Excerpt: “The U.S., the U.K. and Humanitarian Intervention: Supporting the U.N. To Further Our Own Interests”

As world powers, the United States and the United Kingdom have a responsibility to intervene in serious humanitarian crises when fundamental human rights are being violated. As members of the Security Council, these countries are supported in legitimate interventions by international law; Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter declares that the U.N. has the authority “in the event of a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, for the imposition of measures, commonly called sanctions, and the use of armed force” ().1 In order to maintain strong and favorable international reputations, as well as to fulfill these two countries’ moral commitments to the basic rights enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, conducting effective humanitarian interventions is a crucial policy goal of both the United States and the United Kingdom. In pursuit of this goal, these two countries have several options. First, these two countries could rely solely on the Security Council and the international validation it provides. Given the extremely weak de facto power of the Security Council, this option is unworkable. Second, the United States could rely solely on bilateral intervention (i.e. intervention outside the channels of the Security Council). Though this option would give the United States and the United Kingdom more freedom of action, since these countries can follow their own policies without interference from others, the drawbacks of this option are significant in certain cases. In some cases, this option will tarnish the international reputations of these two countries, especially if other countries strongly object to the intervention. Further, ignoring the apparatus of the Security Council will ultimately lead to complete lack of authority for the Security Council. If the United States and the United Kingdom want an international ally that will support peace and justice, which in turn will lead to greater economic stability and security for all people, then these countries should invest in the Security Council and work to develop its power rather than detract from it. Therefore, we recommend a third option: a combination of reforming the Security Council’s humanitarian intervention procedure and bilateral intervention. In cases of immediate terrorist threats to U.S./U.K. citizens (i.e. an embassy hostage situation), the U.S. and U.K. should intervene bilaterally or in alliance with each other outside the Security Council; bilateral intervention is far quicker than negotiating the many diplomatic entanglements of the U.N., since failure to act, delayed action, and a lack of resolution enforcement often stymies U.S. and U.K. humanitarian interests.2 However, in more complicated cases, such as situations in which governmental sovereignty would have to be challenged or the opposing parties are not immediately clear to potential interventionists, the U.S. and U.K. should work through the Security Council to intervene. However, Security Council intervention procedure should be revised to include a) strong enforcement of secondary sanctions and b) the rewriting mandates to allow U.N. soldiers more freedom of action on the ground. These two revisions will not only

1Pascal Teixeira, “The Security Council at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century: To what extent is it willing and able to maintain international peace and security?” (Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 2003), 43. http://www.heinonline.org.ezpprod1.hul.harvard.edu/HOL/Index?index=unl%2Funaabu&collection=unl 2KaraC.McDonaldandStewartM.Patrick,“U.N.SecurityCouncilEnlargementandU.S.Interests”(paperpresentedaspartofInternationalInstitutionsandGlobalGovernanceProgram,CouncilSpecialReportNo.59,December2010),14.

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make U.N. missions immediately more effective, they will also give U.N. interventions more authority and thus prevent deter potential humanitarian rights’ violators. We will now explore each of these recommendations at length.

Bilateral Intervention In order to understand why bilateral intervention is sometimes necessary, the weaknesses of the Security Council must be addressed. The Security Council faces several structural problems that affect its ability to fairly intervene in some international conflicts. Five members of the council have permanent seats and all permanent members have veto power.3 The veto power of Russia and China is often opposed to the humanitarian interests of the US, UK, and France;4 Russia and China typically vote to not intervene in humanitarian crises, thus blocking the U.N. from intervening at all. Further, notions of sovereignty, important in the UN, can make international intervention in humanitarian cases less likely. Perhaps the most significant obstacle to realizing US interests via the UNSC is the general inability of the UNSC to enforce its resolutions. Bilateral intervention does not necessarily need to occur without U.N. approval, however. For example, in 1998, the US contended that previous UNSC resolutions authorized the use of force against Iraq if it failed to comply with weapons inspections.5 On March 2, 1998, the Security Council passed resolution 1154 endorsing a memorandum of understanding between the Secretary General and the Iraqi deputy foreign relations minister. At the same meeting, no Security Council member claimed that the resolution authorized the “unilateral use of force.”6 After the meeting, however, the Clinton administration claimed that the resolution was a “green light” to attack Iraq if it didn’t cooperate with weapons inspections.7 It therefore appeared to many observers that the US thought of the UNSC as a way to authorize, but never to limit, the use of force.8 US claims that it could legitimately invade Iraq rested on “creative interpretation” of previous Security Council resolutions.9 In certain cases, particularly terrorism, this type of technically U.N. sanctioned intervention is the best course of action for the United States. The ways in which the Security Council should deal with terrorism are limited when non-state groups are responsible for the acts of violence.10 Generally, two options are available for responding to terrorism: containment and deterrence. Containment is difficult for an international organization to enforce, due to the lack of strict territorial boundaries for terrorist networks. Deterrence is often ineffective when extremists do not fear death, so containment is usually the better option. Since deference to great powers is built into the structure of the Security Council through the P5 veto power, the Security Council can not do anything that would upset the most powerful countries.11 Often, this means 3Teixeira, “The Security Council at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century,” 11.4Teixeira, “The Security Council at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century,” 11.5Jules Lobel and Michael Ratner, “Bypassing the Security Council: Ambiguous Authorizations to Use Force, Cease Fires and the Iraqi Inspection Regime,” The American Journal of International Law, 93 (1999): 124. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29979586Lobel and Ratner, “Bypassing,” 124.7Lobel and Ratner, “Bypassing,” 124.8Lobel and Ratner, “Bypassing,” 125.9Lobel and Ratner, “Bypassing,” 124.10Teixeira, “The Security Council at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century,” 8.11Teixeira, “The Security Council at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century,” 3.

