When does a serious environmental problem become a security threat?

Professor Tim Flannery, a leading scientist and public intellectual in Australia wrote a piece in the Guardian newspaper a few days ago reflecting on the links between climate change and the extreme temperatures and bushfires ravaging Australia at present. He notes that “Australians are used to hot summers. We normally love them. But the conditions prevailing now are something new. Temperature records are being broken everywhere.” What is important for thinking about the security consequences of climate change is that towards the end of the article, Flannery reflects:

“Australia’s average temperature has increased by just 0.9 of a degree celsius over the past century. Within the next 90 years we’re on track to warm by at least another three degrees. Having seen what 0.9 of a degree has done to heatwaves and fire extremes, I dread to think about the kind of country my grandchildren will live in. Even our best agricultural land will be under threat if that future is realised. And large parts of the continent will be uninhabitable, not just by humans, but by Australia’s spectacular biodiversity as well.”

Conditions in which large parts of the continent are threatened in such a way would appear to raise some pretty serious questions about Australia’s national security (let alone the human security of those individuals living in areas where agriculture has failed or fires threaten homes and livelihoods). Yet recently a number of commentators have become particularly concerned about the so-called ‘securitisation’ of climate change, largely due to a sense of there being “alarmist views about climate change on conflict risk.” This has led some to argue that rather than helping to raise the profile of the issue in terms of the need for urgent policy change, we in fact now need to “disconnect security and climate change.” According to Professor Betsy Hartmann of Hampshire College, “A fear of imminent doom runs deep in popular culture and, like the grim reaper, stalks the environmental movement.” This, she argues allows “security agencies and analysts” to distract us from feelings of empathy towards those affected by climate change and to instead cause us to fear them and to “turn to the military to protect us.” According to Professor Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia,

“What climate change means to us and means to the world is conditioned by what we do, by the way we govern, by the stories we tell. Presenting climate change as the ultimate security crisis is crudely deterministic, detached from the complexities of our world, and invites new and dangerous forms of military intervention.”

All of this matters as the potential world in which Flannery is imagining that his grandchildren might have to live in is becoming more and more likely the longer multilateral efforts drag on. Richard Haass, the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, when asked to look ahead to the big global governance challengers for 2013 recently stated that: “It is becoming increasingly clear that efforts at mitigation are not just falling short but that the gap between what is needed and what is likely to happen is widening.”

The whole notion of the ‘securitisation’ of climate change pre-supposes that we get to choose whether climate change is a security threat or not – it emphasises what political scientists refer to as human agency. Of course we can choose to label something as a threat or not (yes, perhaps it may even not be the end of the world if we use the dreaded T word!). But in the face of increasingly extreme weather and related natural disasters (let alone serious discussions about whether states such as Kiribati can survive within their own national borders), it does seem that we can sensibly talk about the security threats posed by climate change in the decades to come regardless of whether we can specifically link particular instances of conflict and climate change in the past.

The point is that simply because something may pose a security threat does not mean that we have to respond in the traditional way – to throw military force at it. It’s abundantly clear that there is no military solution to climate change and that addressing the problem at source means changing (among other things) the ways we use energy. But that doesn’t mean that our current energy policies are not a fundamental security threat. They are. And why can’t we use better energy policies to ensure our security?

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

Author’s Note: All views in this piece are the author’s own and do not reflect her employer’s views or anyone else’s.

In 1996, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) opened for signature. The CTBT is a multilateral treaty that bans all nuclear explosions on Earth. Its predecessor, the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT), banned nuclear explosions except for underground testing. Between 1945 and 1996, over 2000 tests were conducted by the five NPT nuclear-weapon states. Since 1996, India, Pakistan and the DPRK have conducted around half a dozen tests. A ban on testing limits further development of nuclear explosive devices. Twenty years since the CTBT opened for signature, the Treaty has not yet entered into force given the pending necessary ratifications by eight Annex 2 states (China, the DPRK, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and the United States).  Annex 2 states are the 44 states that participated in the negotiations of the CTBT and possessed nuclear power or research reactors at the time.

