Nicholas J. Wheeler

Good international citizenship: A third way for British foreign policy

To date, there has not been a sustained attempt to bring the philosophy of the Third Way into foreign policy. In order to fill this gap, the authors turn to the idea of ‘good international citizenship’ pioneered by the former Australian Foreign Minister, Gareth Evans. It is argued that good international citizenship provides a conceptual rationale for an ethical foreign policy as well as a standard for judging the priority accorded to the goals of security, trade and human rights. Through an examination of a number of cases, the authors conclude that Britain’s record as a good international citizen has been uneven and argue—against Labour’s critics—that the government has set a new course for Britain’s way in the world. More importantly, it has encouraged a public debate about the meaning and priority accorded to the promotion of different values.

East Timor and the new humanitarian interventionism

The fate of East Timor provides a barometer for how far the normative structure of international society has been transformed since the end of the Cold War. In 1975, the East Timorese were abandoned by a Western bloc that placed accommodating the Indonesian invasion of the island before the protection of human rights. Twenty-five years later, it was the protection of the civilian population on the island that loomed large in the calculations of these same states. Australia, which had sacrificed the rights of the people of East Timor on the altar of good relations with Indonesia, found itself leading an intervention force that challenged the old certainties of its ‘Jakarta first’ policy. The article charts the interplay of domestic and international factors that made this normative transformation possible. The authors examine the political and economic factors that led to the agreement in May 1999 between Portugal, Indonesia and the UN to hold a referendum on the future political status of East Timor. A key question is whether the international community should have done more to assure the security of the ballot process. The authors argue that while more could have been done by Australia, the United States and officials in the UN Secretariat to place this issue on the Security Councils agenda, it is highly unlikely that the international community would have proved capable of mobilizing the political will necessary to coerce Indonesia into accepting a peacekeeping force. The second part of the article looks at how the outbreak of the violence in early September 1999 fundamentally changed these political assumptions. The authors argue that it became politically possible to employ coercion against Indonesian sovereignty in a context in which the Habibie government was viewed as having failed to exercise sovereignty with responsibility. By focusing on the economic and military sanctions employed by Western states, the pressures exerted by the international financial institutions and the intense diplomatic activity at the UN and in Jakarta, the authors show how Indonesian political and military leaders were prevailed upon to accept an international force. At the same time, Australian reporting of the atrocities and how this prompted the Howard government to an intervention that challenged traditional conceptionsof Australias vital interests, is considered. The conclusion reflects on how thiscase supports the claim that traditional notions of sovereignty are increasinglyconstrained by norms of humanitarian responsibility.

‘We the peoples’: Contending discourses of security in human rights theory and practice

This article develops a critical conception of security by showing the limits of traditional realist and pluralist discourses. It does this by exploring the deficiencies of realist and pluralist approaches when it comes to thinking about the promotion of human rights. Realism leads to moral indifference and a myopic approach to security and pluralism is complacent about how the rules and norms of international society exclude humanitarian concerns. The article argues for a critical approach to security that places human rights at the centre of theory and praxis, reflecting the fundamental indivisibility of security and human rights. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications for agency of this position.

Humanitarian Intervention After Kosovo: Emergent Norm, Moral Duty or the Coming Anarchy? 1

In March I999 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) justified the use of force against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) on the grounds that it was necessary to avert an impending humanitarian catastrophe. This action was so controversial because it was the first time since the founding of the United Nations (UN) that a group of states, acting without explicit Security Council authority, defended a breach of the sovereignty rule primarily on humanitarian grounds.2 The international reaction to NATOs intervention has been mixed: on the one hand, it has been welcomed by those who argue that

Investigating diplomatic transformations

This article investigates the role that diplomacy—especially at the highest levels—can play in transforming adversarial relationships. Building on Martin Wights exploration of these issues, in particular the question of how two adversaries can convince each other that they are serious negotiating partners, the article contends that achieving a significant de-escalation of a conflict depends upon the growth of trust. In contrast to Wights limited conception of what diplomacy could achieve in terms of ending conflicts, the argument made here is that particular types of communicative encounters between diplomats, and especially leaders, can build a level of trust at the interpersonal level which can lead policy-makers to make conciliatory frame-breaking moves. To make good on this claim, the article employs a case-study of the summitry between US President Ronald Reagan and his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev. The key contention here is that the face-to-face encounters between Reagan and Gorbachev promoted a level of trust between them that made possible the fundamental de-escalation of the Cold War that took place in the second half of the 1980s. Rival explanations focusing on nuclear weapons and Soviet economic decline are analysed, but while these were enabling conditions in the transformation of relations, the article argues that it is necessary to recognize the critical role that interpersonal trust between US and Soviet leaders played in achieving this diplomatic transformation.

