Democratic Fundamentalism in Switzerland

Imagine you are asked to vote on a treaty concluded between your home and your neighboring country. The treaty aims at improving cooperation in border control matters between the two states. Would you vote in favor of or against adopting the treaty? Or would you not go to the polls at all?

How much democratic control of foreign policy? Photo: courtesy of Kanton Glarus
How much direct democracy in foreign policy-making? Photo: courtesy of Kanton Glarus

The Action for an Independent and Neutral Switzerland (AUNS) launched a popular initiative, which, if adopted by Swiss voters, will amend the Constitution so as to require a popular vote on all but the most trivial international treaties. What sounds like empowerment from a committed democrat’s point of view sounds like handcuffs from a foreign policymaker’s perspective.

Yet, the motivation behind AUNS’ initiative is not so much democratic as politically strategic. The group’s main goal is to prevent Switzerland from joining the EU, overtly, or as they fear, covertly. AUNS members, which unsuccessfully vowed against Switzerland joining the UN in 2002, lament that the Swiss political elite is too open-minded toward the world. The strategy they employ is an old one: If you think the majority of the people is behind your cause, you ask them, if not, you ignore them.

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International Relations on Facebook – the Best and the Brightest

Engagement through Facebook, photo: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid / flickr
Engagement through Facebook, photo: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid / flickr

While hardly a comprehensive list of top IR Facebookers, we thought we’d put together a top ten of interesting organizations and personalities to follow on Facebook (in no particular order).

Many provide neat and easy access and links to their newest content; others encourage active debate and exchange of views on their ‘Discussion’ board. US Forces in Afghanistan even provide picture series (in the ‘Boxes’ section) that show the daily work of troops in the Afghan theater. For others still, Facebook provides an avenue for engagement with hitherto ‘distant’ audiences – Admiral Mike Mullen’s Flickr stream and Twittering come to mind.

If you know of other interesting, engaged and insightful Facebookers in the IR field, please let us know and add your suggestions to the ‘Comments’ section.

And please remember that you can find us on Facebook and Twitter too.

Happy Facebooking!

1. The Atlantic

2. Foreign Policy Magazine

3. US Forces in Afghanistan

4. Al Jazeera

5. World Economic Forum

6. Oxfam (GB)

7. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

8. Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

9. Council on Foreign Relations

10. United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR)

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Uncategorized

Mindanao’s Memorandum of Disagreement

Young MILF fighter in front of peace poster, Mindanao, Philippines
In support of peace? Young MILF fighter in front of peace poster, Mindanao, Philippines. photo: Mark Navales/flickr

The 2008 Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) was meant to solve the seemingly intractable and bloody conflict raging, for decades, between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). It was meant to give the disenfranchised and marginalized Muslim minority of the southern Philippines a homeland, self-rule and near-equal status with the Philippine central government after centuries of bloodshed. Instead of bringing the conflict, which reflects a centuries-old stuggle, to an almost clinically clean end, the collapse of the MOA-AD in the summer and fall of 2008 revealed the deep fissures at the heart of the conflict and laid bare the government’s inability and unwillingness to push through a potentially momentous peace deal.

The Memorandum of Agreement had, almost overnight revealed itself as little more than a fractured ‘Memorandum of Disagreement’ devoid of real political backing or popular support.

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Audio/Video

Johnny Mad Dog: A Film on Child Soldiers, Played by Former Child Soldiers

Former child soldiers / Screenshot: Johnny Mad Dog Foundation
Former child soldiers / Screenshot: Johnny Mad Dog Foundation

A small group of Center for Security Studies staff watched the film “Johnny Mad Dog” today. It’s a war film played by former child soldiers of Liberia, filmed in Liberia about one and a half years after the actual war (1998-2003).

The Johnny Mad Dog Foundation was created with the aim of bringing a framework and support to the actors in the movie, most of whom fought with Charles Taylor or the Lurd Forces.

The film is highly graphic, difficult to watch and absorb at times, as it shows very realistically the utter mess of urban warfare in contemporary Africa. The crazy way the kids dress seems total fiction, until one sees the photos of the actual child soldiers during the Liberian war.

In the making of the film, former child soldiers were interviewed, and they were very clear that they wanted to tell their own story, give a voice to the unspeakable experiences they had been involved in, how they were manipulated, so that in their turn they start manipulating and violating others.

Academics and even staff of ‘conflict resolution’ NGOs often work with texts, juggling concepts, theories and methodologies. In contrast, this kind of film puts a human face on to violence. It reminds one of the brutality that comes with conflict and the emotions that are conjured.

Once the war ends, the suffering continues, and it is extremely difficult for former child soldiers to find a place in society. However, it is not as though they have become war machines, the film shows how aspects of humanity remain, how they can switch their emotions off, but at times also on again. Video extracts from the film can be seen at TFM Distribution.

According to the Child Soldiers Global Report 2008, there are many tens of thousands of child soldiers in armed forces and groups, in about 19 different countries.

You can find more about the issue of child soldiers on the ISN website.

UN, G20 and the Dollar

Dollars ! / Photo: pfala, Flickr
Dollars ! / Photo: pfala, Flickr

In the August 2009 ISN Special Issue entitled “Redesigning Global Finances- The End of Dollar Dominance?“, I asked whether the window of opportunity to redesign the global financial architecture has already passed with no real progress having been made. This week, the UN Trade and Development report was published, calling for a “new approach to multilateral exchange-rate management to complement stricter financial regulation.” Their critique of the dollar system contains the usual arguments: it is prone to fluctuations, creates current account disequilibria and requires poor countries to create huge reserves better used elsewhere. To mend this, they suggest nothing less than a new Bretton Woods system. Accordingly, it would be based on managed flexible exchange rates at sustainable levels, thus making great fluctuations and currency crisis a thing of the past and level the playing field for international trade. The report is interesting not because it contains revolutionary new ideas, but because a UN agency officially calls for alternatives to the dollar system.

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