The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a significant, if controversial, development in international affairs. China has proposed its own semi-official version of R2P called “Responsible Protection”.

Author’s Note: This article highlights issues discussed in more depth in various publications, including Andrew Garwood-Gowers, ‘China’s “Responsible Protection” Concept: Reinterpreting the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and Military Intervention for Humanitarian Purposes’ (2016) 6 Asian Journal of International Law 89 and Andrew Garwood-Gowers, ‘R2P Ten Years after the World Summit: Explaining Ongoing Contestation over Pillar III’ (2015) 7 Global Responsibility to Protect 300.

Introduction

Over the last decade and a half the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle has emerged as a significant normative development in international efforts to prevent and respond to genocide and other mass atrocity crimes. Yet it has also been controversial, both in theory and in practice. R2P’s legal status and normative impact continue to be debated in academic and policy circles, while its implementation in Libya in 2011 reignited longstanding concerns among many non-Western states over its potential to be misused as a smokescreen for regime change. These misgivings prompted Brazil to launch its “Responsibility while Protecting” (RwP) concept as a means of complementing and tightening the existing R2P principle. China, too, has proposed its own semi-official version of R2P called “Responsible Protection” (RP). This contribution explores the key features and implications of the lesser known Chinese initiative.

The R2P Principle

R2P first appeared in a 2001 report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), a body set up by the Canadian government to consider how the international community should address intra-state humanitarian crises. However, after the initial concept proved contentious a modified version of R2P – labelled “R2P-lite” by one commentator – was unanimously endorsed by states at the 2005 World Summit. In its current form R2P consists of three mutually reinforcing pillars. The first is that each state has a responsibility to protect its populations from the four mass atrocity crimes (genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing). Pillar two stipulates that the international community should encourage and assist states in fulfilling their pillar one duties. Finally, pillar three provides that if a state is manifestly failing to protect its populations the international community is prepared to take collective action in a timely and decisive manner on a case-by-case basis, in accordance with Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

Action under pillar three can encompass non-coercive tools such as diplomacy and humanitarian assistance, as well as coercive means including sanctions and the use of force. The international community’s pillar three responsibility is framed in conservative terms, creating only a duty to consider taking appropriate action, rather than a positive obligation to actually respond to a state’s manifest failure to protect. Crucially, the UN Security Council remains the only body that can authorise coercive, non-consensual measures under pillar three. R2P does not grant states a right to undertake unilateral humanitarian intervention outside the Charter’s collective security framework. Overall, R2P is best characterised as a multi-faceted political principle based on existing international law principles and mechanisms.

The most well-known instance of pillar III action to date is the international community’s rapid and decisive response to the Libyan crisis in early 2011. The Security Council initially imposed sanctions and travel bans on members of the Gaddafi regime before passing resolution 1973 authorising the use of force to “protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack’’. China, Russia, Brazil and India each abstained on the vote to mandate military force against Libya. As the extent of NATO’s military targets and support for the Libyan rebels became apparent, many non-Western powers criticised the campaign for exceeding the terms of the Security Council resolution. For these states, the eventual removal of the Gaddafi regime confirmed their perception that R2P’s third pillar could be manipulated for the pursuit of ulterior motives such as the replacement of unfriendly governments.

The post-Libya backlash against R2P was at least partly responsible for Security Council deadlock over Syria. Russia and China have exercised their vetoes on four separate occasions to block resolutions that sought to impose a range of non-forcible measures on the Syrian regime. At the same time, there has been renewed debate about the strengths and weaknesses of R2P’s third pillar. In late 2011 Brazil’s RwP initiative proposed a series of decision-making criteria and monitoring mechanisms to guide the implementation of coercive pillar three measures. While RwP initially attracted significant attention and discussion, Brazil’s foray into norm entrepreneurship was short-lived and R2P has remained unaltered.

Reframing R2P as “Responsible Protection”

China’s traditional insistence on a strict interpretation of sovereignty and non-intervention has made it uncomfortable with the coercive, non-consensual aspects of R2P’s third pillar. As a result, Beijing has consistently emphasised the primacy of pillars one and two, while downplaying the scope for pillar three action. In this respect, its decision not to veto resolution 1973 on Libya came as something of a surprise.

China’s contribution to the post-Libya debate over R2P’s third pillar is less widely documented than Brazil’s efforts. In mid-2012 the notion of “Responsible Protection” was floated by Ruan Zongze, the Vice President of the China Institute for International Studies (CIIS),  which is the official think tank of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Although China has not explicitly adopted the concept as a formal policy statement on R2P, its implicit endorsement means it can be described as a “semi-official” initiative.

RP is primarily concerned with R2P’s third pillar and, in particular, providing a set of guidelines to constrain the implementation of non-consensual, coercive measures. It consists of six elements or principles, which are drawn from just war theory and earlier R2P proposals such as the 2001 ICISS report and Brazil’s RwP. In this respect, RP represents a repackaging of previous ideas, rather than an entirely original initiative. However, by reframing these concepts in stricter terms it reflects a distinctive Chinese interpretation of R2P that seeks to narrow the circumstances in which non-consensual use of force can be applied for humanitarian purposes.

The first element draws on the just war notion of “right intention”. It provides that the purpose of any intervention must be to protect civilian populations, rather than to support “specific political parties or armed forces”. This conveys Beijing’s concerns over the motives and objectives of those intervening under the banner of R2P, as expressed during the Libyan experience. Element two relates to the “right authority” criterion. It reiterates the longstanding Chinese position that only the Security Council can authorise the use of coercive measures, and that there is no right of unilateral humanitarian intervention granted to states.

RP’s third element is based on the traditional principle that military intervention should be a “last resort”. Its call for “exhaustion of diplomatic and political means of solution” is consistent with Beijing’s broader policy preference for diplomacy and dialogue over forcible measures. However, insisting on a strict, chronological sequencing of responses may deprive the international community of the flexibility needed to ensure timely and decisive action on humanitarian crisis. For this reason, some clarification or refinement of element three may be needed. The fourth element of RP draws on aspects of the just war principles of “right intention” (like element one) and “reasonable prospects”. In relation to the latter, it provides that “it is absolutely forbidden to create greater humanitarian disasters” when carrying out international action. This stipulation reflects Beijing’s position that external intervention often exacerbates humanitarian crises and can ultimately cause more harm than good.

Element five of RP provides that those who intervene “should be responsible for the post-intervention and post-protection reconstruction of the state concerned”. Although the notion of a responsibility to rebuild appeared in the original 2001 ICISS report it was not included in the text of the World Summit Outcome document in 2005 and therefore does not form a component of the current concept of R2P. It is unclear whether China’s RP concept is explicitly seeking to resurrect this dimension or whether this element is simply intended to emphasise Beijing’s broader perspective on peacebuilding and development in post-conflict societies. Finally, element six calls for greater supervision and accountability of those carrying out UN authorised civilian protection action. This is a similar demand to that made in Brazil’s RwP proposal, though little detail is given as to what form any such monitoring mechanism would take.

Conclusion

Overall, the Chinese notion of RP is an attempt to reinterpret and tighten the content of R2P’s third pillar so that it aligns more closely with Beijing’s own normative preferences and foreign policy objectives. Compared to RwP and the ICISS report, RP outlines a narrower set of circumstances in which military intervention for humanitarian purposes would be appropriate. Some aspects of the proposal would certainly benefit from clarification and refinement.

However, it is notable that despite strongly criticising the way R2P was implemented in Libya, China has chosen to engage with, and actively shape, the future development of the norm. This illustrates the extent to which China, as a permanent member of the Security Council, is enmeshed in the ongoing debate over R2P. In fact, RP is explicitly framed as an example of China “contributing its public goods to the international community”. In the future we can expect China and other non-Western powers to play increasingly influential roles in the development of international security and global governance norms.

Andrew Garwood-Gowers is a lecturer at the Faculty of Law at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia. He has written extensively on R2P and the law governing the use of military force, with publications in leading journals including Global Responsibility to Protect, the Asian Journal of International Law, Journal of Conflict and Security Law and the Melbourne Journal of International Law.

In February 2016, two former military officers of the Guatemalan army were convicted of crimes against humanity based on cases of sexual and domestic slavery, perpetrated in the 1980s during the civil war. Together they received sentences of 360 years in prison, and ordered to pay reparations to the eleven victim-survivors on whose testimonies the case rested. The case, known as Sepur Zarco after the community where these crimes took place, is unique; it is the first domestic trial successfully prosecuting former military for sexual violence in conflict in the world. What happened in Sepur Zarco is less unique: the witness statements echo the experiences of women who gave their testimony to the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Committee (2001-2003), where women in embattled communities during the war between Shining Path and the state (1980-2000) were also systematically raped and/or enslaved. And there are other experiences; other genocides, war contexts, and rape camps in contemporary history, which would allow for a solid comparison with Sepur Zarco. Such an observation confirms the importance of the Sepur Zarco trial for the future of accountability and justice in cases of war-related sexual violence, in Guatemala, in Latin America, and indeed, globally.

The testimonies of victim-survivors in the Sepur Zarco trial against military commanders in Guatemala shows once more that rape in war has specific meanings and intentions that are informed and shaped by the specific coordinates of conflict. In the 1980s, the Guatemalan military repeatedly attacked the population of the rural community Sepur Zarco. Local indigenous leaders who were trying to get their land titled by the state were kidnapped, tortured, and killed. Women who went to search for disappeared family members at the military base were captured, beaten and raped, and enslaved as sexual and domestic servants of soldiers. Several witnesses at the trial told details about how they were raped and beaten multiple times, in front of or alongside their children, sometimes in a pit where their husbands would be held before being buried. They also told about other victims, abused, enslaved, raped and killed in their presence. The statements show a world of extreme cruelty and suffering, facilitated by racism and sexism, and encouraged by a military campaign against indigenous communities that lasted three decades. All evidence shows that in the case of Sepur Zarco, rape was used as a weapon of war: to conquer, to reinforce victory, to send a message, humiliate, and fragment entire communities, in sum, to control.

Of course, military commanders can only be prosecuted for systematic rape if we accept that rape in war is exceptional, different, and not inevitable. Perpetrators can only be held accountable if we recognise their agency in the act, their authority in allowing (or ordering) certain acts to happen. The extreme cruelty and violence that accompanies many of these acts further confirm that rape in war represents a rupture in a community’s history and in the lives of both perpetrators and victims. This is not normal, and hence, we can prosecute.

And yet, there are others, including myself, who have emphasised the continuity in the history and possibility of sexual violence against women. I have argued, based on the testimonies of victim-survivors of rape in the Peruvian conflict, that while much of the scale and cruelty of these experiences were certainly exceptional and strongly conflict related, the script for these acts – immersed in racism and sexism, as in the case of Guatemala – pre-dated the conflict, and has yet to be dismantled. There is a continuum in the persistence of sexual violence against women that supersedes the categories of war and peace.

In contemporary Guatemala, around 700 women are murdered each year because of sexism, killed by intimate partners or unknown others. This is what is known as femicidio in the region. Impunity is not absolute, but it is certainly very high and contributes to its prevalence, as public institutions are uninterested in pursuing cases of ‘private’ violence. The idea that violence against women, even if so large scale as in contemporary Guatemala (or elsewhere), can be private and thus irrelevant to national security (police, judiciary, policy) is strongly tied to perceptions of women being responsible somehow for the domestic sphere, the home, including the sexual gratification of men. Women are often perceived and portrayed as somehow complicit in their own abuse. Similar patterns of the domestication of violence are seen in conflict.

For example, women held at military bases to sexually serve men are often also required to wash and cook. The Sepur Zarco case also heard a former military commissioner tell the court how the then head of the military base and the accused in the trial, Lieutenant Esteelmer Reyses Girón, ordered soldiers to gang rape a woman, and that the Lieutenant himself “took” this woman as his “wife”. In similar vein, in the case of Peru, few women used the words ‘rape’ (violación) to describe their experiences. Instead, some said ‘he used me as his wife’, indicating how domestic and sexual enslavement were part of the package of abuse. One witness even stated ‘he started to beat us as if we were their wives’, further blurring the boundaries between the domestic and the political, between wartime abuse and peacetime abuse, and arguably, between husband and abuser. In Sierra Leone, and Uganda, similar patterns can be found: sexual and domestic slavery go hand in hand, and is made possible because of the peacetime structures in which women’s roles are already defined by their service to men. Hence, girls forcibly recruited into rebel armies soon became ‘wives’.

The idea that those who are violently enslaved could in fact be in a consensual relationship, albeit unequal, such as a marriage, provides a veil of legitimacy to an otherwise exceptional situation. It does, indeed, suggest a level of normality, a continuum, of life as one knows it. It might be the veil that makes survival possible. But many victim-survivors of conflict-related rape and sexual slavery are ostracised from their communities, exposed to a postconflict life of continuous abuse from their intimate partners, or choose to hide their trauma out of fear of retaliation. The women who testified in the Sepur Zarco case either did so behind closed doors, or they hid their faces behind veils during public sessions. What happened in war might have been exceptional, but not sufficiently so to erase the suggestion of complicity entirely, less so, stigma.

In my book Sexual Violence in War and Peace, I identify a continuum in how sexual violence is understood and perpetrated in both war and peace, and hence, how such violence is dealt with post-conflict. The characteristics of rape regimes perpetrated by military in the high Andes of the 1980s and early 1990s showed many known features of power relations along lines of race, sex, class, age, and gender. Sexual violence, because of its intimate and potential reproductive qualities, helps produce and reproduce those unequal power relations. In war this might be strategic and large-scale, or it might be facilitated and condoned, in order to dominate over others (i.e., both to affirm power as well as subordination, both to destroy communities, as well as consolidate military loyalty and masculine strength). But in peacetime, it does the same: sexual violence produces dominance and subordination between genders, races, sexualities, classes and ages, be that catcalling, sexual harassment, marital rape or other forms of highly gendered and sexualised violence.

Understanding sexual violence along a continuum does not say anything about the gravity of the violence or even how it might be experienced. On the contrary, while recognising and naming the differences between forms of sexual violence, experiences can be named as violence and as harmful, instead of normal or deserved. What the concept of a continuum of violence intends to highlight is how all forms of sexual violence are part of gendered social structures and patterns that have to be identified and transformed. Highlighting, combatting and prosecuting rape in war should arguably be part of a similarly linked set of measures that aim to eradicate gender inequality and the (often intersecting) violence with which such inequality is maintained and perpetuated, be that in war or in peace, at the level of families or in public space, in Guatemala or in the UK.

Thinking in terms of a continuum does not aim to minimise rape in conflicts, gang rape, or the femicides we are seeing particularly in parts of contemporary Central America. But it gives us an analytical tool that allows us to connect sex, male violence, and gender inequality, both in the everyday as well as during armed conflict. Thinking in terms of a continuum allows us to see how much violence is hidden, institutionalised, and/or normalised in everyday life, both in peacetime and wartime, in homes, in intimate relationships, and in public spaces. The term allows us to see parallels between the extreme and the everyday, the public and the private, thereby not undermining the seriousness of the extreme, but undercutting the normality of the everyday.

As such, the Sepur Zarco case is a milestone, and is hopefully a further step towards accountability for acts of sexual violence, and more broadly, gender-based violence, in both war and peace, in Guatemala and beyond.

 

Jelke Boesten is Reader in Gender and Development at International Development Institute, King’s College London.

In 2008, media outlets declared that a new Cold War was unfolding in the Arctic. This story was centred on a small, titanium Russian flag, fixed to the seabed below the North Pole.

Planted in 2007 by a modest team of explorers and scientists, the flag triggered angry responses from Western politicians and media commentators, with the most vociferous coming from the then Canadian Foreign Minister, Peter MacKay, who declared: ‘This isn’t the 15^th Century…You can’t go around the world and just plant flags and say “We’re claiming this territory”’.

Nearly a decade later, this story remains emblematic of the geopolitical intrigue that refuses to go away in the Arctic, which continues to be stoked by uncertainties over sovereignty, ownership and access in the region.

Carving up the Arctic, Carefully

The Arctic Ocean, like every ocean, is governed by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea’s (UNCLOS) provisions. The US has not ratified this treaty, but considers its provisions relevant as customary international law of the sea.

Under UNCLOS, the Arctic Ocean littoral states are entitled to Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) stretching up to 200 nautical miles (nm) from their Arctic coastlines. Article 234 allows littoral states to develop and administer special regulations dealing with human activities in ice-covered waters. Russia and Canada use this to regulate shipping activity in their Arctic waters through environmental protection measures.

UNCLOS also entitles a coastal state to extend the outer limit of its sovereign rights over the continental shelf (the seabed and subsoil of submarine areas–including, any oil and gas resources contained) beyond 200nm, if it can prove the shelf is a natural prolongation of the coastal states’ land mass. This has led Denmark and Russia to submit evidence (with Canada expected to follow this year) to the UN to support claims reaching all the way to the North Pole. Norway settled its continental shelf limits in 2009.

As their claims overlap, the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) is responsible for reviewing the evidence and issuing a final recommendation on where the borders should be drawn according to Articles 76 and 77. However, the CLSC has no legal authority or personality meaning it will be up to Canada, Denmark and Russia to reach an international agreement which will settle their claims. Any remaining space will be considered part of ‘the Area’ (see below), and falls under the purview of the International Seabed Authority.

Although the decision on ‘who owns the North Pole’ will ultimately be determined by an agreement between Canada, Denmark and Russia,wherein lies a latent potential for conflict, the five Arctic littoral states’ public commitment to use UNCLOS as the basis for settling any sovereignty disputes is an important step towards ‘sustainable security’. It will take three to five years just for the CLCS to review the latest evidence submitted by Russia on 9 February 2016.The CLCS is already overwhelmed by the number of applications received globally. Since the prospects for oil and gas development further from shore are still highly uncertain, and claims to the North Pole are primarily symbolic, the CLCS arguably has time on its side.

As long as the Arctic states maintain their trust in the process, UNCLOS should be able to prevent any ‘race’ to carve up the Arctic seabed, which could lead to tension between the littoral states.

High Seas and the Area: Accommodating New Interests

Where UNCLOS reaches its limits is in the parts of the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO), we will be dealing with High Seas,parts of the water column beyond the EEZs of coastal states,and ‘the Area’– seabed areas which cannot be claimed by any state (see map). Theoretically, anyone can fish and mine in these parts of the Arctic, but such activity is likely to be limited for the time being by the continued prevalence of thick sea-ice covering the surface of the ocean (and other environmental factors).

In another step towards ‘sustainable security’, the five Arctic coastal states have initiated a process to create a governance framework to manage future fishing activity in the CAO.

In July 2015, the littoral states signed a ‘Declaration’ preventing unregulated high seas fishing in the CAO, and promising to only authorise their own fleets to conduct commercial fishing in the CAO if it was in accordance with recognised international standards.

The littoral states’ problem is that they do not have the authority to dictate the terms under which the rest of the international community can access CAO high seas fisheries. China’s, Japan’s, Korea’s, Iceland’s, and the EU’s finishing fleets are entitled under international law to fish in the CAO.

Consequently, the littoral states took another preventative step by calling a second meeting in December 2015, where negotiations for fisheries agreement for the CAO’s high seas was opened up to these other parties. Other nations such as Taiwan are expected to join future deliberations, eventually ensuring buy-in for a governance framework from all nations with an interest in future Arctic fisheries.

Again, this is a long-term process, providing another example of how governance structures developed now can prevent certain unwanted futures from becoming present, including, for exampletension and conflict over fisheries and continental shelves.

Navigating Arctic Waters

Can similar preventative steps be taken to ensure that disputes do not flare up over the problem of maritime activity in the Arctic? There are two issues to address. Firstly, the status of two ‘international straits’ in the Arctic: the North West Passage and the Northern Sea Route. Secondly, the regulating of ice-covered waters in littoral state EEZs as addressed by Article 234 of UNCLOS.

Canada and Russia do not consider the North West Passage (passing through the Canadian archipelago) and the Northern Sea Route (across northern Russia) to be ‘international straits’. Consequently, foreign vessels have no right of ‘transit passage’ through these waters–a right that entitles foreign ships to pass through without coastal state permission, and foreign submarines may remain submerged. Both countries claim that their sovereignty over nearby islands effectively means these waters should be considered ‘internal waters’, requiring foreign vessels to seek permission before entering.

The US and the EU contest Canada and Russia’s claims, not least because of concerns about setting a legal precedent that could be applied to more important southerly shipping routes.

There seems to be little ambition to settle the disagreement, because Arctic transit shipping is still a niche activity. Several uncertainties remain about whether large-scale transit shipping will ever become commercially viable, not least because of the competition posed by more southerly trade routes and the general unpredictability of seasonal sea-ice retreat that makes seasonal passages possible without expensive icebreaker escorts.

The problem with the current stance is that Russia is actively investing in icebreakers, port infrastructure, marine services, search and rescue facilities and constabulary forces with the ambition of turning NSR into a viable shipping route. The more Russia builds up infrastructure around the route and offers to accommodate shipping on Russian terms, the greater the historical precedent it will set that the NSR is part of Russian-controlled waters. This feeds Western fears about Russian militarization of the Arctic building a security dilemma.

While US and EU lawyers might question the validity of such a precedent, the de facto claim will remain and Russia will likely continue resisting attempts to change the status quo. It might therefore be worthwhile considering preventative steps sooner rather than later to resolve the NSR and the NWP’s legal status, before marine activity in the Arctic increases further and positions become more deeply entrenched.

The issue is complicated by the second issue referred to above–the regulating of ice-covered waters by Arctic littoral states, notably Canada and Russia. As already noted, under Article 234 of UNCLOS, Arctic littoral states are entitled to regulate marine activities in ice-covered waters within their EEZs. Both the NSR and the NWP fall within these provisions, allowing Canada and Russia to regulate marine activity beyond their territorial waters regardless of whether they have the status of ‘international straits’ (see, for example, Canada’s Arctic Waters Pollution Prevent Act).

So what happens when these waters are no longer ice-covered for a large part of the year? Article 234 indicates that ice-cover must be present for most of the year (i.e. 6 months and one day), while other points of contest exist in determining exactly what is meant by ‘severe climatic conditions’ and ‘exceptional hazards to navigation’ and who would decide whether such conditions prevailed (littoral states, non-littoral states, international organisations?).

This remains a longer-term issue, but if as most scientists predict the amount of sea-ice cover each year continues to spiral downwards, the issue of whether littoral states can regulate in Arctic waters beyond 12 nm could become a significant point of tension with those seeking to benefit from new opportunities for regional marine activity. Currently, unlike in the cases of fisheries and continental shelves, few preventative steps are being taken to resolve this outstanding issue, despite its potential to cause future confrontation in Arctic waters. The situation is exacerbated by the deterioration of relations between Russia and the West over the Ukraine and Syria crises, likely making dialogue difficult.

Prospects for Sustainable Security

On the issues of resource competition and militarisation sustainable security’s prospects, in the Arctic for the most part look good. Since the end of the Cold War, international cooperation on various scientific and environmental protection initiatives have provided the basis for constructive engagement between the Arctic states and other interested actors (such as the UK) on many issues.

Bilateral and multilateral arrangements have provided a governance structure that all Arctic states, and other interested actors, have indicated provides a firm basis for resolving inter-state disputes peacefully in accordance with international law, especially concerning fisheries and the delineation of the continental shelf. However,access to the NWP and NSR could lead to future contention. Potential flashpoints remain over how regional marine activity should be governed in EEZs where the sea-ice is in fast retreat, especially if Russia and Canada refuse to accept that Article 234 might lose purchase in the future.

Whether preventative action is politically possible on this issue remains to be seen, but the sooner a constructive dialogue begins between Russia, Canada and potential users of the NWP and NSR, the more likely it will be to find a sustainable solution. Speculatively, an Arctic agreement on shipping activity negotiated under the Arctic Council’s auspices (but accommodating interested non-Arctic states as seen in the fisheries discussions) to complement the International Maritime Organisation’s Polar Code (due 2017) could be one way of consolidating international understanding that these waterways are to some extent shared spaces requiring the international community’s shared stewardship.

An important dimension of sustainable security not discussed in this state-centric article is that of human security–especially of indigenous peoples and other local communities that live and work in the Arctic. The decline of traditional cultures, environmental pollution and other threats to human health and well-being are prevalent in nearly all of the Arctic states, and there has been a long history of marginalisation of Arctic residents. However, all of the Arctic states have readily admitted the need to address the challenges facing Arctic indigenous peoples and other local communities, and the Arctic Council is somewhat unique to the extent that it invites representatives of indigenous people’s organisations to sit at the table with government ministers.

The sustainable security outlook is also weaker with regards to climate change. Huge uncertainty remains over how soon we are likely to see an ice-free Arctic in the summertime. The temperature spikes witnessed in January and February this year suggest this event horizon might be closer than we think. The impacts of climate change pose a particular risk to human security in the Arctic, threatening food, housing, infrastructure and livelihoods. It remains to be seen whether these communities will be able to adapt to the drastic changes that are being observed.

Duncan Depledge is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London, and director of the secretariat to the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group for Polar Regions. He received his PhD from Royal Holloway for his research investigating contemporary developments in U.K. policy toward the Arctic.

A year after the adoption of the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, the pace is starting to pick up on state action to ratify the treaty. But acceleration of the global arms trade and recent irresponsible deals by treaty ratifiers suggests that state behaviour has yet to catch up to the ideals that sit at the heart of the ATT. A focus on the consistent and long-term blowback of irresponsible trading might go some way to convincing states to start to practice what they preach.

April 2nd marked the first anniversary of the adoption of the much celebrated Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), the world’s first treaty to establish common standards of international trading in conventional weapons and which, in turn, aims to  ‘ease the suffering caused by irresponsible transfers of conventional weapons and munitions’. 118 states have signed so far, with 31 ratifications including, as of last week, the UK, France and Germany, each a major exporting state. Of the rest of the P5+1, the US has yet to ratify and Russia and China, both of which abstained from voting for adoption of the treaty, have yet to sign. But despite a recent acceleration in the rate of ATT ratification, hard data shows that the global arms trade is accelerating, with many of the biggest deals continuing to transfer cutting edge technologies from democracies like the UK to autocracies like Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, the ghosts of arms deals past continue to haunt arms producing states as their wares come around to be used against them or their allies. Establishing the norms that the ATT seeks to establish will require exporting states to take a longer-term perspective on trading decisions that acknowledge the destabilising impact of weapons proliferation in fragile regions and the consistent blowback against national security. In short, they must start to practice what they have preached.

New powers, old habits

Data released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on 17 March chart the steady rise of international arms transfers – including battle tanks, combat aircraft, missile launchers and small arms and light weapons –  with the volume of transfers up 14% in 2009-13 from transfer in 2004-08.  In 2011 alone, the value of all international arms deliveries is estimated at $44.3 billion. This trend is particularly reflected through rising imports to regions such as Africa, where imports by states rose 53% between 2004-08 and 2009-13. Among the BRICs, Brazil’s arms imports increased by 65% in the same time period, while an increase of 111% in the value of its arms imports has made India the world’s largest arms importer.

Beyond the deadly threat inherent these tens of millions of weapons pose to human life – the top five arms exporting countries alone delivered nearly 92 million major conventional weapons in 2006-10 – , these statistics suggest an entrenched belief by existing and emerging powers alike that weapons acquisition is a solution to today’s security challenges. Rather, such militarisation is the source of a number of spiralling security crises that are in turn being dealt with using military approaches, with all the Sisyphean repetition that entails. The current NATO-Russia stand-off over the future of Ukraine is but the most obvious example. Prioritising military solutions also tends to stymie peaceful, sustainable alternatives to reducing insecurity.

What goes around…

At the heart of the decade-long drive towards a consistent standard of arms trade regulation was an acknowledgement of the human cost of misuse and abuse of legally transferred conventional weapons, leading to human rights abuses and prolonging armed violence in countries such as Sudan, Egypt and Libya. Use of weapons in these countries against citizens has been particularly objectionable and Libya inparticular stands as an example of the warped logic of trading weapons to such countries. Following the lifting of its arms embargo in 2004, EU states granted export licenses worth a reported €834.5m from 2004-2009 to the notoriously repressive Libyan Government – weaponry that was subsequently used against Libyan civilians in 2011, leading to international condemnation and, eventually, western military intervention.

Yet it seems that such lessons must be continually hard learnt.  Sales such as February’s deal to sell 72 British Typhoon fighter jets to Saudi Arabia – listed by the most recent UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office report on Human Rights and Democracy as a ‘country of concern’ – suggest that London is still not choosy who gets its bang as long as it gets the bucks.  In addition to its domestic record of torture, repression and executions, Saudi Arabia sent its forces to Bahrain to assist in violent crackdowns of popular protests in 2011 and is the leading sponsor of Islamist insurgents in Syria. The UK had to revoke 158 arms export licences to the Middle East in 2011 because of concerns about human rights abuses and risk that the exported weapons might be used for internal repression. Yet the UK was found to have another 600 extant licenses to countries such as Syria, Bahrain and Yemen. With these actions in mind, it is  difficult to reconcile such disregard for the spirit of the ATT with the UK’s recent ratification of the treaty.

…Comes Around

In addition to direct abuse within states such as Libya, international security is challenged by further proliferation through diverted weapons from irresponsible states. For example, the 2008 Final Report of the UN Panel of Expertson Sudan found that arms originating from the stockpiles of Sudan, Chad and Libya had been used in attacks by the Justice and Equality Movement in Sudan, a militia group included in the UN Security Council arms embargo on Darfur since 2005. Chain-of ownership tracing by the Panel then identified numerous weapons that originated in Libya to have originally been transferred from Spain, Belgium and Bulgaria.

Inside Libya, the dispersal of weapons stockpiles across the country before the downfall of Colonel Gaddafi’s regime – mortars stashed in disused factories, missiles in abandoned buildings – means that today there is an estimated million tons of weaponry in Libya, and much of it is unsecured. Given that this is more than the entire arsenal of the British Army, it is little wonder that MI6 warned the British government in 2013 that the country has become a ‘Tesco for terrorists’. Indeed, Tripoli’s open air Fish Market has now reincarnated as its biggest arms market and deliveries of new weapons systems are regularly hijacked on delivery. Given the hugely destabilising impact of Libyan arms flows south across the Sahara in 2011-12, not least to Mali, one can only speculate on how much of its arsenal has found its way to Syria.

In Afghanistan, where US-supplied rifles and ammunition have been making their way into Taliban hands for a number of years, the US is currently contemplating  what to do with the $7bn worth of military equipment that will be too expensive to transport from Afghanistan and which will reportedly be of little strategic value to the US once the draw down is complete. As it considers driving some of the equipment over to Pakistan, it seems like the parting gift of the militarised approach in Afghanistan will be the further militarisation of an already deeply unstable region.

Time to practice what they preach

The ATT represents the beginning of an important new international norm on arms transfers that aims to lead to more responsible and transparent trade and, ultimately, consideration of the human cost of the trade itself. But despite a majority vote of 156 votes to adopt the ATT last April at the UN General Assembly, and accelerating pace of ratification, there are still important changes to be made to the behaviour of major arms trading states. Countries such as the UK, which proudly claimed to lead the push towards the ATT and made a grand show of ratifying in the recent ‘Race to 50’ campaign, have yet to exhibit the changes to practice that are at the heart of achieving the core ideals of the treaty. Under the terms of the ATT, states reserve the right to continue trade with whichever states they choose, but if a new norm is to be established, they must start to take seriously the spirit of the ATT, whether they have ratified it yet or not. More attention to the consistent and long-term blowback of irresponsible trading – both in terms of the civilian cost of misuse and costs to national security goals caused by destabilisation of areas like the Sahel – might prove worthwhile in making leading exporters like the UK start to practice what they preach.

Zoë Pelter is the Research Officer of Oxford Research Group’s (ORG) Sustainable Security programme. She works on a number of projects across the programme, including ‘Rethinking UK Defence and Security Policies’ and ‘Sustainable Security and the Global South’. Zoë has worked on conventional arms control issues since 2011. 

With skills and expertise in fighting insurgencies and drug trafficking networks, Colombia’s armed forces are increasingly being sought for engagement in similar security challenges in West Africa. But increasing Colombian engagement gives rise to a number of important questions – not least of which is the goal and expected outcomes of replicating militarised approaches to the war on drugs that have already failed in Latin America.

Colombia has become an exporter of defence cooperation, including operational support, training and capacity building in national security and the fight against insurgencies, drug trafficking networks and terrorism. The skills and expertise of their security forces are in demand and, with strong US support and funding, and through intense diplomatic activism (the ‘Diplomacy for Security’ initiative), the country is building a wide array of bilateral and multilateral agreements for these activities. West African countries suffering from drug trafficking related problems are among the recipients of this support. Although extensive information on these ties and specific programmes is not publicly available, this involvement is evident and therefore raises a number of questions.

Colombian Engagement in West Africa

Between 2005 and mid-2013, Colombia trained 17,352 military staff from approximately 47 countries in various areas of assistance. In 2009, officials from Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Togo and Senegal attended training on operations and intelligence-gathering in Colombia under the auspices of the European Union and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. The head of the Colombian police then announced that he would send ten anti-narcotics police to Africa, to be based in Sierra Leone.

Colombian and African officials met again in March 2012 in Bogotá at a seminar on transnational organised crime. The same year, the US State Department announced that both countries were providing direct operational support and indirect capacity building efforts to countries throughout the hemisphere and West Africa. And police from 10 African countries, including Cameroon, Guinea Bissau, Senegal and Sierra Leone attended in January 2013 a Colombian National Police-hosted port and airport security seminar.

Colombian involvement in West Africa (and Africa more generally) should not come as a surprise. West Africa is increasingly affected by the illegal narcotics trade and associated problems on governance and security. In this trend there are pull and push factors. It has become a transit hub and intermediate point for drugs making their routes from South America to European and other markets,  at a time when border –particularly maritime – security has improved in some European countries, making it more difficult for drugs to reach their territories using the traditional direct routes. The West African coastline is situated at the shortest travel distance from some Latin American departure points, and networks shifted to it while looking for new routes. From West Africa, drugs can continue to Europe or elsewhere by sea or by diverse land routes. Some countries with problems of territorial and border control, corruption and weak governance have been particularly vulnerable to this shift in international narcotics routes. One case in point is Guinea Bissau, where “the combination of a corrupt and centralized leadership and an inadequate and underfunded justice system in a country riven by upheaval and abject poverty” are among the driving factors.

US Reliance on Colombian forces – Advantageous for Both Sides

The reliance of the US on Colombia to export security policies makes sense for both countries. For the former, it is a way to maintain indirect military support and training programmes at a lower cost and through a reliable partner. “It is cheaper for us to have Colombia do the training than us do it ourselves,” Ambassador William Brownfield (Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs) told Congress, later adding that “it’s a dividend that we get for investing over $9 billion in support for Plan Colombia.” The SOUTHCOM Posture Statement 2014 describes Colombia as a clear example of a sizeable return on relatively modest investment and sustained engagement.

For their part, the Colombian security forces face uncertainty about the future. They have undergone an important growth in personnel (up to 450,000 now) and operational capacities, parallel to increases of a defence budget that reached $12 billion in 2012. Their air power and deployment capacities have become more sophisticated; and the Police now have highly vetted units trained in intelligence-gathering on drug trafficking organizations. A significant part of those advancements can be attributed to US support through Plan Colombia. But this is an untenable situation provided that a peace deal with the FARC has been reached and in the event of a post-conflict scenario. Not surprisingly, they are in search of new missions within and outside Colombia.

US Focus on West Africa… From Narrative to Policies

Africa is for the US “the new frontier in terms of counterterrorism and counternarcotics issues,” according to Jeffrey P. Breeden, the chief of the DEA Europe, Asia and Africa section. The US narrative on this region is one of intertwined and convergent threats and actors, where illicit trafficking feeds the crime-terror continuum and criminal insurgencies become players in illicit markets, using the profits to finance terror campaigns. A member of the State Department remarked that “If we do not act decisively, the region will remain an exporter of terror and a provider of safe havens where terrorists from other conflicts all over the world find refuge, illicit trafficking will continue to expand, (…) and drugs and illicit enterprise will corrode the rule of law and the gains of globalization.”

There is a boom of academic and policy literature about the ‘continuum’ and other modalities of confluence among terrorism, illicit traffic networks and armed conflict. But the relations between these actors are complex, multifaceted and non-linear. Oversimplification of this complexity,  reducing the problem to a ‘merger’ of different types of groups makes an ideal argument to gain media attention and push for kinetic policies and strong military involvement. For the US, any link to terrorism or crime-terror nexus makes it easier to gain political support for engagement. But this ‘merger’ is hardly supported by operational evidence, with cross-overs between terrorist groups and drugs cartels, for example, remaining more like opportunistic agreements and less as structural and permanent. This argument also leaves aside other root causes of crises such as lack of governance, corruption, underdevelopment and marginalisation.

The reason for abundant use of this narrative may be hidden in plain sight. According to the criminal code, US agencies are authorised to pursue and prosecute drug offences abroad provided that a link to terrorism is established, even if there is no connection with US consumption markets. This is the case for West Africa.

In 2011, Ambassador Brownfield led a delegation of senior U.S. officials to West Africa to begin formulating a strategic approach to undermine transnational criminal networks and  reduce their ability to operate. The response is the West Africa Cooperative Security Initiative (WACSI). US counter narcotics assistance for West Africa soared from $7.5 million in 2009 to $50 million each of the past to years, according to the State Department. The budget and operational constraints limiting direct US engagement in West Africa’s drugs and organised crime problems include AFRICOM, an agency that relies on around 2,000 personnel to manage coordination of defence programmes for 38 African countries, plus around 5,000 soldiers deployed at any time. The response to scarce resources increasingly takes the form of reliance on special operations teams and cooperation with close allies, with Colombia playing a prominent role.

Colombia in West Africa: More Questions Than Answers

The strategic partnership between both countries is expressed in several instruments, notably the bilateral High-Level Strategic Security Dialogue (HLSSD), periodic meetings of the Security Cooperation Coordinating Group (SCCG) and the US-Colombia Action Plan on Regional Security Cooperation. These instruments are used to formalise security cooperation activities and assistance programs to partner nations affected by transnational crime, including West Africa.

There is no doubt that the shift in trafficking routes is affecting security in some West African countries. Again, Guinea Bissau is among the most obvious cases, due to the ties among senior government, military officials and criminal groups that have played into upheaval and instability. Northern Mali has experienced drug related violence among armed groups involved in different degrees in the drug trade. Beyond these, the connection between drugs and overt violence is less evident, but a focus exclusively on drugs and violence ignored the important connections of the drug trade and criminal networks with political and business elites. These less studied but structural relationships have potentially grave destabilising effects.

A Colombian cooperation undertaken by the Police (not the military), focusing on capacity building to strengthen national capacities in law enforcement, and improved intelligence and information–sharing mechanisms, could make sense. International cooperation is certainly needed to address this truly transnational problem. But due to the lack of information available, it is not clear what kind of responsibilities different parts of the Colombian security forces (Police, military, intelligence) are currently assuming.

Therefore, the involvement in West Africa raises a number of important questions. The security forces, with US support, have managed well in counter-insurgency but the overall impact of Plan Colombia and associated policies on the illegal drug economy remains doubtful. What kind of capacity building and operational support can the Colombian forces provide in countries at peace, provided that their expertise has been acquired in armed conflict? What insurgencies might be fought in West Africa?

What is the goal and the expected outcomes of replicating ‘drug war’ policies and approaches already failed in Latin America, such as militarisation of the fight against drugs? In particular, one of the unintended consequences of this approach is the ‘balloon effect’, through which crop cultivation, routes and transit points shift to new places as the old ones become more controlled. Indeed, this is already an important factor in current West African problems. In terms of fight against corruption and involvement of powerful figures in the drug economy, the results have been mixed in Colombia (considering both national and regional levels).

Last but not least, all the relative Colombian successes have come at the untenable cost of grave human rights violations. The security forces, particularly the military, remain very active in trying to avoid accountability for past misbehaviour and crimes. In one of the latest scandals in civil military relations, sections of Colombian military intelligence have been found to have spied on delegations of the recent peace process, including spying on the President’s representatives. What kind of human rights and democracy messages are being sent through this US backed Colombian defence activism?

International Law enforcement cooperation can be asset in dealing with criminal networks like those involved in drug trafficking, particularly where corruption and involvement of state officials is a factor. But approaches that confuse different non-state actors, their roles and potential levels of threat and attempt to provide a one-size-fits-all response, generate more risk than certainty with regards to potential outcomes and consequences. Militarised approaches to the drug war and public security have been extensively tried in Latin America with limited impact on the drug trade, while worsening the situation of violence. In the Colombian case, the results have been remarkable in counter-insurgency, but the country is still one of the main sources of cocaine for international markets, and there have been widespread violations of human rights.

These approaches are being increasingly questioned in Latin America and continue to lose support even among high Government representatives and Presidents. Replicating them without further evaluation and careful reflection about what has worked  – and what has not – is not a promising approach. Instead, approaches to drugs and organised crime in West Africa must be based on lessons learned, to avoid the repetition of past ineffective policies and their harmful effects.

Mabel González Bustelo is a journalist, researcher and international consultant specialized in international peace and security, with a focus on non-State actors in world politics, organized violence, conflict and peacebuilding. You can follow her at her blog The Making of War and Peace, her webpage, and Twitter (@MabelBustelo).

Feature image: Colombian Marines, 2009. Source: Wikimedia

Monthly Archives: November 2012

Myanmar: peaceful transition to democracy or storm clouds on the horizon?

November 30, 2012by Anna Alissa Hitzemann

Analysing a recent report by International Crisis Group, Anna Alissa Hitzemann argues that in order for the transition from authoritarian rule to democracy to be stable, and for peace and security to be sustainable, the government of Myanmar will have to face and resolve major challenges such as idespread militarization and the political and social marginalization (past and present) of ethnic and religious groups.

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Sustainable Finance and Energy Security

November 24, 2012by Phillip Bruner

General volatility in financial markets – fuelled by irresponsible lending and trading practices, as well as evidence of market manipulation – have had an effect on oil prices. Although the specific effects of the finance sector on oil prices requires further investigation, we can already understand that a sustainable and secure future will require the development of a wider energy mix to meet rising demand. To this end, more sustainable financial systems must be developed to service the real needs of citizens

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A top-down approach to sustainable security: the Arms Trade Treaty

November 4, 2012by Zoë Pelter

2012 has been hailed as a potential landmark year in the push for greater regulation of the global trade in conventional arms. After more than a decade of advocacy to this end, negotiations took place throughout July towards the world’s first Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which is intended to establish the highest possible common international standards for the transfer of conventional weapons. However, although significant progress was made during the month of intense negotiations, the ATT is not yet open for signature. In this article, Zoë Pelter explores what role a potential treaty – if reopened for further negotiation – could play in a move towards sustainable security.

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A recurring feature of Western counter-radicalisation discourse is the ‘Muslim paranoia narrative’, a belief that resentment towards Western societies is motivated by a paranoid and conspiracy-riven worldview. This association between radicalisation and paranoia appears repeatedly through official statements and policy documents.

Radicalisation is at the forefront of policy debates as ISIS continues to draw recruits from Western democracies. Recent summits in Washington and Sydney on countering violent extremism have highlighted the importance of undermining extremist narratives, mobilising moderate Muslims who oppose ISIS, and working to address underlying drivers of radicalisation. Yet representatives of Muslim communities have met this approach with considerable scepticism, both in Western states and across the Muslim world. A common complaint is that Muslims are singled out and caricatured as a unique danger, which only increases the level of vilification experienced by Muslims.

The Muslim paranoia narrative

In recent research published in Critical Studies on Terrorism, I explore the underlying ideological conditions that work against engagement with Muslim communities thought vulnerable to radicalisation. I examine what I call the “Muslim paranoia narrative”, a recurring feature of Western counter-radicalisation discourse that helpfully captures these underlying ideological dynamics. In the Muslim paranoia narrative, resentment towards Western societies is said to be motivated to some degree by a paranoid and conspiracy-riven worldview, which is thought to thrive in alienated and disempowered communities. Terrorist recruiters exploit distorted outlooks to fuel a sense of injustice about the plight of Muslims abroad. This association between radicalisation and paranoia appears repeatedly through official statements and policy documents, including those associated with ongoing counter-radicalisation strategies like the US State Department’s Digital Outreach Team.

The Muslim paranoia narrative is worth examining because it is a clear tension point in contemporary radicalisation strategies that are increasingly focused on engagement and collaboration. The negative connotations associated with paranoia connect palpably with the sense of vilification often highlighted by Muslim critics of these programs. And the paranoia narrative can be connected to a broader ideological imaginary. Tracing the Muslim paranoia narrative from its ideological roots provides a window into the assumptions and priorities informing radicalisation discourse and contextualises the reticence of Muslim communities towards it.

The Muslim paranoia narrative is especially intense in the United States where my research is focused. Richard Hofstadter is widely understood to have established the now commonplace account of political paranoia in his famous essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”, which identified a recurring strain in American politics characterised by a “sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy”. Hofstadter positioned political paranoia on the periphery of pluralistic American democracy as the irrational pathology of angry extremists, and contrasted it with a rational political centre where sensible politics occurred. Although Hofstadter wrote this seminal piece in 1964, it is difficult to overestimate its traction and influence. This is in large part due to the fact that Hofstadter deployed many of the most common conceptual features of post-War liberalism, which abhorred populism and focused on the mediation of competing interests through bargain and compromise. America was situated as a moderate democracy, pragmatic, centrist and non-ideological, in contrast to the radical politics sweeping the post-War Europe. Although liberalism has evolved significantly over the intervening years, the basic conceptual features set out by Hofstadter have remained pervasive in contemporary perspectives on political paranoia.

