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United Nations

The Blue Helmets: Nobel Peace Prize Winners to Warfare Targets

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), originally created by the UN Security Council in March 1978, was established in response to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon the same year. The primary objectives of the peacekeeping force were to confirm Israeli withdrawal, restore international peace and security, and assist the Lebanese government in regaining effective control over the southern region of the country. This mandate, however, has been amended multiple times to adapt to new developments. For instance, during Israel’s second invasion in 1982 and subsequent withdrawal in 2000, UNIFIL’s mandate expanded to address emerging tensions in the region.

In the wake of the July-August 2006 conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, the Security Council further extended the force’s role. In addition to its original duties, the mission was enhanced to include monitoring the cessation of hostilities, assisting the Lebanese Armed Forces in their deployment, and facilitating humanitarian access to civilian populations affected by the conflict. Despite these adjustments, the mission continues to face significant challenges. Today, the peacekeepers, known for wearing their distinctive blue helmets, are no longer just neutral actors facilitating peace but have become targets of warfare themselves in the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. This raises a critical question: has the mission of UN peacekeepers in Lebanon failed?

The UN Peacekeeping Forces, often celebrated for their efforts to restore peace in war-torn regions, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988. Their role in various global missions was commended for preventing conflicts and creating conditions for peaceful negotiations; however, they also faced a plethora of obstacles. One of the most pressing issues they face today is that their mission to maintain peace has increasingly placed them in harm’s way, making them direct targets in the conflicts they are meant to mediate. The situation in southern Lebanon is emblematic of this shift. UNIFIL was designed to protect peace and security along the Lebanon-Israel border, but rising tensions between Hezbollah and Israel have made the region a danger zone for peacekeepers. Recently, on October 13, 2024, Israel called for the evacuation of UNIFIL troops after multiple incidents where peacekeepers were injured and their posts targeted in crossfire.

The UN Peacekeeping mission has been hailed as one of the most ambitious international efforts to promote peace. However, it is not without significant failures. Two glaring examples are the 1994 Rwandan Genocide and the Srebrenica massacre during the Yugoslav Wars. In both cases, UN peacekeepers were present but unable to prevent the atrocities from unfolding. In Rwanda, despite early warnings of impending mass violence, the UN mission was understaffed and under-equipped to respond effectively. This led to the deaths of approximately 800,000 people in just 100 days. Similarly, in Srebrenica, peacekeepers failed to protect Bosniak Muslims from genocide, resulting in the deaths of more than 8,000 men and boys. These failures not only demonstrate the limitations of UN peacekeeping operations but also cast doubt on whether the international community has learned from its mistakes. Despite these lessons, similar issues continue to plague contemporary missions, including the UNIFIL mission in Lebanon.

The recent calls for UNIFIL’s evacuation bring the broader issue of peacekeeping missions into sharp relief. As hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel flare up, the very presence of peacekeepers has been called into question. Three UNIFIL peacekeepers have already been injured, and several of their posts have been struck, either intentionally or unintentionally, by Israeli forces. This situation begs the question: If the very presence of peacekeepers no longer serves as a deterrent, should they simply retreat, as Israel has suggested, and what does this mean for a mission that has been in place for over four decades? The notion that peacekeepers can be forced to abandon their posts due to safety concerns undermines the essence of their mission. Peacekeepers are deployed to prevent conflict and ensure the protection of civilians. However, when they become targets themselves, the mission becomes untenable. Furthermore, does their withdrawal suggest that the international community has given up on supporting Lebanon in its long-standing conflicts, and by extension, on peace itself?

The safety of UN peacekeepers is protected under various international legal frameworks. According to the Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel, deliberate attacks on UN personnel are considered war crimes. In addition, peacekeepers are afforded special protections under the Geneva Conventions. However, legal protections have proven to be more theoretical than practical. When peacekeepers are attacked, the perpetrators are rarely held accountable. For instance, despite clear evidence of violence against peacekeepers in Lebanon, there have been no significant legal repercussions for the attackers. One wonders: Who has the authority to enforce laws protecting peacekeepers when host nations or warring factions refuse to cooperate? This dilemma is further complicated by the neutrality of peacekeepers. Their mission requires them to remain impartial, often putting them in precarious positions where they cannot defend themselves or retaliate without breaching their mandate.

