Not sure I sanction this, either
BBC News reports that some Western companies continue to work in Burma despite pressure from governments and activists. The European Union bans and penalizes commercial activity that clearly supports the Burmese military regime and its repression. The United States and a few other countries impose sanctions that make business in the country nearly impossible.
On the one hand, according to the BBC report, “the firms that invest say their capital helps to improve the lives of ordinary Burmese, ties the military into international systems of oversight, and consequently promotes openness and a respect for human rights.” On the other hand, in an authoritarian country like Burma, it is not unreasonable to think that the “money goes straight to the generals, who use it to buy weapons and widen their repression.”
The argument in favor of investing in Burma resembles one of the moral arguments in favor of free trade, sweatshops and all. But even if this claim carries water, the second argument is true as well. Legitimate business done in almost any part of the world will see its cut taken in the form of taxes by the government and so, in effect, “supports” that government. We normally don’t complain (too much), but the Burmese junta happens to be an exceptionally vile regime.
In the past I have written about the great harm that sanctions can inflict on the public. Does the good of punishing the military government with sanctions outweigh the good of providing jobs and income to ordinary Burmese through trade? Unless we think that sanctions will weaken the Burmese junta to the point at which democratic revolution is possible, it’s a tough moral case to make.
-Charles
Photo by Flickr user informatique used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
I don’t sanction that
The BBC reports that the United States has imposed sanctions on key Iranian officials for human rights abuses dating from the crackdown on anti-government protesters in the summer of 2009. The sanctions consist of travel bans and asset freezes. As far as diplomatic tools go, sanctions like these –small, targeted ones- are mostly symbolic in nature and morally uncontroversial. They will at least inconvenience the miscreants in question a little, and likely will not hurt any innocents.
But the same cannot be said of sanctions in general as diplomatic tools. Without so much as a shot fired, economic sanctions can be just as destructive as wars and just as capable of harming the innocent. More than that, they rarely accomplish policy goals in their own right, although they might make some goals easier to attain in at least the short run.
When we discuss sanctions of the kind that target whole nations, we are really weighing the morality of collective punishment against the desirability of certain policy goals. Maybe the price will be worth it. Maybe not.
-Charles
Image by Flickr user ajagendorf25 used under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Police and thieves
The rise of China and America’s military responsibility
A piece in The Atlantic reports on a joint US/Japan rehearsal to defend Japan from a possible Chinese invasion. According to the article, while there is no immediate threat of any Chinese invasion, there is no doubt that China is a rising power that one day will challenge American supremacy.
The question isn’t will China rise, it’s what happens when it does. If we simply let current trends continue, it’s entirely foreseeable that China could cajole, persuade, or bully the rest of East Asia under its influence. The U.S. can handle Chinese competition, but a unified East Asia could undermine the U.S. in any number of ways. […] Another risk of inaction could be regional war. As China expresses more dominance over its neighbors, if regional diplomatic institutions remain too weak to ensure peaceful conflict resolution, it’s possible that China could come to blows with states such as Thailand or, yes, Japan.
This is an argument for a more aggressive foreign policy in an era when many are calling for cuts to the defense budget and dismantling of the American “empire.”
Moral arguments for scaling back American power overseas tend to rely a “live and let live” type of analogy. It is arrogant and often disastrous for Americans to impose our will upon disparate nations and peoples, some might contend – let each family live according to their own rules without the fear of the American fist.
There is certainly some truth to this argument, but I think it is overly simplistic. Even if America withholds its own power, nations may still fear the power of other militaries, or perhaps equally important, individual persons may fear the power of their own governments. Read more
Iraqi getaway
The recent news coverage of the three American hikers detained in Iran since 2009 raises important questions about ‘danger tourism’ and its role in foreign policy. The hikers’ trip to mountainous northern Iraq took an unpleasant turn when they wandered into Iran and were promptly accused of espionage by the Iranian government.
Media response to the event has been generally sympathetic to the hikers. But maybe they shouldn’t get off so easily. Consider their vacation destination. Kurdistan has many features that make it attractive for adventure tourism: it’s isolated, unconventional, and thrillingly dangerous. But there are many other destinations that meet similar criteria and are far less politically sensitive.
