Tom Farer

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.

What Syria has to Teach Neo-Conservatives and Liberals about US Foreign Policy

The only means available to the US to assume a responsibility to protect the Syrian people from slaughter was by credibly threatening Bashar al-Assad and the security and military elite surrounding him with a decapitating air strike if they did not immediately cease murdering protestors and begin negotiations with opposition figures to the end of making the regime broadly representative of the Syrian population. Credibility probably demanded an initial decimation, a technically possible move. In part because the US lacks the ideology and institutional structure of a real imperial power, in part because it is post-Bush a careful calculator of national interests, Syria, unlike Libya but much like Sudan and the DRC, was a bridge too far.

Obama's Foreign Policy: Bridging the Expectations–Capability Gap

Barack Obamas first year should appear disappointing only to persons blind to the constraints imposed by the Bush legacy, the still reeling world economy, an intimidating agenda of domestic problems, a polarised domestic politics, and at least temporarily intractable opponents of the Presidents undoubted ambitions to tame the Middle East and promote cooperation among the leading states without jettisoning a commitment to liberal values. By ordering an end to torture and moving to close Guantanamo, he has signalled the restoration of moral restraint on the exercise of American power and implicitly expressed belief in the efficacy of soft power assets. Additionally, he has attempted to create political space for change by pushing the conventional limits of American presidential discourse. A decent start, but the hard part lies ahead.

Terrorism, Islam and America: In Search of a Disarming Narrative

If anything is uncontroversial in the envenomed setting of contemporary American political debate, it is the proposition that the struggle to protect the United States against violent Muslim extremists is in part a struggle to influence “hearts and minds.” Though it has deployed the nation’s resources as if terrorism were essentially a nail that could be flattened by the military hammer, the Bush Administration itself has conceded the importance of ideas, for instance, by sending one of the President’s closest political advisors to the State Department in a misconceived hence futile effort to invigorate its essays in public diplomacy.1 Intellectual fellow travelers of the Administration, like the writers Paul Berman2 and Jean Bethke Elshtain,3 even as they vilify a notional “left” for seeking to “understand” Muslim rage, note the risk of multiplying recruits to terrorist networks faster than we can unravel them. In doing so they display a kind of schizophrenia. On the one hand, they call for merciless war against a phenomenon they variously characterize as Islamic fundamentalism or Islamo-Fascism and vituperatively indict as naive or worse anyone who proposes to explain the ferocious militancy of groups like Al Qaeda in part as a reaction to U.S. policies. On the other hand, they concede that there is a hierarchy of militancy with suicide bombers and their handlers at the narrow top and below them broad layers of persons experiencing various degrees of antagonism toward the United States in particular or Western governments and peoples in general. More importantly they seem to concede that violent measures alone, at least measures of the kind they are willing to countenance, are unlikely to block movement of a dangerous number of people into the top level where the armed and intractable militants reside.

Rumo a uma ordem legal internacional efetiva: da coexistência ao consenso?

Ao proibir o uso da forca, exceto em caso de legitima defesa contra ataque armado ou quando ha autorizacao do Conselho de Seguranca, a Carta das Nacoes Unidas surge como o auge do desenvolvimento de um sistema de ordem internacional baseado na doutrina da soberania do Estado. O resultado cumulativo de leis, omissoes e declaracoes relacionadas ao direito internacional - desde o inicio do Governo Bush - pode ser interpretado como um desafio fundamental ao sistema do Estado soberano. A estrategia de seguranca declarada pelo Governo Bush e uma das possiveis respostas a desafios que, incontestavelmente, poem em risco a seguranca nacional e humana. Somente uma parceria institucionalizada entre os EUA e os Estados secundariamente poderosos seria dotada da legitimidade necessaria para tratar de tais desafios com sucesso. Tal pacto ou parceria poderia ser organizada no âmbito das Nacoes Unidas, apesar da intensificacao de seus elementos hierarquicos.

Toward an effective international legal order: from co-existence to concert?

Ao proibir o uso da forca, exceto em caso de legitima defesa contra ataque armado ou quando ha autorizacao do Conselho de Seguranca, a Carta das Nacoes Unidas surge como o auge do desenvolvimento de um sistema de ordem internacional baseado na doutrina da soberania do Estado. O resultado cumulativo de leis, omissoes e declaracoes relacionadas ao direito internacional - desde o inicio do Governo Bush - pode ser interpretado como um desafio fundamental ao sistema do Estado soberano. A estrategia de seguranca declarada pelo Governo Bush e uma das possiveis respostas a desafios que, incontestavelmente, poem em risco a seguranca nacional e humana. Somente uma parceria institucionalizada entre os EUA e os Estados secundariamente poderosos seria dotada da legitimidade necessaria para tratar de tais desafios com sucesso. Tal pacto ou parceria poderia ser organizada no âmbito das Nacoes Unidas, apesar da intensificacao de seus elementos hierarquicos.

Hacia un eficaz orden legal internacional: ¿de coexistencia a concertación?

Ao proibir o uso da forca, exceto em caso de legitima defesa contra ataque armado ou quando ha autorizacao do Conselho de Seguranca, a Carta das Nacoes Unidas surge como o auge do desenvolvimento de um sistema de ordem internacional baseado na doutrina da soberania do Estado. O resultado cumulativo de leis, omissoes e declaracoes relacionadas ao direito internacional - desde o inicio do Governo Bush - pode ser interpretado como um desafio fundamental ao sistema do Estado soberano. A estrategia de seguranca declarada pelo Governo Bush e uma das possiveis respostas a desafios que, incontestavelmente, poem em risco a seguranca nacional e humana. Somente uma parceria institucionalizada entre os EUA e os Estados secundariamente poderosos seria dotada da legitimidade necessaria para tratar de tais desafios com sucesso. Tal pacto ou parceria poderia ser organizada no âmbito das Nacoes Unidas, apesar da intensificacao de seus elementos hierarquicos.

To Shape the Nation’s Foreign Policy: Struggles for Dominance among American International Relations Scholars:

Whatever its other effects, the Soviet-American Cold War helped launch and sustain an era of feverish intellectual activity in the linked fields of international relations theory and foreign policy analysis. One sign of the importance of more recent phenomena with all their resonant impacts may be the continuing ferment in theorizing about international relations, foreign policy and public international law years after the war’s conclusion, a ferment which the 9/11/01 terrorist attack on the United States and its aftermath have intensified. Comprehending the scholarly inquiries and debates in these fields should be important to intellectuals regardless of their professional interests, not only because those inquiries and debates concern profound epistemological and ontological issues, but primarily because they have influenced and continue to influence the trajectory of United States foreign policy.

Toward an effective international legal order: from coexistence to concert?

In forbidding the use of force except in self‐defence against armed attack or when authorised by the Security Council, the UN Charter appears to be the culminating development of a system of international order based on the doctrine of state sovereignty. The cumulative result of international‐law‐related acts, omissions and declarations of the Bush administration since its inception can be construed as a fundamental challenge to the sovereign state system. The administrations stated security strategy is one possible response to undoubtedly grave challenges to national and human security. In fact, only an institutionalised partnership between the US and regional powers such as China, India, Brazil and Germany can hope to address those challenges successfully, in part because only it would have the requisite legitimacy. That partnership or concert could be organised within the UN framework, albeit intensifying its hierarchical elements.