As the situation in southern Lebanon worsens, the human cost of peacekeeping becomes increasingly evident. UN peacekeepers, once lauded as the guardians of international peace, are now being targeted in the very conflicts they are sent to prevent. While peacekeepers play an essential role in global conflict resolution, their vulnerability raises doubts about the effectiveness of the current peacekeeping model. When the Blue Helmets are no longer seen as untouchable protectors of peace, but rather as expendable targets in conflict zones, it becomes clear that reforms are needed. The UN Peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, like many others, faces significant challenges that put the lives of peacekeepers in jeopardy. Without substantial reforms and a renewed commitment to protecting those who serve in the name of peace, missions like UNIFIL may ultimately fail to fulfill their objectives.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

October 29, 2024 0 comment

Internet Interview Racism Society and Culture Technology

UN Special Rapporteur Tendayi Achiume on Racial Discrimination in Emerging Digital Technologies: Annabelle Werner and Elizabeth Onibokun

written by thegeneration

E. Tendayi Achiume is a Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights at University of California, Los Angeles. She serves as the United Nations special rapporteur on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.

As we enter into the one year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have learned just how much of our society can be conducted in virtual landscapes. We keep up with our friends through endless scrolling on international social media platforms, we coordinate “zoom” calls with our colleagues across different time zones, and our children log into their classrooms from behind a screen: our virtual society is essentially intrinsic to our physical one. Yet, one could argue that the relationship between society and digital technology has always been heavily intertwined since the latter’s development, and in fact, the societal problems we see in our physical world are also manifested in and perpetuated by our online one.

In our interview with UN Special Rapeturer Tendayi Achiume, we were able to discuss such relationships between societal inequality and technology in covered in her 2020 thematic report on “Racial discrimination and emerging digital technologies: a human rights analysis”. Ultimately, we learned how different forms of racial discriminination appear “in the design and use of ‘‘ digital tools. In our brief interview, we not only gained an appreciation of the urgency and timeliness of Professor Achiume’s findings, but also began to understand the gravity of our virtual situation: not even our most advanced, “objective”, digital inventions can overcome historical legacies of social injustice.

Definitions and Examples of Techno-chauvinism and Technological Determinism

When discussing how societal problems are manifested in technology, Professor Achiume argues that we must be cognizant of the ills of techno-chauvinism. Techno-chauvinism is the idea that technology is the solution to everything, when in reality, some forms of digital technology can create more (or simply different) problems than before. If we make presumptions that technology will blanketly fix the issues that we cannot, Achiume claims that we will fail to critically investigate the ways that technology “reproduces human biases and perpetuates structural inequalities”. After all, the structures, designs, and functions of social media platforms and AI algorithms are shaped by the beliefs of those who create them.

The UN special rapporteur found that emerging digital technologies can directly perpetuate racial discrimintion. In the report, she discusses “digital redlining”, or “the creation and maintenance of technology practices that further entrench discriminatory practices against already marginalized groups’”. In Section III B 32, Achiume describes how Facebook used to have a function that would allow one to “narrow audiences” by providing the ability to filter Facebook users by “ethnic affinities” under a demographics category of its ad-targeting tool. Facebook by itself controls about a quarter of the market share for digital advertisements in the U.S., so this tool had a significant impact and resulted in the prevention of Black people from viewing housing advertisements. If we were to accept principles of techno-chauvinism and assume that technological tools will be ubiquitously advantageous, we would fail to see how problems of racial bias were created by this new tool. Techno-chauvinism shields digitals tools from critique and blinds us from seeing how racial discrimiantion can be ingrained in the structures of our social, political, and economic interactions online, including how these virtual inequalities can be actualized into very real harm in our physical lives.

It is also important to discuss the spaces in which these global networks are created. Digital technologies and social media platforms are mainly produced in a few, concentrated environments in the Global North, which directly or indirectly affect the product. Sillicon Valley, for example, is experiencing what has been called a “diversity crisis” and has had “a history of problems of discrimination, exclusion, and sexual harassment”. These findings prompt the question: Who is creating AI technology? And who is it being created for?

In an investigation of the effects of this lack of diversity, Achiume includes a 2019 study that reviewed 99 developers from around the world. It found that, “‘many of these algorithms were 10 to 100 times more likely to inaccurately identify a photograph of a black or East Asian face, compared with a white one. In searching a database to find a given face, most of them picked incorrect images among black women at significantly higher rates than they did among other demographics’”.

We can see how even the seemingly “neutral” AI systems are shaped by the lack of representation in the environments that they are created. The inequalities at various intersections of our social identities, such as race and gender, are then present in the technologies we produce. Thus, we cannot simply code away racial bias because technology can never be a completely “neutral” instrument: it is ultimately influenced by what it’s creators perceive, or rather, what they do not perceive. In fact, this problematic assumption that technology is objectively neutral, is codified in the term “technological determinism”.