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one or more of the permanent members does not wish to interfere with another state’s sovereignty just to reach a terrorist organization only targeting one or several countries. In fact, the great powers often either use the Security Council as a “vehicle for their influence” or limit its power and rely instead on regional bodies to prevent/end conflicts.12 Yet in many cases, those regional bodies are underfunded and the troops ill-equipped. For example, the African troops often expected to replace Western troops in peacekeeping missions in Africa are expected to do so with less training and far shoddier equipment than their Western counterparts. The African Union’s Mission to Somalia’s (AMISOM) entire budget is less money than the US spends on its Afghanistan mission in a day and half.13 Further, this is not at all unusual for African troops; the African troops composing the UN Assistance Mission to Rwanda (UNAMIR) were significantly less equipped than the Belgian troops of the same mission.14 In Mali, the American government spent $221 million on alleviating poverty but only $4 million on security programs because they feared a military coup, though a military coup resulted anyway and the Malian troops are now poorly trained and work with extremely poor equipment.15 Yet despite having significantly poorer physical and mental tools, these African troops are expected to carry out peacekeeping missions that their Western counterparts do not wish to take. Not only is this arrangement amoral, then, but it is also impractical. Troops with far less resources and troops will be far less effective than well-equipped and trained Western troops. Thus, in cases where the Security Council is only willing to send regional organizations to intervene, the U.S. and U.K. should instead intervene bilaterally. Further, refusing to intervene bilaterally in humanitarian crises can seriously tarnish the international reputations of the U.S. and U.K. reputations. The case of Rwanda is perhaps the best example of such international backlash. Various international bodies investigating after the fact, including the UN Security Council, the Organization for African Unity, and the French and Belgian governments, concluded that genocide had in fact taken place.16 Almost every group that reviewed the incident, including Human Rights Watch and other NGOs, concluded that the international community had failed to act in accordance with the Genocide Convention of 1948.17 A report headed by the Canadian government concluded that, based on evidence from the Rwandan genocide, it was clear that it is possible for humanitarian necessity to trump state sovereignty when the international community is debating whether to intervene or not.18 The Canadian report declared that “the idea that sovereign states have a responsibility to protect their own citizens from avoidable catastrophe, but that when they are unwilling or unable to do so, that responsibility must be borne by the broader community of states.”19 Finally, the United States government was widely blamed for refusing to intervene. Journalist Stephanie Power posits that mid-level government officials knew of the Rwandan government’s genocide 12Teixeira, “The Security Council at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century,” 3.13Audie Cornish and Robert Siegel, “Western Money, African Boots: A Formula for Africa’s Conflicts” (PR: March 29th, 2013). Audio broadcast. 14Samantha Power, “Bystanders to Genocide,” The Atlantic Monthly, 288 (2001) pp. 84-108: 4.15Mark Moyar ,“How Misguided U.S. Aid Contributed to Mali’s Coup,” Bloomberg (March 11, 2012). 16Major Brent Beardsley, “Humanitarian Intervention: Learning from the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 to Stop the Genocide in Darfur” (paper presented at Conference of Defence Associations Institute, Kingston, October 29-30, 2004). http://www.journal.dnd.ca/vo6/no1/human-humain-eng.asp17Beardsley, “Humanitarian Intervention.”18Beardsley, “Humanitarian Intervention.” 19Beardsley, “Humanitarian Intervention.”

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intentions within the week of the plane crash which sparked the conflict and refers to the decision not intervene as a terrible stain on the United States’ reputation.20 In refusing to intervene, the United States seriously compromised its integrity as a member of the United Nations and lost respect in the eyes of other countries and its own citizens. Though the Rwandan situation was not a case of terrorism, the reputation component highlighted by the U.S.’s refusal to intervene still applies to terrorist situations. If the United States and the United Kingdom wish to maintain their reputations as moral nations who protect human rights, they must occasionally intervene bilaterally when the United Nations cannot. In the case of Rwanda, where governmental sovereignty was an issue and UN troops were already present in the region, the U.S. should have supported the U.N. mission; but in other cases, specifically terrorist cases, the U.S. and U.K. should intervene bilaterally.