One reason for this is that political extremism is still largely understood through the same centre/periphery framework. This dynamic is at the heart of radicalisation discourse in the US, where the political and religious beliefs of Muslim communities have emerged as a subject of concern. In this context, the Muslim paranoia narrative locates paranoia not just on the fringe of liberal democracies, but also on the periphery of international power and legitimacy from the point of view of political leaders and security experts. Here the pervasive perspective on political paranoia folds together with a long-running orientalist narrative about the supposedly dysfunctional characteristics of Muslim cultures, particularly in the Middle East, which has often framed America’s regional encounters.

A problematic narrative

The Muslim paranoia narrative is involved in a powerful process of ideological reproduction that works against engagement and collaboration with Muslim communities. Underlying liberal and orientalist frameworks situate Muslim cultures as dysfunctional and anti-modern, while associating Muslim resentment about Western foreign policies with problematic and potentially pathological modes of thought. Like post-War liberal orthodoxy secured by contrast with paranoid populism, contemporary liberal modernity is secured by contrast with the paranoia of alienated Muslims.

At the same time, contemporary radicalisation discourse disciplines the wider public against consideration of Muslim grievances and associated criticisms of US policy. For instance, the identification of political paranoia as a subject of concern has the double effect of producing a strong general deterrent against the interrogation of elite power and political controversy, when the personal and professional costs of such engagements are potentially catastrophic. The taint of irrationality can be devastating, even by association – undermining credibility and calling motivations into question.

In this sense, the Muslim paranoia narrative can be understood in terms of powerful ideological scripts in American political culture, rather than as an objective description of an ideational precursor to radicalisation in Muslim communities. The broader point is that potent narratives around extremism and oriental otherness have undermined the approach of successive US administrations to counter-radicalisation. These scripts have worked against a persuasive encounter with Muslims critical of American foreign policy, when such criticisms are framed as the product of a problematic thoughts and dysfunctional culture.

This problem is clear enough in the practical setting of counter-radicalisation programs like the US State Department’s Digital Outreach Team (DOT), a group of bloggers tasked with confronting views critical of American policy on foreign language websites, and, more recently, discrediting ISIS affiliated users on social media. For our purposes it is interesting to note that according to the State Department “the Digital Outreach Team contrasts objective facts with the often emotive, conspiracy-laden arguments of US critics in the hope that online users will take a fresh at their opinions of the US”.  And this frame manifested in the online activities of the DOT where time was spent “ridiculing myths and conspiracy theories and calling users with extreme views radicals, but claiming to enjoy engaging with users who post objective views.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, a close analysis of DOT work following President Obama’s 2009 Cairo Address found that a large majority of people who expressed a view about the DOT were negative in their comments, with half openly “ridiculing and condescending”. Although there were no doubt many reasons for the widespread hostility to the DOT, it should be obvious that labelling people paranoid and irrational is highly antagonistic, particularly when considered in the context of the wider set of intimations that have historically been associated with such language.

Indeed, it is critical to acknowledge that although the identities and relations highlighted in my analysis of the Muslim paranoia narrative exist within a specific policy discourse, they bear no necessary relationship to the lived experience of differentiated Muslim people, who often refuse classification in these terms. Moreover, it is critical to acknowledge that there is still no conclusive evidence for a particular terrorist profile; for a common pathway or pattern to radicalisation; or for predicting which holders of radical views will become violent. Without critical awareness of the ideological conditions identified here and a sustained attempt to move beyond them, the crucial work of engagement, partnership and community building will be likely ineffectual.

Tim Aistrope is Lecturer in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland.

Over the past two decades, the United Nations Security Council has responded more strongly to some humanitarian crises than to others. This variation in Security Council action raises the important question of what factors motivate United Nations intervention.

The United Nations (UN) selective response to humanitarian crises—as evidenced most recently by the organisation’s uneven reaction to the conflicts in Libya and Syria—is arguably among the most contentious issues in international politics. Some scholars and observers heavily criticize this practice, arguing that the selectiveness of humanitarian interventions undermines their legitimacy and ultimately their success; that the uneven response to humanitarian emergencies suggests that these intervention are motivated not by humanitarian concerns but by the military and economic interests of powerful states; and that the selective enforcement of human rights norms undermines the emerging rule of law in international politics (for examples see Archibugi 2004, Chomsky 1999)

Others disagree and claim that selectivity is not only unavoidable for the UN but also desirable. The selectivity of humanitarian intervention, so the argument goes, reduces the risk of over commitment; it helps to maintain cooperation among the great powers; and it prevents the UN from becoming involved in ill-conceived operations (see Roberts and Zaum 2008)

But what explains why UN humanitarian interventions remain selective in the first place? Why is it that the UN has taken strong action to respond to some crises, like those in Northern Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Sierra Leone or—more recently Libya—but not to other like those in Colombia, Myanmar, Sudan, or—currently—Syria?

The scholarship on humanitarian intervention often argues that each humanitarian crisis (and the responses to them) is historically unique and therefore requires a case-by-case explanation. While I agree that attention should be paid to the specificities of each crisis, my research shows that the UN’s response to them is not random but follows remarkably consistent patterns (see Binder 2015, 2017). More specifically, I argue that a combination of four factors explains whether the United Nations does or does not take strong action (sanctions, ‘robust’ peacekeeping operations, military action) in response to a humanitarian crisis. This explanation has been developed and tested through a systematic comparative analysis of the UN’s response to more than 30 humanitarian crises after the end of the Cold War combined with several in-depth case studies of intervention decisions in the UN Security Council.

• The first explanatory factor is the extent of human suffering in a crisis. In a humanitarian crisis people suffer and die while human rights norms are massively violated. This generates a morally motivated pressure to come to the rescue of threatened populations and to defend international norms.

• Secondly, whether the UN intervenes depends on the extent to which a crisis spills over to neighbouring countries and regions. Humanitarian crises often affect neighbouring countries or regions in negative ways. Spill over effects include regional conflict diffusion, refugee flows, terrorism or economic downturn. Spill over effects create a material interest to intervene.

• The third explanatory factor for UN intervention is the ability of a target state to resist outside intervention. Militarily strong target states, or target states that have powerful allies, can raise the costs and risks of UN intervention and affect its chances of success.

• Fourth and finally, UN intervention is explained by the level of material and reputational resources the UN has committed to the resolution of a crisis in the past (sunk costs). To the extent that the UN have invested time, money, and diplomatic prestige in the resolution of the crisis, this creates the wish to protect these investments through continued or escalated involvement.

None of these explanatory factors is sufficient in itself to explain selective intervention. In combination, however, they provide a powerful explanation for the UN’s uneven response to humanitarian crises.

When does the UN take strong action?

The UN can be expected to take strong action—coercive measures including economic sanctions, ‘robust’ peacekeeping operation or (the authorization of) military action—if the extent of a humanitarian crisis (in terms of victims and internally displaced persons) is large, and if the organisation has committed substantial resources to its resolution. This, however, leads to intervention only when the crisis also generates substantial negative spill over effects (e.g., refugee flows) or when the target state of an intervention is weak and therefore unable to resist to outside intervention.

Explaining limited UN action (or inaction)

A limited response of the UN to a humanitarian crisis, such as UN observer missions, humanitarian assistance, or even complete inaction of the UN, is best explained by the ability of a potential target state to resist outside intervention (e.g., through military capabilities). However, other factors must be present as well. Military capabilities must be either complemented by a low level of previous UN involvement; or by a relatively low level of human suffering and spill over effect to neighbouring countries.

A few brief examples may help to illustrate how these four factors interact to lead to strong or limited UN action.

Bosnia

UN intervention in Bosnian crisis was clearly driven by a combination of motivational factors. For one, UN members were strongly concerned by the large-scale plight of the Bosnian civilian population and the grave human rights violations committed by the parties to the conflict (ethnic cleansing, the installation of concentration camps, the siege of Sarajevo, and the massacres at Srebrenica). Second, the intervention was motivated by the wish to prevent the crisis from spilling over to Western European countries, most notably in form of refugee flows, and to stop a more generalized destabilization of the Balkan region. A third important driver of UN intervention in Bosnia was the wish of UN member states to protect the tremendous investments both material (through humanitarian assistance and peacekeeping) and reputational (diplomatic efforts) the UN had made over the course of the conflict. However, when the Bosnian Serbs took hundreds of UNPROFOR blue helmets hostage, this brought the UN to the brink of failure and put the UN’s efforts in the Bosnian crisis in jeopardy. In this situation, rather than withdraw, the organisation escalated its response. Finally, outside intervention was facilitated by the inability of the Bosnian Serbs and the Serbian government to generate sufficient resistance against outside intervention by the UN (and later by NATO).

Cote d’Ivoire

Very similar motivational patterns can be observed with respect to the UN’s decision to authorize military intervention in the context of post-election violence in Côte d’Ivoire in 2010. The dramatic levels of internal displacement and the fears of genocide, given the xenophobic politics of ‘Ivoirité’ that characterized the conflict, raised strong humanitarian concern in the UN. At the same time, UN members wished to prevent the conflict from spilling over to other Western African countries, most notably to Liberia which was slowly recovering from a long and brutal civil war. Moreover, the substantial and longstanding involvement of the UN in the country generated an additional institutional dynamic pushing towards intervention. The UN had invested heavily in the resolution of the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire—most notably through peacekeeping and peacebuilding. UN members wished to protect these investments they saw at stake, should country relapse into civil war. Finally, former President Laurent Gbagbo and his supporters were too weak to effectively resist outside intervention in in the country. By the time the UN decided to authorize military action, large parts of the country were controlled by forces loyal to Gbagbo’s opponent Alassane Ouattara.

Libya

As in the crises in Bosnia and in Côte d’Ivoire, humanitarian intervention in Libya was driven by more than one factor. Muammar al Gaddafi’s public announcement to commit a massacre in the town of Benghazi generated particular pressure on the part of UN members to act. Concerns to prevent spill over effects also played an important role. In addition to destabilizing effects for neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia—both of which are undergoing important political change in the wake of the ‘Arab Spring’—Western UN members feared that hundreds of thousands of Libyan refugees would cross the Mediterranean towards Europe. At the same time, the Gaddafi regime was not in a strong position to resist outside intervention. Not only was there a capable opposition movement in the country, but also Tripoli had managed to alienate nearly all of its former Arab and African allies. Libya also lacked partners in the Security Council who might have opposed or blocked UN intervention. However, the Libyan case fails to provide strong support for the previous institutional involvement explanation in that the UN did not invest substantial material and immaterial resources to the resolution of the crisis prior to the intervention.

Syria

The ongoing crisis in Syria illustrates how a combination of factors prevents strong UN action. The available evidence suggests that massive human rights violations, the spiralling violence in the country as well as the severe spill over effect of the Syrian conflict for neighbouring countries, most notably Lebanon, raised strong concerns on the part of UN members. A majority of UN members have pushed for sanctions against the Assad regime in the UN Security Council. That the UN has nevertheless not taken strong action in Syria can be explained by two factors. First, unlike the cases discussed before, Syria is more able to resist outside intervention—most notably because the Assad regime enjoys the continued support of its Russian and Chinese allies, who block any coercive measures against Syria in the UN. Second, the UN has not been substantially involved in Syria in the past and has not committed substantial resources to the resolution of the crisis. As such, a complementary dynamic of escalating commitment could not unfold in the UN to push towards coercive measures.

Summary

Whether the UN intervenes or does not intervene in a humanitarian crisis cannot be explained by a single factor. Rather, a combination of conditions – the extent of human suffering, the level of spill over effects, the military strength of a target state and the extent to which the UN has been involved in a crisis before – accounts for this variation in UN action to a large extent. While the explanation I suggest here does not account for all UN responses to humanitarian crises, it covers more than 80% of the UN humanitarian interventions after the Cold War.

Martin Binder is Associate Professor in International Relations at the University of Reading. His research focuses on humanitarian intervention, the authority and legitimacy of international institutions, and rising powers. His work has been published in the Journal of Peace Research, International Studies Quarterly and International Theory, among others. His recent book The United Nations and the Politics of Selective Humanitarian Intervention has been published in 2017 with Palgrave Macmillan.

Summary

Despite considerable disarray continuing into its third month, the new US administration is showing more consistent, if not coherent, signs of how it will try to implement Donald Trump’s campaign proposals. In large part, these may be assessed as antithetical to a more sustainable security agenda, given that they promote military confrontation, undermine attempts to address climate change, and are, at best, incoherent in their response to economic inequality. Little of this translation to reality is likely to endear Trump to voters or his party. Greater policy turbulence, at home and abroad, should be expected ahead of mid-term elections next year.

Introduction

The Trump administration has been in power for 75 days; following the election campaign and the post-election transition it is now possible to get a reasonably clear picture of how its policies relating to security are taking shape. There has been much speculation that the United States will take a very different path to that of the Obama era, not least in relation to security and climate change, and since the United States is the world’s most powerful state it is appropriate to make an initial assessment of the changes as they may affect the sustainable security thinking with which ORG has been concerned for the last decade. Is the Trump era likely to make a major difference to the global security outlook or is it more likely that realities of international relations will limit the capacity for the change Trump seeks?

Sustainable Security

The ORG approach to security may be summarised:

Security challenges such as terrorism, crime and weapons proliferation cannot be successfully contained or controlled without understanding and addressing their root causes. ORG’s Sustainable Security concept takes a comprehensive, long-term approach that encompasses climate change, resource scarcity, militarisation, poverty, inequality and marginalisation.

As the thinking has developed it has tended to group the challenges into three main areas, economic relations, climate change, and militarisation, and these are convenient headings with which to make an initial assessment of the Trump era.

The issue of economic relations is seen as having as its greatest challenge the failure of the neoliberal approach to deliver economic justice, equity and emancipation, and the consequent growing divide between a relatively small minority of rather more than a billion people and the majority of the world’s population, with a clear rise in frustration and resentment among that majority at relative marginalisation and lack of life prospects.

In the environmental context, while a number of resource limitations and regional environmental impacts are important, the emphasis in the ORG analysis has to be on the most significant trend – climate change and especially its impact on human well-being especially as a result of severe effects on food production.

Finally, militarisation is seen partly in terms of a particularly entrenched and powerfully influential economic sector but most significantly as a culture in which the early use of military force is essential in maintaining the status quo, however unequal, unjust or unstable that order is.

In all cases, the ORG view is that these approaches are thoroughly inappropriate if we wish to avoid an unstable and violent world, and much more emphasis must be placed on the underlying causes of the problems and how they may be addressed. The failure of the current 15-year war on terror is the most grievous example, having led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of displaced people, at least three failed or failing states and a continuing perception of the threat of political violence in western countries. The question, simply, is how does the new Trump era affect the possibility of taking the wider view?

Economic Issues

The early indications are that the Trump administration is a potentially unstable mix of those best described as economic nationalists and others, especially in the wider Republican Party, who are convinced neoliberals. The latter may be dubious about any trend towards protectionism and believe that in a free market which already favours the wealthy such protectionism may turn out to be counter-productive. In this view, transnational corporate organisation is a fact of life and no country, not even the United States, can go its own way for long.

The economic nationalists, who are dominant within Trump’s inner policy circle, are very strongly convinced that the United States has sufficient power to dominate the markets that matter most. Furthermore, the whole Trump election platform was predicated on strong opposition to the perceived elite, an establishment that “ran” Washington. His appeal to those left behind, especially in the post-industrial American Mid-West, was probably the most important element in his successful election and it is an approach that will not readily be abandoned. At the same time, he was committed to policies that would reduce taxes while scaling down the Obamacare reforms – initially both popular with his supporters.

In the short-term Trump’s policies may be popular but it may be as little as a year before those left behind find that their predicament simply does not ease. Indeed, it is already becoming clear that health provision reforms will lead to many millions of Americans facing higher costs, including many of those who voted for Trump. More generally, economic nationalism may turn out to provide little gain for the country as the power of China and other major economies becomes more apparent. “America first” is simply not sustainable in a globalised world.

Even so, what has to be faced is that the Trump era will not see any fundamental challenge to the neoliberal system, precisely in a period when that system is proving unfit for purpose. What may perhaps be more relevant is how long the Trump approach in its present form persists. The degree of disorganisation currently apparent in so many areas within the White House is hardly encouraging in terms of stability, and it may well be that as the 2018 mid-sessional elections to the House and Senate draw nearer, Trump’s singularly soft Republican majority support in both Houses of Congress will lead to sudden changes of policy. These may not directly address core issues of inequality but could take much of the remaining lustre off the Trump approach.

Climate Change

This month has seen the very clear enactment of a number of policies that confirm that the Trump approach on climate change is one of denial coupled with the strong promotion of domestically-sourced fossil fuel resources. This is a highly negative approach for two reasons – there will be an increase in carbon emissions from the United States and a lack of leadership within the international community for addressing the considerable dangers stemming from climate change. This would seem disastrous for any hope of effectively preventing climate change but there are other very interesting factors at work.

Firstly, the reality of the dangers of uncontrollable climate change is far more recognised across the world than a decade ago. Many more states are accelerating their moves towards renewable energy sources, with the biggest emitter, China, making remarkable strides. Indeed, China may well see its way to playing a global leadership role. Secondly, the rapid developments in renewable energy technologies are making renewable sources far more economic, with many further developments coming closer to fruition. The effect of this is that renewable energy utilisation is now competing much more closely with fossil carbon sources and, as a consequence, there is a rapid increase in investment in renewables. More than half of all investment in electricity generation is now in renewables and in the United States and elsewhere there is far greater potential for employment in renewables than in fossil carbon sources.

Major problems remain including historic underinvestment in energy storage technologies and the need to cut carbon emissions by even more than most states currently accept, but the point here is that this is one area where there is every sign that Trump’s policies are obsolete and likely to ensure that the United States is left high and dry. Even in the face of that, though, the ideological certitude of the climate change deniers close to Trump means that the administration is unlikely to change. In short, the advent of the Trump era may limit the prospects for countering climate disruption but at least this will be another area where the Trump approach may be singularly counterproductive to any aim to make the United States the world leader.

Security

As with climate change, the first two-and-a-half months of the Trump administration have shown the translation of rhetoric into policy: control of migration, increased military spending and the more frequent use of force. Here, though, it is necessary to recall that the eight years of the Obama administration may have seen the withdrawal of US troops from substantial parts of the Middle East and Afghanistan but also saw the quiet transition to remote warfare with much greater use of air power, armed drones and Special Forces, not least in Libya and Iraq. The early signs are that Trump is expanding such operations rather than radically changing the posture and this includes even greater use of air power in the war against Islamic State (IS), as well as the deployment of even more Special Forces in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

These kinds of changes are being reflected in the manner in which the Pentagon is being given a much freer hand to conduct operations, but there are already consequences. A major raid in Yemen in late January failed to achieve its objective while also killing many civilians, and the much-expanded use of air strikes in Mosul in the past month has led to such an increase in civilian casualties that they are even being reported in the mainstream western media. Even so, such consequences are unlikely to carry any weight with Trump unless there are serious disasters involving US military personnel.

The risk of this has been limited until now but one factor that has received little attention is that Trump’s Pentagon is advocating, and indeed already initiating, a substantial increase in the number of “boots on the ground”. In Iraq this is no longer just Special Forces but regular troop deployments which include, for example, units from the 82^nd Airborne Division. Trump has also just agreed to give US forces in East Africa much more open powers to operate assaults on suspected al-Qaida-linked groups in southern Somalia, and there are also repeated calls for the Pentagon to expand its deployments in Afghanistan.

As with economic issues, such actions may be popular with Trump supporters in the short term, examples of forceful action in the task of “Making America Great Again”, but based on the failures of the last fifteen years, the longer-term impact may be very different. What it does mean, though, is that as the United States seriously expands in overseas military operations then its close allies such as Britain will have to face up to whether they are willing to maintain their commitments.

Conclusion

These are, indeed, different times and with all three aspects of the sustainable security challenge the election of Trump is likely to exacerbate ingrained problems. At the same time, his policies may become increasingly irrelevant concerning climate change and his economic popularity with his supporters may also erode quickly. This may well increase the temptation to use foreign military action to distract voters from domestic discontents. However, even in the military dimension there are unlikely to be any quick wins and Trump’s direction of travel means that his allies could quickly come under domestic political pressure if they were to stay closely aligned with the United States. In any case, the need to rethink our attitudes to security remains critical and it is best to see the advent of the Trump era as a period when even more opportunity for creative, critical and independent rethinking of security will be essential.

Paul Rogers is Global Security Consultant to Oxford Research Group and Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. His ‘Monthly Global Security Briefings’ are available from our website. His new book Irregular War: ISIS and the New Threats from the Margins will be published by I B Tauris in June 2016. These briefings are circulated free of charge for non-profit use, but please consider making a donation to ORG, if you are able to do so.

By Wim Zwijnenburg and Doug Weir

Is the US backpedalling on its use of depleted uranium (DU) rounds? There are indications that the use of these highly toxic munitions could increasingly be a political liability for the US, with countries affected by DU, like Iraq, other UN Member States, and populations in contaminated areas all expressing concerns over its use and impact. But stigmatisation, although important, is not enough on its own – in order to make sustained progress on accountability and in reducing civilian harm, a broader framework that addresses all toxic remnants of war is needed.

In a recent policy change, the Pentagon stated that it has not, and will not use DU in Iraq and Syria during Operation Inherent Resolve. The decision, which was cautiously welcomed by campaigners, contrasted with a statement made in October 2014, when the US announced the deployment of A-10 gunships to the conflict. The standard combat load for the A-10’s cannon includes a 30mm DU armour-piercing incendiary round, and in autumn 2014 a US Air Forces spokesperson said that the Air Force was ready to use DU again in Iraq and Syria.

Iraq is no stranger to DU: at least 404,000kg of the radioactive and chemically toxic heavy metal was fired in the country in 1991 and 2003. The fine dust created by DU impacts presents a hazard to civilians if inhaled, and both the dust and fragments of the ammunition can contaminate soil, vehicles and buildings. As DU particles are environmentally persistent, DU’s legacy can last long after conflicts end. Exposure to DU has been linked to increases of cancers and congenital birth defects in areas of Iraq that saw heavy fighting.

Yet despite long-running concerns voiced by Iraqi civilians and international advocates, no robust civilian health studies have ever been undertaken in Iraq to determine this link. Progress on clean-up operations has been slow, and has been hindered by the US’ refusal to provide comprehensive targeting data to UN organisations and the Iraqi government.

The evolving use of DU

The A-10 gunship has long been promoted as a “tank killer”, with the US arguing that DU ammunition is crucial for this function. Justifying the apparent U-turn over Inherent Resolve, a US public affairs official explained that: “The ammunition is developed to destroy tanks on a conventional battlefield. Daesh [Islamic State] does not possess large numbers of tanks.”

While its original Cold War close air support role did primarily concern the destruction of Soviet tanks and armoured vehicles, even then there were questions over the legality of DU. As a result, a 1976 legal review undertaken by the United States Air Force of the A-10’s DU ammunition sought to ensure that it was not used in populated areas and to restrict its use to armoured targets.

However, the role of the A-10 has evolved since the 1970s, as has its range of targets. This was clear from data from the 2003 Iraq War, acquired by PAX in 2014. It revealed DU use by A-10s against anti-aircraft guns, buildings, trucks and un-mounted troops. Data on targets from the conflicts in the Balkans painted a similar picture. With the A-10s role evolving from attacks on armour to more general close air support, aircraft were often called in for a broader range of operations, this led to DU being used against other targets, even in densely populated areas. Once loaded with the standard combat mix, a mixture of DU and high explosive rounds, it is impossible to change the type of munitions in flight for attacks against non-armoured targets of opportunity, thus heightening the risk of exposure to civilians close to other targets.

Recently published figures on the 4,817 targets selected by US CENTCOM show that more than 120 tanks and armoured vehicles were destroyed in the first six months of the air campaign. There was therefore ample opportunity for the A-10 and its DU rounds to “kill tanks”, yet the US subsequently chose not to equip its A-10s with DU. Could this change in posture have more to do with a changing political environment, and in particular the growing stigmatisation of DU, than military calculations alone?

Stigmatisation

More than two decades after its first use in Kuwait and Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War, concern over the humanitarian and environmental legacy of DU has gradually increased.

In recent years, legislation banning the weapons has been introduced in Belgium and Costa Rica. The European Parliament has also issued a number of resolutions calling for a moratorium on use and, most recently, a common EU position in favour of a ban. Since 2007, five UN General Assembly resolutions have been passed by large majorities. These have highlighted DU’s potential health risks, called for the release of targeting data to allow clean-up, for a precautionary approach to DU’s post-conflict management and, in 2014, for international assistance for states affected by DU use. This last resolution was supported by 150 states and opposed by just four, including the US. In addition to establishing soft law norms on DU, the process has also created a platform for an increasing number of states to voice their concerns over the weapons.

Perhaps the most influential of these was from Iraq in March 2014, where its government expressed:

[D]eep concern over the harmful effects of the use in wars and armed struggles of armaments and ammunitions containing depleted uranium, which constitute a danger to human beings and the environment.

The Iraqi government called for the UN, its specialised agencies, member states and civil society to take a proactive approach to the issue and to condemn DU use. They also argued for:

[A] binding and verifiable international treaty prohibiting the use, possession, transfer and trafficking of such armaments and ammunitions.

Clearly then, the further use of DU munitions by the US in Iraq would have been viewed as unacceptable by the Iraqi government, and would have been likely to result in further criticism of the increasingly controversial munitions.

Leaving through the back door?

Could the changing political climate be influencing US policy on DU? The US had previously come under pressure from civil society campaign the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW) in 2011 over fears that DU would be used against Gaddafi’s tanks in Libya. Recent evidence of DU’s international stigmatisation has come, ironically, from the Joint Strike Fighter, which is supposed to replace the ageing A-10 in its close air support role – a decision that is proving controversial in the US. During the fighter’s development, project partners including Australia, Norway and Denmark expressed concern over the US proposal that it would use a DU round, insisting that an alternative material be found. DU was eventually ruled out, as were other toxic metals such as beryllium. Elsewhere there are signs of shift away from DU in the US’s other medium-calibre ammunition.

In 2008, just a year after the first UN General Assembly resolution, the US Army Environmental Policy Institute (AEPI) argued that alternatives were needed, stating that ‘the military should continue pursuing R&D for substitutes and be prepared for increased political pressure for current and past battlefield cleanup’. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of several bodies researching less toxic materials, and in December 2014, published a new advance in manufacturing nanocrystalline tungsten alloys, which results in a material with similar properties to DU. DU’s toxicity is a key driver for this research.

While changes in procurement policies are slow, decisions like that taken over Inherent Resolve are tangible signs that international pressure is changing DU policy. Nevertheless, the emerging threshold of acceptability for DU use remains poorly defined and it is unlikely that the US will seek to clarify it any time soon. Operation-specific factors – such as Iraq’s clear position in favour of a ban – are also likely to remain important in determining whether DU is used or not. Backlash over veteran exposure, community opposition and financial liabilities associated with former testing ranges may also influence policy within the US.

The way forward

Welcome as these developments are, they serve to highlight the current lack of formal obligations for post-conflict DU clearance and victim assistance. Unlike explosive remnants of war, and in spite of the soft norms developing at the UN General Assembly, accountability and assistance for past DU use is underdeveloped and requires attention from both civil society and the international community.

As was the case with anti-personnel landmines, it will not be enough to simply stop DU being deployed. Protecting civilians requires that its legacy is also dealt with. DU remediation is costly and technically challenging, and states recovering from conflict require assistance to implement effective programmes.

More broadly, DU is just one of a number of toxic munitions constituents, and munitions just one of a wide range of pollutants generated by conflict. These toxic remnants of war pose a threat to human and environmental health before, during and after conflict. Efforts to minimise the practices that generate them and work to ensure that their impact is properly assessed and responded to could contribute greatly to not only the protection of civilians but also of the environment upon which they depend. Tackling the causes and legacy of conflict pollution also provides a welcome opportunity to creatively merge the environment, public health, human rights and humanitarian disarmament in response to the toxic footprint of modern warfare.

Wim Zwijnenburg works as a Program Leader Security & Disarmament for PAX, a Dutch peace organisation. He has a research program in Iraq on the impact of depleted uranium munitions, works on Toxic Remnants of War in Syria, emerging military technologies such as (armed) drones, and is supporting the Control Arms campaign in regulating the global arms trade.

Doug Weir is the Coordinator of the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons, a global coalition seeking a ban on the use of DU and for assistance to communities affected by its use. He also manages the Toxic Remnants of War Project, which explores state responsibility for the toxic legacy of military activities. 

 

Featured image: A tank destroyed and contaminated with DU in 2003 near Basrah. Credit: UK Ministry of Defence

In Africa, former child soldiers are often stigmatized and considered impure by the people they once lived among. But religious rituals, in the form of spiritual purification, can help reintegrate former fighters back into communities.

Author’s note: The statements cited in the text are a combination of the author’s own experiences as a former child soldier and his investigative research works with former child combatants, ECOMOG Soldiers, refugees, military officers, religious and tribal leaders in Northern Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, South Sudan, Mali and Côte d’Ivoire. All respondents, including children currently serving prison term in Giwa Barrack and those in 5th Battalion Operational Ground Headquarters, Gubio Northeast Maiduguri, Nigeria; gave consent for the interviews and publication. Most children in Northern Nigeria pleaded that we tell the world what has happened to them; however, the information they have provided will be published in an upcoming publication.

Introduction

The involvement of children in armed conflict has raised more questions than answers regarding the future of Africa. Child soldiering is strictly prohibited in international law, yet over 500,000 children in conflict hotspots are exposed to the worst forms of cruelty on the face of the earth. Governments and international bodies have discussed remedial policies, but have largely failed to formulate effective reintegration initiatives to tackle this serious problem. Part of this failure lies with inability of Western approaches to child soldiering, and more generally African conflict resolution, to address the local and religious settings of the people. This is a problem because whilst the highly religious nature of African societies can stigmatize former child soldiers, it can also provide a means to reintegrate them back into societies.

This article discusses a study conducted by the Charles Wratto Foundation in rural Liberia using local solutions to address local challenges. Among other experiments, indigenous religious purification rites were performed for the acceptance and reintegration of former child soldiers while tribal leaders and youth were trained to discuss tolerance and lead peace-building activities within their respective communities.

Mental health and child soldiers

Despite the wealth, security and comfort of stable societies, studies show that, on average, an estimated one million people commit suicide every year worldwide. The reasons for these suicides include, but are not limited to, an inability to deal with extreme emotional pain, divorce, physical and mental violence, low self-esteem and substance abuse. According to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, an estimated 22 deaths through suicide take place among US service men and women every day. In comparison, regardless being poorly trained or equipped for battle and conscripted to fight in guerrilla armies where they are subjected to serious mental and physical mistreatments, the development of a high suicide rate, if any, is yet to be seen among former child soldiers, particularly in Africa. Indeed, the harsh realities of war, has bestowed on these children the will to survive beyond our imagination.

Although researchers in the field of mental health eagerly and critically examine the behaviours of those formerly associated with child soldiers, it should be noted here that suicidal ideation, which is a thought, and suicide, meaning the action of taking one’s own life, are distinct and entirely different. Despite the evidence, the idea that a child soldier is scarred with mental disability and in no position to function as a normal human being has come to influence our thoughts, communities and, most importantly, our political and educational philosophies. Regrettably, it is based on this discourse that the youth and children associated with armed groups in post war Africa, are, for the most part, marginalized and excluded from national priorities including sustainable reintegration strategies.

The relevance of the indigenous approach

Contrary to the imaginative views of non-Africans, the wars on the African continent are not restricted to the uses of small weapons, drugs or alcohol alone; instead, they involve also deep-rooted and extreme tribal rituals practices that demand human or animal sacrifices believed to protect a warrior against an enemy in battle. Against this backdrop, there is no doubt that, from the point of view of a warlord, ritualistic oblations are strategies designed to strike fear and horror into the hearts and minds of their much larger and better-equipped enemy. However, once the gun beat ceases and peace treaties are signed, reintegration becomes a major challenge as the rural communities to which most of these children are returned to, hold religious purification in the highest esteem.

The returning soldiers are considered unholy, and, as such, required to undertake spiritual cleansing in order to sanctify themselves from the evils of war and appease the spirits of dead victims. These ceremonies are significant and symbolic as they acknowledged the vile practices that have occurred, and thus, serve as a deterrent to future reoccurrences. As is the case, refusal to perform these religious appeasements would be seen to contaminate the entire clan and lead them into misfortune. But there is more to the ritual than this. There is also a fundamental and unshakeable credence that the avenging spirits of those killed during the war, but were denied their place in the ancestral world due to the lack of a proper burial, possess the ability to harm their killers and community members. In this sense, it should be noted here that such impending danger, which includes, but not limited to, the reappearance of a victim’s ghost to his/her killer cannot be prevented or resolved by Western treatments as they are seen to hold no place in the spiritual realm. Undertaking these ritual rites does not necessary mean a child is mentally unstable, but above all else, it is a precondition for readmission into society.

The indigenous methodology applied

The traditional purification rites performed for the youth and children with military backgrounds were aimed at dealing with their wartime experiences as well as rebuilding their morality for the re-admission into society. Hence, the rituals performed varied depending on the extent of the child’s involvement in the war. While some rituals addressed those who participated in the war but did not kill, others were focused on murderers.

During these ceremonies, the former soldiers were isolated from their communities and taken to shrines and secret locations of spiritual significance, where they were given sacred herbal medicine to drink. There, the healers spoke to ancestral spirits who were believed to be unhappy and pleaded forgiveness on behalf of the youth and the community through incantations. Furthermore, they were taken to streams for sanctified baths and were told not to look back upon emerging from the river. Doing so was considered a way of reopening the door to the evil war spirits and inviting them to harm the person. Their clothes and other objects from the war were burnt or washed away in a river to symbolize an end to a life of violence and the beginning of a new peaceful life.

In addition, the healers pleaded with the spirits of the dead, asking them to forgive the community and the perpetrators which included protecting them from harm and illness. During the Liberian civil war, brutality grew to its worst when every rebel group attempted to instilled terror and wanted be viewed as the most dreaded fighting force in the country. Children lacking military experience were ordered to eat the hearts of their captured enemies if they desired to be invisible to bullets. However, given the scarcity of finding an enemy’s heart, the definition of an “enemy” was redefined from anyone opposing you in battle to those outside your ethnicity. Needless to say, this led to the deaths of many innocent people falsely accused of being “enemies.” Informed of these experiences and aware that the bleeding spirits of those innocent souls will hunt their killers, the healers performed separate ceremonies to appease the dead upon request by each perpetrator.

Conclusion

There is nothing wrong with Western approaches to conflict resolution in themselves. Nevertheless, the concepts and contexts under which they are employed to address conflicts in Africa undermine the social and religious settings of the people. Consequently, scarce and precious resources are wasted and achieving the overall objective of sustainable peace in a timely fashion becomes a major challenge. It is a known fact that Africans are extremely religious with each tribe having its own religious structure established on a set of beliefs that is impossible to separate from daily life. That being said, they have welcomed new ideas and foreign assistance.

However, foreigners could be exploited if they ignored the traditional structures or the systematic realties of the communities they find themselves in. For instance, the assumption by most donors and international organisations that children formerly associated with armed groups are mentally ill and need the help of Western psychiatrists isn’t just a delusion, which deepens the wounds of fragile communities, but more than this, it provides a platform for children, who were never recruited to fight as soldiers, to exploit humanitarian organisations due to a pre-meditated notion of the situation. NGOs will be told what they want to hear by those with no military background in an effort to claim the benefits of a child soldier. After all, they are all victims of war. Lets not forget, Western veterans were born and raised in much more stable societies while the children in armed conflict were born and raised in dreadful environments which they considered normal.

Here, they mastered the art of survival when serving not only as combat soldiers, but as leaders and strategic decision makers who have developed a high sense of intelligence and a reservoir of knowledge that can be put to constructive use during peace time. For this group of children, reintegration programs organized by representatives of foreign donors are perceived as dangerous and unnecessary given that these programs differentiates them as evil monsters, which doesn’t just ruin the possibility of future career opportunities, but also exposes them to retributions and increases family shame.

While a few find it challenging to adjust in society, the vast majority, including female fighters, concealed their true identities and reintegrated into society without the help of internal or external bodies. For the girls who wish to have a family, this remains a personal and well-kept secret as associating themselves with armed groups could destroy the chances of having a future husband. In addition, both girls and boys, some of whom may have financial means or a place to stay, do so with the knowledge of being perfectly fine and thus, see no reason to attract stigmatization and societal imagination by seeking medical or psychological assistance.

Children endure harsh realities during their time in combat, but regardless of the brutality involved, these experiences do not lead all child soldiers into psychological crises. Naturally, we would imagine post-traumatic disorders occuring given that we are so distracted and disconnected from these realities due to the very nature of our lifestyle. As a result, the inability to live without certain preferences limit our vision to either recognize nor connect with those possessing outstanding survival qualities and resilience.

Charles Wratto is a former child soldier and a Ph.D. candidate whose research focuses on Child Soldiering, Youth Peace-Building and Indigenous Dispute Resolution Mechanisms on Sub Saharan Africa. He is currently a lecturer assistant and an associate researcher at the Babes-Bolyai University’s Conflict Studies Centre, in Romania. As a former child soldier, and now a peace activist, Charles has experience working with youth and children in armed conflicts, victims of war as well as community and religious leaders on issues relating to youth participation in post-conflict reconstructions. He has given public lectures at several universities and organizations across three continents and spoken at numerous conferences on the use of children in war and its impact on our society. He is also the founder of the Charles Wratto Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to rescuing and helping war affected youth and children. In January 2014, “Think Outside the Box,” a Romanian New Agency, named Charles one of the four heroes of the year.

Community-led counterterrorism presents an untapped opportunity, as it recognises that religiously defined communities have a distinct role to play in responding to growing terrorist recruitment efforts in Europe and North America.

How is security against terrorism risk with a domestic origin to be created in an effective and sustainable way? The first instinct of many politicians, especially on the populist right, is to turn to the state and its diverse apparatus of police, military, and intelligence agencies as the canonical supplier of protection against violent risk. The so-called “travel ban” recently enacted in the United States is one example; the aggressive use of Section 44 stop and search powers in the United Kingdom is another.

But a different dynamic is often at play when terrorism incidents are in fact interdicted—a dynamic that the state and its agents are less keen to publicize:

• In 2008, British police arrested a man named Isa Ibrahim (né Andrew Philip), a convert to Islam, in Bristol, England, on the basis of information from the city’s Muslim community. A detective leading the investigation stated, “He was an unknown. Without the information from the community we may not have got to him. Without the community’s help he could have killed dozens of people.”

• On February 17, 2015, three teenagers from the Bethnal Green neighborhood of east London boarded flights from London’s Gatwick airport to Turkey with plans to join the Islamic State. Distraught, their families appealed for their return, but also criticized the Metropolitan Police for failing to share information that might have allowed parents and close friends to have intervened and thereby prevented the girls’ departure. Even if the state would have lacked the authority to act coercively against the girls, family members persuasion and appeals from close relations could have mitigated IS’ allure.

• In 2004, a Jamaican-born imam, Abdullah el-Faisal, was convicted in London of solicitation to murder and provocation of racial hatred. Yet a group of Salafists from Brixton had already brought el‑Faisal’s propaganda in favor of terrorism to the attention of London police some years earlier. The same Brixton-based Salafist group had also attempted (unsuccessfully) to persuade the English-born Richard Reid—later to secure renown as the ‘shoe bomber’—to reject el‑Faisal’s teachings.

In each of these examples—and they can be multiplied—a nongovernmental actor with ties of some sort to an alleged terrorism suspect independently took an action that mitigated the threat of terrorism without priming or prompting by the state. In almost every case, the sheer fact of daily interaction endowed the relevant actor with an epistemic or credibility advantage in comparison to the government. The resulting intervention, to be sure, was not always a success. Sometimes, it was not forceful enough. Other times, the state failed to follow through. But still, each intervention made a terrorist act less likely in expectation. At a minimum, these examples should provoke an investigation of what I call the social production of counterterrorism—social mechanisms external to state apparatus that are conducive to collective security against terrorism—to ascertain better its magnitude and significance, its causal predicates, and its policy entailments.

The social production of counterterrorism

Given the increasing claims made on behalf of state coercion and control, there is a pressing need to explore the potential theoretical or evidentiary foundations for an account of counterterrorism’s social production. In a series of articles, I have identified three causal mechanisms that might underwrite the social production of counterterrorism: ideological competition, ethical anchoring, and cooperative coproduction. Each works by changing the costs of terrorist groups’ action.  The first two involve raising the cost to terrorists of transparency at the moment of recruiting; the last involves raising the cost of opacity downstream.

First, ideological competition is the possibility that social action can raise the cost of terrorism by providing substitute forms of social solidarity and vehicles of collective political action. The ideological competition mechanism works through the disciplining effect of competition, which, as in any other domain, conduces to higher costs and smaller operating margins. A terrorist organization seeking to attain certain policy goals or appealing on the basis of particular foreign policy disputes must compete in a market of social movements, both political and religious. The greater the competition it faces, the more onerous its task.

By populating the marketplace of ideas more densely, ideological competition raises terrorism’s propagandizing and recruitment costs. At the same time, this mechanism is not free of risk: Perhaps a plurality of private associations that share the liminal political views—but not the penchant for violence—of terrorist organizations might instead hinder efforts to minimize terrorism risk. Beyond this enabling effect, an increase in the frequency of antiestablishment messaging by quietist but politically radical organizations may have the effect of legitimating terrorist organizations’ calls to arms. Ultimately, the net effect of ideological competition is an empirical question. The important point here is that ideological competition is at least a plausible candidate mechanism through which the social production of terrorism might work, even if its sign and magnitude may well vary according to circumstance.

A second way in which social action can prevent a person from even considering the possibility of violent political action is through the ethical anchoring effect of close affiliations. This mechanism hinges on the manner in which a network of friends, colleagues, and kin members can impose social pressure on an individual to eschew the use of violence for political ends. Political violence necessitates the violation of generally shared ethical commitments, which in turn can lead to breaches with otherwise close members of familial and social networks. To the extent that members of tight social networks reiterate and reinforce those ethical norms, with the implicit threat of ostracism and social sanction in the background, recruitment costs will be higher. And to the extent that these networks furnish affirmative role models, individuals will feel less need to seek out violent forms of social action in the first instance.

Finally, the possibility of cooperative coproduction focuses on the manner in which private individuals can substitute more fine-grained epistemic instruments for the blunter investigative methods government otherwise employs. Whereas ideological competition and ethical anchoring raise terrorist organizations’ front-end recruitment costs by increasing the price of effective publicity, this third species of social action against counterterrorism is valuable because it increases the cost of opacity during the period in which a terrorist group seeks to render its activities immune from public, and in particular official, scrutiny.

For example, members of the public will be better able than the state to interpret ambiguous and fragmentary social cues from otherwise scattered and disconnected individuals in their social milieu. In the case of the Brixton Salafis, there is some reason to believe that they were able to discern the difference between individuals drifting toward violence, as opposed to those becoming more religiously committed but quietist. Even if the state can develop an extensive and deep system of intelligence collection through electronic data, undercover agents, and paid informants, it is still not at all clear that these sources have the same epistemic competence in situating nuanced social actions in context as members of a close-knit community. Moreover, there is always a concern that the state apparatus itself will be captured by elements with a xenophobic or racist agenda.

Conclusion

Assuming these causal mechanisms are fruitful, can the state promote them? To date, states have not seriously considered how efforts to promote beneficial social action intersect with other policy efforts. Nor have they seriously considered how efforts to promote counterterrorism’s social production might interact with other security‑related policies.

The place to start in thinking about how to promote the social production of security is programs like the U.K.’s  Prevent  and the U.S.’s Countering Violent Extremism. These have been subject to considerable criticism, and have not succeeded in the main in fostering healthy relationships between Muslim communities and law enforcement. Often, quite the opposite has occurred. These programs, though, could be reengineered (with considerable effort) to be less directive, more inclusive, and more enabling of a range fof different voices.

Moreover, any government’s security strategy will inevitably have coercive elements. At times, these may work at cross-purposes with security’s social production. A government that is serious about security (as opposed to mere security theater) will carefully examine any such conflicts, and do its best to mitigate rather than exacerbate them.

Striving to achieve these policy goals at a moment when political pressures bend in a quite different direction will require vigorous argument and clear thinking in the coming years.

Aziz Huq is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School.

 

Two new reports surveying the strategic trends that are likely to shape the next few decades of global politics point very clearly to the prospect of a severely resource-constrained world. Released two days apart, both the new Chatham House report on Resource Futures and the US National Intelligence Council report on Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds raise a number of important questions relating to conflict and security.

According to the Chatham House report,

The spectre of resource insecurity has come back with a vengeance. The world is undergoing a period of intensified resource stress, driven in part by the scale and speed of demand growth from emerging economies and a decade of tight commodity markets. Poorly designed and short-sighted policies are also making things worse, not better. Whether or not resources are actually running out, the outlook is one of supply disruptions, volatile prices, accelerated environmental degradation and rising political tensions over resource access.

The report outlines what the authors refer to as volatility being “the new normal.” For this reason “High and fluctuating prices are spurring new waves of resource nationalism and making unilateral and bilateral responses more attractive.” This should be cause for concern, especially in relation to the ways in which the response of governments and other actors to scarcity (or at least perceptions of scarcity) can interact with existing tensions and conflicts between and within communities. As the report highlights, “In addition to efforts to reduce demand at home, governments and other actors have moved to ensure access to affordable resources, reshaping the landscape of international politics. The return to largely protectionist and beggar-thy-neighbour manoeuvres – often in reaction to short-term supply bottlenecks or perceptions of scarcities rather than actual ones – can act as fuel to the fire.”

