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ОглавлениеThe Role of Norms, Values and Institutions in International Politics
International politics is not mechanical: values, norms and institutions play an important role. The emphasis here should be placed on politics. It is through the dynamic process of politics where the factors of power meet the world of values and norms. And it is the process of politics which shapes the actual working of institutions. So, politics must be at the center.
It is worth reminding ourselves that international politics has always been a rough place, dominated by the struggle for power. This has been the case since the time of the Peloponnesian War to today, when we are currently preoccupied with the war in Syria and the instability of the wider Middle East. History is a constant reminder of the decisive importance of power in international politics. The somber message of the “Melian Dialogue,” articulated masterfully by Thucydides, still resonates in many situations in international politics now: “The strong do as they can and the weak suffer as they must.”1 Far too often power prevails over the moral argument.
But it would be factually incorrect and morally wrong to believe that power and military force alone decide all the important questions in international politics. The famous question posed by Stalin: “How many divisions does the Pope have at his disposal?” received a convincing answer several decades later, at the end of the Cold War. None was the answer, but he can nevertheless generate important changes in the international environment. The role of the human spirit, the power ←11 | 12→of ideas and the importance of human values that bind people together must never be underestimated.
And then there is the world of norms. Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of political realism, reminded his readers of an ethical point made long ago by Roman politician and jurist Cicero: There are two ways of contesting, either by force or by law, and force must be resorted to because law is not always sufficient2. As a cultured man, Machiavelli had a clear preference for legal ways. At the same time, as a practitioner of politics, he was sufficiently realistic to understand the limits of law as an instrument of statecraft and international politics. Therefore, he did not hesitate to advise his Prince to be determined and brutal.
However, there are moments in international politics when the use of force becomes so counterproductive that the softer aspects of human nature prevail. Human values gain ground and law becomes the chosen way to durable solutions. People wary of war invariably start searching for ways out of war and that path leads them to the world of norms and institutions. The conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 was such a moment. It ended a period of religious wars in Europe with an agreement which constituted a new international system based on the legal principle of the territorial sovereignty of states. This legal solution has been the main organizing principle of the international system ever since and it needs to be taken seriously. It came about at a serious cost and it continues to be a cornerstone of peace today and into the future.
Another important example of the search for solutions in the world of norms and institutions can be found in the thinking during the Napoleonic Wars. The statesmen of that era had to devise a new system which would provide stability in post-war Europe and thus searched for values, norms and institutions that would make this possible. A promising approach was developed in the memorandum written in 1805 by the British Prime Minister William Pitt (The Younger). The memorandum had an apt and ambitious title: “Deliverance and Security in Europe.” The innovative idea expressed in that document was that post-war arrangements cannot be built solely on border changes and balance of power among the European empires. What was needed, according to Pitt, was an arrangement which would enable “a general and comprehensive system of Public Law in Europe, and provide, as far as possible, for repressing future attempts to disturb the general Tranquility…”3
The Pitt memorandum became the blueprint for the British diplomatic strategy at the Congress of Vienna and helped in the creation of the Holy Alliance. At the Congress, the major European powers restored peace with a combination of territorial changes and political arrangements to which they added a new normative and institutional dimension. The normative focus of this approach, “the Public ←12 | 13→Law of Europe” element, was the key to the concept of the modern collective security that was further developed in the twentieth century. Today, two centuries later, we cannot imagine the existence of Europe without its tightly knit web of legal arrangements, “a comprehensive system of public law of Europe,” as the modern version of a reliable guarantee of European peace and tranquility.
The same normative idea inspired the system of global collective security in the twentieth century. The immense suffering during the two world wars convinced political leaders to ensure that the idea of collective security was the centerpiece in the construction of peace treaties and to expand the scope of international law as the “way of contesting”, to use one of Machiavelli’s expressions. The Covenant of the League of Nations in 1919 brought a host of new norms and institutions. The new system put arbitration and adjudication at the center of the effort to resolve international differences peacefully. The whole design was a product of the legal mind. This was not surprising, given the fact that its chief architect, American President Woodrow Wilson was a distinguished professor of constitutional law. The world owes a deep gratitude to this great leader and his achievements.
At the same time, it is necessary to understand the history lesson relating to the limits of normative ideas and legal solutions in international politics. The League of Nations relied too heavily on legal norms and institutions, and, critically, did not (and, given the historic circumstances, probably could not) incorporate two other key elements, essential for the success of an international institution aimed at preserving peace: the balance of power and a platform of shared values. The demise of the League of Nations made this lesson painfully clear.
