 pm paper
Speaker: David Copp – Philosophy Department, University of Florida
Topic: “Cultural Relativism and Post-intervention Decisions"
4:25 pm - 5:05 pm paper
Speaker: Judith Kumin – UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Geneva, Switzerland
Topic: “Refuge Repatriations: A View from UNHCR”
Discussion 5:05 pm - 5:45 pm
PLENARY SESSION 2: 5:45 pm - 7:15 pm - From the Short Term to the Long Term
Chair: Michael Koros – Canadian International Development Agency, Ottawa, Canada
Lead Questioner: Mira Sucharov – Department of Political Science, Carleton University
50
5:45 pm - 6:45 pm plenary
Speaker: William J. Garvelink – United States Agency for International Development, Washington, D.C.
Topic: “Post Interventions: Relief and Development Obligations and Operational Realities”
Discussion 6:45 pm - 7:15 pm
7:45 pm Banquet Palais Imperial 311-313 Dalhousie St., Ottawa, Ontario
51
Sunday, October 5, 2003
Coffee and Muffins
8:30 am – 9:00 am
SESSION 5: 9:00 am - 10:30 am - Third Parties and Intervention
Chair: Colleen Duggan – International Development Research Center, Ottawa, Ontario
Lead Questioner: David Long - Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University
9:00 am - 9:30 am paper
Speaker: Peter Stockdale - Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee (CPCC), Conflict Prevention
Working Group
Topic: "Clash of Cultures: Institutional Alienation after Intervention, or Discovering Strange Bedfellows
when the Bed's Upturned"
9:30 am - 10:00 am paper
Speaker: Christiane Berthiaume – World Food Program, Geneva, Switzerland
Topic: "Human Rights: Start With A Good Breakfast In The Morning"
Discussion 10:00 am - 10:30 am
Break
10:30 am - 10:45 am
SESSION 6: 10:45 am - 12:15 pm – The Economics of Intervention: Theory and Evidence
Chair: John M. Curtis – Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Ottawa, Canada
Lead Questioner: Maureen Molot – Norman Paterson School International Affairs, Carleton University
10:45 am - 11:15 am paper
Speaker: Jay Drydyk – Philosophy Department, Carleton University
Topic: "Ethical Norms for Reconstruction"
11:15 am - 11:45 am paper
Speaker: A.R.M. Ritter – Economics Department, Carleton University
Topic: "US Intervention in Latin America: The Cuban and Chilean Cases Re-Considered."
Discussion 11:45 pm - 12:15 pm
Lunch Baker’s Grille
12:15 pm - 1:30 pm
SESSION 7: 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm – Lessons of Intervention
Chair: B. Herbert-Copley – International Development Research Centre, Ottawa Canada
Lead Questioner: Jean Daudelin – Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University
1:30 pm - 2:00 pm paper
Speaker: Stephen Stedman - Center for International Security & Cooperation, Stanford University
Topic: "Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements."
2:00 pm - 2:30 pm paper
Speaker: Dane Rowlands - Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University
Topic: "Does Official Development Finance Promote peace?".
Discussion 2:30 pm - 3:00 pm