As well as mapping the consumption and trade trends across a series of important resources, the report also discusses the impact of external variables such as population growth and climate change. These are “multiple stress factors” which “render countries vulnerable to different types of shocks such as environmental disasters, political unrest, violent conflict or economic crises – increasing both local and systemic risks. Such factors can create new tensions and flashpoints as well as exacerbating existing conflicts and divisions along ethnic and political lines.”

The report includes a section on resource conflict flashpoints (p. 114) which outlines fifteen different potential flashpoints relating to territorial/economic zone disputes in resource-rich areas, shared water resources and transboundary river systems and resource-related rebellion and insurgency. The report is also linked to an interactive website that maps some of these trends and potential flashpoints.

The day after this report was released, the US National Intelligence Council released their own on the key trends over the next twenty years that the United States will need to adapt to or try and shape in order to “think and plan for the long term so that negative futures do not occur and positive ones have a better chance of unfolding.”

Among other so-called mega trends such as urbanisation and changing demographics, the report echoes the Chatham House research by pointing to an increasingly complex situation in terms of global resources. The report argues that,

“We are not necessarily headed into a world of scarcities, but policymakers and their private sector partners will need to be proactive to avoid such a future. Many countries probably won’t have the wherewithal to avoid food and water shortages without massive help from outside. Tackling problems pertaining to one commodity won’t be possible without affecting supply and demand for the others.”

The key trend or ‘tectonic shift’ as the report calls it is that “demand for food is expected to rise at least 35 percent by 2030 while demand for water is expected to rise by 40 percent. Nearly half of the world’s population will live in areas experiencing severe water stress. Fragile states in Africa and the Middle East are most at risk of experiencing food and water shortages, but China and India are also vulnerable.”

While this may lead some towards overly pessimistic conclusions about a world defined by instability, human insecurity and geopolitical tensions, it is refreshing to see the NIC emphasising the importance of how the US can respond now. In his forward, the Council’s Chairman Christopher Kojm states that “We are at a critical juncture in human history, which could lead to widely contrasting futures. It is our contention that the future is not set in stone, but is malleable, the result of an interplay among megatrends, game-changers and, above all, human agency.” It is worth noting the deliberate use of the phrase ‘alternative worlds’ in the report.

While some degree of adaptation to these structural trends mapped out by both Chatham House and the National Intelligence Council will undoubtedly be necessary, the importance of both of these reports is that they remind us of the need for clear and far-sighted thinking on policy responses now. The worst case scenarios that these reports discuss are not inevitable and risks can be mitigated. National security policymakers will do well to study the scenarios outlined in these two impressive reports and to try and understand the drivers and ‘tipping points’ that lead to certain pathways. Both reports offer prescriptions for current decision makers (the Chatham House recommendations on ‘targeted resource dialogues’ and ‘coalitions of the committed’ are particularly worthwhile). While volatility and uncertainty might be the ‘new normal’ in global resource politics, one thing is entirely certain – inaction and ‘business-as-usual’ when facing “a critical juncture in human history” is a recipe for disaster.

Ben Zala is a Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Leicester.

Image source: Stayraw

El Salvador’s gang history dates back to the 1960s. At the time, numerous neighbourhood-based groups provided marginalised urban youths with the means to hang out, party, take drugs, and fight their rivals. These gangs constituted a nuisance for the affected residents but did not represent a public security threat. The situation drastically changed when the Central American civil wars ended and the United States stepped up its deportations of offending non-citizens, including members of Mara Salvatrucha (or MS-13) and Calle Dieciocho (18^th Street). Both gangs had been formed in Los Angeles’ immigrant barrios, a haven for Central American refugees some of whose children responded to difficult circumstances by joining existing gangs (such as the Dieciocho) or forming their own group (Mara Salvatrucha). Tired of the stresses of gang life, many deportees arrived in their country of origin hoping to make a fresh start. Faced with poor reinsertion opportunities, however, they continued with what they knew best. Their comparatively nice dress, money, and tales of gang exploits held a fascination that local adolescents found hard to resist. Soon the imported gangs absorbed their smaller counterparts and continued to grow, since widespread social exclusion made El Salvador fertile ground for gang proliferation. Over time gang members resorted to greater levels of violence and drug activity, but the country long lacked a full-fledged gang policy.

In 2003 – eight months before the 2004 presidential elections – President Francisco Flores of the conservative ARENA party launched Plan Mano Dura (“Strong Hand”), ostensibly to dismantle the gangs and curb the number of homicides, most of which had been attributed to these groups. Backed by considerable media publicity, the measure entailed not only area sweeps and joint police-military patrols, but was also accompanied by a temporary anti-gang law that permitted the arrest of suspected gang members on the basis of their physical appearance alone. Both the nature and the timing of the initiative suggested that it had been designed to improve the ruling party’s electoral position rather than to ensure effective gang control. Plan Mano Dura enjoyed huge support among a population that had become weary of permanent insecurity, but human rights defenders, judges, and opposition politicians criticised it for its abuses and neglect of prevention and rehabilitation. The measure helped ARENA win the elections, but the incoming administration of Antonio Saca responded to the earlier criticism by incorporating prevention and rehabilitation into his Plan Super Mano Dura. These alternative approaches, however, were a largely rhetorical concession since suppression remained the dominant strategy. Contrary to the official discourse of success, Mano Dura was spectacularly ineffective: the homicide rate escalated, and the gangs adapted to the climate of repression by toughening their entry requirements, adopting a more conventional look, and using heavier weaponry. More importantly, confinement in special prisons allowed gang members to strengthen group cohesion and structure. Moreover, the large-scale incarceration of gang members fuelled the need for more resources for both the inmates and their families and resulted in an upsurge in extortions, particularly in the transport sector.

By June 2009, when the government of ex-journalist Mauricio Funes and the FMLN (the former guerrilla army) came into power, the gang problem had become intractable. MS-13 and Dieciocho clicas (subgroups) sprawled hundreds of marginal urban communities, their members committed a variety of crimes – ranging from threats, robbery, injuries, auto theft, and the illegal carrying of firearms to drug sales, extortions, rapes, kidnappings, and homicides – and their violence had become increasingly diffuse and brutal. The Funes government announced a comprehensive crime policy comprising social prevention, law enforcement, rehabilitation, victim support, and institutional and legal reforms. The strategy, however, is underfunded (state coffers had been plundered by previous administrations), and gangs are being tackled through the overall crime policy rather than a specific gang programme. The police – now under a new command – has stopped conducting mass raids in gang-affected zones and begun to strengthen its investigative capacity. These are promising steps, but events on the ground soon pushed policy in another direction. Public demands for a quick reduction of homicides and media coverage alleging government incompetence led President Funes in November 2009 to deploy the army. Military participation in public security tasks is no recent development. At present, however, the army has been given broader powers, permitting it to conduct patrols, perform searches, and arrest criminals caught red-handed as well as to maintain perimeter security at the prisons. In what appears to be a face-saving gesture, the Funes administration adopted a gang strategy that exhibits ominous parallels with the earlier Mano Dura policies. Meanwhile, prevention and rehabilitation have once again taken the backseat.

Sonja Wolf is a Researcher at the Instituto para la Seguridad y la Democracia in Mexico City, where she conducts research on security and migration issues in Mexico and Central America.

Image source: VCK xD

There are strong calls to give UN peacekeeping operations more robust mandates to engage in counter-terrorism tasks. But the idea of UN peacekeepers conducting counter-terrorism operations is not without its problems.

Terrorist attacks have been increasing rapidly over the last decade. According to the Global Terrorism Index, 29,376 people were killed in terrorist attacks in 2015. This was the second deadliest year after 2014, when 32,765 people were killed. The spike in 2014 and decline in 2015 is largely a result of the rise and subsequent weakening of Boko Haram and the Islamic State (IS).

Fatigue after long engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq and the continued impact of the financial crisis has significantly dampened the interest in new out-of-area operations among Western member states. At the same time, the threats of terrorism and migration remain at the top of the foreign policy agenda. It is in this environment that policy makers are turning to the UN, to see what role it can play in the global security burden-sharing. This means a more transactional relationship with the UN, not necessarily considering the longer-term impact of undermining its impartiality and legitimacy.

UN peacekeeping operations have, during the last decade, been deployed to protect civilians in increasingly unstable conflicts, most often without a peace to keep. However, although the conflicts have been asymmetrical in nature, armed groups have seldom perceived the UN as a party to the conflict, and pursued a strategy of strategic targeting of its troops, police and civilians.

The Case of Mali

In March 2012, a coalition of rebel and Islamist groups took control of the north of Mali in the wake of a coup. On April 6, 2012, the rebels proclaimed the independence of the ‘Republic of Azawad’ and the imposition of sharia law in northern Mali. 412,000 persons had fled their homes and had become internally displaced or moved across the border to Mauritania, the Niger and Burkina Faso. By November 2012, Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had taken control of Timbuktu and Tessalit, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) had taken control of Douentza, Gao, Menaka, Ansongo and Gourma, and Kidal was under the control of the Islamist group Ansar Dine (“defenders of the faith”).

The Islamists and rebel groups were quickly conquered and fled to the far north of Mali after a short and swift intervention in the beginning of 2013 by the French Opération Serval, in cooperation with the African-led International Support Mission in Mali (AFISMA). To avoid being stuck in a long and bloody counterinsurgency, the French had pushed for a swift handover to the UN.

On 1 July 2013, AFISMA handed over authority to the UN multidimensional integrated stabilisation mission in Mali (MINUSMA). However, the Islamist groups have proven resilient and the operation has been struggling to deploy and implement its mandate. From its inception in 2013 until 31 January 2017, it has endured 72 fatalities due to hostile actions, including suicide attacks, mortar attacks and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The mission has been given increasingly robust mandates, and its most recent mandate ordered the mission to “…to stabilize the key population centres and other areas where civilians are at risk, notably in the North and Centre of Mali, and, in this regard, to enhance early warning, to anticipate, deter and counter threats, including asymmetric threats…”.

The mission is actively supporting counter-terrorism actions, as it has been preparing “targeting packs” and has been informally sharing information with the French parallel counter-terrorism operation Barkhane  (the French follow-on mission from Serval). This follows a trend towards peace enforcement that started with MONUSCO, where the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is now being mandated to “neutralize” identified rebel groups.

Future missions may be deployed to Libya, Syria and Yemen – countries that are also marked by asymmetric conflict and violent religious extremism. Against this backdrop, many member states are now arguing that UN peacekeeping operations need to reform to not only deal better with the challenges it faces in Mali, but also in future operations.

The high-level panel on peace operations, nominated by former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, strongly underscored that UN peacekeeping operations should not undertake “counter-terrorism operations”. However, the report left the back-door open, insofar as it argued that “UN peacekeeping missions, due to their composition and character, are not suited to engage in military counter-terrorism operations. They lack the specific equipment, intelligence, logistics, capabilities and specialized military preparation required, among other aspects.” Disregarding the principled arguments against moving UN peacekeeping in such a direction, this could indeed be read as a list of areas where reform is needed to enable UN peacekeeping to take on counter-terrorism tasks.

A Desirable Shift?

But what may the consequences be of taking UN peacekeeping operations in such a direction? First, UN peacekeeping missions are not likely to be able to perform counter-terrorism tasks in a satisfactory manner, militarily speaking. They are composed of troops from many different countries, and although they should provide a military deterrent against armed groups, they are not likely to be able to protect themselves against asymmetric attacks. Even small attacks can lead to the withdrawal of troops by troop-contributing countries, as most of these do not have the political interest needed to be able to sustain losses. The exception to this are neighbouring countries, as these may have a political interest in the conflict, but precisely because of this fact they may also be interested to use force only against some and not all parties that threaten the peace.

The UN has been strongly criticised for not taking action to protect civilians, and the continued inaction has been used as an argument to make the UN more robust, as well as able to take on counter-terrorism tasks. However, this argument confuses the ability of the UN to protect civilians with counter-terrorism. In Mali, the mission is much busier protecting itself than protecting civilians. In fact, the recruitment to the terrorist groups is increasingly moving south in the country, as local populations are not experiencing a peace dividend or improving levels of participation and inclusion after the deployment of MINUSMA. Rather, they are experiencing a government that is continuing to marginalize significant groups of the population such as the Tuaregs in the North and the Fulani (also known as Peul) in the central regions of the country, and employ draconian counter-terrorism tactics.

The inclusion of neighbouring countries’ troops in UN peacekeeping missions was previously considered a red line. As seen with the example of MINUSMA, as well as UN peacekeeping missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan (to mention a few), this principle has fallen by the wayside. Taken together with the move towards UN peacekeeping missions taking on counter-terrorism tasks, this shows a trend towards a more partial UN in these situations, which may increasingly be rendered unable to play its vital good offices and humanitarian roles, and be a UN for all the people, not only the government of the day. The UN and member states should reverse this trend, and make sure that UN peacekeeping operations can serve in their most effective way – as a tool to keep the peace while institutions, service delivery and an inclusive and participatory state is being built.

John Karlsrud is the Manager of the Training for Peace program. He is on Twitter at @johnkarlsrud.

This article is part of a two-part series discussing Britain’s Trident nuclear programme and the influence it may be having on the country’s energy policy. Read part 2 here.

Following a majority vote of 355 in the House of Commons  in July 2016, the UK Government took the key decision to renew the Trident nuclear weapons system. Yet the issue remains controversial, with a wide variety of aspects persistently under scrutiny. At the forefront are debates over the costs of Trident renewal, which range from £31 billion (for the lowest estimates of submarine build costs alone) to over £200 billion when lifetime costs are considered.

With a host of other ethical, technical and strategic issues also abounding, controversy around UK nuclear weapons policy has intensified in recent years and months, including on the future vulnerability of nuclear submarines, the growing influence that the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) has over university research, the malfunction of a Trident missile test, and Theresa May’s decision to withhold this information from parliament ahead of the July 2016 vote. Not for the first time, support for Trident has come into tension with democratic transparency and accountability.

In this two-part article we focus on another non-military sector in which developments may be strongly – but nearly invisibly – conditioned, by ambitions to renew UK strategic nuclear weapons capabilities. The issue here is a widely identified ‘puzzle’ in UK energy policy – the persistent intensity of UK Government enthusiasm for what is actually in energy terms the seriously under-performing option of civil nuclear power. Based on official defence policy documents, it seems clear that UK commitments to nuclear energy are significantly influenced by pressures to sustain the skills and expertise perceived to be necessary for the country’s naval nuclear propulsion programme. Crucially, these military connections remain almost entirely unacknowledged in energy policy literatures. The implications thus extend beyond military and energy policy alone, to raise questions about British democracy more widely.

 The ‘puzzle’ of UK energy policy

In September 2016, after many years of setbacks, the decision was finally taken by UK Prime Minster Theresa May to give the green light for the construction of Hinkley Point C (HPC) nuclear power station in Somerset. This £24.5 billion initiative, largely financed by French and Chinese state-owned firms, constitutes one of the largest single infrastructure investments in British history. The announcement came less than a year after enactment of a “new direction” in UK energy policy, withdrawing support from several renewable and energy efficiency schemes and entrenching commitments to nuclear power. The relative scale and intensity of this British nuclear enthusiasm is a point of growing curiosity among international observers. Al Gore is “puzzled” by this and he is not the only one.

Official UK rationales for these persistent nuclear commitments are indeed puzzling. As government analyses have repeatedly shown, nuclear power is far from being the most favourable low carbon UK energy option. Britain is blessed with what the Department for Energy and Climate Change called “the best wind, wave and tidal resources in Europe”. Official figures repeatedly show HPC to be more expensive than comparable tranches of energy from wind and solar power. Arguments over the value of “base load” generation are repudiated by the National Grid. With nuclear construction times also massively longer and relative costs dropping radically for renewables, the mismatch looks set to exacerbate by the time HPC comes online.

Originally set for completion by Christmas 2017, HPC is now unlikely even to have started construction by then. Associated plans for a massive 16 GWe programme of new nuclear power by 2025 look even less likely. With UK renewable energy capacities in the meantime burgeoning despite a relative dearth of official support, energy security arguments would logically also favour a switch towards these “Cinderella options” to fill the gap left by nuclear delays. Yet, as prospects for resolving underperforming nuclear plans get ever more distant, increasingly favourable renewable projects remain paradoxically ever more threatened by cut-backs, leading to serious problems in that sector. Taken at face value, these patterns are difficult to explain.

The comparative weakness of UK civil nuclear

Looking at key international comparators, our research has illuminated these anomalies in more detail. The scale of the planned 16 GWe UK “nuclear renaissance” relative to the existing size of the national energy system, is unsurpassed anywhere in the world. With global investments in non-hydro renewables outstripping nuclear and fossil fuels combined, authoritative observers – including a UN Chief Scientist – argue that the world is moving in one direction (towards a renewables future), whilst the UK is moving in another. As a country with an unrivalled record of success in industrial policy, Germany offers a particularly compelling contrast. Despite hosting one of the best-performing nuclear industries in the world, the German Energiewende (energy transition policy) aims entirely to phase out nuclear power by 2022. Why should a country like the UK, with a far more attractive renewable resource and a far less competitive nuclear industry, persist in the reverse strategy?

Our research also finds that conventional theories concerning innovation and technological transitions predict, on the basis of economic and industrial considerations, Britain (not Germany), would be most expected to phase out nuclear power. Germany was a leader in nuclear innovation with German companies leading in reactor construction projects around the globe. The UK no longer has the industrial capability to construct new conventional civil nuclear reactors. German nuclear reactors have traditionally been some of the best performing in the world, while (as noted by the Environmental Audit Committee), the UK performs badly in international comparisons. The history of UK nuclear power is replete with a number of historic failures including the “major blunder” of the Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor (AGR) programme, a 15 GW new build programme announced in 1979 where only one reactor was built, and the “financial collapse” of privatised nuclear signalled by the bailing out of British Energy.

Factors that may explain why British and German policies have pursued such counter-intuitive trajectories go well beyond energy-specific issues – involving (for instance) the relative strengths of democracy in the two countries. Disembedding an entrenched industrial system like nuclear power requires enormous political leverage. This is difficult to achieve without strongly democratic institutions and wider capacities for vigorous critical debate. German levels of participation, subsidiarity, civic responsiveness and central accountability are repeatedly rated in international surveys to surpass corresponding qualities of democracy in the UK.

The UK as a military nuclear power

There is, however, another key difference between these two countries which arguably helps explain this pattern: the two countries’ contrasting enthusiasm for military nuclear capabilities. Although it hosts US air-launched nuclear weapons under NATO nuclear-sharing agreements, Germany has no apparent commitments or ambitions to develop its own nuclear-armed or nuclear-powered military capabilities. Conversely, the UK has retained a remarkable industrial and technological infrastructure for maintaining a ‘continuous-at-sea-nuclear-deterrent’ since the late 1960s.  Even a cursory familiarity with UK politics shows how essential this capability is perceived to be, under a particular post-colonial vision of an ‘outsized power’ that ‘punches above its weight’ on the world stage.

This cherished feature of elite UK national identity comes at significant cost. Nuclear-powered submarines are a particularly burdensome element of these ambitions. With their stealth, range and robustness viewed as essential to the military credibility of strategic nuclear weapons, these are among the most complex and demanding of manufactured artefacts – each comparable in complexity to the space shuttle. Yet security sensitivities preclude much of the kind of specialist outsourcing of production that is routine in other industries, as made explicit in the (still current) 2005 Defence Industrial Strategy. So despite a diminishing, ever more globally-integrated manufacturing base, Britain must somehow finance exclusive national capabilities in this most demanding of areas.

With the sensitive nature of the military nuclear sector, obviously limiting opportunities directly to cover these costs through exports, it is becoming ever more difficult to maintain the national reservoirs of specialist expertise, education, training, skills, production, design and regulatory capacities necessary to sustain UK nuclear submarine infrastructures. It is here that even second- and third-tier roles for British submarine industry firms in parallel supply chains for civilian nuclear power, could make all the difference. Perhaps it is a particular militaristic vision of national prestige on the world stage, then, that might help explain why the UK Government is evidently so relaxed about the otherwise insupportable additional costs of civil nuclear power?

Here, further illumination may be found in another UK energy policy puzzle: the Blair government’s unexplained ‘U-turn’ on nuclear energy policy where the technology went from being declared “unattractive” in 2003 to being firmly back on the agenda in 2006 in one of the most abrupt policy turnarounds in UK history. It is during this period that the obscure imperatives around national submarine capabilities come to the fore. We explore this critical juncture in Part 2.

Phil Johnstone is Research Fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU),  the University of Sussex. His current research is focussed on disruptive innovation in the energy systems of Denmark, the UK and Germany. Previously Phil worked on the Discontinuity in Technological Systems (DiscGo) project and is a member of the Sussex Energy Group (SEG). 

Andy Stirling is a professor in SPRU and co-directs the STEPS Centre at Sussex University. An interdisciplinary researcher with a background in natural and social science, he has served on many EU and UK advisory bodies on issues of around science policy and emerging technologies.

A version of this article was originally published on Paul Roger’s column on openDemocracy on 11 September 2014.

Soon after the start of the Iraq war in March 2003, I wrote of the risk of a “thirty-year war” in the Middle East. More than eleven years on – and after thirteen years of the “war on terror” – Barack Obama has now committed the United States to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State with “a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy”.

This will be a long-term project that goes way beyond Obama’s own second term, and thus his 10 September Address to the Nation may be the most important speech of his presidency. Beyond that, it is likely to be the prelude to two more decades of war – and perhaps even on to that thirty-year timescale.

The BBC summarises the strategy as Obama outlined it:

* A systematic campaign of airstrikes against IS targets “wherever they are”, including in Syria;

* Increased support for allied ground forces fighting against IS – but not President Assad of Syria;

* More counter-terrorism efforts to cut off the group’s funding and help stem the flow of fighters into the Middle East;

* Continuing humanitarian assistance to civilians affected by the IS advance.

The Iraq element of this strategy has already been underway for a month, with at least 154 airstrikes by 10 September.  An initial analysis of the targets attacked shows that the Islamic State paramilitaries are lightly armed, highly mobile and prone to use commercial vehicles for much of their mobility. They have acquired US weapons, not least from overrunning Iraqi army bases, but they use these sparingly. A Breaking Defense analysis suggests that their capabilities would be limited against well-protected and well-armed defenders, but that their versatility would make it difficult for air-strikes to degrade and ultimately destroy them.

Tip-toeing back into Iraq

The United States intention is to work with other states, including the Iraqi government and the Iranian (though that is not admitted in public). Also it already has its own substantial forces in the region, primarily air and naval power. The latter includes the George H W Bush carrier battle-group in the Persian Gulf and the USS Cole cruise-missile-armed destroyer in the eastern Mediterranean. The USS Cole itself was an early victim of an al-Qaida-linked operation when it was bombed in Aden harbour in October 2000, killing seventeen American sailors and injuring thirty-nine.

The US airforce has even stronger forces available: air-bases in Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey as well as facilities in Jordan. It could also utilise the large UK base at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. President Obama has stated that the US operations will differ greatly from the “boots-on-the-ground” wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with their deploymernt of huge numbers of ground troops. More indicative of what is intended are the operations in Yemen and Somalia, with their heavy reliance on armed-drones, special forces, and aid to local militias.

In each of these examples, though, early successes have been followed by regroupings of opponents. The Yemeni government is currently struggling to cope with a resurgent al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Al-Shabaab in Somalia may have been excluded from some of the country’s few large urban areas, but it has influence across swathes of countryside as well as regional abilities through to Kenya and beyond.

In any case, the US secretary of state John Kerry has acknowledged – in a revealing comment at a Baghdad press conference on 9 September – that in extreme circumstances, the United States might commit combat-troops on the ground in Iraq. Indeed, several hundred more US troops are already heading for Iraq, albeit reportedly for defensive purposes only; but special-forces units are likely to be already in the country, many of them involved directly in combat (though again this would never be acknowledged officially).

In the labyrinth

All this raises the issue of why the Islamic State’s paramilitary capabilities have come to the fore so rapidly and lethally. It remains a central question. The answer will determine how deeply the US and its coalition partners gets immersed in a new war, and relates quite strikingly to how the United States conducted the previous war in Iraq before the withdrawal of most of its forces in 2011.

The well-informed Guardian journalist Martin Chulov reports that at the core of the Islamic State’s paramilitary force is a tightly-knit group around its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Many of them are Iraqis who fought the American and British special forces in perhaps the most vicious phase of that singularly dirty war, which lasted for three years from late 2004.

At that time, the US joint special-operations command (JSOC) under General Stanley McChrystal was facing a relentless and capable insurgency inflicting huge US casualties. In response it developed a new form of network-centric warfare focusing on mobile special-force groups that were highly autonomous yet connected in “real time” to a wide range of intelligence capabilities.

The operation reached its peak in 2005 in the form of Task Force 145 (TF 145), comprising four groups working in four geographical locations around central Iraq. Three of the groups were based on US forces – SEAL Team 6 from the navy, a Delta squadron and a Ranger battalion. The fourth, Task Force Black, was organised around a British SAS squadron.

The entire JSOC operation was centred on rapid night-raids that killed or captured insurgent suspects. Those captured would often be subject to intensive interrogation (a.k.a. torture) – the results immediately used, sometimes within hours, to prompt further raids. Steve Niva, in his remarkable academic paper “Disappearing violence: JSOC and the Pentagon’s new cartography of networked warfare” in the journal Security Dialogue (June 2013) recounts: “By the summer of 2005, JSOC teams undertook an estimated 300 raids per month, hitting targets every night, eventually turning their focus to suspected local players and middle managers in insurgent networks”. A further valuable source is Mark Urban’s book Task Force Black (2010).

The learning game

The full death-toll among the insurgents is not known but believed to be in the thousands. More significant in this context, however, is that many tens of thousands of insurgents were detained by JSOC units and others. Some of them were kept for years in squalid conditions in huge prison-camps such as Camp Bucca, south of Basra – which at its peak had 20,000 inmates. Some of the prisoner abuse came to light at Abu Ghraib, but other centres were engaged as well in straightforward torture (one was the infamous “Black Room” at Camp Nana near Baghdad).

By 2009, Barack Obama had been elected president in the US and the war began to wind down. Most of the prisoners were released, including the current Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who may himself have been radicalised partly by his time in Camp Bucca. Nouri al-Maliki, prime minister of Iraq since 2006, was marginalising the Sunni minority. From the Sunni ranks arose a renewed extreme lslamist group in Iraq which developed into the Islamic State, linking increasingly from 2011 onwards with paramilitaries fighting Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

The Islamic State is thus part of a long-term evolution of a process that originated in Iraq in 2003, was badly knocked back by McChrystal’s JSOC forces by 2008, but has now re-emerged to provide the hardline core of a revived movement – veterans of urban conflict against well-trained and heavily-armed US troops, marines, and special forces.

These are people likely to have an intense hatred of the United States and its forces – coupled with a cold ability to avoid that hatred clouding their judgment. They will be people, including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi himself, who will positively welcome US military action, especially when it extends to the greater use of special forces and the even more welcome possibility of regular troops. These are individuals who survived intense air-attacks and special-force operations for years in Iraq. They will be prepared for what now, following Obama’s speech, is likely to ensue: a new phase in a very long war.

 

Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University and Global Security Consultant at Oxford Research Group.  He is the author of numerous books including Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on twitter at: @ProfPRogers 

Featured Image: Iraqi troops run through a smoke screen in Baqubah, central Iraq, 22 June 2007, followed by US troops from the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team. The action was part of Operation Arrowhead Ripper against al-Qaida in Iraq (precursor of Islamic State) as part of the 2006-07 Diyala Campaign. Source: Sgt. Armando Monroig, 5th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment, Tikrit (via Wikipedia)

February marked the 25^th anniversary of the Gulf War’s end. The intensity and magnitude of the allied coalition’s offensive, followed by the systematic destruction of Kuwaiti oil wells by retreating Iraqi troops, led to an unprecedented environmental disaster. Yet within two months, and in a first for international armed conflict, a post-war claims and remediation mechanism ─ the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) ─ was in place. Its aim was to not only help neighbouring states recover from the personal and financial losses inflicted during the war, but also to help repair the environmental damage caused. With protection for the environment in armed conflict under increasing scrutiny, it seems useful to re-examine how this mechanism worked.

Following the conflict, there was an expectation that reparations were due to neighbouring countries and Iraq’s oil revenues offered a ready source of finance. The UNCC was established and mandated to: “…process claims and pay compensation for losses and damage suffered as a direct result of Iraq’s unlawful invasion and occupation of Kuwait”. The 2.69 million claims it processed were categorised according to claimant and type of compensation sought. These ranged from individuals’ personal injury, deaths and financial losses, to costs incurred to neighbouring countries in housing refugees, to damage to businesses and governmental property. Last but not least, was the “F4” sub-category for “Environmental damage and depletion of natural resources”.

Using expert panels, the UNCC assessed 170 F4 claims from 12 States (Australia, Canada, Germany, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, UK and USA) and awarded US$5,261m ─ just 6.2% of that claimed ─ to 10 States in five instalments over as many years: the Dutch and Turkish claims were unsuccessful. Oversight of payments was strict, with regular reporting to establish that funds were used as specified. All payments have now been completed, although some projects will run until at least 2020.

Environmental Damage on a Massive Scale

The recognition of the F4 claims for remediation and restoration was unquestionably due to the highly visible environmental damage the conflict caused. Aside from the unexploded ordnance covering 3,500km², the footprint of the 700,000 allied troops, and the effect of millions of Iraqi, Kuwaiti and other refugees relocating to Jordan, Iran, Turkey and Syria; Kuwait and its neighbours suffered from the unique impact of the calculated use of oil as a weapon of war.

More than 700 oil wells were blown up, with most igniting, burning 6m barrels per day for nearly ten months. Damaged oil wells spewed crude oil, forming lakes covering at least 50km². Fallout from dispersing smoke plumes created a thick deposit known as tarcrete over 1,000km² of Kuwait’s deserts. Meanwhile, 11m barrels of crude oil from storage units, sabotaged pipelines and oil tankers spilled into the Persian Gulf, damaging 800km of coastline. The impact of the oil on air and land quality, terrestrial and marine habitats and biodiversity was immediate, severe and long-lasting, damaging natural resources and threatening human health.

Putting a Price on the Environment

Placing a financial value on the environment is no easier than defining what the environment is. As they counted the cost, affected countries submitting UNCC claims were clear that economic, social, public health and biodiversity concerns were all linked to environmental quality. States not only wanted to reinstate pre-war environmental conditions in heavily polluted areas, they also wanted to address the damage to land and natural resources, and the footprints of the military and refugees. Concerned about the health implications for their populations from pollution, they also sought acknowledgment of the risks, and funds for health monitoring.

The difficulty in assessing the monetary value of the damage was evident throughout the process. Both Iraq and the UNCC demanded that claims be supported by precise estimates, detailed costs and clear scientific evidence. The difficulties this presented, in the absence of an agreed framework to quantify damage, and debates over the quantity and quality of evidence, led to 94% of claims being dismissed.

The bulk of the claims from Jordan, Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia related to either oil spills or damage from oil well fires. Because of the visibility and immediacy of the damage, and the necessity for data gathering, monitoring and assessment claims were often upheld and remediation claims, which were reviewed later in the process, were considered favourably. Nevertheless the remediation costs, area calculations and baseline comparisons of pre-war environmental conditions were still debated and individually re-negotiated by the UNCC’s experts.

Claims for the degradation of natural resources such as groundwater, and the loss or damage of habitats due to population displacement proved less successful. This was partly due to the difficulties in quantifying the harm caused, and the uncertainty in assessing refugee numbers and their collective behaviour. The few non-regional States’ claims related to technical and expert services provided to Kuwait and its neighbours; these were just as hotly debated as other claims.

Claims linking the oil fires to human health risks considered the financial impact of long-term health problems and the additional deaths expected due to inhalation of the fires’ toxic fumes. However, due to the difficulty in meeting the evidentiary standard requiring harms to be the “the direct result of the invasion and occupation” these proved unsuccessful. Health monitoring and assessment projects were awarded funds, although the expert panels contested the methodologies and models they used to assess exposure, morbidity and mortality in Kuwait and Iran. Similarly, other claims relating to the impact of airborne particulates on land and heritage sites, including virtually all Syrian claims under “Transport and Dispersion of Air Pollution”, were also unsuccessful.

Post-war Remediation and Restoration are Still Incomplete

Although capping the oil wells took only nine months, damage has proved long-lasting. The varied composition of soils caused different contamination problems. Wet oil, dry oil and solid tarcrete remained depending on absorption levels, length and severity of exposure. Oil spills covered coastlines and invaded mudflats, killing wildlife and transforming habitats. Remediation was highly specialised, often complicated by weather and the saline conditions, and necessitated preliminary monitoring and assessment work. The technologies and remediation techniques used varied, including chemical oxidation, soil washing, tilling in mudflats, soil excavation, transportation, landfills and thermal treatment.

The necessary assessments slowed the claims process; Kuwait was still processing and awarding tender applications in 2013. Often, delays led to natural environmental changes in habitats, for example the colonisation of coastlines by algal mats, preventing their return to pre-war conditions. Such changes led to questions over what constituted successful remediation for these degraded and altered habitats, especially when remediation had not been initiated by the affected States prior to claims being filed – for instance Saudi Arabia’s duty to prevent and mitigate environmental damage was examined.

Recognising the long-term and technical nature of environmental remediation work, the UNCC mandated further monitoring until 2013 through the Follow-up Programme for Environmental Awards – now completed and wound up. Some national projects are still underway, relating to ordnance removal, the damage and stresses caused by refugee settlements and military camps and health monitoring. Other long-term works, including irrigation improvements, livestock management, soil improvements, re-vegetation, marine reserves, saltmarsh clear-up, wildlife re-introduction and protection continue in Iran, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Learning from the UNCC

That the UNCC process included the F4 environmental damage category at all was a step in the right direction, setting a precedent and demonstrating the importance of post-conflict environmental restoration. Although influenced by well-established peacetime environmental norms, the UNCC claims and awards process had limitations. But could its lessons be developed for environmental restoration after future conflicts?

One starting point would be to develop a common legal definition of the environment, derived from environmental and humanitarian principles. This could be used to help frame the necessity of preventing harm, and ensuring environmental restoration. Complementing this with a common framework for damage assessment could accelerate recovery and reduce harm by avoiding further damage resulting from delays in remediation. The framework would need to be developed as part of a post-conflict environmental mechanism, with claims and operations processed through an independent institution with a clear mandate.

To be successful, monitoring and clean-up operations should neither be dependent on the affected State’s finances, nor limited to post-conflict reparations. Ideally an international fund would be established and made available, not only to support public and environmental health monitoring throughout the conflict cycle, but also to ensure that urgent remediation and clean-up operations begin quickly.

Another lesson from the UNCC is that it is essential to go beyond the purely financial implications of damage and loss. A more comprehensive approach would also consider the direct and indirect consequences of environmental damage, linking environmental health with humanitarian protection, promoting ongoing health monitoring and re-instating post-war environmental governance.

Most of the UNCC decision-making process was not public, when instead it should have been accessible and transparent. “Non-claimant states, civil society and the media had no access at all. The panel’s proceedings were not open to public scrutiny”[1]. Today such opacity would run counter to the principles of the Aarhus Convention on access to information and participation in environmental decision-making, and act as a barrier to external scrutiny.

In spite of the UNCC, and the precedent that it set, the fact that 25 years on the environmental legacy of the Gulf War has still not been fully addressed is a stark reminder of the long-term impact that wartime environmental damage can have. Armed conflict not only degrades the natural environment and damages human health, it also harms environmental governance. While the UNCC model may not be applicable to all conflicts, its lessons highlight serious limitations in how the international community currently responds to the environmental consequences of conflict: limitations that must be addressed in the growing debate on strengthening the protection of the environment from the impact and legacy of armed conflict.

Laurence Menhinick is a research assistant with the Toxic Remnants of War Project, which studies the humanitarian and environmental impact of conflict pollution. The Project is a founding member of the Toxic Remnants of War Network, which advocates for a greater standard of environmental protection in armed conflict: @TRWNetwork. The author thanks Prof. Cymie Payne for her clarifications for this article.

[1] De Silva, A. L. M. (2014), Conflict Related Environmental Claims – A Critical Analysis of the UN Compensation Commission, Faculty of Law, University of Sydney, Australia p70 http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/10426

Drones continue to play important roles in conflicts around the world. In Africa, drones have been tested for civilian projects, but they have been largely absent from miltary operations. But will this always be the case?

With the enormous role drones have started playing in conflict areas around the world, it would not be unreasonable to think that, by now, African skies would be buzzing with them. There are many drones being tested for civilian projects in Africa, but for military purposes they are largely absent. Rather than being drones developed in Africa, these eyes in the skies can be traced back to French or American origin, with the occasional imported Chinese drone buzzing by. Why is this? Time for a short assessment on the state of drones in Africa and the challenges that lie ahead for local development and use of military drones.

Doing Good

Large parts of Africa are signified by vast distances and large swaths of difficult terrain combined with a lack of infrastructure. No wonder, then, that drones, with their ability to glide in a straight line over the jungles, hills, rivers and deserts for hours on end, have been considered part of a solution to many of Africa’s problems.

And they have solved some problems. Drones keep an eye out above herds of elephants and rhino’s in order to stop poaching, they help farmers tend their crops, and they deliver blood and medicine to remote hospitals. Even Facebook is using drones to bring internet to dark spots in Sub-Saharan Africa. So what about military purposes?

Security in Numbers

Africa’s security problems are heavily influenced by the aforementioned geographic factors. Securing remote villages is an incredibly difficult task. International crime organizations, guerilla movements, and terrorist groups can all cross the long porous borders that many African countries have, only to disappear in enormous areas of seemingly impassable terrain. For security too, the surveillance capabilities of drones can be very beneficial to African states. This idea is supported by UN peacekeeping chief Hervé Ladsous, who expanded the use of drones to peacekeeping missions throughout Africa after testing them above the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But aside from the UN, a few African states have taken control of their own drone deployment. Using the US Department of Defense categories, which separates drones according to their performance and capabilities, we can summarize the state of drones in Africa as follows:

• Not one country on the African continent uses drones that have medium altitude, long distance capability, such as the Reaper or Predator drone.

• Currently, 14 of 54 African states have used so called ‘Tactical’ drones, meaning drones that have low altitude and low endurance. These are mostly used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, such as the Scan Eagle.

• Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Ethiopia and South Africa have claimed that they are now developing their own drones. South Africa is the only African country with a significant history of developing and deploying them.

• Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa now have drones with lethal capability, while more states seek to acquire them. Egypt and Nigeria bought these from China, South Africa developed an armed version of its Seeker 400 line.

For security, then, the use of drones is expanding too, but overall, drone acquisitions remain relatively limited. It might be tempting to explain this lack of wide-spread drone use by pointing to the idea of a cash strapped African government, but the real reason lies with the way in which the money is being spent.

African Ways

Military budgets throughout Africa have been expanded significantly in the past eleven years, only to be interrupted by low oil prices. According to SIPRI, Chad and Uganda recently invested in Russian MiG fighter jets, Ethiopia purchased 200 Ukrainian T-72 tanks, and Somalia and Nigeria invested in tanks, planes, armored vehicles and fighter jets. Interestingly enough, investments in military drone systems are largely absent, even though these systems are providing a growing tactical advantage for modern armed forces. Armed drones have seen a particular use in intrastate conflict as their loitering and intelligence capabilities enable forces to effectively monitor areas for insurgents. This choice for conventional weapons can be explained in part by the different solutions African governments have for conflicts, compared to the West.

According to Prof. Ralph Rotte of the Aachen University, conventional weapons are favored over drones because they are better suited to the ways African governments fight civil wars. Western warfare is usually done by destroying the enemy while winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the local population. This occurs less often in African civil wars, where military forces focus on outmaneuvering and disrupting each other in order to sap morale and willpower, only to incorporate the exhausted enemy in a system of patronage. This kind of low-intensity fighting does not require the destruction of troops or long-loitering surveillance capability through highly advanced technology. Hence, drones have taken a backseat in military spending in favor of small arms and conventional weaponry.

Even in the few cases where African countries have tried to employ drones, a lack of maintenance, and limited institutional capability for intelligence sharing have grounded the few drones they had. This restricts the capability African states have in terms of tracking and identifying the locations of terrorist organizations such as Boko Haram, AQIM, ISIS and Al-Shabaab, which subsequently impacts the fight against these terror groups.

No wonder, then, that Western states have stepped in the counter-insurgency vacuum with their own drones. France now operates drones from Chad, Nigeria and Mali, and the United States (US) flies them from 14 locations throughout Africa, while in the process of constructing a drone base with a 100$ million dollar price-tag in Niger. But the Western drone-monopoly will likely not be a permanent fixture of Africa.

Drone Troubles

Despite the shamble state of African drones, it is only a matter of time before they do become widespread and used effectively by African governments. As mentioned previously, five African nations are already developing their own. Several others, such as Algeria, are looking to acquire armed drones from China.

Interest in using drones in Africa is growing, and the US has recently adopted a joint-statement together with 40 other countries on drone-exports, which will smooth the export of drone-technology. Even if Washington demands high regard for human rights from the countries that seek to acquire armed drones, Beijing won’t. Proliferation, then, either via import or local development, is bound to continue.

That drones still have a future in Africa is exemplified by Nigeria as well, which, after having its Israeli drones grounded by corruption, and its Chinese drone crashing while carrying missiles, finally committed a successful drone-strike on Boko Haram.

With the advent of African drones, the flaws of drones will also become a risk to security in Africa. The US has set dangerous precedents with its seemingly unlimited, obscure extra-judicial executions. In fact, UN Special Rapporteur Christof Heyns has warned that US drone strikes are undoing 50 years of international law. African states might be tempted to follow Washington’s lead, sending drones to neighboring states to stop those groups that abuse porous borders, without risking the lives of their own military forces. In turn, this cross-border activity might exacerbate conflict between states. Sounds farfetched? Just a few weeks ago India attacked terrorists in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, with the help of a drone. This surgical strike worsened the already poor relationship between the two countries.

Though current advanced strike-capable drones are reliant on a complex technological infrastructure, including satellites, and thus limit the number of States able to use them, other developments in the defense industry are focused on making smaller tactical drones capable for either armed use, or use them as loitering munitions that turn into kamikaze drones. These types of drones are more accessible for States that do not rely on high-tech networks to deploy them.

It’s also not difficult to imagine what armed drones can do in the hands of oppressive governments. If Barack Obama can take out people without due process, there is no reason why the likes of Omar al-Bashir or Robert Mugabe cannot do the same to their political opponents under the guise of “security”.

Then there is the question of whether drone-strikes can bring long-term security. New evidence suggests that more innocent civilians are being killed by drone strikes, and that communities are getting traumatized en masse. This might actually lead to an increase in militancy and terrorist activity, and thus only exacerbate the problem. African governments will have to be able to avoid the trap of drones as an ‘easy solution’, in order for drones to become a positive addition to stability and security.

Drone Danger Ahead

Drone development and imports are set to rise across Africa. With time, and through cooperation with the West and China, African military forces might develop the necessary technical know-how, organization and doctrine to deploy drones effectively. Because of the drone’s unique features, they might contribute greatly to security and stability across Africa.

But there is also an incredible risk of escalating conflict if drones are used wrongly. The low threshold for use of force that armed drones bring, combined with the cross-border nature of criminal and terrorist organizations in Africa, can pit countries against each other if drones are used recklessly in each other’s territory. Drones might also appeal to African states that seek to eliminate rebels or dissidents, without full realization that drone strikes can actually worsen a conflict both internally and with neighboring states.

The current use of drone strikes by the West sets the precedent for future abuse by African governments. The recent Joint Declaration on use and export of armed drones contains too many caveats, and the only African countries to sign it were Nigeria, Malawi, South Africa and the Seychelles. China was not a signatory to this declaration, even though it is the largest exporter of armed drones to Africa. Therefore, it’s imperative that the West becomes transparent about its use of drones, and that it (re-)establishes judicial norms and boundaries through which states can hold each other accountable. Stronger export control regimes, that include China, will be essential too. This will be necessary to prevent drone-chaos that we might otherwise see unfold in Africa in the near-future.

Foeke Postma works for PAX, a Dutch peace organization, focusing on the subject of drones and the proliferation thereof. He holds a MSc degree in Conflict Analysis & Conflict Resolution from George Mason University, and a MA degree in Conflict Analysis & Mediterranean Security from the University of Malta.

by Rebecca Sharkey and Laura Boillot

International momentum towards a treaty to ban nuclear weapons reached a milestone in the December 2014 Vienna conference. Even assuming that the UK does not initially sign up to such a treaty, it is subject to the pressures of a changing legal and political environment and could find its present position increasingly untenable – not least on the issue of Trident renewal.

The Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, held in December 2014, was the latest conference of the ‘humanitarian initiative’, following previous meetings in Norway and Mexico . Having fully explored the impact of a nuclear weapon detonation as well as the consequences of testing and production, the conference concluded with a pledge from the Austrian government to “fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons”. Since then, more than 50 countries have associated themselves with the Austrian Pledge and yet more are expected to join over the coming months, signalling readiness to begin negotiations for a treaty that outlaws nuclear weapons.

A ban treaty could be a straightforward legal instrument with prohibitions on the use, development and production, transfer, stockpiling, deployment of nuclear weapons and on assistance with these prohibited acts. It could require the elimination of nuclear weapons for states that possess them, with the specific processes for elimination being left for these states to agree when they are ready to do so. Treaty negotiations are a logical and compelling next step for states no longer willing to accept the status quo, and no longer prepared to wait for nuclear-armed states to lead on nuclear disarmament. In addition, civil society organisations across the world, under the banner of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) are putting increasing pressure on states to begin treaty negotiations immediately – even if nuclear-armed states may initially not wish to join.