The League’s successor, the United Nations, did better, in fact, much better. The Charter of the UN incorporated the balance of power quite successfully. The design of the UN Security Council and the status of its five permanent members by and large proved to be historically adequate. The UN also offered a broad platform of common values: it contained a built-in commitment to peace as the supreme value. Moreover, this commitment allowed a gradual evolution of a comprehensive legal system for the promotion and protection of human rights. This legal system remains imperfect, but it is still much more developed than any other system of human values known in earlier periods of history.
The process of UN construction and evolution has been long and arduous. The Security Council appeared paralyzed during the four decades of the Cold War when there were doubts about the adequacy of the Charter design itself. However, for almost an entire generation, from the 1980s to the 2010s, the Council functioned largely as the authors of the UN Charter had expected, which should be considered as a success of historic proportions.
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The UN system’s work in the promotion and protection of human rights was also developed gradually, proceeding from the embryonic provisions on human rights in the UN Charter. The key development was the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 “as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations…”
It is sometimes suggested that human rights cannot, in fact, be a universal platform of shared values, given the differences among the world’s many cultures and the diversity of paths to human development. Moreover, some critics maintain that human rights are a product of Western civilization, imposed on others who were not yet, at the time of adoption, in a position to make a genuine contribution to the content of the Universal Declaration.
It is only natural that such criticism exists, inviting a continuous discussion on human rights. However, it should be understood that the original aim of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was not to dominate but emanated from the wish to create a strong firewall against the re-emergence of oppression, which had been among the primary causes of World War II. It was entirely logical for this war-weary generation to start building a system that would help to prevent a relapse into oppression and war, which had caused so much suffering. Moreover, as the process of construction of the human rights system continued, many voices were heard and many new ideas were included, among them the right of peoples to self-determination and the human right to development. And the debate continues. The universality of human rights is being strengthened – gradually, steadily and sustainably.
It is not an exaggeration to say that today international politics must always take into consideration the requirements of universal human rights. Human rights are an important expression of values that all humanity shares and thus should be upheld, to the highest degree possible, by practical action. The existing norms, institutions and state power, all must be brought into the picture in the effort to fulfill this fundamental requirement of our time. This is, after all, the purpose of the values we share – they must be protected and ensured in real life. The question is how?
There is, obviously, no single or uniform answer to this question. Many roads lead to Rome. Many things need to be done to make human rights a reality. Let us now look at an experience which is particularly close to the questions of international security.
In the 1980s, the decade leading to the end of the Cold War, great advances were made in the realization of human rights. The end of apartheid, the demise of military rule in Latin American countries and the end of oppressive regimes in Eastern Europe all represented a very positive change and a victory for the values ←14 | 15→embodied in the international code of human rights. This era of the triumph of human rights brought about new institutions, most notably the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and led to significant improvements in the international system for the promotion and protection of human rights.
In addition, the new situation gave rise to a sense of triumph of human rights and created a new moral high ground. The question to be answered was: how to address situations after the period of human rights violations and what to do about perpetrators of massive and systematic violations? Justice was the answer; impunity was declared unacceptable. But what did justice mean? In many cases it meant prosecution and retribution. In many others, the answer was truth and reconciliation. Justice seemed to be the order of the day in the new era.
This sense of the triumph of human rights did not last long, however. In one of the bitter ironies of history, that sense of triumph ended in only a few years, in the wake of the massive war atrocities in the Balkans and the genocide in Rwanda, followed by the crimes committed in many other parts of Africa. This experience of genocide in the 1990s showed the very real limits of the reliance on human rights. The international community and its organizations were unable to prevent the atrocities or stop them at an early stage. Instead, it was agreed that the perpetrators would be prosecuted. New international institutions were established for this purpose, a host of international criminal tribunals and, finally, the International Criminal Court with a broad, almost global jurisdiction.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was the first among the international criminal tribunals established in the post-cold war era. The experience is mixed. The tribunal must be hailed for its pioneering work and for its achievement in bringing many of the main war criminals to justice. On the other hand, it must be also recognized that many crimes remained unpunished and, above all, that there is still a long way to reconciliation.
Today, almost thirty years later, something fundamental is equally clear as it was at the beginning. It would have been much better to prevent the atrocities in the Balkans, in Africa and elsewhere than to allow situations in which prosecution of crimes against humanity and war crimes became necessary. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. But how to achieve that in the complex world of international politics, in which norms have a limited effect and where the strong do as they can and the weak suffer as they must? Very few wars can be deemed as clearly preventable and even when they are, prevention is seldom pursued with the necessary sense of urgency or with the needed unity of purpose. The prevention of armed conflicts remains one of the most elusive areas of international cooperation.