Marking the 20^th year of the CTBT, I attended the 2016 CTBTO Symposium, including several panel events on the treaty in Vienna, and organized a public panel event at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation (VCDNP). Last week, I attended a high-level CTBTO public discussion panel featuring the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, among other dignitaries. The following are a few reflections and musings on issues surrounding the CTBT at 20 to stimulate discussion. These include issues and questions which continue to irk me—an analyst—and which remain unanswered.

Trite but true: political will vs policy priorities

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the CTBTO Symposium. Image by the Official CTBTO Photostream via Flickr. 

Twenty years on, the bottom line ultimately remains languishing political will. Let’s be honest—the CTBT is not a priority for most states who have yet to sign or ratify this treaty. If this issue had been a policy priority for states, there would have been positive progress towards ratification by now, despite domestic hurdles. Some Annex 2 states may be increasingly perceived to be holding CTBT entry-into-force hostage to other regional issues and priorities.

Political will is again tested when those few windows of opportunity for exerting political leverage on other states vis-à-vis non-proliferation and disarmament are dismissed for more pressing policy objectives. In bilateral nuclear cooperation deals with India, NPT states who advocate routinely for the entry into force of the CTBT—including the US and Australia—could have used the negotiation of a bilateral commercial cooperation deal to include some requirement for India to progress on its CTBT status. More significantly, if the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) has to take a decision in the future on admitting India into the NSG as a participating government, then the pre-condition of adhering to nuclear non-proliferation conditions such as ratifying the CTBT could be pushed. Yet these small windows of opportunity for bilateral or multilateral leverage on non-proliferation priorities are squandered.

In a similar vein, one could wonder whether requiring Iran to ratify the CTBT was sacrificed early on in the negotiation process of the multilateral deal seeking to curtail Iran’s nuclear activities. Of course, more pressing objectives vis-à-vis Iran’s nuclear program were at stake. The CTBT and missile development issues were expendable.

If CTBT entry-into-force is indeed a priority for states of the international community, as oft heard in high-level declarations of support and urgency for this issue, political will and determination for the CTBT should align with policy priorities. It currently doesn’t and, as evidenced by bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements, securing trade policy objectives seem instead to be prioritized.

With the DPRK’s continued defiance of the nuclear testing moratorium, more than high-level statements of condemnation and expressions of regret need to take place following suspected nuclear tests and missile-related activities. China seems to be finally exerting some pressure on the DPRK in the UNSC and via bilateral channels after all these years of acquiescence. Concerted and united action by the international community and the UN Security Council needs to be taken against the DPRK. Such action should include curtailing bilateral trade relations with the DPRK. Again, this will require policy priorities—trade versus non-proliferation—to be assessed by governments.

CTBT: is it a disarmament, non-proliferation, or an arms control treaty?

Throughout the various sessions of the CTBTO Symposium, there were comments and unanswered questions posed by speakers on their views of how to categorize the CTBT. For example, is it a disarmament, non-proliferation or arms control treaty? Or possibly a hybrid of these? There was no clear consensus of views on this issue which was recurrently woven throughout sessions and presentations. An academic assessment of this issue would be useful and may have implications on practicalities.

During a session on the CTBT and nuclear security, I posed a politically sensitive question which remains unanswered. What are the prospects of the CTBT contributing to issues of the broader nuclear security agenda given the existing apprehension and political sensitivities by IAEA member states to link any aspects of nuclear disarmament in addressing nuclear security issues post the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) process? The “d” word inside certain corridors of the Vienna International Center (VIC) seems to raise apprehension and discontent, with arguments voiced by member states of certain international organizations that nuclear disarmament is not covered by the mandates. Disarmament seems to traditionally not be a Vienna issue, and belongs to the enclave dialogue in the NPT and First Committee bubbles in Geneva and New York. Until, that is, 2017, when the NPT PrepCom is due to roll into town for the kick-off of the 2020 NPT review cycle. How states parties view the CTBT—as a disarmament, non-proliferation or arms control treaty—may have implications for this question on whether the CTBT can contribute towards the broader nuclear security priorities.

Is testing necessary?