Legal obligations

The UK and other nuclear-armed states have long expressed their desire for a nuclear weapon-free world. Alongside other nuclear-armed states, the UK has a legal obligation under article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to pursue ‘effective measures’ towards nuclear disarmament and ‘a treaty on general and complete disarmament’.

Despite this, there has been very slow progress so far towards nuclear disarmament, and nuclear-armed states continue to say that nuclear weapons are essential to their security doctrines. The UK advocates a ‘step-by-step’ approach towards nuclear disarmament, which has been marked by a lack of substantial progress. Most crucially, the UK government has seen this approach as compatible with getting new nuclear weapons. In 2007 UK Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed that “the Non-Proliferation Treaty… makes it absolutely clear that Britain has the right to possess nuclear weapons”. This bad faith reading of the treaty and continued investment in maintaining its arsenal of nuclear weapons raises concerns over the UK’s commitment towards fulfilling these legal obligations under the NPT. A significant recent development and challenge to this position is a Marshall Islands legal case, currently being taken against the UK and other states for failing to act on multilateral nuclear disarmament obligations.

In the run up to the NPT Review Conference, the UK government has argued vigorously that the proponents of a ban treaty are misguided, and that such a treaty would undermine the NPT. However, the absence of any evidence to substantiate this claim suggests that such an argument will ring hollow against the persistent pursuit of Trident renewal. If the UK government is sincerely committed to pursuing nuclear disarmament then there is no need for it to oppose the development of a treaty with that aim. A ban treaty would actually constitute a long-overdue implementation of the NPT: the momentum towards a ban treaty could be seen as a positive opportunity for the UK to take concrete steps towards nuclear disarmament by creating the right conditions and helping to fulfil its own NPT obligations, even if the UK chose not to sign up immediately.

Political pressure

The international humanitarian initiative has sparked interest and debate inside Westminster, even if the government initially claimed the initiative would ‘divert discussion and focus away from… practical steps’ towards nuclear weapons reduction. At a debate on Trident renewal in the House of Commons on 20 January 2015, eleven MPs raised the spectre of the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, with some specifically calling for a ban treaty.

With the final decision over the renewal of Trident due to be taken in 2016, the incoming 2015 government will be faced with taking a decision over the renewal of the UK’s nuclear weapons – at the same time that other states are most likely to be engaged in treaty negotiations that will rule those weapons illegal. This development will significantly increase the political costs of holding onto nuclear weapons and sinking even more money in their maintenance and modernisation. As Dame Joan Ruddock MP has stated, “a global ban on nuclear weapons would present the greatest challenge to UK renewal of Trident”.

Military cooperation

Continued possession of nuclear weapons when other militaries are rejecting them could also put strain on the UK’s relationships with some of its military allies. Whilst a ban treaty would not prevent a state that joins the treaty from being in a military alliance with a nuclear-armed state like the UK, it should require states not to assist in acts that are prohibited under the treaty. As such, it would require states parties to renounce any joint policy that envisions the development, stockpiling, or use of nuclear weapons.

There is however, no barrier to NATO member states’ adherence to a treaty banning nuclear weapons. The North Atlantic Treaty, which is a legally-binding instrument, makes no reference to nuclear weapons. And although NATO’s Strategic Concept does refer to nuclear weapons capabilities as part of its strategy, this is not a legally-binding document and would not prevent any NATO state from joining the ban treaty. Besides, the document gets revised and could be updated so as not to rely on nuclear weapons. The International Law and Policy Institute (ILPI) points out, “concerns about the political implications of such a treaty for NATO ignore historical variations in member state military policy and underestimate the value of a ban on nuclear weapons for promoting NATO’s ultimate aim: the security of its member states.”

There has not been a coherent and uniform NATO position towards the humanitarian initiative. All NATO states are members of the NPT and as such are committed to pursue ‘effective measures’ towards disarmament. So far, virtually all NATO states have taken part in one or more of the conferences on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons. After all, the humanitarian initiative was spearheaded by a NATO state – Norway. A ban treaty should in fact be seen as a positive step towards NATO’s long-term security goals.

Finance and investment

A nuclear weapons ban treaty could also help to increase the stigma and practical difficulties attached to nuclear weapons by prohibiting investment in their development. According to a 2014 report by PAX, 35 financial institutions in the UK invested over US$27bn in 28 nuclear weapons producing companies over the past 3 years. A number of UK companies are involved in the ongoing production and maintenance of the UK’s nuclear arsenal.

Prohibitions on assistance, such as financing the production of nuclear weapons, would mean that companies that produce nuclear weapons would find difficulty in securing financing to produce these weapons. As financial institutions move towards corporate socially responsible investments, many are anyhow adopting policies prohibiting investments in certain weapons, and this too will impact the producing companies and the states buying their products.

Even without an international ban treaty there have been successful efforts to promote disinvestment. A well-known example of a nuclear weapons boycott is the campaign initiated in the 1980s by Infact (now Corporate Accountability International) against General Electric (GE). GE had played a major role in nuclear weapons production since the Manhattan Project. The boycott resulted in significant financial losses for the company and damage to its brand. Ultimately, it was compelled to end its involvement in nuclear weapons work. More recently, Allied Irish Bank, named as an investor in the 2013 Don’t Bank on the Bomb report, had fully divested by the time the 2014 report was published.

A treaty signed by a majority of countries in the world that prohibits investment in the development, production, or testing of nuclear weapons would significantly increase pressure for many UK financial institutions to pull out their investments from companies that develop them. Past experience with the treaty that bans cluster munitions shows that the stigmatizing effect of outlawing weapons significantly reduces available financing for their production.

Conclusion

The conferences held as part of the humanitarian initiative have left no doubt over the severe and long-lasting effects that would result from a nuclear weapon detonation, as well as the devastation of lives and environment caused by testing and production. The resulting momentum created among the non nuclear-armed states to achieve a ban treaty is coupled with a conviction held by civil society and many states that a treaty can – and should – be achieved even if the nuclear-armed states do not join immediately. The UK should see the start of a treaty process as a positive development that is helping to foster the right conditions for its own nuclear disarmament, and that of other states too. But official responses notwithstanding, the climate surrounding the perceived status and security of nuclear weapons is changing – whether the UK government likes it or not.

Rebecca Sharkey is UK Co-ordinator at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Rebecca has worked on campaigns, communications, research and outreach at NGOs such as Freedom From Torture, the National Secular Society and the National Assembly Against Racism.

Laura Boillot is a Project Manager for Article 36. Laura previously worked as Campaign Manager and subsequently as Director of the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC). Prior to that she was a Program Officer for the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA).

Featured Image: Trident Nuclear Submarine HMS Victorious near Faslane, Scotland. Source: Flickr | UK Ministry of Defence

Hybrid warfare has become a popular term in academic, military and policy circles. But what does the term actually mean and how is this approach to warfare harnessed by state and non-state actors in practice?

The term hybrid warfare (HW) came into prominence in 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimea, part of the Ukraine, proceeded to support autonomist Russian-speakers in the Ukraine, and crushed some Ukrainian regular battalions in border clashes. Barely six months later, hundreds of miles to the southeast, a revitalized non-state actor, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) trounced the Iraqi Army in a ‘blitzkrieg’ that unraveled four Iraqi army divisions in the most humiliating defeat of an army since the Six Day War of June 1967. ISIS forces seized Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul located in the north, and proclaimed their caliphate there on June 29, 2014. These events were seen by many to be hybrid warfare in practice.

Since 2014 there has been an explosion of op-eds, policy statements, policy papers and academic papers on the concept of hybrid war. Despite this plethora of literature, there is still a serious need to establish a better definition of HW, to describe its characteristics, assess the term’s relevance, and address the distinction between hybrid warfare as it is practiced by states and by non-state actors. This article addresses such issues.

What is hybrid warfare?

Despite gaining prominence since 2014, HW has been used to describe changes in the character of warfare since around 2005. The term was used to describe Hezbollah’s strategy in the 2006 Lebanon War. But some observers and strategic analysts have even argued that its contemporary origins lie in the Balkan War and the unraveling of Yugoslavia. Others have argued that elements of hybridity have occurred in many wars since the rise of ‘civilized’ warfare. In other words, there is nothing ‘new under the sun,’ except yet another term to describe the familiar.

Defining HW has also been a matter of debate. While there are not as many definitions of HW as there are gainfully employed strategic thinkers (although at times it feels like it), it would be safe to say that there are as many definitions of the term and concept as there are countries worried by it or seeking to practice it. But even this is contestable too because a number of countries deny that what they actually practice hybrid warfare. Indeed, for Moscow ‘gibridnaya voina’ is what others (Western powers) have done to Russia. The definition I offer here derives largely from the various iterations of it by Frank Hoffman and others and from a variety of doctrinal manuals from the United States of America and those of other countries.  The term hybrid means something heterogeneous, multi-shaped or multi-varied. With respect to warfare, what does this mean? HW occurs when an actor practicing it against an opponent brings into play a ‘cocktail’ of conventional military capabilities, political warfare, terrorism, subversion, guerrilla warfare, organized crime, and, in contemporary times, cyber warfare. It may also include violations of international laws of war by the practitioner of hybrid warfare.

However, haven’t nations in the past used a ‘cocktail’ of measures against their opponents? Is it not true that Russia, which stands accused of using HW, is successor to a nation, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which used all kinds of measures and ‘skullduggery’ to advance its interests even times of peace? Hoffman argued that even though wars in the past, even the recent past, could also include both regular and irregular elements, these occurred in different places, were not coordinated, and often occurred in sequence or one after the other. In contemporary HW, all the above-listed elements are orchestrated to act in coordinated, coherent and often simultaneous ways. Hence, for the person or persons watching from outside as well as for the enemy, this ‘cocktail’ of measures – some designed to kill and others not to do so but just as deadly to morale and cohesion of the target — may become blurred into a unified force acting in a single and comprehensive battle-space. Thus, the practitioner of hybrid warfare achieves a synergistic effect against which the target is rendered hors de combat in lieu of a shooting war, before a shooting war starts, and during an actual war.

When the term first appeared to describe what a certain number analysts like Hoffman saw as emerging trends some of their colleagues literally sighed because they wondered – politely and often not so politely — whether the term added anything new to describe wars other than the purely conventional or symmetric force on force clashes between like armies. Others wondered whether the term added much to the existing plethora of terms that describe wars other than purely conventional: irregular, guerrilla, low-intensity, fourth generation, asymmetric, new wars, forever war, etc. I argue that each term has a purpose and most should have a specified life-span before gracefully disappearing into the shadows instead of lingering on like an unwanted guest. Each term brings out certain aspects of indirect war associated with particular technologies, operational art, tactics, environment and cultural context. The same holds true for HW; if it still in existence a decade from now, then strategists are a dull lot indeed. Indeed, HW is not a prediction of what future warfare is going to be like. In this context, we need to avoid the ‘reification’ of HW.

HW is also ‘transcultural.’ There are ways of warfare to be sure, but HW is not just Eurasian – Russian – or Oriental. This would be strategic ethnocentrism to borrow a recognized term from international relations scholar, Ken Booth. Russia is, indeed, right in arguing that the West, which sees itself as the target of HW, as being as much perpetrators of the genre as they are the victims. Russia perceives the West, rightly or wrongly, as making a ‘big issue’ of it in the last half decade because of the events in Ukraine where Moscow believes it has successfully blocked Western-inspired or even led HW against Russia’s resurgence. Ultimately, HW is a useful term because it draws out/highlights certain characteristics of contemporary warfare by states and non-state actors.

HW is not replacing inter-state conventional warfare. The dominance of inter-state conventional warfare between roughly 1645 and 1945 has always been buffeted by forms of warfare that have been given various names throughout this three hundred year history. Many of these forms have actually been nothing more than appendages to conventional warfare; and HW is but one of the latest terms to describe certain characteristics of the contemporary conflict environment.

Ultimately, though, HW is a useful term because it draws out/highlights certain characteristics of contemporary warfare by states and non-state actors.

State and non-state hybrid war

There are clear-cut differences between state and non-state hybrid warfare characteristics. Indeed, even the definition for state hybrid warfare might not fit what non-state actors do in terms of hybrid warfare. Russia is not the only state that has developed hybrid warfare capabilities; Iran, North Korea and China come to mind. Even here, we can see wide disparities in military power between these states that are alleged to be at the forefront of hybrid warfare developments. Similarly, IS was not the first to develop non-state hybrid warfare capabilities (nor will it be the last). In fact, when several American theorists, of whom the indefatigable former United States Marine Corps officer, Frank Hoffman, was in the lead in developing the concept, the focus was on groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

The output on hybrid warfare in 2014 and thereafter was almost overwhelmingly focused on the alleged hybrid warfare capabilities of these two distinctly different entities. This was, in fact, a huge problem: Russia on the one hand, and Islamic State are certainly not similar entities. Without meaning to state the obvious, one is a large and powerful legitimate state with a military establishment that has come out of the doldrums of the 1990s. Historically, the Russian military has engaged in some very innovative thinking, about which only a few Western experts are cognizant. For example, in the 18^th century the great soldier, Frederick the Great of Prussia, was derisive of Russian military prowess. The Russians quickly disabused him of this derision when the Russian army trounced him in a major battle. In the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet officers formulated some very innovative military ideas, which those interested in current Russian military theorizing are revisiting. A considerable amount of literature has appeared in the West to address the matter of Russian hybrid warfare over the course of the past three years. This has elicited some humor and denials on the part of the Russians. Russian commentators argue that Russia, does not wage hybrid warfare, and that it is actually the West that is waging war against Russia. Russia is responding and developing its own approach to contemporary warfare, which Russians refer to as ‘New Generation.’

For a state like Russia, hybrid warfare entails the composition of different elements of ways to wage war used simultaneously and in a coordinated manner to achieve one’s goals. If the measures work without leading to an extended or large-scale war or indeed lead to the achievement of the goals at stake below the threshold of the legal definition of war with the victim or the victim’s allies all the better as far as the state practitioner of hybrid war is concerned. Though the debate about evidence for Russia seeing contemporary warfare as being hybrid is still ongoing, for the sake of argument Russia’s hybrid capabilities as exhibited in the Ukraine and Crimea can be described as a ‘cocktail’ of measures that were used to achieve one’s goals in lieu of going to full-scale war, in shaping the theater of operations to one’s advantage, and as a force multiplier if need be in an actual exchange of violence with an enemy.

HW is different for IS and entities like it. The literature on IS is now huge and almost unmanageable. Most of it, however, concentrates on its personalities, ideology and organizational structure. Very little deals with the military ideas or strategy of this entity, which is surprising because there remains the puzzle of explaining its military rise during the first Iraqi insurgency (2003-2011), its demise, which proved to be temporary, and then its rapid re-emergence from 2012 to 2015. Between 2016 and early 2017, it suffered enormous losses and has lost Mosul. However, the consensus is that the collapse of the caliphate in Iraq (and soon in Syria) will not be the end of that entity. How do we explain its military trajectory? Some analysts have argued that this is hybrid threat or hybrid entity. Unfortunately, the analysis of IS as a hybrid warfare has mainly been descriptive rather than analytical in that most of the literature narrates the trajectory of IS’ war fighting over the years without conceptualization or context. The underdevelopment of the literature on the hybrid threat posed by most dangerous current non-state actor then raises the question of how can we distinguish between the hybrid warfare capabilities of a state actor and that of a non-state actor.

HW for a non-state actor also involves building a ‘cocktail’ of hybrid capabilities. Among these capabilities are political warfare techniques for propaganda against enemies, recruitment of supporters and shaping the ‘human terrain’ on the ground in the conflict zone in their favor. However, while states have the resources to develop robust hybrid capabilities only a few non-state actors in the contemporary conflict environment have been able to develop and maintain effective revolutionary political warfare infrastructures. These include the FARC in Colombia, the LTTE in Sri Lanka, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and of, course, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. These groups have also incorporated terrorism to target civilians and to intimidate and terrify opponents or even force them to overreact. The practice of terrorism has, of course, been a subject of controversy even among its practitioners, some of whom have even distinguished between discriminate, which targets specific individuals or categories of people, and indiscriminate terrorism, which targets people collectively or whole communities. Indeed, indiscriminate terrorism became a source of contention even within the global constellation of violent jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda and Islamic State during the course of the war in Iraq between 2003 and 2011. These entities also develop robust guerrilla hit and run tactics for attacking small-scale enemy units. Finally, this limited set of non-state actors have moved up the spectrum of warfare to develop impressive semi-conventional forces, which have been able to conduct both offensive and defensive operations against seemingly more formidable conventional forces.

Conclusion

For an advanced and well-developed non-state actor hybrid warfare is part and parcel of their arsenal of war whereas for states it can be used in lieu of outright war. For a super-empowered non-state actor, hybrid warfare is scalar manner, defined as having ways of war – terrorism, guerrilla tactics, and semi-conventional war coupled with the requisite capabilities for each – necessary to go up and down the spectrum of conflict in accordance with environmental factors, enemy faced, operational art and tactics needed at a particular time.  When a non-state actor like IS first emerges, it is invariably weak, lacking in resources, personnel, and territory to control. This leads them down the path of using the most primitive and illegitimate form of political violence, namely terrorism. As such an entity develops it moves ‘up the chain’ of violence, as it were, to guerrilla warfare, which is more ‘advanced.’ As it acquires territory, which is both a sanctuary and a base, this enables it to develop semi-conventional ways of war. This has almost Hegelian march up the ladder of progress was, indeed, the trajectory of people’s revolutionary war as espoused by Mao Zedong and Vo Nguyen Giap in China and Vietnam respectively. So what is the difference?

The key difference with hybrid warfare by contemporary non-state actors, like IS or the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and state actors is that the progression towards a higher form of warfare is not one way; the lesser forms are not discarded. Indeed, they remain integral to the entity so that they can slide up and down the spectrum of violence when needed or when necessary. IS has its territory and Mosul, it will now revert to guerrilla warfare and terrorism. The ‘happy days’ of having a quasi-conventional military and a ‘state,’ are over, at least for now.

The future is likely to witness the further evolution of HW; it will be developed both by states, including powerful and weak ones, as well as non-state actors. If HW is really nothing more than the effective, efficient, and often simultaneous use of a set of measures, military and non-military to achieve one’s goals before or during a war and if the use of these measures ultimately ensures that the lines between peace and war are blurred to the point of irrelevance, then we will see states scrambling to deal with this situation by devised offensive and defensive measures.

Ahmed S. Hashim is Associate Professor in the Military Studies Programme at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, RSIS, and specialises in Strategic Studies. He received his B.A. in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick, Great Britain and his M.Sc and Ph.D from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has worked extensively in the fields of Strategy and Policy dealing in particular with irregular war and counter-terrorism for the past 20 years prior to taking up his current position at RSIS in 2011 where he teaches courses on insurgency and counterinsurgency, terrorism, and defense policies at RSIS and SAFTI Military Institute (SAFTI MI).

Climate change and human migration are often presented as threats to national and international security. But what is the actual link between these phenomena and conflict?

Author’s Note: This commentary presents key arguments from the articles Christiane J. Fröhlich (2016) Climate migrants as protestors? Dispelling misconceptions about global environmental change in pre-revolutionary Syria, Contemporary Levant, 1:1, 38-50, DOI: 10.1080/20581831.2016.1149355 (available online here), and Michael Brzoska & Christiane Fröhlich (2015): Climate change, migration and violent conflict: vulnerabilities, pathways and adaptation strategies , Migration and Development, DOI: 10.1080/21632324.2015.1022973 (available online here).

Climate Change and Conflict

Today, climate change is often perceived predominantly as a security risk. The most common argument behind this train of thought is that many societies’ adaptive capacities will be overstretched by the effects of global warming within the short- to midterm, potentially leading to destabilization and violence, and jeopardizing national and international security in a way that is unprecedented (see WBGU, 2007; UNSC, 2007; UNGA, 2009). One additional concern is that, should the international community fail to adopt an effective and globally coordinated climate policy, climate change may deepen pre-existing lines of conflict on the local, national, inter- and transnational levels. Another worry are conflicts over natural resources, since reduced availability and changes in the distribution of water, food and arable land are considered by some to potentially trigger violent conflicts (Hsiang et al., 2013; Burke et al., 2009). Other hypothesized pathways from climate change to the onset of violent conflict are a deterioration of the governance capacities of formal and informal institutions as well as the increase in horizontal inequality among groups (see Gleditsch, 2012; Scheffran et al., 2012).

Bringing Migration in

Very much the same is true for human mobility: Large migration movements have frequently been presented as a threat to national and international security, particularly when crossing into the United States and Europe (see Huysmans 2000; Ceccirulli & Labanca, 2014; Adamson, 2006; Alexseev, 2006; Waever, Buzan, Kelstrup, & Lemaitre, 1993). The underlying assumption is that in a globalised world, states enjoy growing benefits and opportunities stemming from increasing human mobility, but are also threatened by an unknown and equally growing potential for crime, trafficking, drugs and terrorism within these new migratory flows. Therefore, human mobility is framed as a matter of security, leading to what has become known as the ‘migration-security nexus’.

“Climate Migration”

With global warming well under way, climate change-induced migration has come to the forefront of such risk assessments (see Myers 1998; Myers 2005; Myers and Kent 1995; Brown 2008; Barnett 2003, Smith and Vivekananda 2007; Boano 2008; Hummel et al. 2012; Warner et al. 2013). The underlying assumed causality is that climate change will engender or exacerbate resource scarcities, which in turn might drive migration as well as conflict. In its first assessment report, for instance, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned as early as 1990: ‘the gravest effects of climate change may be those on human migration as millions are displaced by shoreline erosion, coastal flooding and severe drought’. This was the basis for predictions of major conflict in receiving regions both within countries suffering from climate change and internationally. In 2008, the European Commission and the EU’s High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy released a report on climate change and international security in which they stressed that as a result of climate change, ‘Europe must expect substantially increased migratory pressure’.

But reality is much less linear and simple, and empirical data is scant. The underlying imaginaire, which assumes linear causality between global environmental change and conflict via environmentally-induced migration, contains several misconceptions. Firstly, migration decisions are complex and not determined by environmental factors alone. Scholarship has identified five main drivers for (internal and international) human mobility, namely economic, political, demographic, social and environmental factors, which are deeply interconnected and mediated through socially, politically and economically determined institutions and structures. Secondly, chain migration and migration networks need to be taken into account as factors that guide migration streams in certain directions and not others. Thirdly, there are few systematic studies researching the assumed causality between climate change and migration (Reuveny 2007, 2008; Raleigh, 2010; Raleigh et al., 2010) or between (climate) migration movements and (violent) conflict. In fact, there is very limited evidence for both propositions. Fourthly, it remains disputed how many people will leave their habitat due to climate change: So-called maximalists assume a simple, direct relationship between migration and climate change and thus project comparatively large numbers of environmental migrants. Estimates reach from some 200 million up to 1 billion refugees globally by 2050 (Jacobson 1988; Myers 1997, 2002; Stern 2006). Minimalists, on the other hand, underscore the complex nature of migration decisions and stress the respective society’s vulnerability and adaptive capacity as a major factor for reducing the expected number of climate migrants (Suhrke 1994; Castles 2002; Morrissey 2009; Gemenne 2011, Morrissey 2012 gives a good overview). Fifthly, migration has been identified as a potentially powerful adaptation mechanism with regard to global warming, a view which is not reflected by the simple causality cited above. In a nutshell, the theoretical foundation and empirical support for propositions of a causal linearity between climate change, human mobility and conflict are thin. This does not mean that climate change will be irrelevant for future patterns of migration, including migration that may be linked to conflict. But the links are complex and defy simple and sensationalist conclusions.

Case Study Syria: A Climate War?

One case in point is Syria. The Syrian Arab Republic, as most of the Middle East and North Africa, has been suffering from long-term environmental changes linked to anthropogenic climate change. In recent years, a particularly long drought period immediately preceding the beginning of the Syrian uprising has negatively impacted what used to be the breadbasket of the Fertile Crescent, with consecutive crop failures in parts of the country, loss of livestock, the demise of whole villages and a distinct increase in internal migration. This has lead an increasing number of commentators to believe that this “century drought” was at least partly responsible for the timing and intensity of social upheaval in Syria (Werrell, Femia, and Sternberg 2015; Kelley et al. 2015, as well as numerous media contributions, for instance in The Independent and The New York Times. From the United States government to the European Union, from American to European think tanks, this powerful supposed ‘pre-story’ of the Syrian revolution is continuously gaining traction and has even been introduced into the overall discussion of the migration flows to Europe by assuming that the timing and magnitude of the current migration flows from the Middle East to Europe was at least partly environmentally motivated.

However, the existing studies of this link, while having received a lot of public attention, do not present authoritative evidence on the issue. On the contrary, they overstress environmental drivers of migration while tuning out other factors that influence migration decisions. For instance, the Syrian state only created around 36,000 new jobs per year between 2001 and 2007, with the agricultural sector losing 69,000 per annum, making (un)employment a very serious issue in the Syrian economy and powerful driver of migration long before the drought began. Modernisation, rapid de-peasantisation and slow replacement of agricultural employment with waged work in industry or services in the formal sector had taken their toll on both rural and urban environments before the drought even began.

Also, macro-economic policies of the Syrian government, which had for decades regulated agricultural crops, worked as economic push factor, too. The state-led system which had been imposed on the agricultural sector in the mid-20^th century was characterised by subsidies for farm inputs and fuels, especially for strategic crops such as wheat, cotton and barley. These state-led structures introduced strong dependencies into the agricultural sector that became liabilities when Bashar al-Assad started to deregulate the Syrian economy into what the 10^th five-year-plan calls “an open competitive economy”. Parallel to his reforms, an economy that had been based on rents from the oil sector started to give way to demographic pressures, a decrease in oil-production, depleting oil reserves and economic stagnation.

Socio-political drivers for migration also played a role in pre-revolutionary Syria. The rule of law was ambivalent, state institutions were characterized by manipulation and poor performance, the business environment was extremely fragile, corruption abounded, and Syrian citizens had little to no avenue to participate in political decision-making processes. Power and wealth were being distributed along highly informal but extremely resilient patronage networks. But the decade-old strategy of repressing those who advocated taghyir (change), while at the same time attempting to bind those advocating islah (reform) in patronage networks, began to crumble.

Finally, the assumed causality between climate change induced migration and social unrest is based on the idea that the migrants were the driving force behind the Syrian uprising. However, orchestrating popular protest requires social networks built on trust and at least some kind of organizational structure (McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1996; Tarrow 1998; Diani and McAdam 2003; Chesters and Welsh 2011). There is no evidence that new migrants, who were often living below the poverty line, could initiate large-scale, long-lasting popular uprisings, especially in repressive autocratic regimes like Syria.

Christiane Fröhlich is Mercator-IPC-Fellow at the Istanbul Policy Center of Sabanci University and Research Fellow at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at Hamburg University. Her research focuses on reasons for migration, with a particular focus on environmental drivers. She has done extensive ethnographic field research on the impact of a prolonged and climate change-related drought period in Syria which immediately preceded the Syrian war. Moreover, she inquires into the role of the Global North for current migration movements from the Global South from a Postcolonial Perspective. In the past, she has worked extensively on water conflicts on the international, national and local levels, as well as on the Israeli-Palestinian core conflict and its role for Middle Eastern geopolitics. She holds a PhD from the Center for Conflict Studies at Marburg University, and a Master in Peace Research and Security Policy from Hamburg University. More information is available at www.christianefroehlich.de

International Relations scholars, politicians, religious institutions and religious leaders can no longer debate whether religion is relevant to global or national governance issues and they can no longer afford to ignore the roles and functions of religious identity in many violent and nonviolent conflict areas in the world today. From European to South Asian societies, the headlines are related to the potentially destructive role that religion can play in everyday policy making. Those cases include, but are not limited to, the self-declared Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS); the civil war in the Central African Republic in which religious identity was thrown into the midst of the political conflict; and the ongoing conflict in Myanmar where religious identity is utilized to justify certain governmental policies.

The issue that practitioners (policy makers, religious institutions and religious leaders) are really struggling to effectively address is how to understand the interreligious dynamics of conflicts and constructively link this to future policies. The response of policy makers in Europe to the ongoing global refugee crisis represents an important case of the need for further linkages between religious leaders and policy makers. Given that the majority of the refugees are Muslims, how are secular European policy makers going to develop an approach to manage or mediate the inherent difference of cultural and religious Islamic ways of living and do so without stereotyping or inciting violence and exclusion towards refuges?  An even more challenging task is facing policy makers in the Muslim world, especially those in the Middle East where religious and sectarian identities have been systematically manipulated to justify political and even inter- and intra-communal violence with brutal effects. Unlike the European reality, in the Middle East, delinking religious identity and institutions from governmental policies and from justifying wars and certain governance frameworks is the primary needed change. In this context, politicians continuously enlist religious leaders in pursuing their own interests.

Despite their problems grasping the issues, there is a growing agreement amongst policy makers and researchers that engaging religious leaders and institutions in peacebuilding on all levels is crucial to bringing the message of tolerance, pluralism and peaceful resolution of conflicts to communities. However, the research on such tools and techniques is still limited. Most studies continue to focus on the theological bases of peace and harmony in different faith groups (See Abu-Nimer’s 2007 book, Unity in Diversity). There are few studies on the mechanism and tools (design, processes, and evaluation of success) of interreligious peacebuilding which will allow policy makers to engage religious leaders and their institutions in a systematic process of mediation, negotiation, or problem solving to respond to a concrete social or political problem. As result of this shortage in experiences, many interreligious peacebuilding activities resort to the traditional and old models of symbolic and ceremonial representation of religious leaders in policy making circles. For example, a prime minster invites Abrahamic faith leaders to bless his/her new policy towards refugees in a certain area. In most cases such blessings take place outside of areas of worship and in the public secular space. The lack of systematic engagement of religious agencies in such peace processes and the instrumentalization of such agencies in a symbolic way only at the end of the process reduces the capacity of religious peacemakers in their own communities.

This approach of limited (time and resources) and symbolic engagement with religious identity (via leaders, symbols, rituals, etc.) has been around for centuries: a ceremonial role but not genuine engagement as a serious stakeholder in the conflict (using the cross or holy books as part of the ceremony to celebrate a peace agreement in a conflict situation like Northern Ireland, Palestine-Israel, Mindanao Philippines, etc.). In fact, a similar approach is taken by those who use religion to justify their war plans and violence in general (such as the use of religion for justification of violence in the wars in Bosnia in the 1990s, conflict in Northern Ireland, etc). The selective and partisan hijacking of certain religious values to explain the need to exclude, discriminate, dehumanize the “different other.” In both cases, there is an instrumentalization of the religious identity but not deep and nuanced engagement.

In current interreligious peacebuilding practices there are genuine efforts to move beyond this instrumentalization and bring a more holistic and integrative approach to engage religious leaders and institutions (See the recent 2015 report on CVE). Such trends can be vied in the most recent revisions of the American White House Summit responding to countering violent extremism (CVE) in which a strong call for a community based approach is an integral part of the CVE efforts; the KAICIID campaign, “United Against Violence in the Name of Religion”; Network of Religious and Traditional Peacemakers (launched by Finn Church Aid, Religions for Peace, KAICIID, USIP, OIC, etc.).

The Main Challenges Ahead

In spite of such efforts, there are still number of core challenges and potential pitfalls that face the field of interreligious peacebuilding in its development as a recognized field of researchers and practice, these include the following:

• First, there is the western post Industrial Revolution framework that endorses the cultural assumption (some argue myth) that religion and faith can and should be left outside of public spheres. Thus, bringing faith into academic institutions becomes a major struggle and threatens the foundation of its knowledge generating paradigm. This assumption that dealing with religion and faith is a private matter that ought to be compartmentalized to the Sociology of Religion or Theological Studies has obstructed many international relations and political scientists from systematically exploring the complex relations between religion and peace and war.
• Second is the assumption that conflicts and their causes reside primarily with material resources and not religion (identity or ideology). Such assumptions can lead many researchers and practitioners to dismiss or underestimate the role that religious identity and ideology can play in both triggering and sustaining conflict, as well as peace. There is no doubt that religion plays a complex and to some extent unique role in many conflict dynamics and outcomes. However, many aspects of this role are similar to other identity-based conflicts in which the stakeholder’s identity is deployed in the process of conflict escalation and de-escalation. Ethnicity, culture, race, gender, and sexual orientation are identities that have also been linked to conflict and violence, often through aggressive parties employing dehumanizing framing of an ‘other’, and there are many studies in both social science and the humanities that have explored the links between these identities and conflict and peace (see From Identity-Based Conflict to Identity-Based Cooperation, edited by Jay Rothman; and Ashmore, Jussim and Wilder of Rutgers University’s Department of Psychology’s publication: Social Identity, Intergroup Conflict, and Conflict Reduction).  The study of interreligious peacebuilding can draw on this wealth of research on conflict and identity and develop its own analytical frameworks and practices (R. Scott Appleby addresses religious identity and documents many of these the conflicts in his book, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion Violence and Reconciliation).
• Third, resources and support by professional organizations, donors, religious leaders and institutions are limited due to the above perceptions and biases. Thus many interreligious analysts and practitioners are rarely invited to the table as recognized and credible actor or agency who can contribute to the processes of peace or policy managements.
• The fourth challenge is understanding that religious peacebuilding is not the ultimate solution for all social and political problems in any given society, since religious identity and its manipulation is rarely the main cause of the violence in any conflict situation. In such cases, we should relate to interreligious peacebuilding agencies as serving a complementary role in a wider range of peacebuilding efforts carried out by many other peace agencies (such as media, educators, business sector, civil society, etc.) (See Abu-Nimer)

Conclusion

Despite the above challenges, the field of religious peacebuilding has been growing and gradually recognized by policy makers and donors as an important agency to engage with. Also, it is important to recognize that interreligious peacebuilders have been able to create significant progress in relief, development and aid. Faith based Organizations (FBOs) have illustrated that through interreligious cooperation they can significantly contribute to eradication of malaria in West Africa, provide relief to Tsunami victims in Sri Lanka and Indonesia, and fight hunger and poverty around the world in many local communities; and NIFA, a Nigerian interfaith organization that launched a campaign to eradicate malaria; also see the recent International Partnership on Religion and Sustainable Development (PaRD), a network for linking development and religion, which was launched by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Nevertheless, the field of interreligious peacebuilding still has a long road ahead in terms of its research and study agenda, especially in producing empirical research that articulates the detailed processes, conditions and dynamics in every conflict and that lead certain communities to be easily mobilized through their religious identities (symbols, rituals, and institutions) to endorse violence or peace.

Mohammed Abu-Nimer is Senior Advisor Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue Center (KAICIID); and Prof. of Peace and Conflicts Resolution, American University, Washington DC.

by Shazad Ali and Chris Abbott

Strikes by unmanned combat air vehicles, or armed drones, have become the tactic of choice in US counterterrorism efforts in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. But lack of transparency, dubious effectiveness, civilian casualties and negative consequences for US national security means that Washington needs to re-evaluate its approach.

It is the controversy over drone strikes in northwest Pakistan that has bought the issue to public attention. Leaving aside the wider issue of the extrajudicial nature of these killings and the questions over the legality of repeatedly breaching Pakistani airspace, it is the level of civilian casualties that is prompting the most concern.

In a 23 May 2013 national security speech, President Barack Obama asserted that only terrorists are targeted by drones and that ‘there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured’ before any strike is taken. However, independent reports contradict his claims.

From 2004 to date, there have been 376 known US drone strikes in Pakistan. According to the UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ), 407 to 926 civilians, including 168 to 200 children, have been killed in these strikes. According to a leaked Pakistani government report cited by the BIJ, at least 147 of 746 people killed in the 75 drone strikes in Pakistan between 2006 and 2009 were civilians. Of those killed, about 94 were children.

Controversial tactics

The high level of civilian casualties is attributable to two key elements of the US drone strike programme: double-tap strikes and signature strikes.

Double-tap strikes use follow up strikes to deliberately target rescuers and first responders who are coming to the aid of those injured in an initial strike. The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Christof Heyns, and the UN special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson, have described the use of double-tap strikes as a possible war crime. Ironically, terrorists in Pakistan are now using their own version of the double-tap strike to target law enforcement personnel in cities such as Karachi: an initial low-intensity blast is used to draw in the emergency services, who are then targeted in a second much larger explosion.

Signature strikes target individuals based on predetermined ‘signatures’ of behaviour that US intelligence links to militant activity. In other words, people are targeted merely on the basis of their behaviour patterns. This is different to personality strikes, which use intelligence to target specific terror suspects. In a June 2013 report that cited classified documents, NBC News revealed that one in four people killed in drone strikes in Pakistan between 3 September 2010 and 30 October 2011 were classified as ‘other militants’ by CIA. This means the CIA were unable to determine the affiliation, if any, of those killed.

Intelligence failures

However, even those strikes directed by intelligence are fallible. Such strikes rely on a mixture of signals intelligence and human intelligence from assets on the ground in Pakistan. The local CIA operatives are notoriously unreliable sources of intelligence.

The doubts over the accuracy of US intelligence have some credence, as there are several cases in which a militant was reported killed in a drone strike only to be declared dead again following a later strike.

For example, the alleged al-Qaeda leader in Pakistan, Ilyas Kashmiri, was reportedly killed in a drone strike in January 2009 and then again in September 2009, though he gave an interview to a Pakistani journalist the next month. Civilians are known to have been harmed in these unsuccessful attacks. In the January attack, 14-year-old Fahim Quershi lost an eye and suffered multiple injuries. In the September 2009 attack, 15-year-old Sadaullah Wazir lost his both legs and an eye. Three of his relatives died in the same attack. Kashmiri was again declared dead in July 2011, which is also contested.

The United States has indeed managed to kill many militants in drone strikes in Pakistan, but these have been mostly low-level targets. According to a September 2012 study by Stanford Law School and New York University’s School of Law, only 2% of militant casualties in drone strikes between 2004 and 2012 were high-value targets.

Justification

There is an important question over congressional oversight of US drone strikes. The Obama administration has refused to provide legal justification of drone strikes to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence despite several requests, according to committee chair Senator Dianne Feinstein. This has created an accountability vacuum and is a significant hurdle in congressional debate on the use of drones.

Following the 9/11 attacks, the US Congress gave the president sweeping powers through the Authorisation to Use Military Force (AUMF). It allows the president to:

‘use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organisations, or persons he determines planned, authorised, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harboured such organisations or persons.’

In that context, drone strikes against al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban are authorised under US law. But it is hard to justify under the AUMF attacks in Pakistan against organisations not involved in 9/11, such as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and the Haqqani network – notwithstanding the transnational nature of and blurred boundaries between some of these groups.

It is also difficult to justify such attacks under the right to self-defence, which cannot be applied prospectively without limit. Nor does it warrant the repeated violations of Pakistan’s airspace, as Pakistan has not been shown to be responsible for any attacks against US interests. According to a leaked US diplomatic cable, Pakistan had, at one point, consented to drone strikes but it is not known whether Washington continues the strikes with Islamabad’s tacit agreement. Publicly, the Pakistani government has denounced the drone strikes, saying they are illegal and a violation of their country’s sovereignty. In September 2013, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told the UN General Assembly that US drone strikes violated his country’s borders and were detrimental to Pakistani counterterrorism efforts. But, in reality, Pakistan has at times been deliberately ambiguous on the issue and the complex nature of civil-military relations in Pakistan and the known links between the ISI and various militant networks make things more complicated.

Unintended consequences

Whatever the legal status of the US drone strike programme in Pakistan, it is clear that it risks several unintended consequences. The United States might have made a prudent military choice in using armed drones rather the special forces for counterterrorism strikes in Pakistan. But the use of drones has backfired in a strategic sense and resulted in serious ‘blowback’.

Chief among these is the radicalising impact US drone strikes are having in Pakistan. Repeated strikes are stoking anti-American sentiments and are a propaganda and recruitment gift to the extremist groups. Pakistan is being destabilised, as the strikes are undermining chances of peace talks between the state and Taliban groups. There are now increasing numbers of terrorist attacks against the Pakistani government by Taliban militants who believe Islamabad has failed to maintain the country’s sovereignty. Furthermore, the United States may be risking further attacks in its own backyard along the lines of the failed 2010 Times Square attack by Pakistani-born US citizen Faisal Shahzad.

Drone strikes in Pakistan may also be complicating the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, as they have resulted in attacks on US forces. The 2009 Camp Chapman attack is a case in point. The al-Qaeda and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan suicide attack used a double agent to target CIA personnel and contractors inside Forward Operating Base Chapman who were responsible for providing intelligence for drone strikes against targets in Pakistan. The attack on the base in Khost province was in revenge for the deaths of three al-Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban leaders who were killed in US drone strikes.

The use of drones by the US has increased the danger of proliferation. Seventy six countries are known to have unmanned aerial vehicles, with approximately 20 countries possessing armed drones (though estimates vary widely). The United States has lowered the threshold for the use of lethal force and pushed back the limits of counterterrorism efforts to include the targeted killing of its enemies abroad. In doing so, they have set a dangerous precedent – one that could easily be followed by other countries. In a September 2013 study, Open Briefing identified 29 different models of armed drone in use with China, India, Iran, Israel, Russia and Turkey – each of which have external security concerns that could justify drones strikes under doctrine modelled on the US approach.

Time for change

The use of double-tap and signature strikes must be ended, as they result in unjustifiably high numbers of civilian casualties. They are the most controversial elements within the already controversial US drone strike. Beyond that, it is time to begin winding in Washington’s unchecked ability to target individuals around the world without due process. Central to this is the revocation of the post-9/11 Authorisation to Use Military Force. For 12 years this has allowed the spread of US military and intelligence operations around the world without accountability and transparency. These operations are increasingly straying from targeting those who ‘planned, authorised, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001’ to simply targeting suspected militants, regardless of their links to al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

Washington can address the democratic deficit inherent in its drone programme by moving responsibility for it from the CIA to the usual chain of command within the US Department of Defense. There must also be proper congressional and judicial oversight of the drone programme, with monitoring by Congress’s intelligence and armed services select committees, in order to remove absolute executive power for the targeted killings.

For its part, Pakistan can retract any tacit approval of US drone strikes and be unequivocal in its opposition to further strikes. This will allow the United Nations and key US allies to use whatever influence they have to press the United States to enact the much needed changes to its drone programme.

Shazad Ali is a contributing analyst at Open Briefing. He is a journalist in Pakistan and pursuing a PhD in European Studies at the University of Karachi. He has been the assistant editor of the Vienna-based journal Perspectives on Terrorism and now serves as a member of its editorial board.

Chris Abbott is the founder and executive director of Open Briefing. He is an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Social and International Studies at the University of Bradford and the former deputy director of Oxford Research Group. http://www.openbriefing.org

Featured image: MQ-1 Predator on patrol  Source: Air Force Reserve Command

Image: An MQ-9 Reaper takes off on a mission from Afghanistan. Source: Wikimedia

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a significant, if controversial, development in international affairs. China has proposed its own semi-official version of R2P called “Responsible Protection”.

Author’s Note: This article highlights issues discussed in more depth in various publications, including Andrew Garwood-Gowers, ‘China’s “Responsible Protection” Concept: Reinterpreting the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and Military Intervention for Humanitarian Purposes’ (2016) 6 Asian Journal of International Law 89 and Andrew Garwood-Gowers, ‘R2P Ten Years after the World Summit: Explaining Ongoing Contestation over Pillar III’ (2015) 7 Global Responsibility to Protect 300.

Introduction

Over the last decade and a half the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle has emerged as a significant normative development in international efforts to prevent and respond to genocide and other mass atrocity crimes. Yet it has also been controversial, both in theory and in practice. R2P’s legal status and normative impact continue to be debated in academic and policy circles, while its implementation in Libya in 2011 reignited longstanding concerns among many non-Western states over its potential to be misused as a smokescreen for regime change. These misgivings prompted Brazil to launch its “Responsibility while Protecting” (RwP) concept as a means of complementing and tightening the existing R2P principle. China, too, has proposed its own semi-official version of R2P called “Responsible Protection” (RP). This contribution explores the key features and implications of the lesser known Chinese initiative.

The R2P Principle

R2P first appeared in a 2001 report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), a body set up by the Canadian government to consider how the international community should address intra-state humanitarian crises. However, after the initial concept proved contentious a modified version of R2P – labelled “R2P-lite” by one commentator – was unanimously endorsed by states at the 2005 World Summit. In its current form R2P consists of three mutually reinforcing pillars. The first is that each state has a responsibility to protect its populations from the four mass atrocity crimes (genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing). Pillar two stipulates that the international community should encourage and assist states in fulfilling their pillar one duties. Finally, pillar three provides that if a state is manifestly failing to protect its populations the international community is prepared to take collective action in a timely and decisive manner on a case-by-case basis, in accordance with Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

Action under pillar three can encompass non-coercive tools such as diplomacy and humanitarian assistance, as well as coercive means including sanctions and the use of force. The international community’s pillar three responsibility is framed in conservative terms, creating only a duty to consider taking appropriate action, rather than a positive obligation to actually respond to a state’s manifest failure to protect. Crucially, the UN Security Council remains the only body that can authorise coercive, non-consensual measures under pillar three. R2P does not grant states a right to undertake unilateral humanitarian intervention outside the Charter’s collective security framework. Overall, R2P is best characterised as a multi-faceted political principle based on existing international law principles and mechanisms.

The most well-known instance of pillar III action to date is the international community’s rapid and decisive response to the Libyan crisis in early 2011. The Security Council initially imposed sanctions and travel bans on members of the Gaddafi regime before passing resolution 1973 authorising the use of force to “protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack’’. China, Russia, Brazil and India each abstained on the vote to mandate military force against Libya. As the extent of NATO’s military targets and support for the Libyan rebels became apparent, many non-Western powers criticised the campaign for exceeding the terms of the Security Council resolution. For these states, the eventual removal of the Gaddafi regime confirmed their perception that R2P’s third pillar could be manipulated for the pursuit of ulterior motives such as the replacement of unfriendly governments.