How to deal with armed conflicts at the early stages to minimize destruction and human suffering? Conflict formation and dynamics, as well as conflict ←15 | 16→resolution take time, a lot of precious time, as the international community has been tragically re-learning in Libya, Syria and Yemen. Armed conflicts in our era exact a heavy toll on human life, particularly in civilian populations. The international community has every reason to strengthen its institutions and make them capable of acting as early as possible – by diplomatic means as a matter of course, and by military force when necessary and possible.
This moral imperative is expressed in several recent international pronouncements, especially in the much-discussed concept of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), and it enjoys significant political support. Through the General Assembly resolution adopted in 2005, it has gained a measure of normative underpinning as well as a degree of institutional backing. The concept of the R2P represented the most significant single expression of the will of the international community to engage values, norms and institutions to prevent horrible crimes against humanity and immense human suffering resulting from massive human rights violations.
However, political pronouncements by the UN General Assembly are not enough. In addition to the moral imperative, and the normative and institutional backing, it is necessary to engage an adequate amount of power and, most importantly, it is vital to employ sound political judgment and responsible political guidance.
The latter requirement cannot be overemphasized. In matters of conflict prevention and conflict resolution, there is no substitute for sound political judgment and responsible political guidance directing all other factors, including military force especially.
While this may sound axiomatic as an abstract principle, it is not easily realized in practice. The facts of any situation before and during an armed conflict are usually unclear, covered by the inevitable “fog of war”. The political and military assessments of facts are most often divergent. This is so because of the complexity of the situation itself, or because of differences in perceptions generated by the political interests of the players involved. Furthermore, in the media-driven world of today, there is never a shortage of rhetoric and imagery supporting a line of analysis or a specific course of action, no matter how inaccurate or inadequate it is. This adds to the complexity with which decision-makers are dealing.
Moreover, decision-makers have to be careful in the conduct of their debates. They must not confuse rhetoric on the one hand, and real thought on the other. They must also not allow prejudices to diminish their ability to listen to convincing, albeit unwelcome arguments.
A set of criteria must be considered in decision-making about the use of military force. Here, rhetoric must not be allowed as a substitute for serious thought. It should be clear throughout that there is no such a thing as “light military ←16 | 17→intervention”. Thus, the rhetoric of the “military lite” option must be set aside. Peacekeepers must not be sent to situations of war where there is no peace to keep. Humanitarian interventions should not be attempted, except in the cases where there is a threat of genocide and mass murder. In such cases, a sufficiently robust military force is needed.
Furthermore, any contemplation on the use of military force must include a vision of its end or exit strategy. This is very difficult given the usual unpredictability in war situations. There is no strategy without an exit. But then again, there is also no exit without a strategy. Military experts, political decision-makers and diplomats must be aware of that. The task is to devise a functioning formula early enough to enable success and to put in place a credible program of post-conflict normalization.
And then, the use of military force must be legitimized. A mandate from the Security Council would provide this, but there are gray areas and complicating factors which make this requirement difficult. Mandates agreed to by the Security Council are often ambiguous or unclear. Sometimes regional organizations work at a higher pace and create additional difficulties in the Security Council process. And sometimes the Security Council finds itself in a situation of an “ex post facto legitimizer” of the use of force by regional organizations. All this makes the role of the Security Council less authoritative and less predictable. Is this likely to diminish the authority of the Security Council and the UN? Only time will tell.
The experience of the last decades has – time and again – confirmed a simple and fundamental truth. There are no “military lite” or “diplomacy lite” options available to the responsible decision-makers. Military options, when deemed necessary and legitimate, must be designed to ensure their declared objectives. Diplomatic options should include the will to engage diplomacy to the full, including doing the necessary diplomatic “heavy lifting”.
It goes without saying that political and diplomatic approaches to security achieve little if they are not supported by real power, including military power. But the opposite is also true: force and military power can achieve little if not used in the framework of values, norms and institutions. This is the only way to move beyond the type of international politics in which the strong do as they can and the weak suffer as they must.
(Keynote Address at the Closing Ceremony of the 27th Training Course of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, Geneva, 7 June 2013)
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Notes
1. 1 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book Five, 89.
2. 2 Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter XVIII, opening paragraph.
3. 3 Quoted from: Douglas Hurd, Choose Your Weapons: The British Foreign Secretary, 200 Years of Argument, Success and Failure, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2010, p. 24.
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