During the CTBTO Symposium there was a very interesting panel discussion between scientists elaborating the technical rationale for why states conduct nuclear tests. One passing comment on the Vela Incident—a 1979 event which is believed to be a nuclear test conducted by Israel and South Africa over the ocean between the southern part of Africa and the Antarctic–prompted  me to think the unthinkable quietly to myself. Given the existing moratorium on testing (not including subcritical)—which only the DPRK defies–and based on the technical assessment that testing is not necessary for certain devices, would the potential sharing of nuclear test data amongst allies be a preferable solution to testing?

Although this would strictly not contravene the testing moratorium and the text of the CTBT, assisting proliferation and nuclear weapons advancement to NPT non-nuclear weapon states and non-NPT states would still contravene the NPT and the spirit of the CTBT. Although states could potentially avoid international condemnation by transgressing the established testing moratorium e.g. by relying on allies for the required testing data and expertise in relation to simple devices, this would still be contradictory to the spirit of the established non-proliferation treaties which underpin the broader nuclear non-proliferation regime. Moreover, some Annex 2 states seem to be debating domestically whether computer simulations, subcritical tests and activities not specifically prohibited by the CTBT are sufficient for the maintenance of their safe, secure and reliable nuclear arsenals. A comment by a Chinese Ambassador at this week’s recent CTBTO discussion panel, alludes to this debate as the National People’s Congress deliberate the Treaty.

Definitional issue: does nuclear testing constitute nuclear use?

There is a definitional issue which remains to be addressed adequately: does nuclear testing constitute nuclear use? Individuals affected by nuclear testing definitely consider the testing of nuclear explosives and devices as nuclear use. In his intervention at this week’s CTBTO discussion panel, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon argued that bringing the CTBT into force would honour the victims of nuclear testing. The Secretary-General noted that nuclear testing poisons water, causes cancers and pollutes the environment with radioactive fallout for generations.

Whilst most states, academics and analysts would consider the explosion of nuclear devices at Hiroshima and Nagasaki the two instances of nuclear use, many —including victims of nuclear testing— would argue that nuclear testing actually constitutes nuclear use. This is based on the detrimental effects and impact that nuclear testing has had on individuals, communities and the environment where these tests were conducted. In Australia, “nuclear nomads” from aboriginal communities have been forced to leave their spiritual lands. In the South Pacific, including the Marshall Islands, many communities are still living with the long-term reproductive health implications from the nuclear testing that was conducted on their territory.

During this year, marking the 20^th anniversary of the CTBT, it may therefore be fitting to have an honest conversation about whether the international community ought to start considering and reframing our understanding and discourse of what actually constitutes nuclear use. This wouldn’t be politically popular, given the many states who have conducted nuclear tests. Given the highly contentious discord and fractures in the multilateral nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament fora—the NPT review process,the UNGA First Committee and the Open Ended Working Group taking forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations (OEWG)—in multilateral discussions of pathways towards nuclear disarmament and the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, discussions of reframing the discourse on nuclear testing as nuclear use may add further contention. It could, however, also serve to discursively elevate the issue of nuclear testing, and strengthen the case for entry-into-force of the CTBT. Additionally, it would raise the political costs of future nuclear tests. It does however remain an issue—along with several others raised in this short piece—which ought to be assessed and adequately discussed, even if only in wonky academic circles.

Jenny Nielsen is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation (VCDNP). Previously she was a Visiting Scholar at the NATO Defence College (NDC), Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Queensland (UQ), Research Analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), and Programme Manager for the Defence & Security Programme at Wilton Park.

South Sudan, the world’s newest country, currently risks slipping into a violent malaise. The crisis in South Sudan highlights very clearly some of the key problems surrounding the practical implementation of the Responsibility to Protect. 

Five years after seceding from Sudan, South Sudan is about to collapse into its second civil war since 2013. Marauding bands of informally constituted ethnic groups contribute to a climate of vigilantism.  UN diplomats debate the utility of an arms embargo in a state awash in arms.  The threat is meant to leverage Juba’s permission to allow a four thousand peacekeeper regional protection force into the country.  But Juba’s complaint about its exclusion from negotiations, contributes to a climate of distrust about the international community and its intentions. The crisis represents a serious challenge for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine and the international community to forestall a humanitarian disaster that is well underway.