The post-Libya backlash against R2P was at least partly responsible for Security Council deadlock over Syria. Russia and China have exercised their vetoes on four separate occasions to block resolutions that sought to impose a range of non-forcible measures on the Syrian regime. At the same time, there has been renewed debate about the strengths and weaknesses of R2P’s third pillar. In late 2011 Brazil’s RwP initiative proposed a series of decision-making criteria and monitoring mechanisms to guide the implementation of coercive pillar three measures. While RwP initially attracted significant attention and discussion, Brazil’s foray into norm entrepreneurship was short-lived and R2P has remained unaltered.

Reframing R2P as “Responsible Protection”

China’s traditional insistence on a strict interpretation of sovereignty and non-intervention has made it uncomfortable with the coercive, non-consensual aspects of R2P’s third pillar. As a result, Beijing has consistently emphasised the primacy of pillars one and two, while downplaying the scope for pillar three action. In this respect, its decision not to veto resolution 1973 on Libya came as something of a surprise.

China’s contribution to the post-Libya debate over R2P’s third pillar is less widely documented than Brazil’s efforts. In mid-2012 the notion of “Responsible Protection” was floated by Ruan Zongze, the Vice President of the China Institute for International Studies (CIIS),  which is the official think tank of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Although China has not explicitly adopted the concept as a formal policy statement on R2P, its implicit endorsement means it can be described as a “semi-official” initiative.

RP is primarily concerned with R2P’s third pillar and, in particular, providing a set of guidelines to constrain the implementation of non-consensual, coercive measures. It consists of six elements or principles, which are drawn from just war theory and earlier R2P proposals such as the 2001 ICISS report and Brazil’s RwP. In this respect, RP represents a repackaging of previous ideas, rather than an entirely original initiative. However, by reframing these concepts in stricter terms it reflects a distinctive Chinese interpretation of R2P that seeks to narrow the circumstances in which non-consensual use of force can be applied for humanitarian purposes.

The first element draws on the just war notion of “right intention”. It provides that the purpose of any intervention must be to protect civilian populations, rather than to support “specific political parties or armed forces”. This conveys Beijing’s concerns over the motives and objectives of those intervening under the banner of R2P, as expressed during the Libyan experience. Element two relates to the “right authority” criterion. It reiterates the longstanding Chinese position that only the Security Council can authorise the use of coercive measures, and that there is no right of unilateral humanitarian intervention granted to states.

RP’s third element is based on the traditional principle that military intervention should be a “last resort”. Its call for “exhaustion of diplomatic and political means of solution” is consistent with Beijing’s broader policy preference for diplomacy and dialogue over forcible measures. However, insisting on a strict, chronological sequencing of responses may deprive the international community of the flexibility needed to ensure timely and decisive action on humanitarian crisis. For this reason, some clarification or refinement of element three may be needed. The fourth element of RP draws on aspects of the just war principles of “right intention” (like element one) and “reasonable prospects”. In relation to the latter, it provides that “it is absolutely forbidden to create greater humanitarian disasters” when carrying out international action. This stipulation reflects Beijing’s position that external intervention often exacerbates humanitarian crises and can ultimately cause more harm than good.

Element five of RP provides that those who intervene “should be responsible for the post-intervention and post-protection reconstruction of the state concerned”. Although the notion of a responsibility to rebuild appeared in the original 2001 ICISS report it was not included in the text of the World Summit Outcome document in 2005 and therefore does not form a component of the current concept of R2P. It is unclear whether China’s RP concept is explicitly seeking to resurrect this dimension or whether this element is simply intended to emphasise Beijing’s broader perspective on peacebuilding and development in post-conflict societies. Finally, element six calls for greater supervision and accountability of those carrying out UN authorised civilian protection action. This is a similar demand to that made in Brazil’s RwP proposal, though little detail is given as to what form any such monitoring mechanism would take.

Conclusion

Overall, the Chinese notion of RP is an attempt to reinterpret and tighten the content of R2P’s third pillar so that it aligns more closely with Beijing’s own normative preferences and foreign policy objectives. Compared to RwP and the ICISS report, RP outlines a narrower set of circumstances in which military intervention for humanitarian purposes would be appropriate. Some aspects of the proposal would certainly benefit from clarification and refinement.

However, it is notable that despite strongly criticising the way R2P was implemented in Libya, China has chosen to engage with, and actively shape, the future development of the norm. This illustrates the extent to which China, as a permanent member of the Security Council, is enmeshed in the ongoing debate over R2P. In fact, RP is explicitly framed as an example of China “contributing its public goods to the international community”. In the future we can expect China and other non-Western powers to play increasingly influential roles in the development of international security and global governance norms.

Andrew Garwood-Gowers is a lecturer at the Faculty of Law at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia. He has written extensively on R2P and the law governing the use of military force, with publications in leading journals including Global Responsibility to Protect, the Asian Journal of International Law, Journal of Conflict and Security Law and the Melbourne Journal of International Law.

The Anthropocene denotes the current geological age, in which human activity has had a significant impact on climate and the environment. The pressing issue of this epoch is whether the global consequences of these interactions between humans and the environment can be governed on a global scale.

The 1972 report to the Club of Rome on “The Limits to Growth” demonstrated the natural boundaries to human expansion which began in the Holocene era, following the end of the last glacial period around 12,000 years ago. The continued growth of human activities since the industrial revolution has become a driving force of reshaping the face of the planet into a new geological epoch, the “Anthropocene”, associated with multiple global consequences such as climate change, land degradation, resource scarcity and biodiversity loss. The Anthropocene is seen as a new geologic epoch in which humankind has emerged as a globally significant force capable of reshaping the face of the planet. The underlying human-environment interactions raise fundamental questions for global governance: Can nature be controlled and shaped on a global scale? Are human interventions a disturbing or regulating global force, avoiding or creating disasters? What are the limits of human expansion in the Anthropocene?

Human growth and complex crises

In the course of its history, the human population has been growing by increasing birth rates and lowering death rates, leading to the expansion of the human sphere in terms of capital, investments, income, technology, energy and resource flows, political power and violent forces of destruction. Despite Malthusian concerns about population growth causing scarcity of natural resources, intolerable pollution, mass starvation and other catastrophes, humans were able to overcome resource constraints and expand into new spaces through problem-solving capabilities, technical and social innovations that generated more wealth on a shrinking natural resource base. Continued pressure on natural resources and ecosystems challenge planetary boundaries in the Anthropocene, raising the question of whether a balance will be established by increased death rates or the reduction of birth rates. While the first pathway implies crisis, disaster and death, the second path may be associated with a sustainability transformation in demographic, economic and societal conditions within natural boundaries.

These pathways are part of the “complexity turn” in the Anthropocene which is characterized by globalized networks among people, markets and institutions, accelerated processes and flows in transportation and communication, and manifold micro-macro interactions between natural and social systems. While complex systems are often robust against disturbances in the core region of stability, on the edge of critical thresholds between stability and instability, small variations and uncertainties can make a big difference and decide whether systems break down or create new ones, as symbolized by the famous “butterfly effect” in chaos theory.

Beyond thresholds and tipping points chain reactions and risk cascades may be triggered which propagate in space and time and induce qualitative system changes. These include complex events such as natural disasters, stock market crashes, revolutions, mass exodus or violent conflicts. A world of ever growing complexity where responsibilities and solutions of crises are hidden behind smokescreens, may provoke over-simplifications, religious, populist and nationalist fundamentalisms, rhetoric against science and intellectuals, or resistance against globalized structures.

With the chaotic breakdown of the East-West conflict in 1989, actions of individuals and groups triggered a chain reaction that within weeks led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Eastern Block. A new world (dis-)order emerged in which multiple crises interacted in fractal and fragile international landscapes that continue to be unstable and full of surprises (see van Creveld 1991, Kaldor 1998, Münkler 2005, Scheffran 2008). Numerous factors and actors are interrelated, involving national, subnational and transnational actors in complex networks, crises and conflicts. Tight couplings lead to cascading crises that spiral out of control, including September 11, global economic crises, the Arab Spring, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, the civil war in Ukraine, the Greek debt crisis, the European refugee crisis and terror attacks in many countries. These events are interconnected through multiple channels that are often invisible.

Climate change as a risk multiplier

In this complex chain of crises, environmental change is connected with other problem areas through multiple linkages from local to global levels. More tipping points may emerge in the nexus of environmental degradation, climate change, poverty, and hunger which affect the living conditions in many parts of the world and could turn into severe security threats. Climate change is considered a risk multiplier, which disturbs the balance between natural and social systems and amplifies the consequences through complex impact chains. Among key pathways, climate change can affect the functioning of critical infrastructures and supply networks; intensify the nexus of water, energy and food; lead to production losses, price increases and financial crises in other regions through global markets; undermine human security, social living conditions and political stability; and induce or aggravate migration movements and conflict situations.

In the most affected regions the erosion of social order and state failure may trigger a spiral of corruption, crime and violence. Particularly critical is the situation in fragile and failing states with social fragmentation, weak governance structures and inadequate management capacities. Human insecurity and personal instability interacts with social and political instability. The impact of environmental change could undermine the ability to solve problems and further dissolve state structures, possibly leading to their collapse.

The Darfur conflict in Sudan has served as a prominent case where climate change is suggested as a threat multiplier in the complex nexus of population pressure, exploitation of land and forests, declining agricultural productivity, food insecurity, and the spread of diseases. While in some studies drought and desertification exacerbate the competition for resources between herders and sedentary farmers, others point to the long-term political roots of instability and violent conflicts, reinforced by national power games, regional struggles and global geopolitics that marginalized the Darfur region and fueled a spiral of violence.

Similarly, several authors found devastating droughts in the years before the Syrian rebellion that hit the main growing areas of the country and forced many people to move to the cities. These changes combined with many other conflict drivers rooted in the country’s economic, social and demographic conditions, political failures of the Assad regime as well as the events following the US invasion of 2003, the Arab Spring of 2011 and the emergence of the Islamic State which question the role of climate change as a dominant factor.

Limits to the Anthropocene

In this complex nexus of overlapping crises and interconnected problem areas, the world may continue on a slippery slope of escalation, running full speed into natural boundaries and their forces. The challenge is to anticipate and avoid risky pathways by counteracting forces that slow down and change course towards a more sustainable, peaceful and viable world which avoids dangerous pathways and interventions (such as risky climate engineering),  allowing for a timely and self-organized system transformation that takes the limits of the Anthropocene into consideration. These include finite natural resources and limits to growth; ethical, social, political and legal constraints; limits of scientific knowledge and uncertainty. In an increasingly interconnected world, stabilization of human–environment interactions under conditions of climate change needs an integrative and interdisciplinary understanding of human–environment interaction to assess destabilizing developments that threaten survival and adapt to changing circumstances to ensure their viability.

Social systems are not determined to aggravate crises situations but also have the ability to cope with problems like climate change and develop alternative pathways. To succeed, human responses and actions need to be timely and adequate compared to the speed, intensity and complexity of change. Concepts of anticipative and adaptive governance are needed to influence critical decision points and adjust actions along multiple causal chains to protect human security, strengthen societal resilience and sustainable livelihoods, and to develop collective adaptive strategies driving the planet through the complex and foggy landscapes of the future where information is limited and uncertain, but continuously updated. A lack of agreement on the underlying causes, on the risks to be expected and on the actions required is impeding progress.

Governing transformations to sustainable peace

Concepts of resilience, security, viability and sustainable peace can strengthen people’s social and economic capabilities in their effective, creative and collective efforts to handle the challenges of the Anthropocene. In a resilient social environment, actors are able to cope with and withstand the disturbances caused by climate change in a dynamic way that will enable them to preserve, rebuild, or transform their livelihood.

Sustainable development seeks to balance economic, social and ecological issues for present and future generations and integrate the human sphere (socio-sphere) into the boundaries of the natural environment (eco-sphere), making conflicting objectives compatible:

1. Sustain refers to preservation and upholding of natural resources as the life-enabling base of society and precondition for human existence.
2. Development means the unfolding of opportunities and abilities to improve human well-being and promote societal progress.

Peace rests on similar principles regarding the existence and development of human rights:

1. Preservation and protection of the existence, integrity and identity of each individual by excluding violence.
2. Self-fulfillment and unfolding of the individual through equal distribution of development opportunities.

Thus, upholding and unfolding of humans and nature are common principles of sustainable peace, which addresses both the negative interactions between armed conflict, environmental destruction and low levels of development (vicious cycle) as well as positive linkages between human development, environmental protection and peace-building (virtuous cycle).

In addition to preservation and development (upholding and unfolding), a third task includes the shaping of a viable world, aiming for its “conformation” to fit the current state into  a  proper  shape,  form  or  design,  creating a balanced relationship between the real and the desired world, between human society and nature. In the triangular relationship between sustainability, development and peace, upholding current abilities serves as a basis for unfolding enabling opportunities to facilitate the conformation of human–environment interaction pathways towards a viable world. This approach is compatible with the multi-level-perspective of socio-technical transformations that describe micro-macro transitions between regimes, niches and landscapes.

Key viability strategies, supporting a “new climate for peace”, include climate mitigation and adaptation; the building of networks, the cultivation of diversity, flexibility and justice; migrant networks that facilitate the exchange of knowledge, income and other resources; new capabilities to manage disasters; arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament; regional security concepts, crisis prevention, conflict resolution and confidence-building; as well as innovative institutional frameworks and legal mechanisms.

The 2015 Paris Agreement offers a first framework of opportunities through setting boundaries of global warming and national commitments of emission reductions as well as instruments for financial and technology transfer between industrial and developing countries. While the scope and effectiveness of these measures may not yet be sufficient to prevent dangerous climate change, they could lay the foundations and attract political support from local to global levels for a sustainable and peaceful transformation towards governing the Anthropocene.

Further readings by the author

Brauch, H.G., Scheffran, J. (2012) Climate Change, Human Security, and Violent Conflict in the Anthropocene. In: J. Scheffran, M. Brzoska, H.G. Brauch, P. M. Link, J. Schilling (Eds.) Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict, Springer, 3-40.

Lüthje, C., Schäfer, M., Scheffran, J. (2011) Limits to the Anthropocene. What are the challenges and boundaries of science for the post-normal age? Geophysical Research Abstracts, 13, EGU2011-11795.

Maas, A., Scheffran, J. (2012) Climate Conflicts 2.0? Climate Engineering as Challenge for International Peace and Security, Special Issue, Security and Peace, 30(4): 193-200.

Scheffran, J. (2008) The complexity of security. Complexity 14(1): 13-21.

Scheffran, J., Brzoska, M., Kominek, J., Link, P.M., Schilling, J. (2012) Disentangling the Climate-conflict Nexus: Empirical and Theoretical Assessment of Vulnerabilities and Pathways, Review of European Studies, 4(5): 1-13.

Scheffran, J., Ide, T., Schilling, J. (2014) Violent climate or climate of violence? Concepts and relations with focus on Kenya and Sudan, The International Journal of Human Rights, 18 (3): 369-390.

Scheffran, J. (2015) Complexity and Stability in Human-Environment Interaction: The Transformation from Climate Risk Cascades to Viable Adaptive Networks. In: Kavalski (ed.), World Politics at the Edge of Chaos, 229-252.

Scheffran, J. (2016a): Der Vertrag von Paris: Klima am Wendepunkt?, WeltTrends, Nr. 112, 24(2): 4-9.

Scheffran J. (2016b) From a Climate of Complexity to Sustainable Peace: Viability Transformations and Adaptive Governance in the Anthropocene, in: Brauch et al. (ed.) Handbook on Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace, Springer, 305-346.

Jürgen Scheffran is professor in the Institute of Geography at the University of Hamburg and head of the Research Group Climate Change and Security (CLISEC) which is part of the Excellence Cluster Integrated Climate System Analysis and Prediction (CliSAP) and the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN). After his PhD at Marburg University he worked in interdisciplinary research and teaching at Technical University Darmstadt, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and the University of Illinois. His fields of interest include: climate change, resource conflicts and human migration; energy security and water-energy-food nexus; land use, rural-urban interactions and river-coastal regions under sea-level change; governance in the Anthropocene (mitigation, adaptation, climate engineering, sustainability transition); technology assessment, arms control and international security; mixed methods in complex systems research (agent-based modelling, social network analysis, field research). He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), consultant to the United Nations, the Technology Assessment Office of the German Parliament, the Federal Environmental Agency, and the German delegation to the climate negotiations.

This article was originally published on openSecurity’s monthly Sustainable Security column on 15 August 2014. Every month, a rotating network of experts from Oxford Research Group’s Sustainable Security programme explore pertinent issues of global and regional insecurity.

Control of water, including navigation rights, resource extraction and the exploitation of shared watercourses is at the heart of today’s geopolitical tensions in Asia. China’s recent actions in the South China Sea and Himalayas have given rise to further—and at times violent—conflict over the region’s natural resources. So will water insecurity lead to greater partnership in Asia? Or will it lead to a revival of China’s traditional sense of regional dominance and undercut efforts to build a rules-based approach to growing resource conflicts?

Little by little

On 15 July, a month earlier than scheduled, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) announced that it was removing its Haiyang Shiyou-981 oil rig—40 storeys high and worth an estimated $1 billion—from waters close to the Paracel Islands which Vietnam claims fall inside its exclusive economic zone.

There were four possible explanations. The first was the one the CNPC offered: the rig had completed its work early. The second was the approach of Typhoon Rammasun, signalling an early start to the region’s storm season. A third was that the US-China Strategic Dialogue the previous week had put pressure on China to lower the temperature in the South China Sea and China had taken the opportunity to demonstrate that it was a responsible international player.

The fourth interpretation was that the rig had accomplished its purpose—not prospecting for hydrocarbons but promoting a steady advance of Chinese claims on the South China Sea through a series of assertive steps, none so provocative as to bring in outside players. With each little step, this story goes, China is building its case for singular rights to navigation and resource extraction there.

The other players on the regional chessboard—the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Taiwan, Indonesia and Malaysia—have grown increasingly agitated. With the memory of violent clashes between Vietnam and China over the Paracel Islands in 1974 and 1988, the installation of the oil rig in May provoked outbreaks of violence in Vietnam against Chinese citizens and businesses. Vietnamese fishing boats and Chinese ships harassed each other throughout the drilling.

It is a dangerous ploy, but China calculates that the dangers are containable. If ethnic Chinese or Chinese citizens suffer harm in the backlash, the host country is to blame. If two ships collide in the course of the hazardous games of “chicken” that have become routine in this contest, Chinese citizens can be mobilised to shout their indignation against the “aggressor”.

Overlapping claims

The waters to which China lays claim are divided under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) into exclusive economic zones for Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan, each of which argues it has been adversely affected by China’s oil rig and claims of sovereignty. The zones, running 200 nautical miles into the South China Sea, allow these states special rights of exploration and exploitation of marine resources in specific areas.

The sea is a major shipping route and fishing area, accounting for around one-tenth of the global fish catch and believed to have substantial untapped natural resources. Notably, China’s claims (outlined in a map in 1947) overlap a large portion of these zones. Malaysia also lays claim to a small number of islands in the Spratlys archipelago. With such a concentration of multifaceted and overlapping claims, China’s oil-rig foray heightened tensions and raised fears.

In an attempt to settle its resource conflict with China peacefully , the Philippines has filed a case before the UN Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on its own exclusive economic zone. However, even if, , as Manila expects, the court rules in its favour, China will ignore this—preferring to use its superior weight in bilateral negotiations rather than submit to third-party or multilateral processes where it is the rules that count. Diplomatic efforts by the Philippines to co-ordinate other claimants to take a common position vis-à-vis China have so far met little success.

China’s behaviour has made its smaller neighbours, including Vietnam, reach out to the US for reassurance. But what can it really offer?

For the US, the fading Pacific power, the disputes in the South and East China Sea pose a particular dilemma. In the East China Sea, China and Japan have overlapping territorial claims, including to the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands which Japan controls and does not recognise as contested. The US has maintained neutrality on the islands but has a treaty commitment to defend Japan as the quid pro quo for its post-war pacifism.

China might be uncertain about the depth of US enthusiasm for that commitment today but limits its provocation, nevertheless, to such moves as the declaration in November 2013, without consultation, of an “air defence identification zone” which covers territory claimed by its neighbours. International flights are now required to report their identity and flight plans to China when crossing the zone, at risk of “defensive emergency measures”.

The strengths and limitations of the US position were clear in May, at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, the region’s annual multilateral “track two” security summit, where the US retains the power to mobilise a chorus of allies to uphold rules and laws and to criticise China’s behaviour. A series of speakers, including the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and the US defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, condemned the use of muscle to enforce claims to the China seas, calling instead for freedom of navigation and overflight and a system based on international rules.

General Wang Guanzhong, leader of the Chinese delegation, accused the US and Japan of ganging up on China. He was not sufficiently moved to answer pertinent questions on the rules of engagement for Chinese patrol vessels in the East China Sea, but he did make it clear that China saw no place for the US in 21st-century Asia.

China is by far the largest trading partner of all the ASEAN members, which are caught in the small-neighbour dilemma, somewhere between the fear that China will come to rule their lives and consume their resources and the fear of giving offence to the region’s most important economic power. For them, the game is to try to stay on good terms with both sides.

Himalayan watershed

The dilemma is also evident among a different set of China’s neighbours—those that depend on the rivers that rise in the mountains and on the high plateau of Tibet. China’s largest downstream neighbour is, of course, India. India-China relations are bedevilled by unsettled borders-status rivalries, the subject of relatively recent skirmishes, but their most intractable potential conflict is over the shared resource of the Himalayan watershed.

In its eagerness to promote new Asian alliances, Beijing dispatched the foreign minister, Wang Yi, to Delhi in June, to reach out early to the administration of the newly-elected Narendra Modi. Wang presented himself as the personal envoy of China’s president, Xi Jinping, and startled the Indian press by claiming that the two countries were ready to settle their long-running border dispute. The announcement was however short on detail—and, since the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh is claimed by China while China’s Aksai Chin is claimed by India, details matter.

There has been no further hint of an imminent deal but India, like all of China’s downstream neighbours, is more concerned by the impact Chinese activities are having on the quality and quantity of water that crosses its borders than the exact position of the borders themselves. The Himalayan cryosphere contains the largest store of fresh water outside the two polar regions and is a significant influence on the region’s climate, including its monsoons. As in the polar regions, rising temperatures are affecting the glaciers and snow fields that give birth to Asia’s rivers and future impacts on monsoons, though hard to predict, are highly likely.

In the shorter term, China’s expansion of development westward is affecting the Qinghai Tibet plateau and everything that flows from it. Increased mineral extraction in Tibet and a renewed frenzy of big-hydro construction on trans-boundary rivers are changing Asia’s water flows for ever. There is increasing awareness of the risk of the downstream disasters that could result from building mega-dams in one of the world’s most active earthquake zones.

There are no trans-boundary agreements between China and any lower riparian country on the shared use of Asia’s great rivers, even though 1.6 billion people depend on them and China is building dams on all their head waters. For India, dams and threatened water diversions on the Brahmaputra are a particular concern. For the countries of the Mekong, China’s dam-building upstream poses a series of potential dangers. Meanwhile, India and others are running to catch up in the dam race, fearful of allowing de facto rights to be created unchallenged.

There has been no source-to-sink assessment of the impact on river ecosystems of any single dam—let alone of the massive cascades planned or under construction—and there are no mechanisms for resolving disputes. China has refused to enter into discussions with lower riparian countries, beyond agreeing to share limited water-flow data with India.

Clear rules

But, as in the South China Sea, limited bilateral discussions are not enough to ensure that the ecosystems of the watershed are protected and the legitimate interests of all those whose livelihoods depend on the rivers are recognised. From the high Himalaya to the teeming deltas, life will be affected.

If ever there was a case for clear rules and co-operation, it can be found in the South China Sea and the Himalayan watershed. Both raise the essential question of whether the region’s resource conflicts will be settled by arbitration and law or by force. China’s challenge to US influence is also a challenge to an international order that values arbitration as a way of defending the weak against abuse by the strong.

Isabel Hilton is the editor of chinadialogue.net, and Advisor to Oxford Research Group’s Sustainable Security Programme. She is a journalist, broadcaster, writer and commentator

The world is witnessing unprecedented forced displacement due to conflict, persecution, and human rights violations. The conflict in Syria has been a major source of this displacement, producing over 7.6 million internally displaced persons and over 4.8 million refugees. The escalation of armed conflict in Iraq since 2014 has also contributed to a dire humanitarian and displacement crisis, and recent data indicate that Iraq is one of the three main origin countries—along with Syria and Afghanistan—for asylum seekers and migrants arriving in Europe. The conflicts in Syria and Iraq have been characterized by mass atrocity crimes including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possible acts of genocide. As the death tolls and casualties associated with attempts to flee these conflicts continue to rise, the failure of the international community to adequately protect civilian populations targeted by violence underscores concerns regarding the international norm of Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Over ten years after its acceptance by all member states at the United Nations World Summit, the framework for collectively responding to mass atrocities when states have manifestly failed to protect their populations remains weakened by critiques of selective use and by its conflation with coercive humanitarian intervention in the aftermath of its application in Libya. R2P’s association with controversial coercive measures threatens to undermine its legitimacy and overlooks important non-coercive opportunities for implementing the human protection principles that are at its core. In particular, in the wake of mass atrocity situations, facilitating access to asylum and other forms of protection for refugees and displaced persons represents an essential step towards fulfilling R2P.

 Linking the Responsibility to Protect and Refugee Protection

There are strong foundations for emphasizing R2P as refugee protection. First, the international norm is intended to apply to mass atrocity situations where there is evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. The refugee crises associated with World War II, the Vietnam War, the Rwandan genocide, and the Balkans conflicts of the 1990s underscore the connection between mass displacement and mass atrocity crimes. International indifference or opposition to collective refugee burden-sharing in these cases frequently resulted in further victimization. In his study of mass killings, Benjamin Valentino argues that greater international response to refugees could have helped reduce the death toll of many of the 20^th century’s worst genocides.

An emphasis on R2P as refugee protection also bolsters the non-coercive and non-violent aspects of the human protection norm at a time when significant criticism surrounding the third pillar of the framework regarding forceful intervention threatens to erode its legitimacy and global consensus. Humanitarian interventions raise concerns about selectivity and often pose significant risks with regard to civilian harm. These risks are compounded by the power asymmetries and realpolitik dynamics that typically characterize coercive interventions. Further associations of R2P with forceful interventions will understandably trigger greater contestations of the norm and undermine the potential for its evolution into meaningful legal obligations. As an alternative to the use of force, states can respond to mass atrocity situations with mechanisms of refugee protection like facilitating access to asylum, granting temporary protection, and upholding the principle of non-refoulement, thus addressing R2P’s call for collective international response in a timely and decisive manner to protect civilian populations and prevent further victimization.

Allocating Responsibility for Refugees

While there are robust foundations for connecting the human protection norm to mass displacement and refugee response, the implementation of R2P as refugee protection faces significant impediments both in Europe and the United States. One major obstacle is refugee burden-sharing. The 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol do not specify how, in the face of major refugee crises, states should equitably allocate legal, financial, or physical responsibilities for protection. While states are obligated by the principle of non-refoulement not to contribute to refugees’ harm by returning them to their place of persecution, international law grants states the right to retain control over their sovereign borders. As such, states are not compelled to grant asylum. A related problem is that the existing refugee protection regime relies on post-World War II assumptions that forced displacement is a temporary phenomenon and refugees will be able to return to their country of origin following the resolution of the conflict. Despite data indicating that displacement has become increasingly prolonged, the repatriation of refugees to their home countries remains more heavily promoted than their resettlement or local integration in host countries.

To date, neighboring states in the Middle East have absorbed the vast majority of refugees fleeing atrocities in Syria and Iraq. This disproportionate burden on states in the region is in line with global trends in the distribution of refugees. Because proximity to place of origin has been a key determinant of distribution, developing countries that can least afford to host refugees have assumed the overwhelming responsibility for them. This inequality in refugee burden-sharing emerges not only due to geographical proximity, but also reflects the increased ability of developed countries to prevent refugees from arriving on their territories. In the ongoing crisis, inequitable burden-sharing is also apparent on a regional level within the European Union (EU), as southern European states have continued to bear the primary responsibility for screening and processing asylum claims. While other EU members have partially shared the burden by committing financial resources to assist Greece and Italy and by hosting some refugees through relocation frameworks, as of November 2015 only three states—Germany, Austria, and Sweden—fulfilled their committed quotas for relocating refugees.   Debates over refugee burden-sharing in Europe have underscored tensions between EU principles and individual member states’ willingness to implement norms of equity in refugee protection.

While discussions of refugee burden-sharing have largely focused on capability—that is, states’ relative capacities to assist refugees based on factors like economic development, population, and territorial size—the criteria that ought to govern the allocation of refugee responsibility remain ambiguous. The EU plan for distributing asylum seekers approved in September of 2015 utilized economic strength, population, unemployment, and the number of asylum applications approved in the last five years as criteria; however, this resettlement plan has faced opposition from central and eastern European states, and Poland announced that it would not participate. Complicating the task of determining how refugee protection responsibilities should be allocated is the notion that a country’s culpability in the creation of the displacement might also shape its obligations to respond.

The Securitization of Refugees

Even if consensus can be reached at the international level regarding principles of equitable refugee burden-sharing, policymakers can increasingly expect resistance from their domestic publics rooted in logics that link refugees to fears of terrorism and perceptions of foreigners as threatening. The implementation of R2P as refugee protection thus faces significant hurdles related to the securitization of asylum seekers—particularly those from Muslim-majority countries—as threats to both national security and cultural values in the United States and Europe. Increased fears of terrorist infiltration via refugee flows have produced calls to round up Syrian refugees and resulted in the U.S. House of Representatives passing H.R. 4038, the American Security Against Foreign Enemies (SAFE) Act. Opposition to refugees at the domestic level has also manifested in arson attacks against refugee shelters in Germany and violence against refugees in France. As refugees are increasingly conflated with migrants, and the current crisis emanates largely from the Middle East, perceptions of asylum seekers have become linked to broader debates about immigration and Islam. In this context, domestic political forces in Europe and the US have framed the refugee crisis in ways that undermine the potential for R2P to be successfully reoriented as refugee protection.

Navigating these obstacles requires grappling with representations of refugees in social and political discourse, as well as articulating how refugee burden-sharing can serve states’ national interests. Organized and predictable responses for allocating refugee responsibilities could, for example, support greater international stability and reinforce principles of cooperative security. In an increasingly interdependent global environment, fulfilling R2P through refugee protection could arguably compliment counterterrorism policies and contribute to an international protective infrastructure that facilitates better coping with transnational threats and humanitarian emergencies.

Alise Coen is currently Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan, USA. Her article, ‘R2P, Global Governance, and the Syrian Refugee Crisis’ was recently published in the International Journal of Human Rights. She is on Twitter at @alise_coen

Following the vote to renew the Trident nuclear programme, a former nuclear-armed submarine commander discusses why the UK needs to seriously rethink its attitude to nuclear weapons. 

Editor’s Note: Commander Forsyth’s explanation as to why he has changed his view on the deterrence value of the now and future Trident weapon system was originally written for family members. It has been edited by the ORG with the full involvement and agreement of Commander Forsyth to be suitable for wider publication. Of particular interest is his alternative proposal for a smaller,  ‘for but not with’ and  more versatile submarine platform as a stepping stone to reducing the level of ready use weapons whilst preserving the ability to resurrect full CSD posture if required.

In 1972 I became Executive Officer of HMS Repulse, one of the four Polaris A3 missile-carrying submarines based on the Clyde. Based on this experience I can say, without any sentiment or exaggeration, that the use of nuclear weapons during the Cold War would have threatened the existence of humanity.

I believed that Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was at the centre of the UK’s deterrence policy, meaning that if the Soviets fired at us then we (as well as the USA and, latterly, France) would respond in such measure as to immediately annihilate several major cities in the Soviet Union.

The consequential radiation effects of any nuclear detonation would largely complete the destruction and this would almost certainly have caused a ‘nuclear winter’.

MAD and the Cold War

The policy of MAD would, we were told, only have been used in retaliation to a Soviet nuclear first strike with missiles en route to Europe or the USA. We were constantly assured that under no circumstances would we fire our Polaris missiles first even if tanks were rolling across the German plain, unless the Soviets had already fired nuclear weapons at us.

As Paul Rogers notes, the UK’s other tactical nuclear weapons could have been used against such a Soviet offensive. Yet at the time we thought that this would not necessarily start a strategic exchange. Perhaps naively, we tended to consider Polaris in isolation from the tactical battlefield and on a whole different level.

The UK’s retaliatory only policy (assuring a second strike was possible) let us sleep easily at night during the years that we took 16 Polaris missiles to sea. As Nick Ritchie explains, each of these missiles carried two warheads with an estimated yield of 40kt. Thus, with 16 missiles per boat, just one patrolling submarine could have fired 32 40kt warheads, which would have given a potential explosive yield of 1.28 megatons—hence why we called what would happen if they were used Armageddon.

Understanding the power of the bomb

The US had many more submarines, aircraft and land-based missile silos. Our contribution was a gesture of togetherness against a common enemy whose declared policy was assumed to be ‘world domination by any means’.

In comparison, the atomic bomb that physically destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima in WWII and killed 100,000 people in the process had just a 15 kiloton yield.  So when Prime Minister Theresa May stated in parliament last July that she was prepared to press the button and kill 100,000 people, we should recognise that the number of deaths she was referring to was significantly less than that which Polaris missiles were capable of inflicting—never mind the massive collateral structural and radiation casualties which would result.

Each Trident warhead has a yield of up to 100 kilotons, which, in terms of destructive power, is equivalent to six or seven Hiroshimas. The UK presently deploys 40 nuclear warheads and not more than eight missiles on its four submarines, meaning that the destructive power on board just one of these submarines, if used at the same time against a densely populated country, would kill considerably more than 100,000 people.

Justifying nuclear use

The ownership of this sort of power begs the question: what threat might justify the use of such destructive force? We also need to be clear under what circumstances and at what scale the Prime Minister might authorise a nuclear strike because she could be taking us all with her.

Two government statements are relevant to this discussion:

1. Then Secretary of State for Defence, Geoff Hoon, stated in 2002, prior to the invasion of Iraq, that Saddam Hussein could ‘be absolutely confident that in the right conditions we would be willing to use our nuclear weapons’.
2. A government policy paper of 8th May 2015 stated that ‘it will not rule in or out the first use of nuclear weapons’ to ‘deter and prevent nuclear blackmail and acts of aggression against our vital interests that cannot be countered by other means’. This leaves open the option for the Prime Minister to authorise Trident’s use to deter an aggressor who may be threatening to use nuclear weapons or is using massive conventional forces which we do not have sufficient conventional force to counter. But, importantly, the government deliberately maintains ‘some ambiguity precisely when, how and at what scale we would contemplate use of our nuclear deterrent’.

Keeping the option open of using nuclear weapons first against an adversary who you judge is threatening your ‘vital interests’ with non-nuclear force is quite different from MAD. This is what makes me question the whole basis of what we may or may not do with Trident. Formerly we would not have fired Polaris missiles until British cities had been totally destroyed by a megalomaniacal action by the Soviets. It would have been a futile gesture by us but the threat of doing so was considered to be a deterrent. Now it is ultimately a matter of the Prime Minister’s judgement as to whether we embark on a nuclear war. This raises the prospect of deliberately causing Armageddon as opposed to a reaction to one already started.

In which case, I would argue that we have the right seriously (a) to question whether the Government should have that power and (b) if so, to constrain the circumstances in which such power can be used. As Nick Ritchie points out, the UK ‘does not dispute that international humanitarian law applies to the use of nuclear weapons and has incorporated the notion of “extreme circumstances of self-defence” into its declaratory nuclear policy statements’. Yet will all future Prime Ministers follow such guidelines in practice?

The need to ask these questions, and decide if building a new generation of nuclear weapons is justified and will ‘keep us safe’, is particularly important given that no military case has been made for Trident’s use by its supporters—other than the vague statement that we don’t know what the future holds.

Reference to the prospective use of nuclear weapons is nearly always qualified by adding that they are a weapon of ‘last resort’. As part of the Prime Minister’s decision making process she has therefore, at the very least, to be satisfied that all other alternative avenues have been exhausted, starting with the political and economic ones, escalating up through the increasing use of conventional military power.

Rethinking what military capabilities the UK needs

When I was at sea in the 1960s and 1970s the UK invested in both the Polaris force and significant conventional armed military forces in all three services. The country was able to send a Task Force as far afield as the Falklands and, more importantly, the armed forces were strong and large enough to withstand the quite considerable attrition—particularly in the Navy—in fighting a full-on war.

The services have gradually been whittled down to a level in which such a Task Force could not be assembled. By its own admission the Navy does not have enough ships and submarines to meet peacetime commitments—never mind war. The six Type 45 destroyers designed to protect the UK’s two new carriers were victims of over-design and under-funding (albeit costing £1billion each) such that they are now in harbour with major operational limitations which will take some years to be rectified.

Meanwhile, the next generation of frigates have been delayed. When they do come they will have outdated equipment and there will still not be enough of them to give anti-submarine warfare protection to the carriers—unless they forego other roles of which there are many. The Army and Air Force also have their own tales of woe—soldiers die for lack of body armour and the correct vehicles because the military budget has to cope with the costs of Trident.

Why is this? To some extent you can blame senior officers for lack of management ability and vision when challenged by the need to meet major commitments with a constantly reducing budget. They should perhaps have been stronger and said we are not well placed to play the role assigned in the Iraq war, be peace keepers afterwards and also embark on a new war in Afghanistan. The ‘can do’ spirit has been counter-productive.

However, the other budgetary factor is that the cost of building four Successor submarines alone is now set to cost at least £31 billion. You can buy quite a lot of aircraft carriers, frigates and hunter killer submarines for that.

The consequential reality is that we have very little conventional capability before the use of Trident becomes our last resort—a very dangerous situation for world peace. So who are we likely to need to use our last resort against having said that rogue states and dirty bombers are not likely targets? The answer is no one at the moment. Yes, Russia is acting aggressively, waving their nuclear weapons stick, but Russia has no grand plan for world domination. I must therefore conclude that the Royal Navy is being exploited to operate a political status symbol with no military value at the cost of other important capabilities.

There is no threat to the UK that justifies our nuclear force

During the Cold War the UK’s nuclear-armed submarines were at 15 minutes notice to fire. Since 1994 however, following an agreement with Russia, the UK’s nuclear weapons have been de-targeted—although this situation could be quickly reversed. The Trident submarines are lurking on standby ‘just in case’, so there is time to target and arm them if the situation escalates. Saying North Korea is a threat to the UK is not credible. Pyongyang may become a threat to US interests, but even that is unlikely and the US is more than capable of responding.

Some may argue that now is not the time to lay down our nuclear arms because it might further destabilise our position in Europe and be seen as a further ‘weakness’ post-Brexit. But what does this mean? That the Russians will see an opportunity and seize it? I believe they know, despite the Prime Minister’s words, that we would not fire our nuclear weapons except in retaliation to a major nuclear first strike by them—which they are unlikely to launch.  But I also believe it is possible that Putin could take advantage of our regular Force’s weakness, for example, through giving covert military support and overt political support to ‘popular’ pro-Moscow uprisings in Russia’s near abroad. The calculation here would be that NATO would likely find it difficult to find an effective response to such manoeuvres.

As for a developing intercontinental threat from elsewhere in the future, if it’s not on the drawing board now (and it’s not) then we have time to consider our options. Designing a submarine today to go to sea in 17 years’ time to counter a future undefined notional threat is really fighting yesterday’s war with yesterday’s technology. By making that decision now it becomes harder to change our posture as more and more money is poured into the Successor programme.

Is there an alternative? Yes there is. If, despite all the above, the UK decides it needs to have a nuclear weapon system for ‘insurance’ reasons then a submarine platform is probably the best vehicle to carry it because it is considerably less vulnerable (I would not use the word invulnerable now) to counter-detection than cruise missiles, aircraft or land based weapon platforms. However, the problem with the current and future Trident submarines is that they are a single purpose platform, very big—consequentially comparatively slow—and really only have a self-defence capability. They contribute nothing to peacetime surveillance or war-fighting capability in any other area than firing strategic missiles and cost the earth.

We have already reduced the number of missiles per boat so why not make a further reduction to say four per boat and fit a missile section into existing Astute class hunter-killer submarine hulls?[1] This option could save money, enable a dual role and, by building five, two or even three of them could be at sea at any time in either role and be a useful enhancement to the UK’s broader submarine needs.

Furthermore, if the Government wished to demonstrate its willingness to comply with the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, then missiles and warheads could be placed in ready-use store. This is justifiable on the basis that there is no threat today that requires the cost of having a submarine at sea at all times employed solely on what is known as Continuous at Sea Deterrence (CASD). Apart from anything else, the maintenance of the ‘invisibility’ of the SSBN on patrol requires additional support from ships, submarines and maritime aircraft taken off other more real time operations. Should it ever begin to become necessary, a CASD posture could, of course, be re-introduced very quickly as a clear signal of the UK’s determination to deter and as a further step up the nuclear ladder.

Conclusion

I believe that it is highly unlikely that the UK will ever come under nuclear attack from an enemy remotely susceptible to a threat of nuclear retaliation. I also don’t think first strike nuclear attack should ever be an option for the UK—we should not duck saying that. But if, as some may argue, that now is not the time to scrap the nuclear option because there is a remote chance we need to retain a nuclear weapons capability, then there is an option which cuts the cost significantly, allows for the restoration of our three Services to something resembling useful and still maintains the nuclear deterrent as a capability to be deployed if events ever require. Yet, of course, even this option would not prevent the government of an independent Scotland from forcing the relocation of Trident south of the border at a massive extra cost.

 

[1] Trident submarines have 16 missile tubes and the Successor class is due to have 12. Each missile is capable of carrying 12 warheads. The 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, unilaterally downgraded the outload per submarine to a maximum of 8 missiles and 40 warheads. There are, therefore, redundant missile tubes in existing and planned submarines. Only 4 missiles are needed to carry 40 warheads.

Commander Forsyth joined the submarine service in 1961 (aged 22). He subsequently served in conventional and nuclear powered submarines until 1980. During his career he commanded HMS Alliance (diesel powered), was Executive Officer (2nd in command) of HMS Repulse (Starboard Crew) a nuclear powered, Polaris missile firing submarine, Commanding Officer (Teacher) of the Submarine Command Course (aka ‘Perisher’) and Commanded HMS Sceptre a nuclear powered Hunter Killer submarine deployed on Cold War patrols. He created the website www.whytrident.uk with the aim of providing the wider world with answers to the obvious questions not easily obtainable elsewhere.

 

It should come as no surprise that David Cameron and the campaign for the UK to remain in the EU have argued that Britain’s continued membership of the EU will benefit the UK’s security. Britain’s EU membership has always had a security side to it. Membership has never been entirely about trade or jobs. And whatever the result of the referendum, the security relationship with the EU will remain vital for the UK.

Those campaigning for the UK to leave the EU do not dispute that relations with the EU, along with European security in general, are not of central concern for the UK. For them, however, not only does the EU make the UK and Europe less safe (for example by allowing free movement of criminals and terrorists), but putting international relations ahead of domestic politics, especially economic and democratic needs, weakens Europe’s nation states and their ability to combat the full range of problems facing them.

The UK government itself is clear that traditional security threats to the UK do not figure as highly as they once did, although they have certainly not disappeared. As successive national security strategies and strategic security and defence reviews have made clear, security challenges to the UK range from nuclear war to environmental disasters, with many not recognising the borders of nation states. While British governments are often reticent to admit to the EU playing a positive role in security cooperation, or admit that the UK has led in such cooperation, there is no denying that tacking these security challenges has been an important part in UK-EU relations.

From the start, European integration has had a security side to it, whether this be about managing the reintegration into Europe of West Germany and later a united Germany, or integrating former Eastern European Communist or Southern European Fascist states into a liberal European mainstream. The EU itself has not been sufficient to keep the peace. The argument by some Eurosceptics that it has been NATO that has kept the peace in Europe is as selective a reading of history as any pro-European that claims it has all been down to the EU. Nevertheless, for successive British governments, especially at the height of Britain’s retreat from empire in the 1960s, Britain’s declining ability to shape the world and the security challenges it posed meant membership of the European Economic Community and later EU was a necessary step for both British, European and transatlantic security cooperation.

Today, Cameron and others in the Remain campaign trumpet Britain’s ability to use the EU to boost Britain’s still substantial but reduced economic and military capabilities to give it the full range of tools and opportunities to face the full range of security challenges. Whether in facing a newly assertive Russia, dealing with Iran or tacking climate change, the UK’s EU membership has been cited as crucial to allowing the UK to shape its security. This is not to argue that EU cooperation is without its problems. Finding consensus amongst 28 states is never easy, even when you have the institutions and familiarity that EU membership offers.

The referendum poses the question of what options the UK has beyond working through or with the EU. Talk of the UK rebuilding the Commonwealth is often oblivious to how strategically marginal that organisation can appear to most of its members. Britain’s NATO membership will remain important to it and Europe. NATO, however, is not the whole story when it comes to European security and the UK should not bet on the alliance being as solid as it was once. Close bilateral relations with the likes of the USA or France will remain, not least in the military fields. But this should not blind us to how the US and European states will continue to cooperate through a range of EU-US forums and that this could leave Britain outside the EU as something of an awkward in-betweener in the transatlantic relationship.