Human Rights in Global Politics: Introduction: human rights and the fifty years' crisis

The humanitarian principles embodied in the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights marked the beginnings of a full-blown global human rights regime. The Declaration, signed fifty years ago, established a standard of civilised conduct which applies to all governments in the treatment of their citizens. For example, the Declaration requires states to provide subsistence needs and basic welfare provision as well as a panoply of civil and political rights. Although the latter assumed prominence in the subsequent history of the post1945 regime, it is important to underscore that from the outset, universal human rights encompassed a concern for positive rights (such as collective provision of education and healthcare) as well as negative rights (freedom from repressive government policies). The framers of these basic documents assumed that there was no necessary conflict between the principles of sovereignty and nonintervention and respect for universal human rights. This represented a historic evolution in the norms of international society which from the seventeenth century onwards had maintained that the domestic practices of governments were not a subject of international concern. According to the Westphalian conception of legitimacy, a government’s claim to be recognised as sovereign was not dependent upon how it behaved towards its own citizens. As a consequence of the experiences of totalitarianism, governments recognised that there was a need to challenge the Westphalian model of unlimited sovereignty. In these emerging human rights norms, there was a clear consensus that states must be made accountable for their behaviour. Underlying the evolution of human rights principles was the conviction held by the framers of the Charter that there was a clear link between good governance and the maintenance of international peace and security. It was believed that the aggressive foreign policies of the Axis powers were caused by the militaristic nature of their political systems. Diplomats and state leaders in the early post-1945 period endorsed the ‘democratic peace’ thesis which has been rejuvenated in

Beyond Waltz’s Nuclear World: More Trust May be Better

In 1981 Kenneth Waltz published a controversial Adelphi Paper, ‘The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better’, in which he turned the conventional wisdom on its head by arguing that the spread of nuclear weapons would not be a terrifying prospect. This article rejects the proposition that fear of nuclear destruction can serve as a permanent basis of international order, and argues that securing order depends upon the building of trust between nuclear-armed and arming powers. A key contribution here has been the theory and practice of security communities, which opens up the promise of replacing nuclear threats by a new international politics in which force has been delegitimated as an instrument of state policy. This article discusses the potential for nuclear trust-building through the example of the security community that developed between Argentina and Brazil in the 1980s. Both countries had the potential to develop nuclear weapons by the end of the 1970s, and there were concerns that their rivalry might lead to a regional nuclear arms race. Having explored the factors that promoted trust between Buenos Aires and Brasilia, the article considers the lessons that can be learned for nuclear trust-building elsewhere.

Roundtable: Humanitarian Intervention After 9/11

Tom Farer opens the roundtable by outlining a five-part test for legitimate humanitarian intervention and questioning the utility of the term ‘cosmopolitan’ in this context. Five responses are offered. Daniele Archibugi highlights the problem of legitimate authority for intervention and offers a separate four-stage process which he believes contributes to institutionalizing cosmopolitanism. Chris Brown questions the value of creating a set of criteria to help policymakers balance the competing moral intuitions surrounding humanitarian intervention. Neta Crawford problematizes the threshold for interventions and argues for a reappraisal of transitional administrations and the idea of global interconnectedness generally. Thomas Weiss defends cosmopolitan force and cautions that the real problem is not to be found in the lack of guidelines but instead in the lack of political will to motivate humanitarian interventions, though he warns against the increasing use of cosmopolitan arguments as a cover for pre-emptive warfare. After examining the role of motives and the ‘spike test’ in Farer’s criteria, Nicholas Wheeler emphasizes the central legitimating role of the UN Security Council in humanitarian intervention. The roundtable concludes with a set of responses by Farer to these arguments. His theme is that the chronic violation of human rights requires a reconception of the national interest and international systems of cooperation; this goal is something that 9/11 might have inadvertently encouraged by bringing together humanitarianism and national security more explicitly than hitherto.

“I Had Gone to Lahore With a Message of Goodwill But in Return We Got Kargil” 1 : The Promise and Perils of “Leaps of Trust” in India-Pakistan Relations

This article explores how it became possible for the former Indian Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, to make a major trust-building initiative with his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, at the 1999 Lahore Summit. Building on security dilemma theorizing in the field of International Relations, the present article develops the concept of a “leap of trust” as a way of understanding how decision-makers trapped in security dilemmas might break through the psychology of distrust by a frame-breaking conciliatory move. This framework is then applied to the moves that led to the development of a trusting relationship between Sharif and Vajpayee. A few months later, Pakistan launched an attack across the Line of Control (LoC) and Vajpayee felt betrayed. I explore how far Sharif knew about his armys plans to attack at Kargil and ask whether he was prisoner of a Pakistani military machine that was intent on pursuing a military solution in Kashmir irrespective of any peace process that might be developing. The article examines the lessons that Vajpayee drew from Kargil and discusses his two further attempts to recover the trust that had developed at Lahore. I conclude with an analysis of the wider lessons of this case for the success of any future leaps of trust that Indian and Pakistani leaders might take.

DECISIONS TO TRUST: MAINTAINING THE NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION REGIME

Abstract The regime of nuclear non-proliferation depends on more than the cost-benefit calculation. Instead, trust plays a significant role in both maintaining relationships and underwriting shared values. Understanding how trust is built and strengthened is vital as the nuclear landscape changes.