Sanctions Though bilateral intervention is the best option in several cases, in the majority of

humanitarian crises, the United States and the United Kingdom should work through the Security Council to intervene. This approach will both lend the intervention international legitimacy as well as strengthen the power of the United Nations so that future dictators and perpetrators of crimes against humanitarian will be deterred by the threat of the UN.

While the UN Security Council is often framed as a core component in legitimate international intervention, this was not the case in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, where in fact the Security Council was crippled by the United State’s disinterest in pursuing intervention despite the escalation of ethic tensions into genocide.21 United States policy both prevented initial intervention and drastically slowed later attempts at providing necessary support for the dwindling Tutsi population.22 In order to impede one state from preventing all action of the Security Council, the UN should consider various means of holding states accountable. One avenue that must be considered is the role of secondary sanctions against nations that impede international action. We recommend secondary sanctions as a means of enforcing Security Council mandates and interventions, and examine why this will work as a mechanism of enforcing compliance even though sanctions have generally been viewed as ineffective in the past in terms of enforcing peace.

According to the U.N., “The Council has resorted to mandatory sanctions as an enforcement tool when peace has been threatened and diplomatic efforts have failed.”23 Current forms of sanctions range from “arms embargoes and travel bans” to “financial or diplomatic restrictions.”24 Secondary sanctions would take affect against nations who have not complied with these sanctions or are not taking action and contributing to interventions as they have initially agreed to do.25

20Power, “Bystanders to Genocide,” 9.21Holly J. Burkhalter, “The Question of Genocide: The Clinton Administration and Rwanda,” World Policy Journal, 11 (1994/95): 44-54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40209383. 22Burkhalter, “The Question of Genocide.”23“Security Council Sanctions Committees: An Overview,” U.N. Security Council Sanctions Committees. http://www.un.org/sc/committees/ 24“Security Council Sanctions Committees: An Overview.”25Teixeira, “The Security Council at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century,” 54.

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Beginning in 1994 during the Rwanda genocide, the U.N. held sanctions against Rwanda, which were terminated in 2008.26 However, violation of sanctions was not what was preventing the Security Council from immediate and effective intervention in Rwanda: it was a disinterested American foreign policy that was holding up any and all action due to Security Council dependency on American funding and supplies.27 Clearly some of these tactics and not others would be appropriate for secondary sanctions. It is evident that travel bans would not be feasible to enforce or even require, and arms embargoes would not be relevant in most cases: for example, if the secondary sanction were to be in place due to a lack of arms supply being received from the sanctioned nation, as would have happened in 1994 if there had been secondary sanctions placed against the United States when they did not immediately give supplies to the intervention effort in Rwanda. This leaves financial and diplomatic restrictions as possible forms of secondary sanctions. It is unclear how feasible financial sanctions would be against developed nations, particularly if applied by developing nations that rely heavily on importer of products. However, diplomatic sanctions are a potential means of enforcing Security Council mandates and interventions. Diplomatic sanctions would hurt the international image of the country: the state’s credibility and respectability would be called into question in light of its noncompliant behavior. Thus, secondary sanctions would be financial and/or diplomatic restrictions against states that are impeding action or violating established sanctions when peace has been threatened and diplomatic effort have failed. It would be crucial that these secondary sanctions be used carefully and only when absolutely necessary for these sanctions to retain any power in the long term. If overused, the fear of loss of international respect and credibility would lose power and the Security Council would return to its current state of ineffectiveness due to unenforceable mandates and sanctions. Similar secondary sanctions against those states that do not go through with what they have committed to or decisions made by Security Council would have to be enacted with equal prudence. However, in the past sanctions have been viewed as largely ineffective. It is necessary to address these concerns in order to understand why secondary sanctions provide a viable option for increasing Security Council effectiveness. First, there is a question of whether countries would be able to economically endorse secondary sanctions. For instance, the United States is such a large importer of other nations’ goods that financial restrictions or even retaliation could cause economic difficulty.28 It would be difficult to get other countries to buy into a system of sanctions if their economies would be significantly affected.

Unfortunately, it will be extremely difficult to get the superpowers to support reforming the security council to include secondary sanctions since the Security Council needs no country wants secondary sanctions applied against them. However, supporting secondary sanctions would be in the best interest of the U.S. and the U.K. in the long run, because it will prevent not only future scenarios such as Rwanda and Darfur but also the loss of American credibility and respect that ensued after those foreign policy disasters, the superpowers might be persuaded to support such a reformation.

26Burkhalter, “The Question of Genocide: The Clinton Administration and Rwanda.”27Burkhalter, “The Question of Genocide: The Clinton Administration and Rwanda.”28Teixeira, “The Security Council at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century,” 54.