The US in particular is aware of the wider implications of a Brexit for Europe’s geopolitics. As Condoleezza Rice, former Bush Administration Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, told Chatham House: ‘It is a very different Europe if it is a continental one’. Accusations that the UK is a US ‘Trojan Horse’, sent to weaken EU cooperation from within, display an ignorance of how the USA – a European power since 1945 – has had a hand in European integration and security from the very start and doesn’t wholly depend on the UK for relations with the rest of the EU.

Britain’s departure from the EU could change the Union in any number of ways, with far-reaching geopolitical implications that will shape Europe’s security. That some Leave campaigners such as Michael Gove have spoken of Britain setting an example that could lead other states to follow gives a hint to the wider geopolitical changes to Europe some Eurosceptics hope a Brexit will bring about.

Such disintegration or radical reconfiguration of the EU has not been set out or anlaysed in any document or strategy. As such this half-baked approach risks a dangerous case of strategic overreach by the UK. Any changes to Europe would rely less on Britain’s willingness to offer the ways and means of managing such changes and more on encouraging a collapse of the EU. Losing control of such a development should not be overlooked. An uncontrolled collapse of the Eurozone, for example, would inflict significant costs on the UK, Europe, the USA and the wider world economy. As HM the Queen warned in June 2015 during a state visit to Germany, Europe’s division is in nobody’s interests.

It is possible that a Brexit will cause the opposite reaction, with an EU rid of ‘an awkward partner’ going forward by unifying further. One of Britain’s longest standing international aims has been to prevent any single power dominating Europe. The EU would be a benign power compared to previous attempts, but such an outcome warrants careful consideration by the UK. Whatever the outcome, the EU’s status quo is unsustainable. The question for those concerned with Europe’s security is whether changes – whether triggered by Brexit of not – can happen in a stable, cooperative way or bring about a collapse into nationalism and parochialism.

The best hope for UK and EU security is that whatever the result of the referendum both sides seek ways of cooperating, if only to rebuild trust. The initiative here will rest with the UK whose recent approach to the EU in the eyes of many elsewhere in Europe has been an unwanted distraction from the many other challenges facing the EU. A UK in search of cooperation with its European neighbours will find it can offer little to help with the problems in the Eurozone or Schengen. Instead, whether in or out of the EU, it will find itself playing its only trump card: security and defence cooperation.

Whether in facing a resurgent Russia – and therefore the continued relevance of hard power in European and international relations – or the more nuanced but potentially far more catastrophic global environmental challenges, the UK and EU could find common ways forward that help both sides realise their mutual interdependence. The UK and the rest of the EU must appreciate that instability or division in Europe limits their options to shape security in the wider world.

Last, but not least, we should not overlook that if the first priority of any state is its own survival then alarm bells should be ringing about how the referendum could lead to the end or weakening of the UK itself. The vote could throw into doubt the place in the Union of Scotland and Northern Ireland, both bringing with them a host of traditional security concerns whether they be terrorist related or the future of the UK’s nuclear weapons. Tensions within England should not be overlooked. Immigration and economic changes have made London the UK’s undiscovered country, much to the chagrin of some elsewhere in England and Britain who feel a Europeanised and globalised capital city has left them behind. Arguments over identity, immigration, radicalisation, race, equality and standards of living rumble beneath the surface of the EU referendum. A reminder, if any were needed, of how sustaining the UK’s own stability and security will be no easy challenge after the 23 June.

Dr Tim Oliver is the Dahrendorf Fellow for Europe–North American relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also a non-resident fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations of the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Washington DC. He has worked in the House of Lords, the European Parliament, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), RAND Corporation, and taught at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the London School of Economics and University College London. 

In spite of early signs of progress, 2016 saw damaging levels of wartime environmental damage. Will 2017 be any different?

Marking the UN’s international day on conflict and the environment in November, the Special Rapporteur tasked with reviewing and developing the law protecting the environment before, during and after conflict argued that 2016 was “…set to be a milestone in global efforts to protect the environment in connection with armed conflict.” But it has also been a year where such efforts have seemed more vital and urgent than ever. This blog takes a look back at conflict and the environment in 2016, at the progress made and considers what should come next.

Fires from burning oil facilities are one of the most visible forms of wartime environmental damage; 2016 began in flames, and it will end in flames. Back in January, facilities in Libya’s oil crescent were being targeted by Islamic State. The smoke plumes from the huge blazes at the storage sites at As Sidr and Ras Lanuf were visible from space, the attacks – branded an economic and environmental disaster by local emergency staff – were intended to help further destabilise the fragile interim government.

The year will close with another environmental disaster caused by oil, this time in northern Iraq where oil well fires, again started by Islamic State, have burned for months and with no end in sight. As of November, data from UNOSAT showed that 29 fires were burning near Qayyarah, and two oil slicks were travelling down a tributary of the Tigris.

 

25 years on from the last time

The fires in Libya, Iraq and also in Syria – where facilities have been targeted by all sides of the conflict – have served as a perverse marker of the 25^th anniversary of the 1991 Gulf War. A reminder, were it needed, that while our understanding of the environmental causes and consequences of conflicts has grown, our formal systems of protection and response appear as weak today as they were 25 years ago.

But as 2016 began, there were modest signs of progress. States at the preparatory meetings for the second UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-2) were considering three draft resolutions on conflict and the environment: on the environmental consequences of human displacement from the Syrian conflict; on the need to assess Gaza’s environment; and on the protection of the environment in all areas affected by armed conflict.

After months of mergers, disagreements and redrafts, the last of these, sponsored by Ukraine, was passed by consensus in May. Co-sponsored by a number of conflict-affected and Western States, in some ways it too marked an anniversary, that of the weak UN General Assembly resolution passed in response to the environmental disaster of the Gulf War in 1992. The UNEA-2 resolution is a significant step forward in many ways. Its scope, which includes the humanitarian consequences of environmental degradation, natural resources, displacement, protected areas, human rights, post-conflict assessments and assistance, is a world away from that passed in 1992. Both were products of their time, reflecting the concerns of States and civil society, but also the international community’s knowledge and understanding of the issues at hand.

Untangling conflict and the environment

The often complex linkages between conflict, peace, environment and health were visible throughout 2016. For Colombia and its peace agreement, it meant costing up the financial benefits of peace – the health and environmental savings that could accrue if the deal were to pass. But peace seemed likely to also herald new challenges for Colombia’s environment, biodiversity and human rights, from an anticipated expansion of the extractive industries, from accelerated deforestation and conflict over rural land rights.

In Syria, the health of children and communities is being harmed by pollution from makeshift oil refining. This coping strategy has flourished thanks in part to a chain of events initiated by policies intended to destroy and degrade the country’s oil production and refining capacity, some of which had fallen into the hands of Islamic State. Satellite images have also captured the wholesale collapse of Syria’s agricultural system as a result of displacement and insecurity. The latter completing the closely related story of growing environmental pressures in Syria’s neighbours due to the influx of people fleeing the conflict, a conflict that has now caused local, national and transboundary impacts on the environment.

Effective policy-making requires that we work to fully understand the causal linkages between conflict and insecurity, and environmental degradation and its impact on human health and ecosystems. While it may be tempting to present simplistic narratives – such as those proposed in relation to Syria and climate change – this year has shown just how important it is to comprehensively document and interrogate the evidence. One powerful example of this has been a new study on conservation in conflict zones, which identified institutional collapse as the single greatest threat to wildlife.

Legal initiatives contribute to a sense of momentum

The complexity and scope of conflict and the environment was also apparent in a major legal development this year. The third report from the UN’s International Law Commission’s (ILC) ongoing study into the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts primarily dealt with the law applicable after conflicts. The report’s draft principles cover everything from military bases, to peace operations, peace agreements, the rights of indigenous peoples and toxic remnants of war; with still more topics proposed for study by governments. The principles that the ILC is formulating are merging humanitarian, environmental and human rights law in an effort to clarify the disparate norms and practices that could provide a legal framework for enhanced protection.

Elsewhere, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced a new focus on the prosecution of individuals involved in the illegal exploitation of natural resources, deliberate environmental destruction, and land grabbing. All problems associated with armed conflicts and a potentially useful contribution if the court follows through on the decision. Meanwhile the 33^rd session of the UN Human Rights Council heard from its Special Rapporteur on the management and disposal of hazardous wastes, on the impact of toxic remnants of war on health and the environment. He recommended that States improve monitoring of such threats and ensure that remediation and assistance takes place.

These parallel legal and political pathways are providing a long-overdue framework for debate and State engagement on conflict and the environment. The renewed energy around the topic was clear on November 6^th this year – the UN’s international day on conflict and the environment. The level of interest this year was a world away from previous years, with compelling statements calling for progress from the UN Secretary General, the heads of UNEP and UNOCHA, governments, experts and civil society.

Where next for conflict and the environment?

The question of “where next?” is currently being considered by a number of parties. Whatever the outcome, it remains the case that civil society will have an important role to play in working with international organisations and progressive States to encourage further progress. The momentum to date is the result of seven years of work and the conditions for advancing protection for the environment and civilians in relation to conflict come around rarely.

When this same question was posed to governments in 1992 in the wake of the Kuwaiti oil fires, the response mirrored the situation today: “Some States felt that the existing rules were sufficient and what was needed was ensuring better compliance with them. However, most of the States represented thought it also necessary to clarify and interpret the scope of some of those rules, and even to develop other aspects of the law relating to the protection of the environment in times of armed conflict.”

But it cannot just be a question of law and compliance. Like that other cross-cutting issue gender, what seems to be required is effective environmental mainstreaming throughout the conflict cycle. Good work has and is being done with regard to peacebuilding and humanitarian response but more is needed. There are also strong arguments in favour of a more robust system of environmental response in the wake of conflicts. And of course more visibility and stigmatisation for the practices that can cause serious harm to the environment and human health. Vague objectives for now maybe, but they perhaps demonstrate one possible direction of travel. Civil society can continue to contribute through research and advocacy, in untangling and communicating complexity, and by engaging at key moments, but achieving substantive progress will require greater capacity and coordination than we have at present.

Work on conflict and the environment in 2017 should aim to signpost the direction of travel, and make more use of the parallel processes currently in play. If they can be identified and agreed, a clearer destination and mode of transport will allow a greater number of States and civil society to engage, something that will be vital if we are to make use of the momentum that has been created this year.

Doug Weir manages the Toxic Remnants of War Project.  The project is on Twitter: @detoxconflict

Summary

The appalling attack on concert-goers in Manchester will be the defining news event of the 2017 general election campaign. Yet polls suggest that the attack has not shifted popular opinion in the predictable direction of a “strong” incumbent government characterised by muscular counter-terrorism interventions at home and abroad. After sixteen years of “war on terror” a clear difference has emerged between the leadership of the two main parties on the consequences of this open-ended war. Whoever wins the election, the longer term opening up of space for discussion on Britain’s security narrative can only be good for British democracy and wider security.

Introduction

In the middle of April 2017 the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, called a general election when the Conservative Party was more than 20 points ahead of the opposition Labour Party in the opinion polls. Mrs May already had a reasonable working majority in parliament and the election was essentially called over the issue of the Brexit negotiations, the stated aim being to provide a “strong and stable” government before the full negotiations started.

Given that the Labour Party was riven with divisions over both policy and the leadership, and with leader Jeremy Corbyn widely characterised as unelectable by the majority of the print media, the expectation was that a landslide victory was highly likely. That outcome has diminished during the course of the campaign and at the time of writing (eight days before polling), the Conservatives do seem likely to be returned to power but with a much smaller than expected majority. Even a hung parliament is now regarded by some analysts as possible if rather unlikely.

Following the Manchester Arena attack this briefing examines the election campaign so far with particular attention to security policy issues and considers whether some of the arguments raised will have a longer-term post-election influence on the debate around security, whichever party wins on 8 June.

Manchester and after

On the evening of 22 May and right in the middle of the election campaign, a bomb was detonated at a popular music concert at the Manchester Arena by a British Islamist of Libyan origins, killing 22 people and injuring over a hundred. Many of the casualties were young girls because the lead performer, Ariana Grande, was particularly popular with such an audience. The attack received world-wide media coverage and was the worst of its kind within the UK since July 2005 when 52 people were killed in four bomb attacks in London on three underground trains and a bus.

Because of the severity of the attack and the terrible consequences, nation-wide election campaigning was suspended by the main parties for three days, resuming on 26 May. On that day the Prime Minister was at a G7 Summit at Taormina in Sicily and calling for increased support for cyber security, not least in response to terrorism. On the same day Mr Corbyn made a speech in which he suggested that a UK foreign policy involving substantial military interventions across the Middle East, North Africa and South West Asia was not necessarily the right approach and might even increase the risk of attack. The speech was roundly condemned by those of a conservative persuasion, but early opinion polling suggested that Mr Corbyn’s scepticism about the outcome of the war on terror resonates with many voters or, at least, has not been the electoral impediment that conventional wisdom has long assumed.

Whatever the result of the forthcoming election, the terrible attack in Manchester and the subsequent discussion on how to make Britain more secure will have a long-term impact on security thinking, not just because of this difficult period but more because of a very clear difference that has emerged between the leadership of the two main parties. The Conservative Party has taken a traditional line on the need to maintain strong defences, to work to destroy the main terrorist movements such as the so-called Islamic State (IS) and to increase defence spending, not least in relation to what is seen as an emerging Russian threat. With Britain part of a coalition facing major challenges from IS and from Russia, a re-elected Conservative government is presented as essential.

This approach is generally popular and would be expected to be a vote-winner, which makes it even more interesting that the Labour Party’s manifesto has put much more emphasis on an increased commitment to peacekeeping, conflict prevention and conflict resolution. Perhaps more significant in the long term was a speech made by Jeremy Corbyn at Chatham House on 12 May. This was his main foreign policy presentation of the whole election campaign – indeed, it followed a long period of near silence from the shadow cabinet on foreign and defence issues – and was notable for taking a very different view to the political norm. His approach was summed up early in the speech:

“Too much of our debate about defence and security is one-dimensional. You are either for or against what is presented as ‘strong defence’ regardless of what that has meant in practice. Alert citizens or political leaders who advocate other routes to security are dismissed or treated as unreliable.”

His views on the war on terror were unequivocal:

“This is the fourth general election in a row to be held while Britain is at war and our armed forces are in action in the Middle East and beyond. The fact is that the ‘war on terror’ which has driven these interventions has not succeeded. They have not increased our security at home – many would say just the opposite. And they have caused destabilization and devastation abroad.”

Corbyn’s speech represented a radically different position to that of the Conservatives with their very clear approach to international issues encapsulated in that core election theme of “strong and stable”, implying a continuing of the rigorous pursuit of a military victory against IS supported by a robust commitment to a well-funded counter-terrorism system at home. Corbyn’s further speech four days after the Manchester atrocity, while roundly condemning the appalling act, did not stray from the central theme of his Chatham House speech of the urgent need to rethink the UK’s approach to IS and like-minded paramilitary groups.

In all normal circumstances in the current UK political environment, the government of the day would expect to gain plenty of electoral support for its security posture, and the Conservative government, especially, would expect increased support in the aftermath of the Manchester attack. That may well be the case as the last week or so of the election campaign plays out, but what happens in the longer term may prove to be much more significant.

Mr Corbyn, essentially, has adopted a very different approach to international security and whether it will open up space for longer-term political discussion may not be dependent on the election result. This is no place to predict outcomes and there are, broadly, three possibilities – Labour gets a disastrous result in line with polls at the start of the campaign and Mr Corbyn stands down; the Conservatives win narrowly in which case he will almost certainly stay; or there is a hung parliament in which case he may succeed in forming a minority administration with a second election in the autumn the outcome.

In all three cases, including the first, what the Chatham House speech may have done is to open up the debate on UK security in a manner which more truly reflects the unease that many people feel about the approach in recent years to responding to IS, al-Qaida and the like. It is the opening up of space that is significant here, combined with what is clearly the current prospect of very long drawn-out wars from Libya through to Afghanistan.

Equally in all three electoral outcomes, but particularly the third, a serious reconsideration of the UK’s security narrative would probably receive backing from the other parties of the left and centre. The Greens have a particular interest in conflict resolution. The SNP, though strongly protective of Scottish military units and industries, is overt about combating IS by “more than military means”. The Lib Dems seem torn between counter-terrorism, liberal interventionism and conflict prevention narratives, albeit committed to multilateralism and human rights. There may therefore be something of a consensus across a significant part of the political spectrum that sees itself in different ways as the “progressive” wing of UK politics.

If IS and like-minded groups were on the verge of a final defeat with no prospect of their being succeeded by other movements, then the current government approach would be largely accepted. Further debate would be unlikely and other approaches to security “dismissed or treated as unreliable” as Mr Corbyn put it.

There are, though, plenty of indications that IS and the rest are not ceasing to pose a threat to the Levant or the West, the Manchester attack being just one grim example. In Iraq, Mosul has not yet fallen after eight months of intense fighting in spite of the Iraqi government expecting the operation to be finished within three months. In the process, the Iraqi Army’s elite Special Forces have taken severe casualties calling into question the ability of the government to maintain control once Mosul does fall. Elsewhere in central and northern Iraq, the government relies on some very dubious, often sectarian militia allies. In Egypt President Sisi faces a growing IS-linked insurgency, and the Libyan link with the Manchester bomb is a reminder of the parlous state of that country. There remain serious security concerns in at least a dozen countries, not least Afghanistan, Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Bangladesh, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. Western coalition states involved in the fight against IS all fear internal attacks.

Conclusion

Thus, after more than fifteen years of the war on terror, failed or failing states in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Somalia, close to a million people killed and over eight million people displaced, the argument for some serious rethinking on Western approaches to security is hardly difficult to make.

This is where Jeremy Corbyn’s Chatham House speech is so significant since it breaks away from a near-universal Western state consensus and may be much more in tune with what many millions of people may be thinking. Whatever the outcome of the general election next week, space has been opened up for much wider debate. Independent organisations such as Oxford Research Group that take a critical but constructive approach to security will have a particular responsibility to aid the quality of that debate.

Paul Rogers is Global Security Consultant to Oxford Research Group and Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. His ‘Monthly Global Security Briefings’ are available from our website. His new book Irregular War: ISIS and the New Threats from the Margins will be published by I B Tauris in June 2016. These briefings are circulated free of charge for non-profit use, but please consider making a donation to ORG, if you are able to do so.

There is no region of the world that faces more threats from climate change than South Asia. Of particular concern is the littoral surrounding the Bay of Bengal, including the Eastern Indian states of West Bengal and Odisha, Bangladesh, and coastal Burma. This region is uniquely vulnerable to a changing climate because of a combination of rising sea levels, changing weather patterns, and uncertain transboundary river flows. Away from the seashore, China holds the high ground in the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas, and complicates the geopolitical picture further by acting as the source of the region’s fresh water.

On the Bay of Bengal’s coast these problems of a changing climate combine with already existing social problems like religious strife, poverty, political uncertainty, high population density, and rapid urbanization to create a very dangerous cocktail of already security threats. Climate change has been called a “threat multiplier” or “an accelerant of instability” by military and intelligence communities because of how it will impact these already existing threats. With a population of more than 300 million people (91 million in West Bengal, 42 million in Odisha, 142 million in Bangladesh, 52 million in Burma), tense militarized borders, overlapping ethnic and religious communities, and uncertainty about the future, there is no region in the world that faces a more dangerous combination of threatsfrom climate change than here.

Rising Sea Levels

One of the key tenets of national security is the ability of a country to ensure the integrity of its sovereign territory. Yet, as glaciers far from South Asia melt, the sea rises and encroaches upon its farms, villages, and cities. As Hemingway wrote about going bankrupt, sea level rise happens “gradually, then suddenly.” Slowly, a rising ocean brings increasing intrusion of brackish water into groundwater, harming costal agriculture. Moreover, gradual ocean encroachment harms the coast’s natural protections, whether dunes, reefs, barrier islands, or mangrove forests. Then, suddenly, when a major cyclone blows in a storm surge will overcome previously unsurmountable barriers.

The shorelines of the Bay of Bengal stand to lose swaths of territory from sea level rise. Bangladesh, as a country predominantly composed of river delta, is most at risk. It stands to lose 11% of its territory – home to 15 million people – from a sea level rise of only 1 meter, a level that is not a particularly extreme prediction over the next 4 decades. Few invading armies could do worse damage.

Oddly enough, the world’s oceans do not rise at the same rate. With rising global sea levels, in some areas the sea level could actually fall while it rises in others. A recent study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) found that sea level rise will be particularly high along the Bay of Bengal, due to changes in currents caused by rapid surface warming of the Indian Ocean.

In the region, the cities of Dhaka, Kolkata, and Yangon all lie in major river deltas and are vulnerable to storm surges. In its 2007 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) specifically listed cities in Asian mega deltas as “hotspots for vulnerability” because of sea level rise and changing patterns of river flow. Already straining at their infrastructure limits, these densely packed cities are becoming more vulnerable in a warming world.

Changing Transboundary Water Flow

Water does not stay within lines on a map. Instead, gravity draws it inexorably from the mountains to the sea. China, through its control of Tibet, controls the headwaters of almost all of the major rivers of Asia – only the Ganges lies outside of China’s control, originating in India. Of the major rivers that empty into the Bay of Bengal, all cross borders. Water is only plentiful during the monsoon season, so these rivers provide much-needed sustenance to agriculture, people, and ecosystems throughout their trip to the sea during the dry season – when they are fed by glacier and snow melt. Competition and tension over that flow is evident around the world when water crosses borders.

This is true of Bangladesh and India, for which the flow of the Ganges are a source of tension. The Farakka Barrage on the Ganges River, just 10 miles upriver from the Bangladesh border, allows India a measure of control over the river. The dam allows India to divert the flow of the Ganges down a canal to the Hooghly River and into the port of Kolkata. Since the dam was built in 1975, there have been allegations from Bangladesh that India diverts water in the dry season and releases too much in the monsoon season. In 1996, the two countries agreed to a 30 year treaty to share the Ganges’ flow, but tensions still remain.

The Brahmaputra River, meanwhile, provides a source of tension between the two regional powers, India and China. China recently announced that they are building a series of hydroelectric dams along the Brahmaputra’s upper reaches in Tibet, but they have forsworn any attempt to divert or hold back the great river’s flow. However, these assurances have not quieted all voices in India, who point to plans in China’s South-North Water Diversion Project to divert water from the Brahmaputra in order to ensure water for industry and the cities of China’s parched north. China’s leaders have denied these extravagant plans, but their engineers have lobbied for such a project. It would complete a dream of Chairman Mao’s, who said: “Southern water is plentiful, northern water scarce. If at all possible, borrowing some water would be good.”

Climate change exacerbates these concerns about transboundary water management in the region. Climate change is threatening both the glaciers that sit at the top of these mighty rivers, feeding them during the dry season, and the very viability and predictability of the Indian Monsoon rains. Temperatures in the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas have risen 1.5 degrees Celsius since 1982, a rate more than three times as fast as the global average. Meanwhile, changes in weather patterns due to climate change could cause repeated failures in the monsoon. While there is little likelihood of an immediate and total melting of the glaciers, uncertainty about their future flows is enough to stoke tension in the region.

The Potential for Conflict

Climate change is altering the environment of the region; the glaciers are retreating, the rivers’ flows are becoming more unpredictable, and the seas are rising. However, whether those changes manifest themselves into either civil or interstate conflict will depend upon how both the populations and the governments in the region react to those changes. How long governments have to adapt depends upon unpredictable weather and climate patterns – but as the Stern Review bore out, earlier action is almost always cheaper and more effective than waiting. How governments adapt is important as whether; some adaptations, like capturing water that would otherwise flow across borders in new reservoirs could actually make the threat of conflict worse. If countries do not work cooperatively, they could stoke conflict.

Throughout history, one of the most effective ways to deal with climate change has been migration – from a climate that is no longer hospitable to one where living is easier. However, modern borders do not reflect the historical ties between the regions. Migration is a natural response. However, in areas with already high population density and an overlapping patchwork of ethnic and religious communities, new immigrant communities often come into direct conflict with established communities. Last year saw ethnic strife in the Indian state of Assam between indigenous Bodos and immigrant Muslims, many of whom hailed from over the nearby border in Bangladesh. Over 75 people died, and over 400,000 people were temporarily displaced. In this region, it is impossible to say whether a group of migrants are “climate refugees” or simply moving to a place with better economic opportunity, but this is what we should expect in the future.

It is difficult to find examples of any interstate wars fought directly over water; to the contrary, water has been a catalyzer of cooperation. However, as countries realize that they can control and shape water flow through mega dams and water diversion projects, there is a danger that the claims of downstream countries could be ignored. Along the Mekong River, for example, China has proceeded to dam and control the river’s flow through its territory – leading downstream neighbors to complain that China is causing droughts. Yet because of the power imbalance between China and smaller countries like Laos and Cambodia, the Chinese have little to fear. Similar thinking by Chinese leadership over dam building along the Brahmaputra, their shared river with India, could lead both countries to stumble into a conflict that neither of them want.

In the age of climate change, conflict is more likely as threats are multiplied. Nowhere is this truer than around the Bay of Bengal. However, war is never pre-ordained. Instead, the threat of conflict is determined by how countries react. Good international governance can encourage countries to not simply pull up the drawbridge and think only of themselves, but will encourage them to see what their actions will mean for regional neighbors. Climate change is increasing the threat of wars and unrest around the Bay of Bengal; but foresight about its impacts can help the region’s leaders work together to solve a problem that knows no boundaries.

Andrew Holland is Senior Fellow for Energy and Climate at American Security Project, a Washington D.C based think tank. He is an expert on energy, climate change, and infrastructure policy. He has over seven years of experience working at the center of debates about how to achieve sustainable energy security and how to effectively address climate change.

Image source: amioascension

The Lord’s Resistance Army is seriously depleted as a fighting force, but it still continues to exist as an armed group. This resilience is driven by several key factors.  

The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has carved a path of violence and disorder throughout East and Central Africa for nearly three decades. Led by Joseph Kony, the rebel group has directly and indirectly killed more than 100,000 civilians, has abducted upwards of 66,000 children, and has displaced hundreds of thousands more across five countries. While formidable in the past, the LRA is now a threadbare non-threat from a conventional military standpoint. With the group’s numbers at less than 200 (down from at least 5,000 active fighters in the 1990s), attacks and abductions are steadily trending downwards.

Yet the LRA has also proven to be distinctly resilient, surviving as a collection of semi-autonomous units in sparsely populated peripheries that put up no resistance. Nevertheless, LRA fighters still pose a tangible threat as they loot and harass civilians, while Kony evades detection in Sudan’s Kafia Kinji region. While many observers describe the group’s current behavior as “survival mode,” its complex history shows this to be its modal pattern of organization and behavior based on an on-going ability of the group to adapt to shifts in its politico-military environment through distinct organizational endowments and resource acquisition strategies.

Understanding LRA Resilience

Most of the prevailing literature on the LRA has provided key insights into its history, organization, and behavior. However, the research that has focused on the group’s motives and the drivers of its violence has not addressed the distinct question of its resilience. The LRA’s resilience comes down to its organizational structure and shrewd resource strategies that have developed within autonomous bush sanctuaries and vis-à-vis the group’s wider political environment.

Its organizational structure is based on a distinct combination of two factors. First, LRA recruitment and retention strategies relied on Acholi beliefs in spiritual and cultural symbols, such as viewing Kony as a medium for the “holy spirit,” and the common use of rituals. Such beliefs and practices, undergirded by violence, helped socialize Acholi youths familiar with them into fighters. Second, a more traditional military hierarchy was built around an initial committed core, which formed the basis for a flexible, decentralized structure that, while slowly degrading over time, has remained remarkably sturdy. In addition, the group’s resource acquisition strategies have adapted to periods of both abundance and scarcity. This configuration of factors has remained more-or-less intact for more than three decades as the LRA has interacted with regional geopolitical shifts and in the face of multiple challenges of maintaining an insurgency.

LRA Resilience Over Three Phases

The LRA grew directly from a homegrown Ugandan People’s Democratic Army (UPDA), made up from the dominant Acholi faction of the national army overthrown by the National Resistance Army (NRA) in 1986. Led by Bazilio Olara-Okello and other military strongmen, the UPDA rebellion ended with the Pece Peace Accord of 1988. Yet senior officer Odong Latek and intransigent junior officers from the former military remained in the bush fearing criminal punishment. While this rump of the UPDA retained a military structure, it began to rely on alternative strategies for mobilization. During the UPDA’s war, head of the Holy Spirit Movement Alice Lakwena and Joseph Kony developed factions that attracted fighters with an appeal to the salvation for the Acholi people through military victory, using unorthodox military practices (e.g. believing shea butter would make fighters bullet-proof and that rocks would explode as hand grenades). Following the 1987 defeat of Lakwena’s Holy Spirit Mobile Forces (HSMF), Kony’s faction became dominant. By late 1988, Latek’s more conventional force merged with the sizable “cosmological” faction controlled by Kony, signaling the rise of his absolutist vision of Acholi society that sought to purify through violence anyone deemed government loyalists. This vision, which drew heavily on elements of elements of Acholi spiritual identity, quickly became an organizing principle and a source of resilience.

With Latek killed in 1989, Kony asserted authority, rebranding the rebellion several times until it became the LRA in September 1993. Here the group established its organizational structure, with “Control Altar” directing its operational brigades – named Gilva, Sinia, Trinkle, and Stockree – which remained intact for years and adapted to changes in manpower and resource availability. Yet the decline of the LRA’s first phase began as the Ugandan state expanded into northern Uganda. The counterinsurgency campaign Operation North weakened the LRA while militarizing Acholiland. The government also expanded the Resistance Council (RC) administrative system while recruiting Local Defence Units (LDUs) as the RC’s coercive arm. However, when military action failed to eliminate the group, peace talks began in late 1993. These talks broke down in early 1994 amidst boycotts and accusations of dishonesty. Tired of the LRA’s mounting demands, President Museveni gave the group seven days to surrender or face a military solution. Meanwhile, Kony had used the talks to conceal clandestine negotiations with Sudanese intelligence. Following Museveni’s ultimatum, the LRA withdrew into southern Sudanese garrison towns for reorganization and training. By February 18^th 1994, the group re-emerged heavily armed and newly equipped.

Thus began the LRA’s second phase in the mid-1990s when it became part of a proxy war as the Sudanese government provided it with weapons and military training to fight the Sudan People’s Liberation Army and territorial sanctuaries from which to attack Uganda. The LRA’s experience in southern Sudan consolidated the group’s structure, hardened its fighters (largely abducted Acholi youth as young as 12), and taught them how to survive in borderlands for years of operations that kept northern Uganda in almost permanent humanitarian crisis. Yet, while Sudanese support was a decisive factor in the LRA’s military strength and the intensification of the conflict, it was not always seamless. Kony’s priorities in Uganda often put him at odds with Khartoum and this led to periodic ruptures in the LRA’s resource pipeline, and the group was often expected to fend for itself in terms of day-to-day survival. As such, the LRA developed a diversified strategy of resource acquisition – maintaining military stockpiles while creating self-sustaining agrarian communities. These experiences with intermittent access to resources promoted the LRA’s self-sufficiency and resilience.

The decline of this period began with the December 1999 Nairobi Agreement, which committed Sudan and Uganda to end their proxy war. Attacks in northern Uganda declined, but the LRA remained in southern Sudan. At times, the group received Sudanese support. But Khartoum signaled its commitment to push the LRA from its territory in early 2002 when it authorized the UPDF to launch Operation Iron Fist, designed to dislodge the LRA from its Sudanese bush camps. While Iron Fist delivered some tactical successes, it did not deliver the desired knockout blow to the LRA. Instead, in 2003 the group re-entered Uganda and started a fresh conflict characterized by high profile violence and a humanitarian crisis that the Ugandan government largely outsourced to international aid agencies. The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) ended the civil war in Sudan and ejected the LRA while a revitalized UPDF blocked the group’s re-entry into Uganda.

From 2005, the LRA shifted into its third phase, best described as roving banditry. Facing military threats and the geopolitical closure of northern Uganda and southern Sudan, the group shifted to DRC’s Garamba National Park. For the following two years, the Juba peace process allowed the LRA to regroup while coalescing more tightly around Kony’s security. During this period, there was a relative lull in LRA violence, limited abductions, and the suspension in abductee training. Yet while support from Khartoum had ended, the LRA’s military capacity remained intact. Juba ultimately collapsed in 2008 due to ceasefire violations, walkouts, the LRA’s refusal to gather in the assembly areas, and Kony’s repeated failure to sign the accord’s final documents of the accord. The LRA soon resumed violence in DRC as the UPDF led Operation Lightening Thunder against Kony’s Garamba hideout. Intelligence failures led to an unsuccessful operation, and UPDF ground troops arrived at an empty camp. Shortly thereafter, the LRA unleashed a series of reprisal killings against civilians.

The LRA’s sanctuaries in DRC, CAR, and Sudan have provided permissive conditions for survival – few state institutions and a new set of resources. As such, the group has since engaged its resilience strategies in two key ways. First, the LRA has managed to maintain its hierarchy despite the outflow senior commanders, extended periods of geographical separation, and sporadic communication between units, which are expected to act independently and fend for themselves. Although this organizational structure is decentralized, core members still carry out Kony’s long-term strategic orders while maintaining an explicit LRA identity. Second, while looting remains a way of obtaining resources, the LRA has become a small player in regional illicit networks in natural resources, particularly ivory, diamonds, and gold. The group’s renewed informal relationship with Sudanese officials in the Kafia Kinji border region shelters Kony and his inner retinue and provides markets for looted items and commodities.

Conclusion

In sum, the LRA has survived by virtue of its organizational cohesion, resource use, and the ability to read its political terrain in order to exploit regions without state structures. However, such strategies may not be sufficient to sustain the LRA indefinitely. The Ugandan-led Regional Task Force (RTF) has killed and captured senior commanders from the battlefield and increased fighter defections. To be sure, the hunt for the LRA has been hamstrung by logistical and political difficulties. Above all, RTF operations are currently at risk of losing their logistical support from the U.S. Special Forces, which have larger consequences for regional peace and security in central and eastern Africa.

Christopher Day is an Associate Professor at the College of Charleston. He joined the Department of Political Science in August 2012. His teaching and research interests are in Comparative Politics, with a particular emphasis on African politics, political violence, and civil wars. His research interests extend to international security, counterinsurgency, proxy warfare, and the institutional role of different armed state actors in Africa. A former disaster relief worker with Médécins Sans Frontières, he is also interested in humanitarian affairs. He offers courses on the Politics of Africa, the Model African Union, Global Political Theory, and World Politics.

This article is part of the Remote Control Warfare series, a collaboration with Remote Control, a project of the Network for Social Change hosted by Oxford Research Group.

 

Editor’s note: Remote Warfare and the War on Drugs mini-series: This series of articles explores how remote warfare is being used in the war on drugs. To date, much of the debate on remote warfare has focused on its use in the war on terror. However, the use of drones, private military and security companies (PMSCs), special forces and mass surveillance are all emerging trends found in the US’s other long standing war, the War on Drugs. The articles in this series seek to explore these methods in more depth, looking at what impact and long term consequences they may have on the theatre in which they’re being used. Read other articles in the series.

In Latin America drones are being used as part of the War on Drugs as both regional governments and the US are using surveillance drones to monitor drug trafficking and find smuggling routes.. However, as drones are increasingly being used by drug cartels themselves to transport drugs between countries, could Latin America find itself at the forefront of emerging drone countermeasures?

In many Latin American countries, militaries operate as internal security forces because they combat drug traffickers and insurgencies. As a result, regional security agencies are constantly looking for new technologies to support security operations. Indeed, Peruvian Admiral José Cueto Aservi described purchasing drones in 2013 as necessary due to the “asymmetric war” being launched by narco-movement Shining Path that “takes advantage of the complex geography to attack” and thus “all methods” – including “technology” – are needed to defeat them.

Today, drones are regarded as potential “game changers” by regional security forces, believed to be invaluable “eyes in the sky” that will aid surveillance operations. Hence, it is no surprise that several Latin American countries have acquired them, whilst many others are producing them. At the same time, US drones are carrying out their own operations in Latin America as part of the global War on Drugs and drug cartels themselves have started using drones to smuggle drugs across international borders. As the use of drones looks set to increase, what is the likelihood of armed drones being used in this theatre and what implications could the non-state use of drones have on the region?

Drones in Latin America

There are currently at least 14 Latin American and Caribbean countries which have used or purchased drones. No Latin American state possesses large numbers of drones in the manner of the US military, rather, regional governments mostly operate just two or three drones of any type. Israel is the largest provider of drone technology to Latin America, having sold some $500 million worth to the region between 2005 and 2012.  Latin American states have also started developing their own drones with Colombia being the first South American nation to have home-built a drone, the Iris, in 2015.

Unarmed drones carry out Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) roles for a range of different operations in Latin America. Due to the region’s complex topography (a case in point is the Amazon, where drug traffickers from Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia and Peru operate) drones require special features like infrared cameras and have been useful for monitoring vast uninhabited spaces in the region. In Brazil, for example, drones have been used for agricultural reasons, including monitoring the Amazon rainforest. In Belize and Costa Rica too, drones have been used for conservation purposes. In Peru, a municipality police force in Lima,deployed three drones to patrol the Peruvian capital during the last Christmas season to help security officers locate emergency areas if necessary and in Mexico, drones have been used to patrol and secure sensitive areas like the facilities of the state oil company PEMEX.

Drones and the War on Drugs

Drones have also been used as part of the War on Drugs in Latin America. In Mexico, National Defense Secretariat, the Federal Police, the Procuradoría General de la República (the Attorney General’s office), as well as the Army and Air Force fly drones to gather intelligence to combat organized crime, mainly drug trafficking. In Brazil, Colombia, Panama and Trinidad and Tobago too, drones are used to monitor drug trafficking and find drug smuggling routes.

Drones are also being used by non-state actors, in the form of drug cartels, to smuggle drugs between countries. In January 2015, a drone crashed in a supermarket parking lot in Tijuana, Mexico –carrying three kilograms of crystal meth and in August 2015, two Mexican citizens were convicted of utilizing a UAV to fly 13 kilograms of heroin from Baja California, Mexico, into California.This led US authorities to deem drones an “emerging trend” employed by transnational criminal organizations to smuggle narcotics into the US.

In its long running War on Drugs, the US has also been using its own drones in Latin America. A New York Times article reported that, in 2011, in an effort to step up its involvement in Mexico’s drug war, the Obama administration begun sending its drones deep into Mexican territory to gather intelligence to help locate major traffickers. Furthermore, an official US briefing from 2011 – obtained via the Freedom of Information Act – revealed that the US Air Force is working to make its RQ-4 Global Hawk high altitude long endurance drones available to its allies in Latin America and the Caribbean in order to help “find drugs fields and helping plan offensives against rebel groups”.

US Customs and Border Protection operates 10 MQ-1 Predator drones, including two based in Cape Canaveral, Florida, that patrol a wide swatches of the Caribbean through the Bahamas and down to south of Puerto Rico as part of the drugs fight, and, in 2013, it was reported that the US Navy was testing a new type of drone that can be hand-launched from a ship’s deck to help detect, track and videotape drug smugglers in action across the Caribbean Sea.

US drones have also been used for other purposes in the region. US Customs and Border Protection have been flying surveillance drones for nearly a decade, launching them from bases in Texas, Florida, North Dakota and Arizona to detect illegal border-crossing. This activity has been called into question recently as a 2015 report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found drones to be ineffective in conducting surveillance along the border.

Towards drone countermeasures?

As for the future, we can expect drones to continue to be utilized in Latin America, as there has been an increase in the purchasing and development of drones across the region in the last few years. US companies Boeing and Aerovironment, for example, have both declared their intention to increase drone sales to Latin America, with countries like Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Peru interested in purchasing from them and the Swedish firm Unmanned System Groups (USG), showcased its F-330 drone to the Uruguayan armed forces in late 2014.

More countries in the region are also looking to develop their own drones. Following the building of Colombia’s first drone in 2015, a COHA report found that Peru, Ecuador, Argentina and Brazil are all in the process of developing their own drones. There have also been talks of developing a South American drone, which would be manufactured by the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR, which has as members all twelve South American states).

With regards to armed drones in the region, a number of states have indicated their desire for them. Peru and Colombia in particular could seek to acquire armed drones as internal security conditions worsen. However, this is unlikely to happen any time soon as countries that possess armed drones, such as the US and Israel, are unlikely to sell them to Latin America in the near future. Hence Latin American militaries would have to look to other potential suppliers, like China or Russia, or construct them themselves. Here, financial barriers, along with limited technological know-how capabilities, even amongst countries that already produce drones, would make this unlikely.

Even if armed drones are unlikely to be used in the region any time soon, there is a potential for Latin America to become a testing ground for drone technology in other ways. As drones are being increasingly utilized by drug traffickers in the region to transport drugs between countries in ever more sophisticated ways, it is likely that this will lead to regional efforts to develop increasingly advanced drone-detection and interdiction technologies to defend against this threat. At present a number of companies internationally are developing this technology, used to detect, block and destroy drones. This includes the development of early warning systems that can identify and detect drones and signal jamming technology to block drone control frequencies. As well as this, technology is also being advanced to destroy detected drones. This includes both laser and kinetic defence systems, the later using missiles, rockets and bullets capable of shooting drones down. Companies are also looking into nonlethal projectile weapons that fire blunt force rounds, such as bean bags or rubber bullets, or small portable net guns that can ensnare drones. As Latin America finds itself battling against the hostile use of drones by drug cartels it could find itself at the forefront of these emerging drone countermeasures.

Alejandro Sanchez is a regular contributor for IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly, the Center for International Maritime Security, Blouin News and Living in Peru. He focuses on geopolitics, military and cyber security issues in the Western Hemisphere. His analyses have appeared in numerous refereed journals including Small Wars and Insurgencies, Defence Studies, the Journal of Slavic Military Studies, European Security, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and Perspectivas. Follow him on Twitter:  @W_Alex_Sanchez

Often seen as a tactic harnessed by the weak, guerrilla warfare can also be a employed by the strong. States have at times used guerrillas in inter-state and civil conflict.

Guerrilla warfare is widely viewed as a weapon of the weak. To Mao Tse-tung, it was the optimum strategy of those “inferior in arms and military equipment.” He drew inspiration from the Russian troops accomplishing, in 1812, what their militarily superior European counterparts could not: drive Napoleon’s Grand Army out of their country. They did this not only by taking advantage of Russia’s distinctive geography and climate, but also by using guerrillas – Cossacks and peasants – to go after the French troops “as unconsciously as dogs bite to death a rabid stray dog.”

But, guerrilla warfare can also be a weapon of the strong. States with robust conventional military capabilities at times use guerrillas in inter-state and civil conflict.

Guerrilla Warfare

Guerrillas’ advantages stem from their organization and local ties. They typically operate as small, independent units, thereby exercising more maneuverability, alertness, concealment, and access to the local population than their regular counterparts. Carl von Clausewitz recommended supplementing a regular army with bands of armed civilians. He observed that, when faced with adversity, soldiers typically “cling together like a herd of cattle,” while civilians “scatter and vanish in all directions, without requiring a special plan.” But, he emphasized that the latter should not be used “to pulverize the core but to nibble at the shell and around the edges” of regular armies.

Both Clausewitz and Mao viewed guerrillas as useful for weakening a conventionally strong rival through harassment and psychological warfare, but recognized that they are “but one step in the total war.” It is the regular troops that must, in the end, directly confront and defeat the enemy. Thus, for example, the recent U.S. strategy of sponsoring local rebels in Syria against Bashar al-Assad’s (Russia-supported) army was likely to fail not least because of the difficulties inherent in using nonstate proxies. The U.S. strategists – presumed students of Clausewitz – failed to recognize the necessary role of the regular forces, or else significantly underestimated their capacity to form a regular army out of irregulars while in the midst of a war. Or, they were simply constrained by the political unfeasibility of setting regular U.S. soldiers’ boots on the ground.

In addition to weakening (or hopelessly trying to defeat) a rival’s regular forces, states often use guerrillas – or “counter-guerrillas” – against guerrilla rivals. The latter are typically rebels fighting to gain, maintain, or reclaim territorial control from an established government or occupying power. The former are sometimes also referred to as “pro-government militias.”

In a recent article published in the Journal of Strategic Studies, I closely examine and disaggregate the different types of counter-guerrillas states use in counterinsurgency operations. I identify two types of counter-guerrillas: self-defense militias and death squads. Self-defense militias typically comprise ordinary civilians, such as peasants, while death squads are usually manned by experienced militants, such as turned rebels or violent criminals.

I argue that states make proxy choices based on the latter’s comparative advantage, availability, and controllability. The state’s ideal partners are highly skilled fighters with deep knowledge of the insurgent network and links to the local population. Regular soldiers are highly skilled fighters, but possess limited local and insurgent knowledge. Partnering with nonstate actors means tackling the classic principal-agent problem, and the state’s capacity to do so is significantly shaped by its spatial reach (i.e. territorial control) across the theater of war. Figure 1 illustrates the different configurations of territorial control.

Figure 1. Zones of Control

 

 

 

 

 

In Zone A, the state exercises full control. Zone B represents the insurgent-dominated area, whereas Zone C is the contested region where both sides actively compete for influence. Zone D represents an area that has been largely neglected in the burgeoning civil war literature. It is a zone that is neither fully controlled nor, for the time being, actively contested.

Among the nonstate alternatives, the ideal partner for the state is a skilled fighter with insider knowledge of the insurgency and its logistics network. The disadvantage of using this type of proxy is that his fighting skills make him dangerous and difficult to control. The cost of losing control of skilled fighters can be unpalatably high. Unless they are weak or collapsed, modern states will prefer to use skilled fighters when and where they can supervise them.