Technological determinism, defined and discussed by Achiume, is the assumption that technology is somehow isolated and not influenced by social, political, or economic structures. This perspective is false. Our digital landscapes determine “everyday outcomes in employment, education, health care and criminal justice”, and will continue to facilitate harm unless we are able to isolate how society’s injustice manifests itself in our digital tools; a process that is only possible through the rejection of technological determinism.

Limitations of “Colorblindness”

The term “colorblind” is sprinkled liberally throughout texts, articles, and journals and while it traditionally had a positive connotation, Professor Achiume cautions against its use. She highlights the insidious effects of “colorblindness,” particularly when dealing with a world increasingly defined by technology and its perceived objectiveness. Achiume recognizes the fact that the idea of a colorblind world seems appealing. Who wouldn’t want to live in a world where a person is not judged by something as inconsequential as skin color?

But, the sad fact is that, “we live in a society which has been constructed on a racial basis.” Approaching issues such as racial discrimination in technology and AI programs without acknowledging the inherit systemic obstacles in this world does no one any favors. Achiume brings up the current COVID-19 pandemic and how black and brown communities have been disproportionately affected, in part, due to factors such as exclusion from healthcare systems and the overrepresentation of people of color in the social services. By stating that “the colorblind approach is not enough” she is calling for approaches that examine the racial and ethnic impact of policymaking that appear to be neutral. She asserts that it should not be about a blindness to difference but rather an engagement with how differences makes certain communities more vulnerable to exploitation, discrimination, and exclusion. In fact, she insightfully states that we don’t yet live in a world where taking a colorblind approach can lead us to justice but that it often sustains systems of injustice.

Importance of Public Awareness

To further expand on this theme of objectivity, Achiume coined the brilliant term “the veneer of neutrality” and this applies especially to the current design and use of emerging digital technologies. There is the widely-held belief that technology is completely impartial but it is in everyone’s best interests to shed these notions. There are people behind the creation of these programs who, whether consciously or subconsciously, perpetuate harmful stereotypes or prejudices.

One of the most terrifying manifestations of this is predictive policing, a phenomena seen around the world and contributes directly to over-policing of black and brown communities. Achiume highlights the transnational nature of these programs and that is not an issue seen only in the United States. For example, in the United Kingdom there is a predictive policing database intended to create profiles of those most likely to commit crime. A staggering number of 78% of black youth is represented despite the fact that when looking at the actual rates of violence, black youth are implicated only 20% of the time. She insists that one of the most urgent courses of action is public awareness, especially in terms of surveillance and predictive policing that exists around the world.

Even in Los Angeles, where many of us call home, the extent to which police surveillance exists is incredibly high. Professor Achiume spotlights the coalition Stop LAPD Spying whose name perfectly reflects their mission statement. They work hard to release reports that reflect the high levels of racialized surveillance of the LA Police Department. The large gap of awareness in the public is a huge wall to climb and Achiume believes this is why the devastating murder of George Floyd ignited the world in the way it did. Public awareness is truly the first step towards seeing action and one of the goals of her report is to raise the all-important point that this issue needs to be on national agendas. In a perfectly worded conclusion she declares that “you don’t get change if you have societies that are unaware of the depth and the nature of a problem. These new forms of surveillance disproportionately affect black and brown communities, whom are more subject to over-policing and discrimination than their white counterparts which is reflected in the makeup of prison populations that unfairly represent minorities to an absurd degree. Relating back to Professor Achiume, the LAPD’s police surveillance tactics are said to be completely objective but as discussed with the aforementioned veneer of neutrality, technology can never be truly “neutral”. Hence the need for caution, awareness, and action.

Reflection

As the world continues to grow more globalized, criticizing the unintended consequences of emerging technology can lead to the implementation of systems that are actually effective and useful. We must recognize how the location of the center of development for digital technologies in the Global North has resulted in both direct and indirect perpetuations of racial bias on the design and use of the tools produced. Unabated trust in our new virtual world, with no caution to how it could reflect racial bias in our physical one, will simply perpetuate such harm.

Dismantling principles such as techno-chauvinism, technological determinism, and colorblindness will help us understand how these tools discriminate along racial and gendered lines, such as heightened surveillance of certain communities. The growth of technology can be a wonderful thing but it also has the potential to be incredibly dangerous. In an increasingly interconnected world, nothing is truly as isolated as it seems. An innovation in Silicon Valley can have reverberations throughout the world. It is best that with the knowledge provided we work hard to create digital technologies that don’t perpetuate the problems and prejudices we face in the real world.

March 11, 2021 0 comment

Geopolitics Military Security and Conflict Terrorism

The Proliferation of Undeclared Warfare

written by Alex Choy

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect any official policy or position of the US Government, the Department of Defense or the US Army.