So why Kurdistan, and why the border region? Is it such a unique and lovely place that the hikers had to go there specifically? It was most likely chosen because of its political instability, not in spite of it. The State Department makes it very clear that travel to Iraq is inherently risky. It’s even reasonable to assume that hiking in Kurdistan is politically dangerous. Considering these travelers were appropriately warned, to what extent is the government obligated to protect them? Read more
Did Petraeus go too far?
When can military leaders criticize constitutionally protected speech?
Last week General David Petraeus made news for speaking out against a Florida church’s plan to burn copies of the Koran. While many commended General Petraeus for his comments, a few others felt his tone was inappropriate. Over at the Democracy Arsenal, Michael Cohen worries that Petraeus may be discouraging other forms of free expression that are vital to the democratic process.
Now I would imagine that Petraeus is correct, but there is something deeply disquieting about having a four-star general characterize an expression of constitutionally protected free speech as a danger to American troops and US national security operations.
I sort of hate slippery slope arguments, but it seems to me that this is the very definition of a dangerous slippery slope.
For example, would people be comfortable if Petraeus characterized an anti-war march as a threat to the US mission in Afghanistan? Or what if Petraeus condemned a Congressional vote to cut funding for a weapons program as a threat to US soldiers in the field? Such behavior would almost certainly overstep not just the letter of civil-military relations, but certainly the spirit.
Bullet the blue sky revisited
A response to Luke’s criticisms
On Tuesday, Luke criticized my defense of targeted drone attacks in the Middle East. In my response to a piece by Ron Rosenbaum, I argued that killing targets that do not pose immediate threats does not violate the “proportionality” criteria of Just War Theory, the established canon that sets out the morality of combat.
Relying on an analogy to preemptively targeting criminals who plan to kill you, I contended that combatants were part of a lethal endeavor persisting through time, making them liable to be killed even when they are currently not doing anything. Says Luke:
In Han’s hypothetical though, the enemy is easily identifiable, the imminent threat is obvious, and there is no risk of serious collateral damage. Rosenbaum’s point, is that in actuality, none of these conditions are necessarily satisfied.
Well no: Rosenbaum’s point was that “proportionality requires that the use of lethal force be justified by the imminence and danger of the threat.” And my point was that under a traditional interpretation of Just War Theory this is simply not true. Read more
State Department throws Arizona under the bus
Why the State Department’s criticism of Arizona’s law is a strike for states’ rights
The AP reports that the US State Department listed its objection to Arizona’s immigration law as a step the State Department is taking to protect human rights. Understandably, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer disagrees, writing:
“The idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a state of the United States to ‘review’ by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional.”
Let’s take these claims one at a time.
If the role of the High Commissioner on Human Rights is indeed to protect human rights, a state’s ability to criticize its own past decisions seems to be critical. Given the UN’s lack of hard power and unwillingness to intercede in state-level politics except when absolutely necessary (and often not even then), for there to be any kind of international human rights regime states must police themselves. The State Department’s actions seem to be internationalism of the best kind.
Further, the State Department’s decision is in fact a strike in defense of state sovereignty. By criticizing Arizona’s law, the State Department concedes Arizona’s ability to make laws that displease federal bodies. While the State Department is working through legal channels to overturn the law, in the meanwhile the immigration law remains on the books and seems to be a legitimate and likely target for human rights discussions.
It’s certainly not clear why Brewer thinks the state department’s decision is unconstitutional, other than the fact that things one disagrees with tend to be unconstitutional. In fact, the federal judge who ruled against Arizona’s law seems to believe that it’s the law itself that’s in the wrong.
-John
Image credit: Wiki Commons
Trading values
Project Syndicate has an ongoing series by Columbia University economist Jagdish Bhagwati on “The Open Economy and its Enemies.” There is more or less a consensus among economists that free trade promotes economic growth; the law of comparative advantage still holds nearly two centuries after it was formulated. But the opinions of both the public and other social scientists are more ambivalent.
