19 Jun Is International Law the Problem in Darfur?
As regular readers know, Julian and I disagree about whether international law promotes or impedes the peacemaking process in war-torn countries. I do not believe that international law is an end in itself, and I acknowledge that in some situations the involvement of international organizations like the ICC can have negative consequences. But I question Julian’s assumption that the West would take more affirmative steps to resolve crises like the one in Sudan if only international law did not (arguably) prevent it from doing so. That assumption is alive and well in Julian’s latest post:
[T]he larger picture: notice how international law acts in ways that make a solution to this crisis harder, not easier, to achieve. An effective outside intervention by Western military powers (e.g. the U.S., U.K., France) is probably illegal (say most international lawyers) unless China and Russia consent via the Security Council or Sudan consents (don’t hold your breath). So we instead get a hodgepodge of limited peacekeeping forces who do not have a mandate to force an end to the conflict. Meanwhile, an effective negotiated peace agreement may still be undercut by the outstanding ICC arrest warrants for Sudan government ministers. What should a good liberal internationalist do? Nothing, I guess.
Put aside the fact that the Sudanese government and the rebel groups showed no signs of being able to reach “an effective negotiated peace agreement” in the three years before the Security Council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC. What evidence is there that the U.S., U.K., or France would intervene militarily in Darfur but for the supposed illegality of such intervention? Julian offers none, and the evidence we do have suggests otherwise.
Consider, for example, the U.N.-African peacekeeping force that the Sudan approved for Darfur on Monday. Though understandably skeptical of its ability to end the conflict, Julian admits that the peacekeeping force is at least “something.” As it turns out, however, the mission may never get off the ground — because the U.S. owes the U.N. more than $1 billion for the costs of global peacekeeping:
A UN delegation announced on Sunday that Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president, had agreed at talks in Khartoum to allow the deployment of a 20,000-strong UN and African Union hybrid force by next year.
The deal ended months of wrangling and followed a direct threat by President George Bush to impose additional sanctions on the Sudanese government.
Diplomats who attended the Khartoum talks said they expected the new Darfur force, which will be under UN command, would be paid for from the UN peacekeeping budget.
But former Colorado senator Timothy Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation, warned Congress last week that the proposed Darfur deployment, and other current or future UN operations, were being jeopardised by mounting US debts. “As of June 2007 the US was $569m in permanent arrears to the UN for UN peacekeeping,” Mr Wirth said. “The administration’s budget request for the UN peacekeeping account for fiscal year 2008 [beginning in October this year] was found to be short by an additional estimated $500m.
“If this is left unaddressed, US arrears to the UN will exceed $1bn by the end of 2007 for peacekeeping alone,” Mr Wirth said.
Deborah Derrick, executive director of the Better World Campaign, said the new Darfur agreement was being threatened by the Bush administration’s failure to pay its dues.
“If the plan is to put pressure on Sudan’s government but the US is unwilling to back it up, it absolutely undermines the credibility of the whole operation,” Ms Derrick said.
[snip]
A state department spokesman said last week that the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, regarded paying off US peacekeeping debts as “one of her highest priorities over the next couple of years”. But Ms Derrick said that when administration officials were asked when the cash would be handed over, “they look at their toes and say nothing”.
Mr Wirth said persistent US debts sat uncomfortably with the Bush administration’s growing enthusiasm for UN peacekeeping missions, such as that launched on the Israel-Lebanon border last year and another that the US is proposing in Somalia.
If the U.S. won’t even pull its own weight when it supports a multinational peacekeeping mission, is it reasonable to believe that it would be willing to take more dramatic — and far more costly — action on its own? Or is the more sensible conclusion that the U.S.’s hard line toward the Sudanese government is all bark and no bite? If it’s the former, which appears likely, it’s difficult to see how international law and the ICC are the real problem in Darfur.
There’s clearly a pattern here: decry the weakness or uselessness of the UN and its affiliated agencies, bemoan the lack of enforcement mechanisms in international law, lament the weaknesses of “soft law,” do little or nothing to foster the rule of international law (except when it serves our economic self-interests), and celebrate the alleged virtues of U.S. power and unilateralism on the world stage. In short, contribute perfervid material and ideological support to the political processes and climate that undermine the effectiveness of international law, and then gleefully proclaim “Aha! Another instance where international law has failed us.” Several cognitive biases may be working overtime here: a confirmation bias, a planning fallacy, selective perception, status quo bias, anthropic bias, hindsight bias, and, perhaps most important of all, self-fulfilling prophecy.
Sorry Patrick, your analysis of Julian’s cognitive biases doesn’t fit anywhere into schlocky neoclassical law and economics analysis of international law. Anyway he’s just parroting Stephen Rademaker’s cognitive bias, so you really aren’t being fair, now are you?
Blaming international law for Darfur is just an exercise in scapegoating. If the genuine will to interfere militarily existed, I doubt law would prove much of an obstacle.
That being said, I’m somewhat hesitant to pay the UN at all. They’ve shown no interest in reform, and really, the purse string is the only control we have at all. Given the past effectiveness of UN peacekeepers, one should wonder whether those taxpayer dollars are wisely spent.
It seems that a lot more relevant than IL may be the thousands of nukes Russia has aimed at us. Or our massive trade with China. But are you arguing that if IL mandated it we would go in? While Darfur is not strictly a genocide (politicide would be better), we have labeled it so and arguably are responsible under the genocide convention.