The post-WWII international order has seen the relationships between states become more numerous, complex, and interdependent. In this new age, international institutions such as the United Nations (UN) and the Geneva Conventions have attempted to regulate how wars are initiated and fought. Naturally, these efforts have caused considerable friction with members of the international community, such as the United States, where many believe that the ‘right’ to go to war is an extension of state sovereignty. However, in recent decades, despite a hawkish foreign policy, the US has stopped issuing formal declarations of war. This change is not due to the domestic electoral costs of declaring war; rather, it is the result of the beneficial legal flexibility the US gains when it intentionally fails to formally classify hostilities as war while operating under the constraints of international law.

One outdated argument suggests that the lack of declarations of war is because domestic electoral costs are too high; politicians shy away from declaring war in fear of not being reelected. Proponents of this argument believe that the human cost of losing loved ones will translate into a negative voter opinion towards those who declared war. However, the fact of the matter is that whether America’s conflicts are declared or not, the majority of voters do not take into account foreign policy when placing their ballots. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara once mused about going “to war without … arousing the public ire.” In recent decades, his musings have become a reality. New technology and advances in medicine have minimized the domestic human toll of conflict. For instance, in ongoing conflicts, 10 % of US soldiers have died from their wounds, compared to 30% during the Second World War. Additionally, the overall number of soldiers exposed to direct combat has decreased, given the proliferation of unmanned drone strikes. The US’s ability to wage limited war has resulted in a constituency that is detached from American foreign policy. Therefore, an argument solely based on the electoral costs of declaring war is not sufficient.

Regarding the jus ad bellum conditions under which states may declare war, the UN Charter prohibits the use of force “against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” except in cases of individual or collective self-defense. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) enforces this through punitive resolutions that impose compliance costs ranging from economic sanctions to the use of force. However, given that the US is a permanent ‘P5’ member of the Security Council with veto power, UNSC resolutions regarding alleged US aggression are thereby nullified. Therefore, to hold the US accountable, less powerful nations can supersede the authority of a US veto by convening a special emergency session of the UN General Assembly.

Given the implications of blatantly violating the Charter, to fly under the proverbial radar of the UN, the US has altered the way it advertises military intervention to the international community. The precedent for doing so was established when President Truman sent US troops to Korea without a declaration of war and under the authority of an international UN treaty instead. Terming the conflict, a police action, Truman explained that under the Take Care Clause of the Constitution, international treaties “are laws of the land, and it becomes the President’s duty” to execute them faithfully.The distinction created between war and police action is poignant. While a declared war is “designed to crush and conquer another nation,” a police action is simply a limited military intervention to punish perceived aggressors and to restore the status quo.

To this day, the US has continued to use the convenient ‘police action’ model to justify military intervention abroad. For instance, when questioned about the lack of a war declaration in Vietnam, Secretary of Defense McNamara explained that doing so would imply a “dedication to the total destruction of the enemy,” when US forces were only concerned with restoring the status quo established by the 1954 Geneva Accords. In the same interview, he also acknowledges that doing so would “significantly reduce the flexibility” of US forces to bring North Vietnam to the bargaining table, given the illicit insertion of US special forces into neutral Cambodia to disrupt Viet Cong supply lines.

Post-Vietnam, with the introduction of the War Powers Resolution, which enables the presidential deployment of troops for up to 90 days before seeking a Congressional Authorization of Military Force (AUMF), these so-called police actions became even easier to conduct. Conflicts such as the 1983 invasion of Grenada, the 1990 invasion of Panama, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq have been authorized in this manner, claiming target nation noncompliance with existing international treaties. Concerning these operations, US officials have maintained that the absence of a formal declaration of war is not what makes military intervention unlawful. Rather, “the only relevant legal question is whether … [intervention] is justified.” Therefore, by painting its military incursions as ‘police actions’ and refraining from official declarations of war, the US generates the plausible deniability necessary to justify that it is not waging war, but merely ‘policing’ to enforce international treaties.

Regarding jus in bello conduct during hostilities, the 1949 Geneva Convention regulates the actions, strategies, and weaponry of military personnel during armed conflict. It does this by establishing standards of international human rights law (IHL). For example, captured military personnel are classified as prisoners of war (POWs) and cannot be tortured. In this context, the wording is critical since the existence of a state of war between two nations determines whether or not the Geneva Conventions apply, and therefore, whether or not war crimes have occurred. Consequently, in non-interstate conflicts, IHL does not apply to insurgents, since they are classified as unlawful combatants instead of military personnel. The useful implications of this distinction are illustrated by the US’s controversial Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

At Guantanamo, captured insurgents were subjected to ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ during the post-9/11 scramble to bring its perpetrators to justice. Due to their classification as unlawful combatants, the insurgents occupied a legal gray area. In the context of IHL, declaring war is akin to crossing a line of no return. On the one hand, if a state issues a formal declaration of war, then it is forced to abide by IHL. On the other hand, when a state does not, it retains the legal flexibility necessary to justify noncompliance. Accordingly, if the US had issued a formal declaration of war against terrorists, it would have implicitly acknowledged their political legitimacy and, thereby, their POW status. However, because it did not, military and government interrogators were able to implement techniques that would have otherwise been illegal in the context of IHL.