The Responsibility to Protect

A 2001 report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty introduced the idea of R2P, creating a new international norm that made the formerly autonomous allowances of absolute sovereignty contingent on each state’s responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.  Its controversial pillar two seized the international community with subject matter jurisdiction to intervene as the residual stop-gap agency to prevent internal abuse when states were incapable or unwilling to do the same.  Two other pillars addressed a responsibility to prevent (addressing root causes of catastrophe) and a responsibility to rebuild (to assist with reconstruction and reconciliation).

The development of the norm has been controversial and it has been reworked, principally along lines of nurturing states to live up to their internal responsibilities and tethering it to actions of the UN Security Council.  But its proactive charge of intervention has also been embraced by scholars and norm entrepreneurs as a progressive development. In its 2007 judgment in the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide Case, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) supported the duty of states to prevent atrocity beyond their borders if they have the capacity to influence persons likely to commit such acts; the ICJ acknowledged that this obligation extended beyond the competent organs of the UN.  The International Law Commission’s 2001 Draft Articles on State Responsibility provided that states cooperate to end through lawful means serious and systematic breaches of peremptory norms.  R2P’s normative development indicates that the idea of a collective responsibility to protect now informs the legalect of international courts and tribunals, suggesting a growing receptivity to and maturation of the doctrine.

R2P, Africa and South Sudan

Image of peacekeepers in Juba by UN Photo via Flickr.

Africa was the first region where the R2P was meant to be applied.  It grew out of the idea of responsible sovereignty, first articulated by Francis Deng and others in 1996.  Responsible sovereignty suggested benefits to cooperation among states.  These benefits went beyond the avoidance of international conflict or the mere ‘tending to’ of sovereign fences.  Responsible sovereignty suggested sovereignty could imply joint action and joint benefits.  It grew into the idea of R2P.

Nowhere has R2Ps reception been stronger than in Africa, having been well received by the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, (ECOWAS), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and a litany of African elites, including South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo, Tanzania’s Salim Ahmed Salim, South Sudan’s Francis Deng, Ghana’s former UN Secretary-General Kofi Anan, and Algeria’s Mohamed Sahnoun.  Cases within the African context indicated its time had come: The UN Security Council validated ECOWAS’ interventions in Liberia (1990/92) and Sierra Leone (1997), offering praise in the face of its own inaction to these humanitarian crises.  R2P received the unanimous support of one hundred and seventy Heads of State in two provisions of the 2005 UN World Summit final document, presaging the incorporation of the doctrine by the African Union in its 2005 Ezulwini Consensus report.

But nowhere has its implementation been more problematic than in the world’s newest country, South Sudan.  Sudan, and now South Sudan, have been beset by internecine violence over the last sixty years.  South Sudan teetered on implosion almost immediately after achieving statehood in July 2011.  South Sudan devolved into civil war in December 2013, when its President Salva Kiir Mayardit accused former Vice President Riek Machar of plotting against the regime.  An improbable rapprochement, fortified by an internationally mediated agreement, was signed in August 2015, resulting in Machar’s much delayed return to the capital, Juba in April 2016, and the formation of a most tenuous unity government, which collapsed in July in a wave of bloodshed and atrocity in Juba.  Kiir has now rejected a US proposal to insert the four thousand peacekeepers, claiming it is an attempt to turn South Sudan into a UN protectorate.

Kiir and Machar’s mutual distrust until the most recent violence in July was outweighed only by a common need for more money to support their factions and a mutual interest in avoiding a personal accounting of atrocities allegedly committed by their respective factions.  Interpreted alternatively as an explanation or a threat to the international community, the two allegedly wrote on the Op Ed page of the New York Times in June 2016 that any disciplinary justice meted out “even under international law” would destabilize unity efforts.  Translation:  If you try to bring us to justice, we will bring back war.  They invoked the name of the international community, calling on it to back their non-punitive plan for a mediated reconciliation.   Four days after publication, the New York Times appended an Editor’s Note to the South Sudan leaders’ world-wide call for reconciliation; Machar had disavowed the Op Ed piece, claiming his views had been fabricated. But not completely.  One month later, he and Kiir brought back bloodshed.

