Tag: Kosovo

Lawless technology available to all (Just war, Part 10)

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Mike Corgan

One senses a barn door closing after the horses have gone out.

There are well-substantiated rumors that NATO convinced Slobodan Milosevic to abandon his war in Kosovo by demonstrating what we could to do to him with our computers beyond just our airstrikes.

Hellfire missile on predator drone
Hellfire missile on Predator drone, inscribed with "In memory of Honorable Ronald Reagan." Image in public domain.

Several years later, Russians, probably with government support, used computers to shut down Estonia for three days over a perceived slight to a statue honoring Russian liberation of Estonia.

Obama administration officials declined to use cyber war against Qaddafi for fear of the example it might set.

We’ve also taken the lead in using drones to strike targets anywhere in the world. What the Bush administration started, the Obama administration has just about perfected. Think of what goes on daily on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Recall the recent stir about killing two Americans by drone strikes in a remote area of Yemen.

Even the Administration realized that here, too, a line may have been crossed. And drones are a relatively cheap technology available to many countries.

The question for us is what rules or laws specific to this new technology are in force? Simple answer, there really aren’t any.

There have been no conferences, no updates of Geneva Conventions, no sustained discussion in public forums about any of these new ways of war that take us far beyond what troops, tanks and ship have always
done.

These weapons are equally effective no matter who uses them and they are available to all.

The capabilities are here. We need to bring out into the open a discourse about rules, laws and norms now.

Michael T. Corgan, Associate Professor and Associate Chair, International Relations, Boston University

Torture Awareness Month: Remember the victims, honor the resisters

Posted on by kathiemm
Torments of the Slaves
Image in public domain

The United Nations General Assembly has designated June 26 of each year as International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.

Today, June 27, 2011,  and in subsequent posts, we want to honor several military leaders in the United States and elsewhere who have spoken out against torture, labeling it appropriately morally offensive, a violation of human rights, and a defiance of international law.

For his work in exposing the myths regarding torture and urging reform of U.S. interrogation practices, we honor Matthew Alexander, a former Special Operations pilot who saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, volunteered to go to Iraq as a senior interrogator, and refused to participate in the use of torture that was rampant there (See 2008 Washington Post article).

Alexander’s book, How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq, will be reviewed in an upcoming post.

For his book “The Fight for the High Ground: The U.S. Army and Interrogation During Operation Iraqi Freedom, May 2003 – April 2004,” we honor Major Douglas A. Pryer, who criticizes the policies and training that led to the abuse of detainees in Iraq during the first year of the post 9/11 Iraq War. We will review his book in an upcoming post.

We also want to honor the ordinary enlisted men and women who have spoken out against torture. In particular, see the article about Ray Bennett (a pseudonym) and the video by David DeBatto.

 

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Who can declare war? (Just war, part 3)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we welcome back guest contributor, Dr. Mike Corgan.]

In order for a war to be considered “just,” it needs to meet six criteria or principles, as outlined in our post on January 10.  Today we look at the principle that addresses the question of who has the authority to declare war.

Kosovo refugee child's drawing of warfare
Refugee child's drawing of wartime in Kosovo. (Image in public domain; from Wikimedia Commons)

Legally, the standard for who can resort to war is embedded in the notion that actors in world affairs are states. Thus it is the state leadership that can decide upon recourse to war. Just war theory is more expansive (or vague, if you prefer).

Just war requires that war can be declared only by a “competent authority.”  What this concept allows for is a non-state actor who might have in all other respects a just cause but is not recognized as being a state.

Consider Kosovo. The so-called Kosovo Liberation Army was not part of any recognized state apparatus but its war against Serbia was given de facto recognition by a coalition of willing western states. Now the new state of Kosovo is soon to be acknowledged and the KLA leadership becomes, in retrospect, a competent authority.

The problem, of course, is how to distinguish such a group from actors who are simply criminal gangs calling themselves by a grander term such as the various warring militias in Africa. The hardest case is the groups that may once have had some legitimacy by championing the oppressed but over time descended into warlord or drug lord enterprises.

Michael T. Corgan, Associate Chair and Associate Professor of International Relations, Boston University

Humanitarian intervention and war (Just war, Part 2)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Editor’s note: This is the second in the series on just war by Dr. Michael Corgan.]

The anguish for leaders of countries is never about right versus wrong. It’s usually about bad versus worse or right versus right. Nowhere is this anguish more sharply drawn than in the tension between legal war and just war as defined by just war theory.

To set the simplest case first, the current legal restrictions on the use of war are essentially the United Nations Charter, which all states have signed, and the attendant treaties and conventions that attempt to codify restraints on armed aggression.

Defendants at Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials: Defendants in their dock, circa 1945-1946. (National Archives photo in public domain; from Wikimedia Commons)

Basically, the only legal recourse to war is self-defense against aggression. The one addition is that a state may, if requested, come to the defense of another state that cannot defend itself against aggression.

The famous Nuremberg Trials following WWII brought the world’s attention to the issue of expanding the criteria for war beyond legally permitted war. Up to that point, international law had been guided by laws that had been agreed to and written down.

But what law had the Nazis in the dock at Nuremberg violated? Certainly no law of the Third Reich had stood in their murderous way. But just as clearly, “crimes against humanity” had been committed, as all civilized nations agreed, even if there were no legal protocols for addressing such crimes.

Enter the idea of “natural law” and the elaboration of just war doctrine, which rejected the prevailing assumption that recognized every state as sovereign and as inviolable for what it did within its own borders.

The new idea of humanitarian intervention as a justification for war was first called into play when NATO took military action in Kosovo in 1999. Was this a legal use of war? Not according to current interpretations of the treaties almost all nations had signed. Was it a just war? If the Nuremberg principles were valid, then it seems it was just, at least from the standpoint of having a just cause.

We will return to this dilemma later but subsequent just war posts will first look at the other five criteria for just war and the conundrums they raise.

Michael T. Corgan, Associate Chair and Associate Professor of International Relations, Boston University