With the recent killing of Quasem Solemani and subsequent Iranian missile strikes, the AUMF has again come under attack, with Representative Joe Kennedy III calling for its repeal. Kennedy reasons that by repealing the AUMF, legislators can redeem themselves by rescuing the power to wage war from Presidential abuse. However, while Representative Kennedy’s qualms are valid, it is essential to recognize that in the modern age, a world where insecurity is generated by threats from non-state actors, Congress is institutionally incapable of the celeritous decision making that such threats require. On the other hand, the President, by nature of his office, possesses the resources necessary to gather and analyze intelligence via his National Security Council and Joint Chiefs of Staff, and therefore can act and respond to national security threats expeditiously.

Crises have illustrated that small, simple working groups focused solely on foreign affairs; i.e., the President and his Cabinet are better suited to address threats to national security than large, complex bureaucracies; i.e., Congress, which is primarily focused on domestic concerns. In addition, the introduction of the War Powers Resolution by Congress implicitly acknowledges the Congressional shortcomings regarding use of force decision making, and was designed to remedy Congressional indecision. Therefore, on top of the legal leeway that waging undeclared war affords, official declarations of war are anachronistic and only serve as a national security risk.

By not formally declaring war in an environment governed by carefully worded international guidelines, the US can afford itself flexibility when dealing with threats. As a result, when the US engages in hostilities without prior UN approval, it attempts to disguise its violations of the UN Charter by labeling its military intervention as something other than war, such as a ‘police action.’ While this is a risky endeavor, it has paid off tremendously, allowing the accomplishment of policy objectives and ensuring national security while walking the fine line between violation and compliance of international law.

April 14, 2020 0 comment

Featured Mexico and Latin America Security and Conflict South America The International Economy

Los Muertos no Pagan: The Case for New Institutions to Resolve Sovereign Debt Disputes

written by Kurt J. Klein

In 1776, Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations asserted: “When it becomes necessary for a state to declare itself bankrupt, in the same manner as when it becomes necessary for an individual to do so, a fair, open and avowed bankruptcy is always the measure which is both least dishonorable to the debtor, and least hurtful to the creditor.” Yet, 238 years later, international financial institutions still fail to answer Smith’s call. Recent turmoil in financial markets has brought both advanced economies such as Spain, and developing nations like Argentina, dangerously close to default. The global threat by destabilized markets makes it imperative that the State of New York, the federal government, and international bodies, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), create new mechanisms to resolve the unique cases of sovereign debt defaults. Just as bankruptcy laws and courts are used domestically to resolve debt repayment conflicts, a similar framework needs to be created to handle sovereign debt disputes. This system needs to be focused on producing economic growth in the interest of both creditors and debtors. This idea is not new: Anne Krueger, while in the office of First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, proposed a Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism (SDRM) in 2002. The proposal was vetoed by the George W. Bush administration. Now it is time to raise the issue again, as the absence of an adequate forum to handle these disputes is apparent in the ramifications of recent US court rulings against the Republic of Argentina.

In Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital, the Supreme Court upheld a ruling by Thomas Griesa, Federal Chief Judge for the Southern District of New York, stating that Argentina must pay the full value of $1.33 billion in bonds that are possessed by NML Capital before paying its obligations on other bonds. NML Capital is a hedge fund that owns Argentine bonds that were not exchanged during the country’s attempts in 2005 and 2010 to restructure debt after its 2001 default. As a result of the ruling, the nation fears that it could be liable for $15 billion when it is applied to all holdouts. This $15 billion albatross would be equal to roughly half of Argentina’s central-bank reserves. Yet the most important aspect of the ruling is Griesa’s understanding of the bonds’ pari passu clause. His interpretation prescribes that Argentina cannot make payments to the exchange bondholders until it comes to an agreement with NML Capital regarding its holdout bonds. When no agreement was reached and the Republic’s payment to exchange bondholders was blocked, Standard & Poor’s declared Argentina in default on July 30.