Nonstate actors that possess the desired local knowledge and have significant experience wielding extra-institutional violence, whether of criminal or rebel nature, may be harnessed to counter the insurgents. Their comparative advantage is in performing specialized, offensive, and highly targeted tasks (e.g. assassinations) that take advantage of their high mobility and combat skills. Consequently, they are likely to be used where the insurgents are actually located (Zones B and C). We should expect them in Zone C, where the state can exercise control over their activities. Using death squads in Zone B requires the state to create robust control mechanisms, such as embedding these groups firmly within special operations units of regular military or police forces. Where the state exercises full control (Zone A), or where the insurgents are not yet present (Zone D), states do not require highly targeted offensive operations and, consequently, death squads.

While the comparative advantage of death squads is in highly targeted offensive operations, self-defense militias are best at performing static defensive tasks, such as guarding villages, communication lines, transportation networks, and vital installations. They are, consequently, more likely to be used to facilitate the operation of state forces in contested regions (Zone C) or to deny the insurgency access to areas where neither side has effective control (Zone D). In Zone B, self-defense militias are helpless against the insurgents. Not only can their government-provided weapons easily fall into rebel hands, but also, given the high rates of defection in insurgent-dominated areas, they may become a fertile source of rebel recruits. Remnants of self-defense militias (once created in Zone C or D) may persist in Zone A, but only because demobilization of nonstate actors is usually slow and costly.

The Kashmir Case

India’s use of counter-guerrillas in Kashmir illustrates the logic of the argument. In response to an insurgency breaking out in the late 1980s in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (here referred to as “Kashmir”), the Indian army used former rebels (i.e. “renegades”) and villagers to combat the insurgents. Initial efforts relied on local police enforcement, treating the insurgency as an issue of “law and order.” However, the local policemen proved ineffective and were supplemented by three paramilitary forces (the Central Reserve Police Force, the Border Security Force, and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police). The Indian army’s role expanded further in 1993 with the introduction of the Rashtriya Rifles, an elite army unit created specifically for counterinsurgency operations.

Former rebels were used mostly in the contested areas (Zone C) and, under the supervision of the Rashtriya Rifles, in Zone B. Kashmiri ex-insurgents, who were also popularly known as “Ikhwanis,” were used to eliminate rebels and their sympathizers. In Zone D – the mountainous areas of the Jammu region – the state instituted the civilian-manned Village Defense Committee (VDC) system. Figure 2 illustrates the distribution of the “renegades” and the VDCs. Official statements place the number of VDC volunteers at 6,000, but a prominent Kashmiri journalist I interviewed in Srinagar (the summer capital of Kashmir) estimated the figure to be closer to 23,000.

Figure 2. Zones of Control in Kashmir

 

 

 

 

 

Costs of Counter-Guerrillas

Counter-guerrillas may be good for war, but they are bad for peace. Weaponizing turned rebels, criminals, and civilians offers tempting tactical benefits, but it also carries significant post-conflict costs. The conventional wisdom is that outsourcing violence lowers the cost of conflict and provides states with plausible deniability. However, as I learned from my fieldwork in Kashmir and other conflict zones, the local population quickly becomes aware of the illicit links between the counter-guerrillas and the government, as does the international community.

The “renegades” may have helped the Indian army achieve military victory over the insurgents, but they also significantly boosted the widespread and enduring resentment against the Indian government. The arming of a select ethnic group (mostly Hindus and some Sikhs) in Jammu generated “intermittent outburst of communal violence” as well as incidents of looting, abduction, and rape.

Playing local groups against one another is a classic strategy of colonialism, with a lasting impact on the peace and prosperity of many postcolonial states. Perhaps India’s Supreme Court said it best. It described the arming of over 6,000 young men in the tribal tracts by the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh to fight the Naxalite-Maoist insurgents as “tantamount to sowing of suicide pills that could divide and destroy society.”

Yelena Biberman is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Skidmore College and Nonresident Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.

Drone strikes have been a core strategy of the so-called global war on terror. But there have also been many questions raised surrounding the effectiveness, transparency, legitimacy, and ethics of their use.

Technology has fundamentally altered not only how security is defined, but also how it is sustained and even enhanced.  Nowhere is this new reality more apparent than in the so-called “global war on terror,” where there is little agreement about counterterrorism tactics and strategy.  A core part of the so-called war on terror has been the utilization of drone technology.  In the context of warfare, the drone has at least three functions: surveillance, killing, and providing targeting for another weapons system. The significance of the new technology is not so much that drone operators must decide between surveillance and firing but that they can decide.  The drone often removes the need for indirect fire (where the shooter cannot see the target).  Under such circumstances, the use of drones is a significant advantage to the side employing them.

Analysts point to several factors indicating why targeted killings by the United States (U.S.) are likely to increase in the foreseeable future. Drone strikes put fewer American lives at risk and provides a low-cost alternative to expensive and unwieldy conventional forces, especially given projected cuts in the defense budget and a dwindling public appetite for long wars.  The reasons for the shift to combat drones are obvious:  it lessens the burdens and responsibility on a state’s taxpayers, policymakers, and military.  But drones have drawbacks, too.

From a broad perspective, the use of armed drones in response to terrorism may actually be counterproductive.  It has at times proved detrimental and terrifying, not just to the targeted individuals but to entire populations, killing innocent civilians and fueling resentment that has fed into terrorist recruitment and radicalization, intensifying the very terrorism that the drones are intended to combat. Those fears have been made ever more real by the surging number of casualties caused by targeting high-value terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.  The debate over the proper use of drone strikes abroad remains far from settled and has raised many questions about their effectiveness, transparency, legitimacy, and the ethics surrounding their use.  These issues deserve more attention.

Legal and Moral Issues

Despite frequent condemnation of the U.S. cross-border drone strikes as patently illegal, the legality question is not so straightforward because international law is not precise.  Even though the U.N. Charter explicitly prohibits states from employing “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” (Article 2(4)), it provides two exceptions, recognizing an “inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.” (Article 51).  The other exception relates to authorization by the Security Council (Articles 39, 41, 42).  Debate over the breadth of the self-defense exception dates back to the 1950s, focusing on the “inherent” nature of the right, what constitutes an “armed attack,” and when an armed attack “occurs.”  This is the essence of the current controversy over pre-emptive self-defense, which the United States invokes to justify preventing an attack by responding to it before it actually occurs.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has generally treated self-defense as a narrow exception to the prohibition on force.  In the 1985 case of Nicaragua v. United States, for example, it held that to give rise to a right of self-defense, an attack must be a significant one.  The ICJ has also upheld the principles of necessity and proportionality, finding that self-defense is not permissible even against an armed attack if the self-defense is not necessary to accomplish the purpose of defense or if it is disproportionate in terms of civilian lives or property lost.  Perhaps the court’s most important finding is that the prohibition on the use of force and the limited self-defense exception have become a part of customary international law.

As Rosa Brooks has argued,  ambiguity and vagueness in these core legal concepts of “self-defense” and “armed attack,” as well as related doctrines of “imminence,” “proportionality,” and “necessity,” permit the U.S. to make plausible arguments for legality, while allowing other states simultaneously to condemn the attacks as unlawful.  In the absence of a single overarching international authority and judicial system to declare who is right, the answer, if it ever arrives, will depend on the development of a consensus within the international community, which could take many years to build.

It is not even clear that use of drones against suspected terrorists is governed by the law of armed conflict (LOAC) in the first place.  If these are more appropriately regarded as law enforcement actions, as some believe, then they should be governed by law-enforcement rules and limited by international human rights law.  The intentional targeting of suspected terrorists poses vexing questions surrounding the legal principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty.’  As a matter of U.S. constitutional law and criminal law, does the executive branch, acting through the military or the intelligence community, have the right to kill a suspected terrorist whose guilt has not been adjudicated in court?  Does it violate the right to life and the prohibition of arbitrary killing, protected by, among other things, Article 6(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights?

In U.S. law, a drone attack, like any other targeted killing, arguably, but not necessarily, violates a ban on assassination by U.S. personnel dating back to an executive order issued by President Gerald Ford in 1976. Until 1975, many high officials inside the U.S. government, including President Ford, did not know that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had ever plotted to kill foreign leaders. All that changed, however, as a result of a series of exposes published in The New York Times by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. In early 1976, following several disclosures, investigations and public revulsion, President Ford issued the executive order banning the assassinations.  The ban on assassination is still in effect in a later executive order promulgated by President Reagan.

Another question is how those who employ armed drones can justify ‘collateral damage’ to innocent bystanders who become unintended victims.  The LOAC allows the targeting of enemy combatants and expressly prohibits targeting civilians, but so long as reasonable steps are taken to avoid collateral injuries, and the loss of civilian lives is proportional to the military advantage, the accidental killing of civilians is not a war crime.  But this does not mean that it is morally or politically justified.  More fundamentally, international law raises questions about the right of the U.S. to target individuals without the consent of the government on whose territory the killing occurs.  Does the UN Charter’s Article 2(4) prohibition on the use or threat of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another state even allow such attacks?

The U.S. has argued that the attacks are permissible because the targeted state is either unwilling or unable to police its own territory and prevent the targeted individuals from carrying out terrorist acts.  The 2005 ICJ case of Congo v. Uganda appears to weaken the U.S. argument, holding that Uganda’s military incursion into Congo to stop cross-border attacks by Congo-based insurgents was unlawful.  Most scholars and most states appear to adopt the ICJ’s broad understanding of the Article 2(4) prohibition on force and narrow understanding of Article 51’s self-defense exception.  Nevertheless, the debate continues.

Both the Bush and the Obama administrations have argued that the United States should maintain its ability to use all of the tools in its arsenal, including armed drones, to prevent terrorist organizations and groups from attacking the U.S. homeland.  On September 17, 2001, President Bush signed an executive finding that authorized the CIA to “kill or capture al-Qaeda militants around the globe.”  While some officials within the Bush administration defended the drone strikes as consistent with and conforming to international law, others emphasized their effectiveness rather than their legality, arguing that the use of drones has given the U.S. a new dimension of capability that most other nations lack.  Still, others have added that some limits must be placed on drone strikes against U.S. citizens overseas—that is, Americans should not be targeted without prior approval by a military panel or a federal judge.

On balance, the U.S. government continues to regard the drone program in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and the border regions of Pakistan as part of the ongoing U.S. war with al-Qaeda, which has been waged pursuant to the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force by which Congress authorized the president to take military action against nations, organizations, or persons involved in the 9/11 attacks.  As long as the attacks are aimed at individuals associated with al-Qaeda and are for the purpose of preventing future acts of terrorism against the United States, they appear to fall within the scope of the authorization.  The U.S. government contends that international law permits the United States to use force against al-Qaeda and its affiliates in countries where there is an extant armed conflict to which al-Qaeda or its associates are party.  If the drone strikes are part of the war with al-Qaeda, the argument goes, the law of armed conflict applies. The Obama administration has taken the view that the law of armed conflict applies to drone strikes, whether they are part of the war or are used as a separate military strategy such as counterterrorism.

The ethical and legal issues raised by the rapidly developing drone technology pale in comparison to those presented by the Pentagon’s development of new autonomous weapons systems.  These amount to fully independent robots, guided by artificial intelligence, which can decide on their own whom and when to kill.  These projects, to which the Defense Department has committed billions of research dollars, have prompted an intensifying debate among legal scholars and ethicists:   “Can a machine be trusted with lethal force?”  “Who is at fault if a robot attacks a hospital or a school?”  “Is being killed by a machine a greater violation of human dignity than if the fatal blow is delivered by a human?”  A Pentagon directive requires that autonomous weapons use “appropriate levels of human judgment.”  Scientists and human rights experts have argued that the standard is far too broad, insisting that such weapons be subject to diligent application and “meaningful human control.”

 Transparency and effectiveness

Critics have argued that the U.S. drone program lacks transparency and is largely unknown to the general public and most government officials, including most members of Congress.  There is also little doubt that innocent civilians are dying in drone attacks. Some studies have demonstrated the disconnect between public statements and what researchers have discovered about civilian casualties from U.S. drone strikes. White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan has often attributed “surgical precision” and “laser-like focus” to the drone program.  Critics argue that stressing the notion of surgical precision in the face of many civilian casualties caused by such attacks is downright misleading.  In some cases, the CIA may not even have known the identity of the people it has killed.  The presumption that all military-age males killed in drone strikes have been “militants” cannot withstand strict scrutiny.

Several organizations or publications have informed the public debate on civilian deaths from drone strikes.  These include, among others, the New America Foundation (NAF), the Long War Journal (LWJ), the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ), the Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic (CHRC), the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School, and the Global Justice Clinic at the NYU School of Law, which have conducted an investigation into several aspects of the U.S. targeted killing program in Pakistan and have provided a detailed narrative about the law and the policy behind it.

Despite Brennan’s and the CIA’s denials of unintended civilian deaths, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London has reported that 371 drone strikes in Pakistan killed between 2,564 and 3,567 people between 2004 and the first half of 2013.  Between 411 and 890 (12%-35% of the total) were civilians.  Fewer than one-quarter of those killed in drone strikes in Pakistan have been civilians. As of August 2016, President Obama has authorized and confirmed 506 drone strikes, killing an estimated 3,040 military combatants and 391 civilians.

The lack of government transparency on drone strikes raises serious questions about their effectiveness and accuracy.  If the drone attacks are to be effectively utilized, critics argue, they have to be used for short-term interventions with the intention of using them rarely, selectively, transparently, and only against those who can realistically target the United States.  Absent a realistic threat against the U.S., it is difficult to justify a killing as self-defense and thus permissible under Article 51.  Otherwise it is arguably just an extrajudicial killing of an un-convicted, often unindicted, criminal suspect as well as a violation of the U.N. Charter’s prohibition on the use of force.

 Managing Risks or Seeking Long-Term Solutions

It is time to think outside the box in which the states fighting terrorism have locked themselves, and to make the case for why the U.N. and other development organizations should be empowered and encouraged to support civic engagement, societal improvement, and low-level civil society rebuilding as a means to battle the unrest and despair that fuels terrorism.  One expert reminds us that drone strikes and the arrest of key leaders can be effective against smaller and more traditional terrorist groups, but not against most radicalized and jihadist groups.  Paradoxically, some U.S. allies, such as Pakistan, who often cooperate with Washington, provoke terrorist activities by their very authoritarian policies and practices.  The U.S. needs as many allies as possible in its military counterterrorism efforts, but some of those allies are likely to prove as problematic as drone strikes in the broader effort to prevent and contain terrorism by winning over the hearts and minds of the people.

Mahmood Monshipouri, PhD, University of Georgia, is a professor of international relations at San Francisco State University and he is also a visiting professor at UC-Berkeley, teaching Middle Eastern Politics, and editor, most recently, of Information Politics, Protests, and Human Rights in the Digital Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

William V. Dunlap, MPhil, University of Cambridge; JD, Yale University, is a professor of law at the Quinnipiac University School of Law. He teaches constitutional, criminal, national security, counterterrorism, and international law. He is a former associate dean for faculty research and a former associate dean for academic affairs. He has served as chair of the Section on International Law, the Section on Admiralty and Maritime Law, and the Section 3on Internation

by Wim Zwijnenburg

This article is part of the Remote Control Warfare series, a collaboration with Remote Control, a project of the Network for Social Change hosted by Oxford Research Group.

While the US and its allies have had a monopoly on drone technology until recently, the uptake of military and civilian drones by a much wider range of state and non-state actors shows that this playing field is quickly levelling. Current international agreements on arms control and use lack efficacy in responding to the legal, ethical, strategic and political problems with military drone proliferation. The huge expansion of this technology must push the international community to adopt strong norms on the use of drones on the battlefield.

Media outlets around the world reported on a new Islamic State (IS) video in August, which made use of a quad copter surveillance drone to film a military base near Raqqa, Syria. ‘Drones and Da’ash: a new terror threat’, headlines suggested. But that’s old news. Drones have been operated by non-state armed groups for years. Indeed, IS had already put up a drone-filmed video in February 2014 of a convoy with armoured vehicles, SUVs and trucks in Fallujah, and Hezbollah has been investing in their drone arsenal since before the 2006 Lebanon war.

The dropping of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is now almost 70 years behind us and, current rhetoric over Ukraine aside, the Cold War ended almost a quarter-century ago. This is how we now understand nuclear weapons – as a threat of the past, more important in history class than in the headlines. But this is not the case. While we have made admirable progress on disarming and dismantling, particularly the arsenals of the US and Soviet successor states, thousands of nuclear weapons still exist and progress on disarmament is too sporadic for comfort. The threat of nuclear proliferation is high and many current nuclear weapons exist within hostile regions or on trigger alert. Nuclear risks are more prevalent than we’d like to believe. Whether we like or not, accidents can happen.

The dramatic decrease in public awareness and engagement in the nuclear weapons debate since the 1980s poses a risk to our future, as younger generations and future policy shapers are less familiar with the challenges posed by nuclear weapons and will be as they start to take over the reins of governance. But nuclear weapons are too dangerous for a disconnect of this magnitude.

It wasn’t always this way

We haven’t always been so disconnected from the bomb. US arms control expert William Hartung describes:

There was a time when nuclear weapons were a significant part of our national conversation. Addressing the issue of potential atomic annihilation was once described by nuclear theorist Herman Kahn as “thinking about the unthinkable,” but that didn’t keep us from thinking, talking, fantasizing, worrying about it, or putting images of possible nuclear nightmares (often transmuted to invading aliens or outer space) endlessly on screen.

Perhaps it was the imminent threat during the Cold War that compelled millions across the world to actively protest against nuclear weapons. For example, in the United Kingdom, the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp was established in 1981 to protest the deployment of US nuclear-armed cruise missiles at the Greenham Common Air Force base. While in June 1982 in the United States, one million people came together in New York’s Central Park to call for an end to the nuclear arms race in the “Nuclear Freeze” protest.

The looming nuclear threat seemed to fade away after the Cold War. Progress on arms control led to complacency with the international treaties that were in place to protect us against nuclear dangers. Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), for example, the nuclear weapon states (UK, US, China, France, Russia) are obligated to work towards disarmament. However, as absurd as it sounds, there is no universal agreement on what that would quite look like, or how to get there.

Moreover, we’ve witnessed three countries become overtly nuclear armed states since the Cold War: India, Pakistan and North Korea. It’s a small percentage in comparison to states that don’t have the bomb, but when it comes to nuclear weapons, even a small percentage is a terrifying one.

International norms of non-use and the “nuclear taboo” have led us not to worry about that small percentage of states. Eric Schlosser’s recent book Command and Control, however, alarmingly points out that there have been several nuclear “near misses” in the United States alone that we as a public have little to no knowledge of. Schlosser writes:

Right now thousands of missiles are hidden away, every one of them is an accident waiting to happen, a potential act of mass murder. They are out there waiting, soulless and mechanical, sustained by our denial – and they work.

Is it simply that the public is in denial about nuclear weapons? A diverse range of psychological studies conducted in the 1980s – including Nuclear attitudes and reactions: Associations with depression, drug use, and quality of life; Nuclear War as a Source of Adolescent Worry; and Gender, sex roles, and attitudes toward war and nuclear weapons – demonstrate a desire to understand society’s feelings about nuclear weapons at the height of the Cold War.

In more recent years, there have been similar studies conducted in reference to climate change, another somewhat abstract and imminent global threat. And yet, while the nuclear threat is the still around, we’re not as concerned about nuclear weapons as we were 30 years ago. It could be, as Schlosser suggests, denial. It seems that we have forgotten, don’t understand, or are simply indifferent.

Why we should care

Beyond the obvious threat of obliteration posed by nuclear weapons, they also undermine essential international co-operation between states and become a liability in certain situations. For example, in the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, many media sources were keen to point out that any Western military intervention would put nuclear armed states up against each other. It could be argued that the diplomatic actions taken towards the crisis, resulting in economic sanctions and a recent shift of the G8 meeting away from Sochi, can be partly attributed to the looming presence of nuclear arsenals. As such, the continued presence of these weapons will continue to affect the cooperation and relationship between Russia and the West, for better or for worse.

Nuclear weapons, or efforts taken to prevent their proliferation, can also affect a range of industries and economies. The threat of nuclear proliferation in Iran led to the implementation of economic sanctions that affected trade in a range of countries (including the UK, US and other European states) and a range of industries such as banking, insurance, oil, pharmaceuticals, and food. UN Resolution 1540 also calls upon states to implement export controls and regulations on materials that could be used for WMD proliferation, which affects such industries as shipping and transport, and manufacturing firms.

It is naïve to assume that any spending on nuclear weapons or related programmes would or could be simply or entirely allocated to spending in other areas, such as healthcare or other threat reduction initiatives, but the stark contrast in the spending is noteworthy: In 2002, the World Bank estimated that $40-60 billion USD annually would be enough to meet the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals, which range from providing universal primary education to eradicating poverty and hunger. Between FY2008 – FY2013, the US spent $77 billion to address global climate change in total, with the President’s request for $11.6 billion for FY2014. At the same time, it was estimated in 2012 that the US was on track to spend an average of $64 billion per year on nuclear weapons and related programmes over the following decade.

Continued reliance on nuclear deterrence is a divisive issue. Whether one believes that it brings security and stability, or that the risks (and monetary costs) are too high, reliance on nuclear weapons for security is among the most pressing issues of our time and we need to be aware that the decisions we make today will have implications on the future and the uncertain threats that we will face. With public interest in nuclear issues waning, policy shapers and the emerging leaders of tomorrow are increasingly focusing their attention elsewhere. As a result, nuclear policy is being pushed back to those who have been making these decisions for decades and the circular debate rooted in Cold War perspectives continues. Fresh perspectives and a renewed interest in the nuclear debate are needed to address these security challenges of the future.

The way forward

Now is the time to engage the next generation on these issues if we are ever going to find a long term solution to this long term problem. The debate on nuclear weapons needs new ideas and help to shift nuclear weapons out of their isolated silo and back to the heart of security debate. This requires building a security narrative that includes nuclear weapons in a broader context, approaching them as a part of a bigger problem, and not as the problem itself. This also involves bringing in a wider range of disciplines into the nuclear weapons debate including businesses, creative communities, environmental and health groups, and social scientists, because nuclear weapons have an effect on all of us.

If we are going to make progress on the nuclear weapons debate, we need continued engagement from all sides, along with a deeper understanding of the motivations behind what drives people to think about (or not think about) nuclear weapons. In essence, we need to reconnect with the nuclear debate and start thinking about a sustainable future.

BASIC has launched a new Next Generation project to inspire a next generation of thinking on nuclear weapons.

Rachel Staley is currently the Programme Manager for the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) in their London office. Since 2011, Rachel has managed the operations of the office and assisted in developing the organisation’s programmes working on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament in the Middle East, as well as engaging directly in the Trident renewal debate in the United Kingdom. Rachel holds an MA with Distinction in Non-Proliferation and International Security from King’s College London and a BA with Honours in International Affairs and Anthropology from Northeastern University.

The announcement of fresh counter-terrorism powers in the UK follows assertions that returning foreign fighters present a substantial new threat to national security. But these powers may be counter-productive in the long term, risking a legacy of injustice that will only exacerbate the political tensions of the War on Terror.

The Counter-terrorism and Security Bill announced in the UK in November includes new powers aiming to limit the flow of people travelling to train and fight with certain rebel groups in Syria and Iraq. The proposals, due to be rushed onto the statute book in January, include the extension of controversial powers to disrupt travel and strip citizenship from terrorism suspects. Life sentences for a greater range of terror offences, including training, are also proposed. The British bill follows a US-drafted UN Security Council resolution to criminalise al-Qaida or Islamic State (IS)-linked foreign fighters which was adopted in November. Similar measures are being debated in other European countries and Australia.

The reason for this wave of legislation? On the back of reports of unprecedented numbers of foreigners travelling to fight in the Syrian conflict, there has been a near-universal consensus amongst the security and intelligence community that returnees present a heightened national security threat. Returning foreign fighters, it is feared, will be networked, skilled up, and angry. The threat of political violence is ‘inevitable’, according to senior EU counter terrorism officials.

Despite these fears, there is little in the way of a historical precedent in the UK to indicate that returning foreign fighters do represent an increased national security threat. The lack of evidence to support these claims is one of several legal and practical difficulties. Existing laws are already being used to criminalise foreign fighters in Syria’s conflict. The overwhelming application of such laws to Muslim communities has raised concerns that the legal principle of parity before the law is at risk. There is also a lack of accountability and oversight of these cases due to the use of secret evidence.

The long term efficacy of such measures is therefore questionable. They may be a distraction from the underlying dynamics driving political violence, which are known to relate primarily to grievances over foreign policy. The abandonment of the principles of justice and equity before the law are likely to exacerbate resentment and the perception that the West is ‘at war with Islam’. The UK’s counter-terrorism policies may be creating a legacy of injustice that risks exacerbating the underlying political antagonisms of the War on Terror.

Threat level: Severe?

In response to the risk posed by returning foreign fighters, the UK’s terrorism threat level was again raised to ‘severe’ in late August. Although exact figures are not known, the number of those who have travelled from the UK to fight in the Syrian conflict is estimated to be at least 500 since 2011. The extent to which the Syrian conflict has mobilised fighters from Europe is clearly significant: key to this is the ability of groups such as IS to attract recruits via its propaganda films and social media activities conducted in European languages.

But not all those who have gone to fight are with IS. The reality of the Syrian conflict is that there are over 2,000 fighting groups in Syria, including some with affiliation to al-Qaida. Little is known about group affiliations of the UK’s foreign fighters. Even individuals that are fighting with proscribed organisations, such as Islamic State or Jabhat al-Nusra, will have varying personal affiliations. Primary source reports collected by journalists and advocacy groups indicate that the primary motivation for those going to fight is a moral duty to fight the Assad regime (See for example, ‘Blowback: Foreign Fighters and the Threat they Pose’, CAGE, July 2014; ‘Joining ISIS: My Meeting with Aseel Muthana’, Huffington Post, 25 June 2014; ‘From Portsmouth to Kobane: the British jihadis fighting for Isis’, New Statesman, 6 November 2014). The reports suggest that, partly due to practical reasons, certain larger groups with more resources such as IS have absorbed the most foreigners. One of these reasons is that some other groups’ vetting procedures present a barrier to foreigners wanting to join.

There are also legitimate questions over the wisdom of excluding foreign fighters from their countries of residence. Following reports that disillusioned fighters have been caught ‘in limbo’ in Turkey, wanting to leave but afraid to come home, some have called for alternatives, such as pastoral re-integration programmes existing separately from criminal investigation proceedings. A programme in Denmark provides an example of how such a scheme could function.

Context: Terrorism laws in the UK

The latest developments have occurred in the context of an increasingly securitised response of the UK to Islamist movements globally. Since 2001, the UK has progressively increased its set of counter-terrorism powers with a succession of laws, most of which have been fast-tracked and introduced as emergency legislation only to be made permanent. The UK’s multi-pronged CONTEST strategy conceives of the battle against terrorism on four fronts: Pursue, Prevent, Protect, and Prepare. The Prime Minister has promised to increase resources to these programmes. Yet intelligence resources dedicated to countering al-Qaida-linked terrorism already dwarf those that were dedicated to countering the threat posed by the Soviet Union and its allies even at the height of the Cold War, as observed by Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of the British Secret Intelligence Services at a Royal United Services Institute talk earlier this year.

There is nothing in the UK’s legal definitions of ‘terrorism’ that specifies Islamist activity. ‘Terrorism’ was defined in a Supreme Court judgment last year to include “any or all military attacks by a non-state armed group against any or all state or inter-governmental organisation armed forces in the context of a non-international armed conflict”. But the shadow of the 9/11 attack continues to shape the security services’ understanding of national security threats, and to shape the application of these laws, primarily to Muslims. The focus on ideology that can be linked to al-Qaida, and the search for evidence of ‘jihadist worldviews’ conflates the criminal and the non-criminal, the threatening and the non-threatening. It leads to a skewed application of laws to those whose ideas or religious beliefs can be superficially associated with those of the UK’s enemies. By comparison, the resources dedicated to tackling political violence by the far-right are minimal, and similar types of crimes attract lesser sentences. One recent example is a former British soldier who was a supporter of the English Defence League (EDL), handed a two-year sentence after nail bombs were discovered in his house. Despite the UK’s legal definition of “terrorism” that is consistently criticised for being overly broad, the soldier controversially avoided charges under terror legislation, instead he was found guilty of offences under the Explosive Substances Act.

The Syrian conflict has prompted security services to make increasing use of counter-terrorism powers against UK residents suspected of travelling there, or planning to travel there. A series of high-profile arrests have occurred in the last years, most of which have not made their way through the judicial process. But several recent cases raise further questions over whether these powers are being applied fairly.

There has been an inconsistent response to those understood to have fought against IS. The estimated dozens of British residents fighting with the Kurdish forces, it has been indicated, will not meet charges upon their return. The Prime Minister stated there was a “clear difference” between fighters with the Kurdish authorities and IS fighters; and stated that “highly trained border staff, police and intelligence services” would be able to distinguish between them. But one man from Derry, who explained he was also fighting against IS, but with the largest Islamic coalition was still arrested by Northern Ireland police upon his return.

Long prison sentences for crimes under terror legislation are being handed out to returning foreign fighters. Last week, two Birmingham men, Mohammed Ahmed and Yusuf Sarwar, were convicted of engaging in preparation of terrorism acts and sentenced to 12 years in prison; they had spent several weeks in Syria in 2013. The pair were arrested upon their return to the UK in January 2014 after Sarwar’s mother reported him missing to the police. The judge concluded that the pair had not planned any attack in the UK; they received the sentence because they had joined proscribed organisation Kataib al-Muhajireen. According to former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg, who was a fellow inmate in Belmarsh prison, the pair were “young” and “bewildered”, and had not thought what they were doing was a crime. Two brothers were also jailed after attending a Syrian training camp for less than a month. Despite returning without having done any fighting, they were sentenced to four-and-a-half years and three years, respectively.

Citizenship revocation powers on the grounds of national security have been increasingly deployed in recent years. In November, reports emerged that an entire family (a British-born father and three sons) had been exiled from the UK due to alleged links with al-Qaida-linked groups in Pakistan. The family deny the allegations, and are appealing the ban. A detailed investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism revealed that the number of UK citizenship revocation orders on national security grounds tripled in 2013, taking the number since 2006 to twenty-seven. At least fifteen of these individuals were abroad at the time of the deprivation order.  The Foreign Office has cited the fighters joining the Syrian war as the reason for this increase.

Where national security reasons are invoked (as they are in virtually all the cases brought under terrorism legislation), the substance of allegations is kept secret. However, police statements saying there is no immediate threat to the British public have accompanied virtually every recent Syria-related arrest (For example: Statement by Hampshire Police 14 October 2014; ‘Anti-terror police arrest five men in Dover and east London’, BBC 1 December 2014; ‘Police arrest man in Slough on suspicion of financing terrorism’ Guardian 13 November 2014; and a statement by the Head Teacher of the school where Jamshed Javeed worked ‘Teacher Jamshed Javeed admits Syria terror offences’ BBC 27 October 2014.)

Syrian Exceptionalism

UK citizens fighting in foreign wars are not universally criminalised. The Israeli Defence Force’s ‘Mahal’ programme enables foreign citizens to fight with the army in Israel, and these foreign fighters are not considered to be in breach of British law. The war in former Yugoslavia attracted fighters from Britain, many of whom were Muslims. After the beginning of the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, UK nationals were known to be fighting against the regime with Islamist groups. Men who had been previously detained and investigated under counter-terrorism powers in the UK went on to fight against the Gaddafi regime – and were supported by the UK’s security services. Advocacy group CAGE reports a number of UK nationals – more than 100, by their estimates – who met no resistance from UK authorities when leaving the UK, or legal problems when they returned from Libya.

The recent selective criminalisation of foreign fighters in the Syrian conflict points to a deeper flaw within broader US/UK ‘War on Terror’ era military strategy: the enemy is poorly defined. It is often noted that the US’ arming of the Afghan mujahideen rebels during their struggle against the Soviets in the 1980s was a key historical factor in the resulting al-Qaida network. In 2013 the UK was on the brink of going to war with the Assad regime, and came close to fighting on the same side as the rebel groups that it now seeks to vanquish. Fighters who left the UK at the beginning of the Syrian war have been criminalised in their absence and now face a major disincentive to returning to civilian life. The absence of a long-term strategy focused on peace and informed by an ethic of equity and justice has resulted in a confusing picture of shifting alliances.

This militarised and reactive foreign policy results in shifting definitions of what constitutes terrorist activity at home. It is not only foreign fighters who are meeting overwrought security responses. Lawful activities such as charity work, political organising, membership of radical religious groups, and particular religious beliefs are increasingly caught up in the dragnet of counter-terror measures. The ongoing repression of Muslim charity organisations provides multiple examples of these blurred lines. The recent seven-month detention of Moazzam Begg is another.

One lesson from the last twelve years is that injustices carried out in the name of counter-terrorism themselves have a deep, global resonance. The enduring resonance within Muslim communities of the well-documented abuse of Guantanamo Bay inmates is indicated precisely by the apparent effectiveness as a recruiting tool by Islamic State. The distinctive orange jumpsuits, as well as imagery from the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib jail, have appeared in IS’ videos, recycled as evidence of IS’ own ability to dominate. The UK, along with the US and France, is widely perceived negatively as having a ‘Crusaderist’ or imperialist project to divide and weaken the Muslim world. The selective criminalisation of foreign fighters has great potential to fuel such resentment further.

 

Betsy Barkas is Oxford Research Group’s (ORG) Quaker Peace and Social Witness Peaceworker. She works as a Project Officer for ORG’s Sustainable Security programme, and co-edits sustainablesecurity.org.

Image: Protest to free Guantanamo Bay prisoners including Shaker Aaamer, the last British resident in Guantanamo Bay. Aamer has been detained without charge for over twelve years and cleared for release since 2007. Source: Flickr | shriekingtree

This article is taken from Paul Rogers’ Monthly Global Security Briefings and was originally posted by Oxford Research Group on 12 March, 2014.

Recent examples of short-term climate disruption have done much to bring the overall issue of climate change up the political agenda. In responding to what will be one of the key challenges of the next decades – well beyond the 15-year lifetime of the post-2015 global development goals currently under discussion – much of the attention has been focused on the need to adapt to those elements of climate change that are already irreversible and also to the need to decarbonise existing high carbon-emitting economies. What needs much greater attention is the fundamental need to ensure that low-carbon emitters in the Global South are enabled to combine effective human development with responding to the challenges of climate change.

Asymmetric Impacts

The scientific evidence that climate change is happening is now overwhelming and only a tiny handful of scientists question its anthropogenic causes. The most recent decadal report from the World Meteorological Office (WMO), for 2001-2010, confirms that climate change already involves disruption, with the decade seeing a clear increase in impact across the world. Events since 2010, including excessive heat waves, floods, droughts and the strongest land-fall cyclone (Typhoon Haiyan) ever recorded all point to accelerated disruption.

In recent years there has been a relative pause in the rate of atmospheric warming but research points to aspects of the Southern Oscillation being responsible, temporarily slowing the overall rate of warming of the atmosphere, but not of the oceans. This is expected to change in the second half of the current decade and the effect of this will be that anthropogenic-induced warming and natural cycles will be in synchrony, leading to rapid change and greater climatic disruption.

Climate change is thus expected to accelerate but there is, in addition, abundant evidence that it is already a markedly asymmetric process. There are many indications that substantial areas of the tropics and sub-tropics will heat up and dry out faster than temperate latitudes. This is significant for four reasons:

• These regions support the majority of the world’s people and produce the majority of the world’s food, much of it being locally produced in subsistence farming systems.
• Most of the poorer and more marginalised people live there, with least resilience to climate disruption.
• These regions also include most of the rapidly growing megacities where infrastructure is not keeping pace with growth, resulting in low urban resilience.
• They include the vast “carbon sinks” of the Amazonian, African and Southeast Asian rain forests, the diminution of which will accelerate atmospheric carbonisation.

The other element of asymmetry – relatively faster warming of the near-Arctic – is directly advantageous to some countries, most notably Russia and Canada, both of whom stand to benefit in the short term in three ways:

• Sea ice will diminish, opening up new commercial sea routes.
• Arctic fossil and other mineral resources will be easier to exploit.
• Agriculture will “move North”, opening up new regions for development.

These two countries are also major fossil fuel producers so they benefit through these revenues, including easier exploitation of Arctic reserves, as well as from the impact of their use since this is likely to enhance Arctic warming. It is hardly surprising that neither government has much interest in controlling carbon emissions. As a Permanent Observer at the Arctic Council, the UK could do much to work with the five Nordic countries, all Main Council Members, on this issue, also involving new observer states, such as China, India, Japan and South Korea that have an interest in new sea routes, but are increasingly aware of the potential direct negative impacts on their own economies of climate change.

The Changing Political Environment

The direct denial of climate change as a phenomenon affecting human society still persists and is most clearly seen in two powerful interest groups. One is the fossil fuel industry, especially oil companies and producer countries that have a clear interest in protecting their revenues. There are also major interest groups clustered around those who genuinely believe that the unrestricted free market form of capitalism is the only appropriate system for the global economy. As such they are deeply suspicious of governmental interference in the economy and therefore highly suspicious of a world-wide challenge that demands strong intergovernmental coordination and government action.

Both groups have been powerful and effective supporters of the denial community and though they are helped by the governmental attitudes of countries such as Russia and Canada, their greatest support came from the Bush administration in the United States in 2001-2009. Their influence is now declining for three broad reasons.

• One is that the frequency of severe and even extreme weather events is changing public opinion in many countries. The UK is a good example where serious winter flooding was enough to ensure that the Prime Minister, David Cameron, agreed that climate change was of huge concern, even though many in his own party remain doubters. At a global level, the WMO report adds credibility to the view that extreme weather events, like the canary in the coal mine, are harbingers of what is to come.
• A second element is that the most powerful state, under Barack Obama, acknowledges that climate change is happening, even though powerful denier elements remain resolute in their resistance.
• Finally, a number of major industrial groups, especially those in the engineering industry, are embracing the prospects for new market opportunities as renewable energy technologies and techniques of storage and conservation come into their own

Current Responses to Climate Change

The two main responses to climate change currently envisaged are the progressive decarbonisation of carbon-intensive societies and the adaptation of high- and low- carbon societies to the impacts of climate change that are inevitable given the existing increases in atmospheric carbon. Both of these remain likely to gain in importance given the recognition of the huge challenges ahead. While the action so far is inadequate, it at least now shows signs of some prioritising. Whether the 80% carbon emission requirements of industrial societies can be achieved within twenty years is, at most, questionable, but it is now at least recognised as a worthy aim.

There is also recognition that adaptation is addressing symptoms rather than responding to causes – improved flood defences in a country such as Britain may well be necessary but unless climate change is halted they are just short-term responses that will progressively be overwhelmed. Similarly, there is already good work going on in aiding the adaptation of less developed economies through, for example, the breeding of robust food grain varieties more able to withstand low rainfall. Such work needs considerable expansion but this, and the progressive decarbonisation of high emitters still misses out a crucial element in responding to climate change.

The Missing Element

In relative terms, the missing element is the low level of investment in the evolution of low-carbon economies of societies that have not substantially industrialised, mainly those in the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the Global South. Such countries include most of the most marginalised and poorest people on Earth where there is a deep-rooted desire for far greater life chances, yet these cannot be met through the modes of economic organisation of the industrialised North. If the marginalised majority is to see its development prospects enhanced then this has to be achieved through new forms of low-carbon economic development. Countries have to succeed without following the path taken by industrialised states over the past two hundred years.

It follows that there is a very strong case for a state such as the UK prioritising any form of development assistance which aids this process. Much of this will centre on any form of low carbon energy use, including a wide range of renewable technologies, with major improvements in energy conservation and storage. Much work is already going on in this area, not least in relation to renewable energy technologies readily available to non-networked societies. It is also notable that when technologies emerge which demonstrate obvious utility, the speed of take-up can be remarkable. The cell-phone revolution in sub-Saharan Africa is just one example.

Regrettably, UK Department for International Development (DFID) operational plans for 2013-14 indicate that low carbon development (LCD) targets from the Department’s 2011-15 strategy have been reduced or abandoned. The 2015 target for installed clean energy capacity has been reduced by almost 97%, from 3GW to 100MW. The original target to raise $610 million in private finance for LCD has disappeared, having raised $15 million by 2013.

If the UK development programme was to commit just 20% of its budget to this area of work, the results could be extremely valuable, especially if part of that was to encourage North-South research and development partnerships. Furthermore, while the British development programme has many faults, it has grown to be the world’s second largest and there is sufficient cross-party support for this to be sustained against opposition. Because of the size of this programme, the UK has a more powerful voice than most in intergovernmental fora relating to development. It can use this voice to help ensure that the commitment promoted here is shared by other national and intergovernmental development programmes.

Conclusion

Climate disruption is one of the greatest challenges facing humankind, a challenge that is at last becoming recognised as such because of the extreme nature of many recent weather events. Decarbonising major industrial economies and funding adaptation to the already inevitable impact of climate change are essential responses but they must be accompanied by major programmes to ensure that human development in the poorer economies can be fully accomplished through processes of low carbon economic development. This is a critically important task over the coming decades, is insufficiently recognised as such, and should be a priority for any serious political party committed to the world-wide development of human well-being.

Paul Rogers is Global Security Consultant to Oxford Research Group, for which he writes monthly security briefings.  He is Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford and author of numerous books including ‘Beyond Terror’. Paul writes a weekly column for openDemocracy  and tweets regularly at @ProfPRogers.

Monthly Archives: September 2012

No Sustainable Peace and Security Without Women

September 27, 2012by Anna Alissa Hitzemann

There will be no sustainable security if we do not equally value the needs, experiences and input of men and women. A new report published by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), funded by ActionAid and Womankind Worldwide, examines the role women play in local community peacebuilding in Afghanistan, Liberia, Nepal, Pakistan and Sierra Leone. The report states “despite the increased international attention to women’s participation in peacebuilding, the achievements and challenges facing women building peace at the local level have been largely overlooked”.

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The United States, Niger & Jamaica: Food (In)Security & Violence in a Globalised World

September 21, 2012by Anna Alissa Hitzemann

due to a complex range of interconnected issues from climate change to misguided economic policies, political failure and social marginalisation, over 2 billion people across the world live in constant food insecurity. Anna Alissa hitzemann takes a sustainable security approach to look at the importance of “physical and economic access to basic food” by exploring the links between food insecurity and violence.

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“Chronic Violence”: toward a new approach to 21st-century violence

September 10, 2012by Anna Alissa Hitzemann

The Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre (NOREF) recently published a Policy brief by Tani Marilena Adams, proposing and outlining the concept of “chronic violence” to “characterise the crisis of escalating social violence that currently affects about one-quarter of the world’s population”. The report approaches “chronic violence” from a sustainable security standpoint, arguing that violence itself should not be seen as the disease to be controlled, but rather as a symptom of many complex underlying issues that need to be addressed.

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The New Insecurity in a Globalized World

September 1, 2012by Guest Author

Writing exclusively for SustainableSsecurity.org, Elizabeth Wilke argues that a new conceptualization of insecurity and instability is needed in a world with greater and freer movement of goods, services and people – both legal and illicit – greater demands on weakening governments and the internationalization of local conflicts. The new insecurity is fundamentally derived from the responses of people and groups to greater uncertainty in an increasingly volatile world. Governments, and increasingly other actors need to recognize this in order to promote sustained stability in the long-term, locally and internationally.

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China’s increasing demand for oil and gas means that it is searching abroad to secure new sources of imports. With its rich resources, the Arctic region could serve this purpose, and Chinese oil companies have shown interest in exploration and production opportunities there.

Decades of high and sustained economic growth have substantially increased China’s need for energy. China is the world’s second largest economy and the world’s largest energy consumer. Importantly, as domestic production has not kept pace with raising consumption levels, China is forced to import most of its oil and natural gas. China today is the world’s second largest oil importer and third largest importer of natural gas. Crucially, China’s oil import dependency is high and increasing. For instance, in 2016 more than 60% of China’s oil demand came from overseas imports, up 3.5% from 2015.

To meet its growing energy import demand, China has, in the last decade or so, embarked on an energetic effort to search for overseas supplies. A central objective has been to diversify the origin of its oil and natural gas sources, and means of delivery. Today, China imports oil from the Middle East and North Africa, Latin America, Central Asia and Russia, via the sea, railway and oil pipelines. China imports liquefied natural gas (LNG) from a variety of sources (for instance from Qatar, Australia, Indonesia, and Malaysia) but also pipeline natural gas from Central Asia, Myanmar and has contracted large future imports from Russia.

However, more than 50% of Chinese oil imports originate in the Middle East and North Africa and up to 80% of China’s maritime oil import must travel through the narrow Malacca Strait, a stretch of water between the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra. In the eyes of China’s strategic planners, this makes their country vulnerable to potential disturbances of oil supplies, not only due to volatile political conditions in these regions but also, however unlikely, a potential U.S. naval blockade.

Enter the Arctic region. According to the widely cited 2008 report by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), 30% of the world’s undiscovered natural gas and 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil is estimated to be in the Arctic region. Energy imports from the Arctic, Chinese strategist calculate, would help mitigate China’s supply and transport vulnerabilities by presenting an alternative to existing import sources and delivery routes.

Expanded engagement 

China is not an Arctic littoral state, but officially defines itself as a “near-Arctic state”. China has in recent years incrementally stepped up its engagement in the Arctic region. China sought, and in 2013 secured, permanent observer status in the Arctic Council (AC), granting Beijing a new platform, albeit with limitations, to participate on issues regarding Arctic governance. Importantly, China acknowledges and respects the sovereignty claims and rights of Arctic states, a pre-condition for observer membership status acceptance in the Arctic Council. China also recognizes the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as the legal foundation governing the Arctic. This helped alleviate concerns over China’s growing Arctic presence, which some viewed as potentially challenging the regional Arctic order.