Competition is the means by which actors in an open economy are disciplined. But competition generates losers and winners, too –at least in the short run. Non-economic concerns with free trade include growing inequality, the constant displacement of people under conditions of ruthless competition, environmental degradation, the globe-spanning hazards of mutual dependency, and national security.
Critics of free trade may accuse economists of linear thinking for ignoring the messiness of reality. But economists might equally accuse critics of free trade for ignoring the bottom line –that increased wealth will expand the possibilities of what a society can accomplish.
The free trade debate, like many others, asks how willing we are to trade increased levels of wealth for other values, and under what conditions. Not surprisingly, this debate tends to come to the fore in times of economic uncertainty.
-Charles
Image by Flickr user free range jace used under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Who deserves sympathy?
On both the 11th and the 23rd of this month there have been stories on BBC citing the inadequacy of the international aid response to the Pakistani floods. At the moment, there are seven mentions of the Pakistani floods on the front pages of the BBC site.
U.S. news outlets have less to say. CNN, Fox, CBS, the New York Times, and the Washington Post have one or two mentions each on their front pages. ABC News and the Wall Street Journal have none at all. Elsewhere in the world, Der Spiegel, Xinhua and Pravda are about the same.
The British understandably feel a peculiar connection with their former colonial possession. But in most of the world, you would not think that there is an ongoing calamity displacing millions of people, exposing them to hunger and disease.
One BBC article offers tentative answers for this indifference. Some suggest that Pakistan is merely unlucky. The floods come while donors are fatigued from the Haitian earthquake; the disaster unfolded over a span of weeks and makes a weak headliner; the floods are a part of the seasonal monsoon rains.
Other explanations, however, point to Pakistan’s perceived faults. Namely, Pakistan’s links to terrorism and corruption within its government make sympathy a tough sell. Comments on the story’s page suggest, sometimes harshly, that a country capable of amassing nuclear weapons, maintaining a large army and funneling money to terrorists surely has the means to rescue its own people.
This is close to approval of collective punishment. Victims of the flood cannot be held personally responsible for the dubious actions of Pakistan’s ISI (its clandestine intelligence service), its decades under military government, or greed and corruption of its officials. Moral and legal codes everywhere assign agency to individuals and judge them accordingly. Can individuals be blamed for the actions of others in a group over whom they have little control? What are the bounds of collective responsibility?
-Charles
Image by Flickr user DFID-UK Department for International Development used under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Statelessness sucks
George Soros writes at Project Syndicate that the recent expulsion of the Roma from France is tantamount to collective punishment. His outrage is echoed by a French priest who prays for Sarkozy to have a heart attack.
Although every state obviously has a right to protect public order, critics of the expulsion wonder “what harm can a few hundred people do?”
They wonder too how it’s acceptable for an EU country to forcibly relocate EU citizens without due process, especially when all EU citizens are entitled to freedom of movement.
The Roma are the continent’s largest ethnic minority group. They are not native to Europe and are in fact descended from Indians. Their distinct ethnic identity combined with misperceptions has historically made them outcasts everywhere. The Roma presently being deported from France tried to escape dire poverty and discrimination in Romania.
Despite being EU citizens, the French government’s recent treatment of them signals that no state may reliably look out for them.
How should we respond to the problem of stateless people? For Theodor Herzl and the Zionists, the answer was obvious – to reclaim an ancestral homeland and establish a new nation. But the present Arab-Israeli conflict highlights the extraordinary difficulty and moral complexity of such a solution. And no reasonable person could suggest that the Roma try to re-conquer Punjab in northern India.
The solution will have to be the least impossible of impossible alternatives. The European countries should probably make a concerted effort to integrate the Roma and make them full members of their societies.
Not only does the “plight of so many millions of Roma… [make] a mockery of European values” as Soros writes, but the alternative is to allow a moral and social problem of enormous proportions to fester and ultimately truly undermine public order.
-Charles
Image by Flickr user Rivard used under a Creative Commons Attributions License
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