Argentina will not be the only party to endure the negative consequences of this ruling: the future of all sovereign debt restructuring is in jeopardy. Under Griesa’s interpretation of pari passu, bondholders will have no incentive to accept a debt swap after a default. Furthermore, even one bondholder who holds out can nullify an entire debt restructure and force the debtor back into default. As a result, countries with troubled economies become bigger prey for “vulture funds”: a pejorative term used to describe hedge funds such as NML Capital who buy up distressed bonds at fractions of their initial prices with the intent to litigate to be paid the bonds’ full nominal value. The ruling sets a precedent that would prevent nations from restructuring their debt, making good with creditors, and rebuilding after a default.

On the international level, Bolivia, with the support of the G77+China and alerted by Argentina’s tribulations, proposed a multilateral legal framework for sovereign debt restructuring processes at the UN General Assembly. On September 9, the assembly overwhelmingly adopted the measure with 124 votes in favor, 11 votes against and 41 abstentions. The US was among the 11 nations that voted against the resolution. The proposal is short on specifics but it includes an element that would bind all creditors to a restructuring agreement if a majority accept. It is improbable that the US would yield jurisdiction on local contracts to a global institution. Thus this hypothetical framework would have little power over existing bonds issued in New York markets. However, this is a clear call by the developing nations who are most likely to issue bonds in foreign markets such as New York that such mechanisms are badly needed.

Understandably, if US law is more concerned about protecting creditors than permitting nations with a troubled past a chance to start over, sovereigns will reconsider issuing bonds in New York or other capital markets in the US. This has the potential for New York to lose its place as an international financial center in regards to issuing sovereign debt. On July 15, with the Argentine President in attendance as a special guest, the heads of state from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa inaugurated the $100 billion New Development Bank (NDB) at the sixth BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil. These nations hope that the NDB will serve as an alternative to the western dominated IMF and World Bank. The BRICS’ NBD will be an alluring alternative to US financial markets for developing nations in the future.

If New York desires to preserve its place as an international financial center, new laws to preside over the unique cases of sovereign debt default need to be adopted. A sovereign is not a normal partner in a contract such as a person, business, or corporation. Hence, a special bankruptcy court for sovereign nations overseen by judges with advanced training in economics should be created by the State of New York or the federal government. A mechanism for negotiation, mediation and arbitration needs to be in place with a focus on restoring a nation’s economy so it has the ability to pay back its creditors. Among its many tools, it could swap debts for new bonds that pay according to macroeconomic statistics such as GDP growth similar to Argentina’s bond swap offers in 2005 and 2010.

But these measures can augment more than a developing country’s economic growth and New York’s standing as a hub of finance; they will promote global economic justice. Social utility is completely absent in the process where a cabal of hedge funds purchases distressed debt at a fraction of its titular value and subsequently litigates to be paid in full. A common counter argument is that Griesa’s and similar rulings are in line with what is in the bond contract. Thus, in order to observe rule of law, debtors must be held accountable. The fact that the legal process supports this practice is the very reason it needs to be reformed. The consequences aren’t beared by the corrupt politicians who wantonly accepted too much in loans and ensuingly misspent them in order to maintain political power. They fall on a country’s citizens who pay for both the creditor’s and debtor’s avarice in increased taxes, substandard public services, and stagnant economic growth.

The US’ foreign policy in regard to sovereign defaults must be reexamined and made coherent as well. With a large mandate from the aforementioned UN resolution, the world has asked the US to bring its actions in line with its commonly stated foreign policy goals of long term economic and social progress in the developing world. It should start by advocating and ratifying a SDRM at the IMF. The Anne Krueger proposed SDRM with collective action clauses from over a decade ago would be a great example to follow. This would set insolvent nations on a feasible path to grow while making good with all their creditors. The alternative is an eternal cycle of debt and default for nations with a dolorous economic past such as Argentina

”Los muertos no pagan las deudas” – ”The dead don’t pay their debts” is a phrase from late President Nestor Kirchner’s 2003 speech to the UN General assembly. Frequently, the current president borrows her late husband’s proverb in speeches regarding the external debt and the holdouts.

November 28, 2014 4 comments

Featured Middle East Security Security and Conflict Society and Culture Terrorism Uncategorized

Adventures in Bizzaro World: or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb…

written by James Walker

by James Walker
Editor

Last week, the President of the United States of America made a televised appeal to the nation, asking them to get on board with his plan to use limited military strikes against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. President Obama laid out two main points for consideration:

1) The use of chemical weapons is a clear crime against humanity and in contravention of an accepted international norm. To let such actions go unpunished would be a green light to the dictators and terrorists of the world, and as such posed a threat to regional, global, and US security.

