NATO's 2011 humanitarian military intervention in Libya has been hailed as a model for implementing the emerging norm of the responsibility to protect (R2P), on grounds that it prevented an impending ...bloodbath in Benghazi and facilitated the ouster of Libya's oppressive ruler, Muammar al-Qaddafi, who had targeted peaceful civilian protesters. Before the international community embraces such conclusions, however, a more rigorous assessment of the net humanitarian impact of NATO intervention in Libya is warranted. The conventional narrative is flawed in its portrayal of both the nature of the violence in Libya prior to the intervention and NATO's eventual objective of regime change. An examination of the course of violence in Libya before and after NATO's action shows that the intervention backfired. The intervention extended the war's duration about sixfold; increased its death toll approximately seven to ten times; and exacerbated human rights abuses, humanitarian suffering, Islamic radicalism, and weapons proliferation in Libya and its neighbors. If it is a "model intervention," as senior NATO officials claim, it is a model of failure. Implementation of R2P must be reformed to address these unintended negative consequences and the dynamics underlying them. Only then will R2P be able to achieve its noble objectives.
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This article explores a perverse consequence of the emerging norm of humanitarian intervention, or "Responsibility to Protect," contrary to its intent of protecting civilians from genocide and ethnic ...cleansing. The root of the problem is that such genocidal violence often represents state retaliation against a substate group for rebellion (such as an armed secession) by some of its members. The emerging norm, by raising expectations of diplomatic and military intervention to protect these groups, unintentionally fosters rebellion by lowering its expected cost and increasing its likelihood of success. In practice, intervention does sometimes help rebels attain their political goals, but usually it is too late or inadequate to avert retaliation against civilians. Thus, the emerging norm resembles an imperfect insurance policy against genocidal violence. It creates moral hazard that encourages the excessively risky or fraudulent behavior of rebellion by members of groups that are vulnerable to genocidal retaliation, but it cannot fully protect against the backlash. The emerging norm thereby causes some genocidal violence that otherwise would not occur. Bosnia and Kosovo illustrate that in at least two recent cases the moral-hazard hypothesis explains why members of a vulnerable group rebelled and thereby triggered genocidal retaliation. The article concludes by exploring whether potential interveners could mitigate genocidal violence by modifying their intervention policies to reduce moral hazard.
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William Zartman's 'ripeness' theory says that parties to a violent conflict will not negotiate sincerely in the absence of a mutually hurting stalemate (MHS). In such circumstances, Zartman ...recommends a mediator employ coercion by escalating the conflict into a MHS, but the concept is not fully elaborated. Building on Zartman, this article specifies a new theory of 'muscular mediation', defined as a powerful mediator using coercion to achieve a mutual compromise that it formulates. The theory is evaluated in three cases from the 1990s: Bosnia, Rwanda, and Kosovo. The article finds that muscular mediation can work but also may backfire by magnifying violence against civilians, especially when all of three adverse conditions are present: (1) the coerced agreement threatens a vital interest of a party; (2) that party has the potential to escalate violence against the opposing side's civilians; (3) the muscular mediator does not deploy sufficient military forces to deter or prevent such escalation. The article also explores why muscular mediation has been pursued under such adverse conditions. It concludes with advice for prospective muscular mediators.
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This article examines how the conflict since 2011 in Sudan's 'Two Areas', the states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, has been prolonged by a well-intentioned but counter-productive international ...response. The United States and other western countries, motivated by humanitarianism, imposed sanctions against Sudan's regime and provided aid to rebel regions. This western response was fostered partially by disinformation - about the genesis of the conflict, the regime's use of force, and the causes and extent of the humanitarian crisis. Western support incentivized the rebels to perpetuate their hopeless military campaign, which prolonged the displacement of an estimated one-third of civilians in the Two Areas. Only after the United States lifted some sanctions in 2017, and a popular revolution overthrew the regime in 2019, did U.S. officials belatedly identify rebel leader Abdelaziz al-Hilu as an obstacle to peace. The article concludes with lessons for ending the conflict in Sudan's Two Areas and mitigating such civil wars elsewhere.
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Each of Africa's countries has a different constitutional design, is characterized by a unique culture and history, and faces different stresses that threaten to undermine political stability. ...Presenting the first database of constitutional design in all African countries, along with seven original case studies,Constitutions and Conflict Management in Africaexplores the types of domestic political institutions that can buffer societies from destabilizing changes that otherwise increase the risk of violence.