The episode highlights the complexities facing South Sudan.  If the international community is to facilitate a solution to the ongoing crisis, only cosmetically concealed by an unravelling claim of unity, the fundamental normative problem of R2P must be addressed:  where in the international community does R2P reside?

Transmuting the international community’s abstract but coercive cause of action to prevent domestic abuse into something other than high-minded rhetoric requires either a fully functioning UN Security Council or another agency with the legitimacy and authority to pierce sovereignty’s veil.  The UN Charter system created a jus ad bellum regime that placed monopoly power over all uses and threats of force (except in cases of self-defense) in the hands of the Security Council.  But that authority is often addled by inaction due to the veto-wielding interests of the big powers, exposing the fundamental weakness of the UN system and provoking the elusive international legal and political pursuit for a better or supplementary normative solution.

Internationalists have wrestled with the poor choice between supporting the legality of the Charter system, which often stood silent in the face of atrocity, or supporting the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention, which only problematized consideration of hidden agendas pertaining to regime change, remedial secession, and self-determination.  Establishing the international community as the ex ante entity vested with such a remedial power came as something of a surprise, and, after fifteen years of ontological development, remains in dispute.  In theoretical terms, R2P marked a return to and modern expression of Christian Wolff’s eighteenth century Republican idea of the civitas maxima (a ‘grand republic’ of nations), the meta-expression of community virtue that upholds the common good, secures the pluralistic interests of the state, and protects the solidarist interests of humanity by presenting a means to prevent internal atrocity.  But even Wolff, who had no understanding of the modern state system as we know it, thought it could not function without a rector.

Kiir and Machar embrace this much of Wolff’s eighteenth century mindset; they view the international community as a rhetorical trope that lacks a headmaster; they invoke its name to lend a fictive air of moral authority to their pieties on reconciliation, when they do not employ it as blackmail.  Much of the doctrinal disarray surrounding R2P’s non-appearance in South Sudan conforms to an uncertainty about the international community itself:  Is it an unwitting continuation of the mission civilisatrice – the persistently failed and resented attempt to make sub-Saharan Africa more European; does it embrace or dismiss African notions of community, which present a humanistic understanding different than contractarian models of liberal institutionalism (Ubuntu); is it an updated form of colonialism?  Perhaps it is an expression of Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology (1922), allowing its claimants the power to decide on the exceptions to legal rules.  Schmitt was wary of the keepers of humanity’s interests.  Paraphrasing Proudhon, he wrote:  whoever invokes humanity’s name wants to cheat.  Kiir and Machar would doubtless agree.

Equally problematic has been locating the international community’s headmaster amid South Sudan’s turmoil.  Does the international community fundamentally reduce to a sanctions policy orchestrated by the US and its allies?  Should it claim a regional identity in the form of mediations sponsored by the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD) or IGAD-Plus (an amalgam of states associated with the African Union Peace and Security Council), or non-African agencies of the EU, the so-called Troika (US, UK, and Norway), or perhaps China?

An Emergent Dark Side

South Sudan’s misery teaches us something about the emergent dark side of R2P.  It reveals a heteronomous will of a fragmented international community, which, in South Sudan’s case finds expression in a variety of cross-cutting alliances.  Tensions exist within IGAD, certainly between Uganda and Sudan and possibly due to reports of Eritrean and Sudanese military support of South Sudanese opposition forces.  These tensions diminish IGAD’s mediation efforts and reputation as an honest broker.  Key sectors of South Sudan’s limited civil society (specifically Church leaders) are overlooked; an array of venues and sponsors compete for influence, contributing to complaints of forum-shopping, which allow Kiir and Machar to play components of the international community against each other.  The center of this unity government in South Sudan has not held; war is around the corner and famine is spreading.

Conclusion

Locating R2P within the international community would be daunting enough were questions of its authorization or operationalization in South Sudan settled matters of fact; but its non-appearance in the continuing misery of the country suggests the doctrine, fifteen years in the making, is neither thickly representative of historical process nor thinly embodied as an aspiration.  R2P, in the context of South Sudan, turns the international community into an ethical referent, a conceptual archetype that satisfies saints and sinners alike.

Christopher Rossi has a Ph.D. in international relations from The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and an LL.M in public international law from the University of London.  He lectures on international law and relations at the University of Iowa College of Law.