2) It is unacceptable for the world to stand idly by as helpless civilians are slaughtered by the thousand, akin to the stain on the consciousness of the international community over Bosnia…or Rwanda…or Darfur…

Having reached the second decade of the 21^st century, what is most shocking is the notion that the focus of this debate continues to revolve around the lynchpin of chemical weapons as an unacceptable form of mass murder—in contrast to the apparently acceptable nature of conventional weapons. The President’s call to arms is, in essence, based upon the form of murder, rather than the act of murder itself.

By the time of the President’s speech on September 10^th, the civil war in Syria had been ongoing for over 900 days—or almost two and a half years. In that time, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates a civilian death toll of over 40,000 people, including 5,800 children. This means that on average, 44 civilians (including 6 children) die every single day in the Syrian conflict. In other words, almost 1,000 people who were not combatants or directly involved in the war have been killed by conventional arms since the Sarin attack on August 21^st. To make that point clearer in a local context, by the time UCLA holds its annual Activities Fair for incoming students on September 23^rd, the death toll from good-old-fashioned flying lead ordinance will surpass the number of civilians killed in the gas attack, estimated at 1,429 people.

It is at this point that the “Bizzaro World” factor kicks into high gear. According to the latest rash of polls by CNN, the Pew Research Center, and the Washington Post, the American public opposes armed intervention in the Syrian crisis by a majority of about 63% of the population. This is an astounding figure, given the fact that since the invasion of Grenada in 1983, public opposition to bombing other countries has never risen above 45% (in the case of Bosnia). Even the extensive military intervention against Libya’s Gaddafi in 2011 only reached a high water mark of 37%! As a nation, we have never been shy about raining death from above before.

A number of commentators have suggested that the prospect of US casualties is simply too much for a post-Iraq/Afghanistan war-weary nation to accept. Given the fact that during the Libyan engagement (which consisted of considerably more involvement than the President is asking for over Syria) the US did not sustain a single military casualty, this notion is a little hard to defend. Others claim that it is a lack of tangible evidence, or possibly a lack of trust in the evidence provided, that is swelling public opposition. If that is the case, then we chose a fine time to start demanding absolute proof from our government. Where was this sense of caution in 2003? An informed electorate is, of course, a laudable thing and should be encouraged. However, most IR specialists would be happy if the majority of Americans could find the Middle East on a map. Add the fact that a recent Gallup poll found 65% of Americans were in favor of using unmanned drones to kill “terrorists” in Yemen and other countries, and you really have to wonder where the opposition to bombing Assad is coming from. Perhaps if Obama simply labeled Assad a terrorist, his PR issues would be solved.

Questions are also being posed as to the intent of the Obama plan – whether the intention is for a punitive strike, or for regime change. At a recent cultural event in Los Angeles, Middle East specialist and UC Riverside professor Reza Aslan suggested that, humanitarian ideals aside, it is not within US interests to remove Assad from power – if it were, then taking out the seven airfields that constitute the regime’s lifeline of military supplies would effectively turn the tide of the war in the rebel’s favor – and that is why we won’t do it. In fact, Obama has explicitly stated that any airstrikes would NOT target such infrastructure, even though it would be a relatively simply task to accomplish from our floating missile platforms in the Mediterranean.

If we take that position for granted and work on the basis that it is not our intention to change the course of the war, then what is the purpose of the proposed “limited military strikes”? There are any number of potential answers here, from the geo-political to the neo-realist, but is it also possible that Obama’s avowed aim to enforce an international norm is in fact the truth? Has the shame of inaction from previous debacles actually begun to sink through, at least in regards to the most heinous of atrocities? If history is any guide, then the odds are not high, but in Bizzaro World anything is apparently possible.

The Bizzaro factor ratchets up even further when you consider the fact that the reason Obama had to make a case to the nation was that the response from the International Community has been minimal, to say the least. The Syrian crisis has done more to highlight the ineffective nature of the UN Security Council (UNSC) than a thousand missives from the Teapublicans, the John Birch Society, or the “New World Order” conspiracy nuts of the world combined. It is a political truism that “politics makes strange bedfellows,” but in this instance you would expect that the “American exceptionalism” wing of the country would be in lock-step with a hawkish President, intent on flexing US military might in order to promote truth, justice, and the American way. Instead we find ourselves in a situation where President Bush’s former Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, takes the same position as the Russian delegation to the UNSC! Has the world gone mad?

If ever there was a textbook case in the international arena to invoke the notion of the “Right to Protect” (R2P), then it is hard to see how it could be any more clear-cut than the Syrian crisis. Does the state have a “responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing”? Check! Does the international community have a “responsibility to assist the state to fulfill its primary responsibility”? Check! Has the state “manifestly failed to protect its citizens from the four above mass atrocities, have peaceful measures failed, and does the international community have the responsibility to intervene through coercive measures”? Check, check, and check!

