Mahmoud Abbas, President of the National Palestinian Authority, delivers an application for full Palestinian membership in the United Nations to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Photo: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras
It came as no big surprise that the United Nations General Assembly voted to upgrade Palestine to non-member observer status. But, reflecting the reality that international criminal justice now goes to the very heart of Middle East politics, many are left wondering whether Palestine will join the International Criminal Court and request (once again) that the ICC investigate its conflict with Israel. Pondering this issue has left me deeply frustrated.
While it may not be wise to box oneself into a particular moral outlook, I consider myself to be a liberal cosmopolitan. Very briefly, that means that I believe in a politics where all human beings share fundamental individual rights and that when those rights are blatantly violated we, as a global community, have some obligations to respond. This political ethos, I believe, is also what guides most proponents of the ICC, not to mention other liberal cosmopolitan projects such as the Responsibility to Protect.
The MAS ETH SPCM is offered in cooperation with leading academic partner institutions (Photo: ETH Zurich)
Our colleagues at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) recently hosted the “Security and Resources” module of their Master of Advanced Studies in Security Policy and Crisis Management program. Practitioners and scholars from around the world traveled to Zurich to discuss issues such as grand strategy, security policy development, crisis leadership and risk management. Given the fertile nature of these discussions, ISN staff members took the opportunity to speak to the lecturers and a Swiss course participant about five security-related issues currently on their minds. The following podcasts present their personal preoccupations and opinions.
Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in the first presidential debate. Photo: VOA/Wikimedia Commons
On 8 November, our parent organization – the Center for Security Studies – hosted a colloquium on the recently completed Presidential and Congressional elections in the United States. The guest speaker, Professor Andreas Falke, not only analyzed the election data for his audience, he also speculated on how the election’s outcomes might impact US domestic and foreign policies over the next four years, to include its influence on transatlantic relations.
Hosting Professor Falke also provided us with the opportunity to put some questions of our own to this keen observer of American politics. In the following podcast, we ask him whether he thought there was anything surprising about the election results, what the future holds for the US Republican Party, and what else we might expect from President Obama in his second term.
As the United States enters the twelfth year of the War on Terror, the counterterrorism effort has challenged the premises of international law. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) armed with Hellfire missiles with targeting capabilities have replaced special forces and manned aircraft as the U.S. tactic of choice against militants. According to the American Security Project, the U.S. military operates UAVs in declared combat zones—Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya—while the CIA operates covert UAV programs in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. These programs raise concerns about oversight, international human rights, and international laws governing warfare. If the White House doesn’t address concerns regarding the most recent UAV attacks in Yemen, the U.S. risks setting a dangerous precedent for UAV warfare worldwide.
The Long War Journal estimates that the U.S. has carried out three times as many strikes this year as it has in previous years against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The increase of covert UAV activity in Yemen raises many important questions: How are the targets decided? Who authorizes the strikes? Are the strikes legal?
John Brennan, the White House counterterrorism adviser, argued that UAV warfare is legally justified under Article 51 of the UN Charter and militarily advantageous because it is low cost and limits casualties on both sides. He argues that capturing insurgents is impossible due to AQAP’s asymmetric tactics and Yemen’s difficult terrain. The U.S. military contends that UAV warfare is a moral necessity. UAVs are more precise and efficient than military alternatives like bombs, air strikes and ground troops. In April John Brennan stated: “there is nothing in international law that bans the use of remotely piloted aircraft, or that prohibits us from using lethal force against our enemies outside of an active battlefield, at least when the country involved consents or is unable or unwilling to take action against the threat.”
Attending conferences in Europe and the United States over the past three years, I have been struck by the increasing Western preoccupation with Asia’s rise, the growing influence of the rising powers of Asia, and the challenge they pose to Western values and norms governing international institutions. There is resistance to the idea that the rise of these powers will lead to changes in the decision-making practices of institutions such as the United Nations Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization.
Although it is recognized that China, for example, should have a greater stake in international decision-making, the approach has been to ask whether China will abide by the rules set by the US and Europe after World War II. Europeans are particularly concerned about the decline of their influence and the norms and values that are espoused by them in global diplomacy as Asian powers seek a larger role in global affairs and assert their values.