With detailed comparative studies of Burundi, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, contributing scholars identify key turning points at which a state's political institutions either mitigated or escalated the effects of economic, environmental, demographic, and political shocks. They find that stability can be promoted by various constitutional designs-not only by accommodative institutions that encourage decentralization and multiculturalism, but also by the integrative, centralized designs that characterize the constitutions of most African countries. The greatest danger may arise from partial or inequitable accommodation that can exacerbate societal tensions, culminating in violence up to and including civil war and genocide. Accordingly,Constitutions and Conflict Management in Africacautions against the typical international prescription for radical reform to replace Africa's existing constitutions with accommodative designs, instead prescribing more gradual constitutional reform to strengthen liberal institutions, such as strong judiciaries and independent electoral commissions. This detailed and methodical volume provides vital lessons for fostering democracy and reducing civil conflict via constitutional reform in Africa and beyond.
Contributors: Justin Orlando Frosini, Gilbert M. Khadiagala, Alan J. Kuperman, Karly Kupferberg, Eli Poupko, Eghosa E. Osaghae, Andrew Reynolds, Filip Reyntjens, Arame Tall, Hillary Thomas-Lake, Stefan Wolff, I. William Zartman.
This article explores an unusually successful case of humanitarian intervention, in Liberia in 2003, to infer lessons for future implementation of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Multilateral ...intervention succeeded by avoiding two common errors. First, the United States did not encourage the rebels, even though they were fighting a reviled autocrat, but instead threatened them, thereby averting escalation. Second, regional actors offered asylum to the president and power-sharing to his subordinates, despite the regime's alleged war crimes, so they did not fight to the end. Thus, humanitarian outcomes were fostered by pursuing compromise and inclusivity rather than violent regime change.
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"This book examines the prospects and challenges of a global phase-out of highly enriched uranium and the risks of this material otherwise being used by terrorists to make atom bombs. Terrorist ...groups, such as Al Qaeda, have demonstrated repeatedly that they seek to acquire nuclear weapons. Unbeknownst even to many security specialists, tons of bomb-grade uranium are trafficked legally each year for ostensibly peaceful purposes. If terrorists obtained even a tiny fraction of this bomb-grade uranium they could potentially construct a nuclear weapon like the one dropped on Hiroshima that killed tens of thousands. Nuclear experts and policymakers have long known of this danger but - so far - have taken only marginal steps to address it. This volume begins by highlighting the lessons of past successes where bomb-grade uranium commerce has been eliminated, such as from Argentina's manufacture of medical isotopes. It then explores the major challenges that still lie ahead: for example, Russia's continued use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in dozens of nuclear facilities. Each of the book's thirteen case studies offers advice for reducing HEU in a specific sector. These insights are then amalgamated into eight concrete policy recommendations for U.S. and world leaders to promote a global phase-out of bomb-grade uranium. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, global governance, international relations and security studies"--
An Illuminating Dialogue Kuperman, Alan J.
Ethnopolitics,
10/2016, Volume:
15, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
It is a privilege to receive feedback from five such distinguished scholars and practitioners. In this brief reply, I aim to address their main critiques of the book in general and of my conclusions ...specifically. Their claims include the following: constitutional design has little to do with conflict management; one of the book's case studies is incorrectly coded; integrative constitutional design is exclusionary and thus causes conflict; partial accommodation is better than none; extensive accommodation is feasible; and the book's research is too complex to yield practical benefits.
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The edited volume that is the subject of this symposium, Constitutions and conflict management in Africa: Preventing civil war through institutional design (Kuperman, 2015), was motivated by a simple ...yet vital question: can constitutional reform help avert violence in multi-ethnic countries? How to answer that question might seem straightforward: search for correlations between constitutional design and civil war. But it is not that simple. Some countries are blessed with few challenges, so they remain peaceful despite dysfunctional constitutions. Other countries are cursed with many challenges, so they suffer internal violence despite helpful constitutions.
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In 1994 genocide in Rwanda claimed the lives of at least 500,000 Tutsi -some three-quarters of their population -while UN peacekeepers were withdrawn and the rest of the world stood aside. Ever ...since, it has been argued that a small military intervention could have prevented most of the killing. In The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention, Alan J. Kuperman exposes such conventional wisdom as myth.
Combining unprecedented analyses of the genocide's progression and the logistical limitations of humanitarian military intervention, Kuperman reaches a startling conclusion: even if Western leaders had ordered an intervention as soon as they became aware of a nationwide genocide in Rwanda, the intervention forces would have arrived too late to save more than a quarter of the 500,000 Tutsi ultimately killed. Serving as a cautionary message about the limits of humanitarian intervention, the book's concluding chapters address lessons for the future.
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