For any ardent internationalist, it is painful to acknowledge that the system as it currently stands is so deeply flawed. Russian intransigence, combined with a lack of prior political will on our part, has allowed the situation in Syria to devolve into a neo-Hobbesian nightmare. The need for consensus in military intervention is a central tenant of the post-WWII collective security ideal, but it is one that has lead to the current deadlock at the UN, and threatens to sideline the effectiveness of this vital institution. R2P was supposed to be a way of answering this issue – instead it has simply become an example of it.

If the Obama administration’s plan to initiate limited, punitive strikes against the chemical weapons capacity of the Syrian state goes ahead, we might actually find ourselves in a world where US military actions serve to reinforce “universal” collective norms, but are undertaken in opposition to the collective will, and without the legal imperator of UN legitimacy. In that case, the move to implement the essence of R2P in the face of stagnation and deadlock would become, in and of itself, a criminal act in international law!

Welcome to Bizzaro World….

James Walker is a first year MA student in Political Geography, and an Editor for The Generation. He is also an ardent internationalist, and astonished by his own position on the situation in Syria – hence the Bizzaro World analogy.

September 16, 2013 0 comment

Africa Middle East Security and Conflict Society and Culture Terrorism Uncategorized

Terrorist Coup Threatens to Destroy Mali

written by thegeneration

By Christine Smith
Co-Editor

Recently, Al Qaeda-affiliated militants have created political chaos in the previously stable West African country of Mali by successfully gaining control of the country through a coup. The United Nations passed a resolution roughly one month ago on October 12th stating that the militants renounce power in Mali within 45 days. Little positive progress, however, has been made. Several international actors, including the United States, France, and Algeria, have been in discussion about the growing necessity for international action. While losing the country to Al Qaeda-linked militants is an obvious security threat both to surrounding countries and to the entire international community, the militants’ presence is significantly impacting Mali’s economy and culture as well.

In an effort to replace Mali’s Africanized version of Islam with the traditional version that is more commonly seen throughout the Middle East, the Islamic militants have decided to ban all forms of secular music and all things “un-Islamic” in the northern part of the country. As a result, the militants in the region have dealt a major blow to Mali’s music and tourism industries. This seemingly minor incident has in reality caused major repercussions throughout the country.

A country that has a rich history of music that includes the singer Salif Keita, the late guitarist Ali Farka Toure, and the legendary kora player Toumani Diabete, Mali has created a vibrant tourism industry out of the legendary music the country produces. Further, Mali has made its mark in the international community as one of the premier music destinations on the planet. Western artists, including U2’s Bono and the British band Blur’s Damon Albarn, have flocked to Mali to collaborate with Malian musicians and immerse themselves in Mali’s rich music scene.

Banning secular music in northern Mali, therefore, has amounted to a significant economic setback to the region. Because of the ban, northern Malian music has been forced underground or out of the country and into neighboring states, resulting in the largest income-producing industry in Mali being eliminated. Malian music, in fact, accounted for two to four percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2000 and is believed to have an even greater impact on Mali’s current GDP. An even bigger economic consequence of banning secular music, however, is the impact it will have on the developing economy. As the country has demonstrated in recent years, the impact of culture on economic development in Mali is huge. Music and other profitable aspects of Malian culture have created more jobs and economic markets both for the state and for its citizens, which consequently has helped grow the national economy. Removing music from Mali’s economy is therefore shaping up to be a huge financial blow to one of the ten poorest nations in the world.

Without secular music, Malians have also lost their ability to publicly express their dissatisfaction with the current political situation. The loss of the traditional way of vocalizing political disapproval, albeit in an indirect manner through their secular music, however, reaches beyond politics. By banning secular music, the Islamic militants have created a cultural war against Malians and their identities. After all, it can only benefit the militants to attack and forcefully remove a culture they view as “un-Islamic.” Consequently, Malians are currently living in silence or facing arrest and possible death if they choose to voice political objections.

A continuation of the militants’ policies will certainly lead to a drastically different Mali than the one that has existed up until the March coup. Not only will the country’s culture significantly change and its economy weaken, but Malians will also continue to lack their pre-coup right to express their opinions and act as the democracy that they have been since 1992. It is essential that the international community follows through on its desire to remove the Islamic militants from Mali. Doing so will both benefit Malians and protect their rights and culture as well as benefit the international community and its security.

Facts obtained from The New York Times, The Guardian, The Jerusalem Post, and The Independent.

Christine Smith recently received her B.A. in Political Science and two minors in African Studies and Anthropology from Boston University. She is currently an editor for The Generation as well as a first year M.A. in African Studies student at UCLA with a focus on human rights issues in East Africa.

November 25, 2012 3 comments