China is active in scientific research in the Arctic pertaining to global climate change. While such research is sometimes brushed off as a mean to hide China’s other goals, the daunting environmental challenges currently facing China surely motivates genuine international scientific climate work and collaboration in the Arctic. China’s icebreaker, The Snow Dragon (Xuelong), has conducted seven scientific research expeditions as of 2016 and a second icebreaker under construction (ready to sail by 2019). In 2004 the Yellow River Station (Huanghe zhan) research facility in Norway’s Svalbard was established. China is also engaged in numerous scientific bilateral and multilectal cooperation projects with Arctic States, for instance the China-Nordic Arctic Research Center, while simultaneously boosting its domestic polar competence.

The EU is China’s biggest trading partner and China is the EU’s second biggest. As the Arctic ice-cap continues to retreat, opportunities for new trade links between transiting the Northern Sea Route (NSR) from China to Europe are opening up, shortening the shipping time and fuel savings considerably compared to the conventional route through the Malacca Strait and Suez Canal. There have been some optimistic estimates made by the Chinese. For instance, according to one figure, 5 to 15 of China’s total trade could use the route by 2020, if constructively prepared. China’s largest shipping company, China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO), has over the years conducted a few, but increasing, intra- and trans-Arctic voyages and announced that it plans to begin with regular trans-Arctic sailings. However, prospects such as the above estimate seem overly optimistic as utilization of the NSR is dependent on variety of factors (commercial, infrastructure, technical, environmental etc.), reflecting  overall low numbers of trans-arctic maritime trade. Importantly, most of the Chinese commercial actors remain hesitant to make large-scale investments and the optimistic scenarios must be taken with caution.

Energy – a cautious tale

Natural resources, particularly oil and gas, constitute another area of Chinese interests in the Arctic, according to some the principle motive. While the Chinese government has of late been more open about its economic interests in the Arctic, and also taken steps to promote energy bilateral cooperation with Arctic states, notably with Russia, Chinese commercial players on the ground have been cautious. It is often stated by the industry itself that China lacks the technical skill to operate in harsh Arctic conditions. The goal for Chinese oil companies is instead primarily to learn and obtain technical know-how from more advanced international companies. Western sanctions against Russia, due to the annexation of Crimea in 2014, further complicate the situation. While Russia has turned increasingly to China for capital and investments, the lack of technological skill limits China’s actual participation in exploration and production. Moreover, the current low oil price has made the global energy market a “buyer’s market”. Today’s big buyers such China have more options. In other words, Arctic oil and gas needs to be “cheap” enough to be commercially attractive compared to other available import sources.

This has undoubtedly impacted on the scope and nature of concrete Chinese Arctic energy projects. Most of what has been done is limited. For instance, the attempt to explore oil and gas in the Dreki area off the coast of Iceland by China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) together with Icelandic Eykon Energy and Norwegian Petoro remains uncertain. The often noted purchase by CNOOC of Canadian Nexen in 2013 for 15.1 USD billion and the company’s investments in Canadian oil sand have yielded limited returns so far. Russia’s Rosneft has invited China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) to explore three offshore fields in the Barents and Pechora Seas, but open information on progress is scant.

There is one project, however, which seems to have materialized significantly, namely CNPC’s involvement in the Yamal LNG terminal project in Russia’s Arctic Siberia. The project is one of the Arctic’s most ambitious infrastructure projects with an estimated cost of 27 USD billion. The terminal will supply costumers with LNG gas and aims at being operational by 2017, offering a future annual capacity of around 16.5 million metric tons per year. CNPC entered the project in 2013 in buying a 20% equity stake while committing to import 3 million tons LNG annually for a 20-year period (price so far undisclosed). Then in 2015 China’s Silk Road Fund bought 9,9% making China the project’s second largest investor after Russia’s Novatek with owns 50,1% percent and French Total with remaining 20%. The Export-Import Bank of China and China Development Bank, China’s “political banks”, in 2016 offered loans of a total of 12 USD billion, lending important financial support to the project. Additionally, Chinese companies supply Arctic modules for the construction of the terminal. Finally, Chinese shipping and construction companies are involved in the manufacturing of specialized ice-breaking LNG carriers which will be used for shipping LNG to customers. As of 2015, Chinese shipping companies have been involved in the construction of fourteen of the fifteen commissioned.

Conclusion

China’s Arctic energy interests have been limited. The Yamal LNG project is the only significant Chinese project, in part reflecting changing external circumstances as Russia’s isolation due to western sanctions literally opened up for more Chinese capital, and thus involvement. Despite the current modest Chinese concrete involvement, Arctic energy will nevertheless play a part in China’s overall energy strategic outlook in the years to come as demand for oil and especially natural gas will continue to be substantial. Arctic energy imports will not replace any of China’s main energy import sources, but more likely serve as an (limited) additional supply source.

Christopher Weidacher Hsiung is a researcher at the Asia Centre at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies (IFS) and PhD Candidate at the Department for Political Science at Oslo University. His main research areas include China’s foreign and security policy, Sino-Russian relations and China’s Arctic interests.

This interview was conducted by the Remote Control project. 

Tara McCormack is Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Leicester.

In this interview, Dr McCormack discusses the British military interventions in Libya, Iraq and Syria, the shift that these interventions mark away from the longstanding Royal Prerogative on war-making and how the use of remote warfare is effecting the democratic oversight of the use of military assets in conflict.

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Q. In Britain, the power to declare war and deploy troops in conflict is one of the few remaining Royal Prerogatives. Recently, however, British military interventions in Iraq, Syria and Libya were all first put to a vote in the House of Commons. Did these cases mark a move towards greater democratic oversight of the decision to go to war in Britain?

The Royal Prerogative (RP) is a set of (not fully defined) powers that used to belong to the Monarch but are exercised by the government and Prime Minister. In essence, the RP allows the Prime Minister to make a decision without consulting Parliament or even his/her Cabinet. The power to commit armed forces to a conflict is one important RP power. Since the end of the Cold War the RP has been seen to be increasingly problematic for a number of reasons to do with a decline in trust in government and broader problems of legitimacy.

The power to take the country to war has been seen as particularly problematic and during the 90s and 00s there were a number of Parliamentary debates and reports that considered this question of the Prime Minister’s power to declare war without broader Parliamentary authorisation.

However, historically when Britain has gone to war, although Parliament has not voted on the decision it has been customary for some kind of debate to take place, often as the military action has begun. This was so for the Kosovo (1999) war. In March 2003, under pressure from a number of MPs, Tony Blair agreed to a vote on a motion about British military intervention in Iraq on the eve of the American invasion.

The Conservative Party pledged that if they came to power would make it a matter of course that Parliament would have a substantive vote on taking Britain to war, and this was done over the Libyan intervention and then Syria. The debate and vote to go to war in Syria received a great deal of media coverage and was reported on hour by hour as indeed was the vote to go to war and even the first military planes that flew.

This new parliamentary convention on authorising military intervention is now well established.  It is a very important convention as, in principle, this new parliamentary convention gives democratic authority and legitimacy to decisions to commit British armed forces to war.

However, at the same time there has been another significant trend in warfare, and that is that governments are increasingly using methods of intervention that are in essence ‘off the books’, for example the increasing use of special forces, or drones. Paul Rogers has called these modes of intervention ‘security by remote control’. This is an excellent phase as it highlights the way in which these methods of intervention allow governments to intervene militarily but without the clear lines of public and democratic accountability that more traditional methods entail.

Q. Why do you think there was this shift towards making the process of going to war more democratic under the Conservative Party?

The shift away from the Royal Prerogative (RP) has been an on-going process since the end of the Cold War for the reasons I mentioned in my first answer, in particular questions of trust and legitimacy combined with a number of observable changes in voting behaviour, e.g. falling voter turnout, increased voter volatility and so on. What we see from the mid-90s are a number of parliamentary debates and reports about what is perceived to be the problem of the RP in this context. Of course, the decision to take a country to war is something that is particularly problematic in a context in which there seems to be a loss of trust in the government.

I think that the reason why the Conservative Party made it an explicit pledge was not that Hague and Cameron (for example) were greater democrats than Blair and New Labour, but because of this on-going debate within the political elite about the RP.

Q. Could the high financial, human and regional geopolitical costs of the Iraq War may have also contributed to the shift away from the Royal Prerogative?

I do think that the Iraq War has been significant in terms of British politics certainly. The Iraq War, the ‘dodgy dossier’ and Blair’s claims exacerbated the problem of trust and raised a question over British military intervention.

However, I do want to stress that the underlying dynamics behind the new parliamentary convention are pre-Iraq, e.g. loss of trust in government, as is clear from the debates and discussions in the House of Commons.

I think it is also worth remembering that many of our politicians have ‘mis-remembered’ the Iraq debate and the immense political support there was for this most disastrous intervention.   Tony Blair did hold a debate and vote on the Iraq intervention (albeit on the eve of military action). There was strong support for the intervention. But there were some brave voices arguing against the intervention whatever the ‘evidence’.

It is easy now to blame Tony Blair and his ‘dodgy dossier’ for all the ills in British politics.

Q. So how is this use of ‘remote warfare’ affecting the democratic oversight of armed conflict in the UK?

I think that the shift towards what Paul Rogers has called ‘remote control warfare’ means that there is less democratic oversight of armed conflict in the UK. This is because methods of intervention such as the use of special forces, drones and also cyber warfare are carried out with little public scrutiny or political debate.

It is not that information about these methods of intervention is impossible to find out, it can be found out through Freedom of Information requests, and sometimes Parliamentary questions and similar. However, compared to the very public political debate and media coverage about what might be called traditional modes of military intervention, there is very little public knowledge or scrutiny or indeed, crucially, parliamentary debate.

Q. Due to remote warfare often being highly secretive, public knowledge of the UK’s use of this tactic may be limited. But is there any reliable data on the British public’s views of remote warfare and the democratic oversight of this practice? For example, are there any opinion polls on the British public’s attitudes to security, armed forces and democratic oversight?

That is a really important question. As far as I am aware this is not something that has been fully investigated yet but it is something that needs to be looked at.

There are polls and surveys that look at public attitudes to armed conflict. Basically, British people are reluctant to intervene militarily (the idea of the ‘post-heroic’ West is more or less true) in particular for ‘wars of choice’.  So for example, a recent Gallup International poll found that only 27% percent of British people would be willing to fight for their country. A YouGov poll found a minority in favour of Britain attempting to influence events around the world.

Interestingly, however, the YouGov poll has found that whilst the majority of people oppose sending regular troops to somewhere like Syria, 60% support airstrikes or use of drones (note this is against ISIS not Assad).

This suggests that public perception is that intervention by remote control is less consequential than conventional intervention. However, I would suggest that this is not the case and that the consequences of warfare by remote control need to be more openly discussed.

Q. The Foreign Affairs Committee’s (FAC) recent report on the 2011 Libyan military intervention acknowledged the presence of UK special forces currently operating in Libya, which is arguably a surprising move given the ‘culture of no comment’ surrounding UK special forces. Looking to the future, do you feel that this may offer some grounds for optimism or do you think that the erosion of the democratic oversight of Britain’s military actions will continue?

Yes I noticed that and also that the FAC report specifically mentioned that this is not really publicly scrutinised. The thing about ‘remote control warfare’ is not that it is totally unacknowledged, information does come out in reports (such as the FAC report on Libya), FoI requests (the website Drone Wars is very good on this) but it is very limited. Compare, for example, the high level of debate and discussion given to Britain’s decision to launch airstrikes on Syria, and of course the vote under the new Parliamentary Convention.

I just do not know the answer to the final part of the question, it depends on so many factors. Certainly it is something that I think is very important to get into the public realm as much as possible.

Alex J. Bellamy is professor of peace and conflict studies at the University of Queensland. His books include Kosovo and International Society (2002), Security Communities and Their Neighbours: Regional Fortresses or Global Integrators? (2004), Understanding Peacekeeping (edited with Paul D. Williams and Stuart Griffin, 2004), International Society and Its Critics (editor, 2004), Just Wars: From Cicero to Iraq (2006), and Fighting Terror: Ethical Dilemmas (2008), and Responsibility to Protect (2009). He serves on the editorial board of Ethics & International Affairs.

In this interview Professor Bellamy discusses the successes and failures of the Responsibility to Protect and the future of this doctrine.

Q. The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is commonly understood to be a global political commitment, endorsed by all Member States of the United Nations at the 2005 World Summit, to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Since the endorsement of this concept in 2005, how successful do you feel the international community has been in honouring this commitment?

It all, of course, depends on what we mean by ‘success’. To text for underlying progress, I tend to use three measures:

1. Are states more or less likely to commit atrocities? Here we’ve seen a steady decline that, of course, predates R2P (the commitment to R2P itself being a manifestation of changing international commitment to norms) – there’s been a blip in the past couple of years owing largely to Syria and South Sudan but the overall trends are still downwards and the ‘norm’ is a much lower rate of atrocities than in any other decade since WWII.
2. Is the international community more, or less, willing to become engaged when atrocities are committed? For this, I’ve used the simple proxy of whether the UNSC passes a resolution in response to atrocity crimes (my dataset works on a threshold of 5,000 deliberately caused civilian deaths). Here we’ve seen clear progress linked to R2P – in the decade prior to R2P the council responded to around three quarters of all qualifying cases (itself up from two thirds in the 1990s), since 2005 that figure has climbed to 100%. In other words, the Council responds in some way or other to every major case of mass atrocity – that is quite a change from past practice.
3. When the international community responds, is protection a priority? Here the change is still more noticeable. Even when the UNSC did act in times of mass atrocity, until quite recently protection was not a priority. In only around a quarter of its responses to civil wars in the 1990s was some form of protection specifically mandated. That grew to around a half in the 2000s, but has now climbed to somewhere north of 90% – i.e. Since R2P not only is the UNSC likely to respond to atrocities, it is also likely to foreground protection in that response.

So, I think the underlying evidence is that R2P has been associated with positive shifts in international behaviour with respect to protection. That doesn’t, of course, mean that all of these responses are effective (in some senses since we are talking only of the world’s hardest and most difficult crises, we should expect a low success rate) – but if R2P is understood as a ‘responsibility to try’ to take measures at reasonable cost to protect civilians from atrocities then we have seen positive overall shifts.

Q. Looking at a specific case of a response by the international community to a humanitarian crisis, the 2011 intervention in Libya was, at the time, heralded as a successful first true test of the R2P. In this instance, the Security Council authorized an intervention to protect civilians citing the R2P. The intervention may have stopped the massacre of civilians, but since 2011 Libya has experienced serious instability. Do you feel that the Libyan case harmed the R2P norm?

First, I’d start with the caveat that the use of force is always controversial, whether in the name of R2P or not, and it was always going to be the case that the use of force connected to R2P would prove controversial.  Second, it is important to stress how significant Resolution 1973 was not just for R2P but for the UN Security Council – the first time in its history that it had authorised force against a de jure state for human protection purposes – this is an important precedent of principle. Third, that said, this was never going to be a precedent that would be followed very often – it was caused by a range of contingent factors unlikely to be repeated often.

I’d agree with your assessment of the campaign itself – the intervention prevented a massacre and shortened the civil war. By doing these things, it undoubtedly saved a lot of lives. We need only look at Syria to see what happens when a country falls into protracted civil war. As unstable as Libya is today, it is better than Syria.  The problems with Libya were twofold – first, the linking of R2P with regime change, which was done for understandable domestic political reasons, muddied the international normative waters. Second, the failure to sustain the peace raised questions about the efficacy of the intervention. On the latter point, it should be stressed that the UN developed plans for a follow-on mission but these were rejected by the Libyan authorities themselves. Certainly, however, more pressure should have been brought to bear to get peacekeepers on the ground.

As for the longer terms impacts on R2P, the effects were paradoxical. On the one hand, there was significant fallout and criticism of the campaign and the link with regime change. On the other hand and at the same time, the use of R2P has become much less controversial in the UN’s political organs. The UNSC has become much more willing to use R2P post-Libya than it was pre-Libya (in fact, subsequent to 1973, the Council issues two more resolutions on Libya itself that contained R2P) and it has even started writing R2P into mission mandates (UNMISS, MINUSMA). Other organs, such as the Human Rights Council and General Assembly have also become more actively engaged (look, for example, at the UNGA’s resolutions on Syria and DPRK).  So, what’s going on here? I think we need to distinguish R2P from the use of force. The former is, by itself, no longer considered controversial and is now a part of common working practice. The latter – whether it is related to R2P or not – remains controversial. What was controversial about Libya was not the invocation of R2P, but the manner in which force was employed. So we have some additional caution on the latter (though I firmly believe that Syria would have panned out exactly as it did had Libya not happened) – in a context where the bar was already set high – but that hasn’t stymied the progress of R2P short of coercive force.

Q. Obama has recently said that the biggest mistake of his presidency was the lack of planning for the aftermath of Gaddafi’s ouster in Libya. Obviously, effective exit strategies which allow a transition into peace are extremely difficult things to develop. But, aside from putting more pressure on the Libyan authorities to get peacekeepers on the ground, what work could the international community have done to build peace in Libya?

That’s a good question, that I’m not sufficiently well qualified to answer I’m afraid, being an expert on neither Libya nor peacebuilding. I would say two things, however. First, we need to be more modest in our expectations of what outsiders can achieve – incremental change is possible, but rapid development and political harmony was always going to be unlikely. Second, though, clearly the Western powers dropped the ball too rapidly and dramatically, and more could have been done to support the new authorities to establish and maintain order and facilitate political dialogue. Greater and more sustained political engagement might have helped produce better results. Also, the international community – through the UN or EU – could have looked at better options for civilian support for the new authorities.

Q. One of the most notable, and perhaps lamentable, changes to R2P since the 2001  International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty report, was the dropping of the ‘Responsibility to Rebuild’ – which focused on peacebuilding and exit strategies. Do you feel that getting this component of R2P back on the agenda might help avoid situations like those witnessed in Libya and, if so, how likely do you feel it would be for the international community to commit to this responsibility?   

Good question. First, I don’t think that Libya panned out the way it did because of the absence of a responsibility to rebuild – it wasn’t that relevant actors ‘forgot’ about peacebuilding, it was simply that the political commitment, strategy and resources from both sides (Libyan and international) were not present. Second, R2P is not a stand alone principle; it exists within a broader framework of international peace and security. The World Summit may not have included a ‘responsibility to rebuild’ but it did say quite a bit about peacebuilding and established an entirely new architecture within the UN system for it — the Peacebuilding Commission. Last year we had the system wide review of that architecture and there are signs that Member States are quite responsive to, for example, broadening the scope of the Peacebuilding Commission’s work.  In terms of understanding post-intervention Libya, I’d suggest that the best lessons to be learned are those from within this peacebuilding architecture and there does seem to be a sense that the key recommendations stemming from the review have purchase in that regard. So that gets me to the third point, which is about political capital. Since 2005, and especially since 2011, the international community’s deeper consensus on R2P has been prefaced on the precise configuration agreed in 2005. I think there’s no will to consider opening that up to include peacebuilding and doing so would, I think, help neither R2P not the peacebuilding architecture. Much better, I think, to see the two as aligned parts of a common whole agreed in 2005 and to focus on learning the lessons of Libya and reforming peacebuilding as fits that rather than trying to reverse engineer the concepts.

Q. Concerning the legacy of Libya, there have been some analyses that have argued that the Libyan case may have seriously affected the international community’s capacity to respond in a timely and effective fashion to the Syrian crisis. Do you feel that this is the case?

Simple answer; no. I think the international response to Syria would have been pretty much the same had Libya not happened.  That’s because the factors actually driving Russian thinking, Western thinking and the positions of relevant regional actors are very much driven by Syrian related concerns and interests that would have been in play irrespective of Libya.

Q. Looking to the future, what do you see as being the greatest challenges for R2P in the next 5-10 years?

1. Conceptual challenges – clarifying the relationship between R2P and non-state armed groups and the relationship between the R2P, counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism policy agendas.
2. Political challenges – the ongoing challenge of persuading states to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law and also commit the resources and personnel needed to protect populations in need. This will be an ongoing political challenge requiring leadership and involves not just persuading cautious states to get on board but also working with committed states to deepen their engagement.
3. Practical challenges – a) fine tuning early warning and linking it to good understandings of effective early response, so policymakers can be advised of conditions and options with greater confidence; b) developing evidence based guidance on the steps that different sorts of actors (Int Orgs, states, civil society, private sector etc.) can and ought to take to prevent atrocities; c) developing and implementing better strategies for the protection of people from imminent harm, including better approaches to displacement that puts protection at the fore.

The types of mediation techniques used by an international organization (IO) to settle an international crisis are crucial.  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) mediation during the Cod Wars represents an interesting case.

The Cod Wars were a series of disputes between Britain and Iceland lasting from the 1950s to the 1970s over fishing rights in Icelandic waters. The two states were part of NATO and this was the first time two NATO member states had come close to armed war. During the crisis, NATO adopted a combination of both formal and informal mediation techniques, which proved to be instrumental in resolving the Cod Wars conflict. This episode carries important lessons regarding the role of mediation in international relations and conflict.

War, mediation and international organisations

War primarily occurs when states perceive that the likely calculated benefits of combat outweigh the expected costs. In turn, scholars and practitioners have paid extensive attention to identifying the mechanisms that alleviate a crisis. The Democratic Peace, institutionalism, trade agreements and economic cooperation are some of the mechanisms that foster peace, because they tend to improve states’ relations by creating interdependence give incentives to cooperate rather than fight.

Also, ties that states create between themselves or through third-party actors help in crisis alleviation because of the strong network structure that is thereby created. This is where the role of international organizations (IOs) comes into play. States can lower their military tensions in favor of expectations of future gains, based on the cooperation with their co- members in the same IO. If a crisis escalates between co-members of the same IO, the latter seeks to assist its members and restore peace and thus, the IO is turning to a mediator.

A member state usually agrees to abide by the rules of the IO. For instance, members in NATO should commit to the following article:

“The Parties will contribute toward the further development of peaceful and friendly international relations by strengthening their free institutions, by bringing about a better understanding of the principles upon which these institutions are founded, and by promoting conditions of stability and well-being. They will seek to eliminate conflict in their international economic policies and will encourage economic collaboration between any or all of them.”

(North Atlantic Treaty; official texts; 1949)

A mediator that enters a conflict aims to become part of the conflict by manipulating the actors’ behavior and, thus, the choices of the opposing parties.

We do not know what would have happened if NATO had not mediated the Cod Wars. Nonetheless, we learned lessons from NATO’s approach in the Cod Wars that could potentially be used in other instances.

The Cod Wars

The UK and Iceland share waters over the Atlantic Ocean in the north. Both the UK and Iceland became charter members of NATO in 1949, with the reservation that they would never take part in offensive action against another NATO nation. Note, though, that the UK and Iceland have had interactions over fishery rights starting even before the 17^th century. The Cod Wars comprised of a protracted series of conflicts between Iceland and the UK that began in 1945. The conflict was initially triggered by Iceland’s one-sided extension of its territorial waters.

There was variation in NATO’s responses towards the crises.  For instance, NATO did not intervene in the first crisis of the Cod Wars (1952-1956). NATO only intervened in later instances, but with different techniques. That is, NATO employed a series of formal and informal mediation techniques over the course of the Cod Wars. A “formal technique” is any official action taken by the mediator that is visible to the public, for instance, all the actors involved in the conflict are aware of that action. Transparency can help the mediator increase their leverage in the conflict and help credibility. An “informal technique” is any action by the mediator that is not visible to the public and to one or both of the disputants. Formal and informal mediation techniques clearly have different advantages.

Public (formal) actions can pose threats to the disputants’ reputations to convince them to stop fighting. On the other hand, informal techniques can improve parties’ mutual understanding and improve their relationship. This usually occurs when the mediator provides a neutral, low-key, safe, and non-judgmental environment. Informal mediation can also give parties opportunities to have earliest talks before reaching an agreement. But while formal mediation by an IO has more leverage and salience, it can also be restraining because it is limited by the organization’s rules, norms, and regulations. And while informal mediation is more flexible, it lacks credibility and thus leverage, as “power through the public” is not used in informal mediation. Mingling both techniques would then seem to be the most successful strategy.

The Cod Wars comprised of four distinct crises, with mostly low tensions on both sides. NATO obliges its co-signers to resolve any mutual conflict peacefully. If the parties are not able to resolve the issue bilaterally, NATO intervenes. Different techniques generated different outcomes to a crisis: either recurrence or non-recurrence of the crisis. A failure to sufficiently address the issues arising from the belligerents’ incompatible goals at the post-conflict stage can ultimately lead to a recommencement of conflict. This happened in the case of the Cod Wars in the first three crises. The first pre-conflict incidents occurred between 1945 and 1948 when Iceland gained the control of its territorial waters. The situation then escalated to clash in the 1950s and became a higher-level crisis in 1952, without NATO intervention. In 1952, the crisis was initially “resolved” and the post-conflict period commenced in 1954. The second crisis began in 1955 and was resolved in 1961, following NATO’s use of formal and informal mediation techniques, with peace lasting for almost eleven years. When tensions exploded again in the early 1970s, NATO used informal mediation to resolve the crisis, but peace was short-lived and conflict recurred beginning in 1975. On this occasion, NATO intervened using both formal and informal mediation. The final crisis ended in 1976, and peace has endured.

A combination of formal and information mediation techniques proved effective for the Cod Wars settlement. When NATO employed formal and informal mediation techniques in a combined manner, it was able to help the parties achieve the most durable resolution. Formal and informal techniques enabled NATO to be flexible (informal) and build trust among the parties but still use the legitimacy (formal) of its organization to gain leverage in the bargaining process.

Conclusion

NATO’s mediation efforts in the first three crises can be seen as failures because the peace that followed each intervention was of short duration. Of course, mediation success is not only determined by the mediator’s strategy, but also by the disputants’ desire to end the crisis. In the case of the Cod Wars, the UK faced risks to its international reputation. Iceland arguably had more leverage because of the strategic significance of its military base and because of the Soviet Union’s interest in developing an alliance with the country. Iceland triggered each crisis of the Cod Wars and eventually achieved all its claims. Nonetheless, in the final crisis, it was Iceland — economically troubled and politically volatile — that requested NATO’s intervention.

Mediation strategies previously employed are to be considered as lessons for future instances, not only to not repeat the same mistakes but also learn from previous success. Take, for example, the Beagle Conflict of 1978 between Argentina and Chile with the Vatican as the eventual mediator. Although the Cod Wars is another isolated conflict that pertains to specific circumstances and features, one could consider relevant generalizations that apply to other/future instances, mostly regarding the mediation strategies used. It is indeed the case that co-members of IOs do not experience frequent conflicts. That said, strategies followed by NATO in the Cod Wars can be employed by individual mediators, countries that act as third party interveners, or other IOs regardless of the shared ties among the countries. Third party interveners who benefit from leverage and resources should have the flexibility to address the issue at stake under different mediation strategies which will depend on the interests, the positions, and the needs of the belligerents.

Zorzeta Bakaki is a Lecturer in the Government Department at the University of Essex. She studied Political Science and Public Administration at the Law School of the University of Athens. She received a Master of Science in International Relations from the University of Essex.  Zeta also obtained her PhD from the University of Essex. Her research interests are international relations, the quantitative and qualitative analysis of conflict management and resolution, international cooperation and environmental politics.

 

Last week saw the start of yet another armed anti-government revolt in South Sudan’s Jonglei state.  Reportedly led by Murle militia leader Major General David Yau Yau, there are now fears that the revolt will escalate as a result of longstanding local grievances with the army of South Sudan, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).

The unrest comes as a result of a widely criticised government-led civilian disarmament campaign in Jonglei state – so-called ‘Operation Restore Peace’ – which was launched after violent clashes between Lou Nuer and Murle communities in January. Carried out by the SPLA, with an additional 15,000 soldiers and 5,000 members of the South Sudan Police Service, the campaign has been condemned by the United Nations Mission in South Sudan and groups such as Human Rights Watch for alleged human rights violations including killings; allegations of torture, simulated drowning and beatings; rape and attempted rape; and abductions. On October 3rd, Amnesty International issued a press statement calling on the government to take immediate action to end these reported human rights violations, launching a new report ‘Lethal Disarmament’ which highlights abuses in Pibor County of Jonglei State.

Not for the first time, the Government of South Sudan’s  civilian disarmament initiative has failed to improve security in South Sudan. In 2006, as described by the Human Security Baseline Assessment at Small Arms Survey, the SPLA’s forcible civilian disarmament operation in northern Jonglei State succeeded in collecting 3,000 weapons from the local community. However, as a result of the campaign’s focus on the Lou Nuer community and martial and poorly planned approach, as well as a lack of subsequent security guarantees for the community, heavy fighting ensued and more than 1,600 people were killed.

In 2008, Interim President  of Southern Sudan, Salva Kiir issued a decree to start a six month disarmament period across the country. Conducted by the SPLA, the aim of the operation was to get all civilians to surrender their weapons in a peaceful manner, although ‘appropriate force’ could be used. However, as operational logistics were not outlined after the decree, a lack of centralised strategy resulted in various outcomes and in many places, an increased sense of insecurity. For example, in Lakes State local police had their weapons confiscated and weapons searches became violent as reportedly drunken soldiers stole from people’s homes.

Thus far, civilian disarmament operations in South Sudan have done little to increase long term security. After decades of war, small arms and light weapons are notoriously rife in the young country, but attempts to solve this problem by confiscating these weapons does little to deal with the root causes of insecurity and communities’ need for self-protection.  Small Arms Survey estimates that prior to the interim separation of Sudan and South Sudan after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, there were between 1.9 and 3.2 million small arms in circulation, with about two-thirds of these in civilian hands.  While these weapons come from a number of sources – including the SPLA during the Second Civil War – it is also important to understand why civilians feel they must arm themselves.

South Sudan’s severe underdevelopment, lack of infrastructure – with only 300km of paved road  – seasonal floods, and subsequent lack of service provision and security capacity, means that there is a considerable absence of established security services across the country.  Persistent, and often deadly, cattle raiding and escalating inter-communal armed conflict between groups such as the Lou Nuer and Murle in Jonglei State leave individuals and communities to seek ways to protect themselves and their property. Subsequently, informal community security structures are common; ranging from community initiatives to groups such as the Lou Nuer’s ‘White Army’, which was originally formed to protect cattle and now constitutes a major threat to Murle communities in Jonglei. In effect, the Government’s inability to ensure security at the community level means that groups are forced to take matters into their own hands, often challenging the state’s right to a monopoly of violence because of a lack of confidence in its ability to provide adequate protection.

In current approaches to civilian disarmament, communities are often left in a ‘security vacuum’, without the means to protect themselves from immediate security threats but without any guarantees that even short term immediate security assistance will be provided.  This state of vulnerability in turn leads to community backlashes, rapid re-arming or attempts not to turn weapons in.

As stated in a report by Saferworld in February 2012, ‘on its own, civilian disarmament does virtually nothing to address the factors fuelling demand and supply of these weapons, which requires a much more complex and long-term strategy.’  Reducing and managing the proliferation of civilian use of small arms and light weapons will require the Government of South Sudan to create a holistic strategy that addresses the demand for weapons as well as their supply. As has been proven in efforts until now, addressing the single issue of weapons supply without dealing with the underlying need for guns undermines attempts to decrease proliferation of small arms and light weapons. A government strategy would necessarily address structural issues, including the state’s capacity to provide professional security services that can be relied upon for protection, such that communities feel safe from immediate threats.

In no small measure, this will involve degrees of security sector reform, particularly with focused training on civilian interaction and ethnic impartiality in operations if the army is to be used for future operations. As the latest Amnesty report demands, the Government must ‘provide security forces carrying out civilian disarmament with the necessary training and resources to enable them to have a clear understanding of how to carry out disarmament in accordance with international human rights standards’. This must also include measures to address the structural issues facilitating civilian arms possession, including sales of weapons to civilians by government security forces because of lack of pay and porous regional borders that allow illicit trade. Such augmentation of basic infrastructure and security capacity in South Sudan will take years, and so attempts to reduce proliferation must also include measures to address immediate security threats, in addition to tackling longer term structural, capacity and training issues.

Civilian disarmament campaigns in South Sudan currently attempt to tackle one of the many symptoms of the country’s militarised post-war society. Instead, these campaigns must be seen as one aspect of an overarching and sustainable disarmament and security sector reform strategy that must be undertaken long term, while ensuring that the immediate security of communities is safeguarded and that their need for weapons to protect themselves is adequately addressed and reduced.

Zoë Pelter is a Research Officer of Oxford Research Group’s (ORG) Sustainable Security Programme. 

Image Source: ENOUGH Project

 

As the long running tensions over the set of islands in the East China Sea appear to be coming to a head, the time for thinking through the alternatives to the militarisation of this conflict seems to be well and truly upon us.

The conflict raises interesting issues about sovereignty claims based on offshore territories, particularly as we face a climate-constrained future as well as the increasing importance of competition over scarce resources. The latter is fast becoming one of the most important global trends if one thinks about the potential ‘drivers’ of conflict and even war.

Spiralling naval spending in the region has been tracked by analysts for some years now, and flashpoints such as the dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands could show rampant military spending and arms racing for the dangerous trends that they are if things deteriorate rapidly. Arms racing helps to reinforce security dilemmas (the problems of interpreting the motives of potential adversaries and responding in-kind by arming yourself thus creating a spiral towards ever increasing militarisation). Arms racing also discourages the development of what Ken Booth and Nicholas Wheeler refer to as ‘security dilemma sensibility’ – the ability to “perceive the motives behind, and to show responsiveness towards, the potential complexity of the military intentions of others. In particular, it refers to the ability to understand the role that fear might play in their attitudes and behaviour, including, crucially, the role that one’s own actions may play in provoking that fear.”

But what is particularly important to note in relation to this crisis is the interaction between the trends of increasing militarisation and competition over resources. The potential hydrocarbon resources beneath the ground around the islands as well as the rich fishing grounds in the surrounding waters gives the competing claims to sovereignty a particular strategic bite.

Imposed on top of this is the effect of unresolved historical tensions and fierce nationalist sentiment in some quarters of both Japan and China. The coverage of the dispute in the media has been particularly important. Kevin Clements and Ria Shibata have noted that “this might be expected in China, which has a state-run media. In democratic Japan and Taiwan, however, the media have also promoted official and unofficial nationalist positions on the conflict. This has been accompanied by a marginalising or silencing of moderate voices favouring negotiated non-violent solutions to the conflict.” Interestingly, the most constructive voices calling for calm who have been able to cut through the jingoism and sabre rattling have been the business community concerned with the bigger picture issues of losing trade and tourism between China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.

Clements and Shibata have outlined five initial steps that could be used to de-escalate the issue and begin the difficult but unavoidable process of a negotiated solution. In the longer-term, both regional powers and important external players will need to put addressing the inter-linked trends of militarisation and increasing competition over strategic resources at the heart of any attempts to avoid the worst case scenarios playing out.

Ben Zala is a Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Leicester.

Image source: Al Jazeera English.

 

There will be no sustainable security if we do not equally value the needs, experiences and input of men and women. A new report published by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), funded by ActionAid and Womankind Worldwide, examines the role women play in local community peacebuilding in Afghanistan, Liberia, Nepal, Pakistan and Sierra Leone. The report states “despite the increased international attention to women’s participation in peacebuilding, the achievements and challenges facing women building peace at the local level have been largely overlooked”.

Last week’s Guardian article entitled Who creates harmony the world over? Women. Who signs peace deals? Men points to some surprising data on female participation in official peacebuilding initiatives. “There have been no female chief mediators in UN-brokered peace talks and fewer than 10% of police officers and 2% of the soldiers sent on UN peacekeeping missions have been women”, reports the article. Furthermore, “fewer than one in 40 of the signatories of major peace agreements since 1992 have been female […] and in 17 out of 24 major accords- including Croatia, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Liberia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo- there was zero female participation in signing agreements”.

An excerpt from The Guardian datablog:

The IDS report found that “women are more likely than men to adopt a broad definition of peace which includes the household level and focuses on the attainment of individual rights and freedoms such as education, healthcare and freedom from violence. In contrast, men have a greater tendency to associate peace with the absence of formal conflict and the stability of formal structures such as governance and infrastructure”. It is important to include women in formal peace mediations and agreements as “peace means different things to women and men because of their unique experiences as a result of war”.

Additionally, the research established that women have a lot of experience, and are principal actors, when it comes to mediating and decision making within the home and the family. Women are also more likely to come together collectively to create change. However, their “experiences building trust and dialogue in their families and communities are frequently dismissed as irrelevant or are not sufficiently valued by national governments, and the international community”.

Some barriers to women’s participation in peacebuilding include: restrictive social norms and attitudes, violence against women and girls, poverty and economic inequality and inequality in access to education. The report suggests empowering women through access to justice, creating safe spaces for women’s participation and changing attitudes towards peace and valuing women’s contribution as key elements to support women peacebuilding.

The 2000 United Nations Security Council resolution 1325 calls for “equal participation for women in the maintenance and promotion of sustainable peace”.

Only yesterday, Foreign Secretary William Hague called upon UN Security Council resolution 1325, announcing to the UN General Assembly that the UK  “will contribute £1 million this financial year to support the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict”. “It’s our purpose in gathering here this morning to ensure that preventing sexual and gender-based crime in conflict and post-conflict situations is an urgent priority for the international community”, William Hague declared, and went on to say “We are convinced in the United Kingdom that we can do more to help […] we can do it as a permanent member of the Security Council, a leading member of NATO, the European Union and the commonwealth and as a nation with one of the most extensive international development programmes in the world.”

The IDS report states that although Security Council resolution 1325 was passed in 2000, it has since then been almost totally ignored, not least by the UN itself. Hopefully this time, the international community, including the UK government, will take serious steps towards its implementation. At the same time, it is important to commit to preventing sexual and gender-based crimes, not only in “conflict and post-conflict situations”, but also in times of “peace”.

No sustainable peace and security will ever be possible, if women’s voices are marginalised and if women and men do not work together equally on national and international peace mediations and agreements.

Anna Alissa Hitzemann is a  Peaceworker with Quaker Peace and Social Witness. She currently works with Oxford Research Group as a Project Officer for the Sustainable Security Programme, with a focus on our ‘Marginalisation of the Majority World’ project.

 

IDS, ActionAid, Womankind Worldwide report From the Ground Up can be read here.

The Guardian, Who creates harmony the world over? Women. Who signs peace deals? Men is available here

The Guardian, datablog Women’s participation in peace- how does it compare is available here

Remarks by the Foreign Secretary William Hague to the UN General Assembly can be read here

UN Security Council resolution 1325 is available here

Image Source: UNAMID

Young people are frequently ‘othered’ in discussions about on conflict. This is a dangerous practice as youths can play a very positive role aiding peacebuilding in societies recovering from conflict.

The UN World Population Prospects statistics estimate that there are 1.3 billion 15-24 years olds in the world and nearly one billion live in developing countries where conflict is more likely to have taken place.

In such demographic realities, the potential youths hold for change and positive action is the subject of growing research agenda, and this is particularly the case with the recent wave of social upheavals and humanitarian crises in different parts of the world.

For much of human social interaction, the category called ‘youth’ has been perceived as a historically constructed social category, a relational concept, and as a group of actors that is far from homogenous. A myriad of factors make childhood and youth highly heterogeneous categories in terms of gender, class, race, ethnicity, political position as well as age.

They also have multi-faceted roles. Youths can be heroes as well as victims, saviours and courageous in the midst of crisis, as well as criminals in the shantytowns and military entrepreneurs in the war zones. Yet, as a category, youth are often approached as a fixed group or demographic cohort.

Youth, peace and conflict

Youths as a conceptual category are frequently ‘othered’ in the discourse on conflict. They are seen as potentially dangerous ‘subjects’ and policy approaches often regard them as ‘a problem’. Often, male youths in the age group 16-30 have been observed as the main protagonists of criminal and political violence. In other words, much of contemporary thinking on youth and conflict tends to be overly negative. It focuses on the dangers posed by disaffected youths as is evident in the negative connotations of the ‘youth bulge’ or ‘at risk youth’ concepts.

A number of dangerous assumptions about the role, position, and contribution of youths appear to plague thinking among national and international elites driving recovery efforts within societies in transition. The majority of national and international policy pronouncements or security-related programmes in post-conflict and fragile contexts reflect a polarised discourse.

The young vacillate between the two extremes of ‘infantilizing’ and ‘demonizing’. On the one hand, youths are viewed as vulnerable, powerless and in need of protection. On the other, they are feared as dangerous, violent, apathetic and as threats to security. Youths are subjected to stereotypical images of being angry, drugged and violent and as threat, especially those who participated in armed conflict as combatants.

On the other hand, recent literature on youth in post-conflict societies marks a shift in thinking about youth. It underlines the agency perspective, and acknowledges the importance of making the connection between youth and peacebuilding for transforming a predominantly negative discourse on the role of youths in societies recovering from conflict.

Youth as peacebuilders

The positioning of youth in society has a bearing on their leadership potential and their possible role in peacebuilding. The tension between young and old has been one of the key features of inter-generational shifts pertaining to the control over power, resources and people.

The tension lies in the palpable impatience of youth, their desire to strive for more, their willingness to be seen as responsible and capable, and the structural barriers to their social mobility. Independence from others and responsibility for others, such as taking care of a family or household, can be seen as defining markers of pre-requisites of social adulthood.

In this sense, dependency, exclusion, and social or political marginalization become prominent sources of social contest. At the same time, it should be recognised that such societal dynamics, challenges and opportunities vary across different cultural contexts whether it is in Africa, Europe, Asia or Latin America.

Within the challenging fluidity of post-conflict environments, which are nothing but contexts where the politics of war continue through different means, the young would need to show great ‘navigational skills’ in order to respond to such power dynamics. Their social, political and economic navigation is about their identity transformation as well as the negotiation or re-negotiation of societal norms, values and structures so that they can find a voice and place in the emerging structures of post-conflict environments.

What needs to be underlined is that youth should be conceptualized and studied as agents of positive peace in terms of addressing not only the challenges of physical violence, but also the challenges of structural and cultural violence, and the broader social change processes to transform violent, oppressive and hierarchical structures, as well as behaviour, relationships and attitudes into more participatory and inclusive ones.

The key point to remember is that without recognizing youths as political actors, their trajectories in peacebuilding would likely be ignored, wasted and at best, under-utilized. To recognize their agency as a political actor in peacebuilding, there needs to be a comprehensive understanding of their conflict trajectories, and this is particularly important for those young people who have taken direct participation in an armed conflict as combatants.

To understand the engagement of youth in peacebuilding, first of all, the youth mobilization and reintegration factors such as who they are, what they did before the conflict, how they were recruited, what specific fighting roles they undertook, what they experienced physically, socio-economically and psychologically, during the armed conflict, and what ‘home’ context they will be reintegrating into will all be critical for the youth’s trajectories in peacebuilding.

Second, the involvement of youth in non-violent politics, and from a wider perspective, the enablement of their political agency in a more positive and peace-oriented role in post-conflict environments, is likely to depend on how these trajectories are shaped by the overall political and governance context.

Third, the enablement of youth as an active agent in peacebuilding cannot be considered without considering such challenges they tend to face due to the armed conflict such as the loss of education, a lack of employable skills and the destruction of a stable family environment. The wider socio-economic needs of youths are often ignored in post-conflict contexts as they are not seen as a ‘vulnerable’ group.

Fourth, it is important to provide youths with training opportunities to take an active part in peacebuilding. With their youthful energy and capabilities, and ability of adaptation to new technological trends, for example, youths could act as mediators, community mobilisers, humanitarian workers and peace brokers. Like any particular conflict affected population group, the mobilisation of youths’ capacities requires a targeted and long-term approach.

At the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, an annual event called Global Peace Workshop is held in Turkey every year. Around 70-80 young participants from across the world get together in this one-week training, networking and solidarity event, and it is incredible to see the transformation of those young people in a such a short span of time as peacebuilders and start undertaking a wide range of peacebuilding projects in their own communities, schools and work places.

Fifth, the engagement of youth in peacebuilding in a wider perspective can be ensured through the arts, culture, tourism, sports and education. The innovativeness and creativeness of young people in those areas could be mobilised effectively by connecting them with wider peacebuilding objectives such as building bridges between divided communities and ensuring a viable process of reconciliation.

There are many examples across the world of the contributions that the young make towards peacebuilding such as the strengthening of community cohesion and reconciliation in South Sudan, civic awareness for peaceful social relations and development programmes in Nepal,  trust-building across different ethno-religious groups in Sri Lanka, and community entrepreneurship and livelihoods programmes in Burundi. Furthermore, the UN Inter-Agency Network on Youth Development  Report entitled ‘Young People’s Participation in Peacebuilding: A Practice Note’ presents a number of policy and programme examples from different conflict affected countries that would facilitate such participation more effectively.

Finally, in undertaking all of these objectives it is also pivotal to avoid the well-known cliché of referring to youths as the ‘future leaders’. Leadership should not be considered as a factor of age and providing appropriate governance contexts would likely enable young people to flourish as leaders today. In other words, they need to be treated as leaders today without postponing it to an elusive future whether it is in governance in general or peacebuilding programmes specifically.

To achieve this objective there have recently been a number of critical developments such as the UN Security Council Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace and Security of December 2015 which makes a clear recognition of positive contributions of youth to peace and sets an overall framework to support their efforts. In May 2016, the UN Peacebuilding Fund started its first Youth Promotion Initiative, which could play a key role to encourage youth leadership in peacebuilding. Therefore, the current trends show that there will be many more similar youth leadership programmes across the world in the near future, but the key point for their successes will depend on whether or not such initiatives can also respond to wider socio-economic, cultural and political barriers that young people face in their quest of becoming an active agent of positive change, peacebuilding and reconciliation.

Professor Alpaslan Ozerdem is Co-Director of the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University.