Daniel Warner

Naming and Shaming: The ICRC and the Public/Private Divide

There is nothing that distinguishes the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as a humanitarian organisation more than its privileging of discreet diplomatic appeals to governments and public condemnations. In the cases of Guantanamo and Iraq, the ICRC has been confronted with several hard choices between acting discreetly in what it perceives to be a humanitarian manner and giving public testimony. The ICRC had certain knowledge of what was going on in the prison camps and did not go public, apparently satisfied with making confidential reports to the United States Government and conducting private meetings. Outside of a rather hasty news conference in Cuba given by the ICRC’s senior Washington official and a Financial Times article by a member of its Legal Department, the ICRC gave no official statements over an extended period of time in which it knew that the United States had made serious breaches of its international obligations under the Geneva Conventions. Though the president of the ICRC, Jakob Kellenberger, went twice to Washington between January 2002 and December 2004 and the pattern of abuse continued Kellenberger has recently responded to criticisms of the ICRC’s decision to remain silent in both cases. His commentary provides an

Two Realist Readings of the Tragic in International Relations

When books by two noted scholars of International Relations (IR)1 focus on tragedy and Realism, one would assume a strong connection between them. In this case, the two books under consideration represent two radically different perspectives on tragedy, Realism, IR and international relations/foreign policy in general. John Mearsheimer clearly states that his vision of tragedy is the inevitability of wars and violence, since great powers will continue to compete with each other for a greater share of world power in an international system with no global government. Ned Lebow uses tragedy as a venue for emphasizing the limitations of power in trying to govern the complexity of human behavior. Mearsheimer presents a rational strategy for ‘offensive realism’ in great power (US) policy. Lebow presents a critical reading of canonical texts to show how arrogant and misguided those policies can be. Mearsheimer searches for meta-theory to explain and predict state behavior. Lebow criticizes the social sciences for their hypotheses and abstractions. In order to understand the different perspectives in these books, it is important first to highlight the major differences in the understanding of the tragic. For Mearsheimer, the tragic involves the inevitability of conflict in competition for power relations between states. Because there is no universal restraining force or world government, Mearsheimer believes states will compete and inevitably great powers will dominate in an anarchical world. The essence of the tragic in the international system, according to Mearsheimer, is that:

The dynamics of community

Most refugee law and Western legal tfieory begins with an individual bias. The basic legal document, the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, contains an individualistic definition of a refugee. Refugee status determinations are based on individual evaluations on a case‐by‐case basis. But what would happen if we looked at refugees from a communitarian perspective? Suppose we assumed communitarian principles for refugees, for receiving countries, and for countries of origin? How could communitarian concerns inform the debate about refugee integration and the voluntary repatriation of refugees to their countries of origin? We begin by assuming that before flight, refugees are involved in a complicated network of social interactions—which we can call community—within their countries of origin. We also assume that this social network is not limited to one ethnic group, but includes a larger, mobile community. We see no reason to assume that before flight refugees lived in social conditions diff...

The role of the USA in meeting global challenges

As after the Second World War, the USA today plays a dominant role in the world following the end of the Cold War. Since 1989, and up to this day, two main theories of historys unfolding, the circular view and the linear view, clash as far as the future role and position of the USA is concerned. On the one hand, Paul Kennedys The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987) and advocates of the circular theory predict the decline of the USA, as history has shown that all empires that have risen have ultimately fallen. On the other hand, advocates of the linear theory, such as Nye and Fukuyama, postulate the continuation of USA leadership in the world and the inevitable spread of liberalism sooner or later. Both views, however, are mechanical and deterministic. The alternative is the realization that global challenges can only be met globally by global actors.

Book Review: Rama Mani, Beyond Retribution: Seeking Justice in the Shadows of War (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002, 256 pp., £50.00 hbk, £15.99 pbk.)

roadblocks to such legalisation. And while the book certainly serves as a corrective to those who have demonised the state vis-à-vis human rights, in casting the state almost exclusively as a human rights protector, Ignatieff may overlook the real politics of the story: how internal struggles determine whether the state will protect more than violate human rights. Although Ignatieff is a historian by training, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry is a must-read for anyone concerned with human rights issues. This important book can serve as both an introduction to the complex panoply of human rights debates and as a more serious reflection on the state of these debates. As Anthony Appiah notes, the essays are at the very least ‘helpful starting points for a conversation’ (p. 102). Ignatieff is at his strongest with his balanced criticism of human rights activism; his shattering of essentialist fallacies and myths; his depiction of human rights conflict as a political more than cultural clash; his pragmatic and historical conception of human rights; and his rendering of human rights as a weapon of the weak, not just a constraint against the strong. Even if one does not always agree with the argument, it is difficult not to admire these elegant and hard-hitting essays.