Paddy Ashdown: The global power shift
I'm gonna post this video on the frontpage in a bit. I imagine Slapout will be up on the net later screaming, "See, see, this is what I've been trying to tell y'all all this time :p."
Paddy Ashdown: The global power shift
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Paddy Ashdown claims that we are living in a moment in history where power is changing in ways it never has before. In a spellbinding talk at TEDxBrussels he outlines the three major global shifts that he sees coming.
the R2P or the States VS the people
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R2P is the essence of sovereignty when exercised at home. R2P exercised abroad is the essence of overriding the sovereignty of another.
R2P can be seen has the obligation of the States to protect their populations against any threat. What Bob calls sovereignty.
But R2p can be seen also as an extension of the regalia power/rights of the States vs their population and then is the basement for legitimacy. In other words, a State apparatus is legitimate when it uses its regalia power to protect the individuals and properties of the population that is under his grip. (Couldn't find a better word but my english is sometimes limited).
What we are witnessing those days is a back fire from the States who felt endangered by the extension of the R2P principle (they do not apply at home) to international relations; the fear from States that R2P would restrein their "independance" and sovereignty.
This is a concervative understanding of R2P which is based on the old principle that aState apparatus has all liberty to act on his soil. (Basically you can do what ever you want to your populations as long as you do not conduct operations out side of your borders).
R2P was used in Ivory Coast and Lybia to support regime change under the argument that government do not have the right to arm their populations (strict application of the R2P at national level extended to the international level on the obligation from others to ensure that a regime in place is applying R2P at national level).
Now, in Russia and DRC, we can witness the back fire of such an audatious move and interpretation of R2P from "progressist countries". We are back to the legitimacy problematic: who is legitimate? the institutions or the people?
R2P tries to impose the people as the source of legitimacy. In response, States are imposing the institutions as the first source of legitimacy, do government protect or not their populations. (Fraudulent elections not respecting the will of the people are nomore a good reason to ban a government)
Further than a legal practice, R2P is an attempt to introduce a real change in what are the basement of a State and in governing practices.
Will take time and the light at the end of the tunnel is far away. But there is still hope that one day, government first priority will be to ensure their population protection against any threat, political, socia;l, natural or man made.
But some say I'm a dreamer. :cool:
Collaboration for Relief and Recovery in Afghanistan
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Originally Posted by
M-A Lagrange
We have to understand why deconstructing the State and bad governance are so appealing for the new rulers once they are in power.
Merci Marc. Meet Nancy Roberts, one of the smartest people that I know, and one of my personal mentors. She was brought in by the UN (1998?) to try and facilitate the International Community to work with the Taliban at the end of the civil war. She wrote this paper in 2000.
WICKED PROBLEMS AND NETWORK APPROACHES TO RESOLUTION
by Nancy Roberts
Collaboration for Relief and Recovery in Afghanistan
http://www.idt.unisg.ch/org/idt/ipmr.nsf/0/1f3bcad88f16e7c6c1256c76004be2c4/$FILE/IPMR_1_1_WICKED.pdf
International Public Management Review · electronic Journal at http://www.ipmr.net
Volume 1 · Issue 1 · 2000 · © International Public Management Network
international R2P: not a reponsability but a need
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In satisfying this new responsibility (new because the "social contract theory" is between a people to establish a government for their own protection; nothing is said about protection of outsiders to the contract), a State will invariably seek regime change. While this may certainly be required under the circumstances, the substitute regime will habitually be made in the same mold as the country conducting the R2P intervention, whether culture dictates it or not. Thus, the intervention morphs into a bellicose chauvinism wherein the populous of the country in which the R2P operation is conducted are "conquered into liberty" (see book of same title by Eliot A. Cohen) whether they desire our version of liberty or not. This brings about the nation-building that Mike correctly points out we are not particularly good at doing.
I might be wrong but the social contract theory is just about the agreement of power sharing between the rulers and the one who are ruled. THere is nothing there about protecting the people.
By extension this can be interpreted as the contract between the people on how they protect themselves but it is basically only focussed on the legitimacy of the use of violence. (Cf Webber). The excellent book rebel rulers (Zachariah Cherian Mampilly, Cornell University Press) shows very well how insurgents government success or fail to go further than this.
R2P comes with the idea of the Just War: the just use of violence by a government. And, its roots can be found deep in history as the roots of most of the regimes. There are, in fact, very few regime (DRC, North Corea and few others) which openly say: we are here to enjoy power and not protect you. Even the initial social contract of feodality is based on the principle of sharing the responsability to protect (I, noble, protect you and you, peasant, feed me). The R2P is just the formalisation of the moral roots of that contract which has been biased into the only legitimate user of violence are the formal State institutions.
The question, at international level, is not do we have to impose R2P to others but rather: government based on R2P (and respecting and implementing it) are the sole form of acceptable government in this world. As we see the world as a global village, there is a need (and not a responsability) for all to have only neigbours that respect R2P to ensure that all mankind lives in a friendly and respectfull environment. This is a need for all as it participates in building a peacefull global environment which improves each and every country home security. Nothing much altruist in that. (If my neigbours are all nice and friendly, then my personnalsecurity is improved).
Somehow, rejection of R2P makes me think of the rejection of democracy by the European Kingdomes in the 18th century when USA and France made their revolutions.
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While there may certainly be instances in which regime change and nation-building are within our national interest (although I know of none currently), not every situation requires COIN-style rebuilding on our part. The realist in me believes we should do only that which serves our interests. R2P imposes burdens that may or may not do that, so we must resist it.
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Like "COIN", "governance" (as seen by me) is an indigenous project. Note that both of these must involve the "political struggle" - which by its very nature must be indigenous.
I agree with those both statements as Regime change and Nation building are just tools to achieve the establishment of a government based on R2P. Their use is limited to the formal form of the State not the moral contract that supports and roots the institutions.
Such change, as Mike rightfully spoted it, is indigeneous and can be only indigeneous. Saying that, it does not mean that others do not have a need/interrest in promoting the emergence of such government in its neighbours by making a clear choice among the forces of those indigeneous political struggles.
And it is true that none on this earth is really good at using violence to build.:D
Internationalist and Human Rights
The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History
by Samuel Moyn
Lawfare
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Only after the end of the Cold War in 1990 did the human rights movement affirmatively embrace internationalism as the preferred vehicle for its own utopian vision, alongside an ever more expansive and progressive substantive human rights corpus as international law, including all manner of group, social, and economic rights. International law of human rights joins with international organizations gradually to overtake the nation-state as the source of legitimate authority, at least over questions of rights – which is to say, more or less, over everything. The extent to which the institutions of internationalism—created with the consent and power of national governments but often rooted in intellectual and historical underpinnings vastly different from those of the human rights movement—will actually serve as witting champions for the human rights movement is, however, much less certain.
Ok, this is a little too much…
But what else could you expect from UNSG
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“I am also acutely aware of the need to preserve my own diplomatic space for the crucial moment when the UN’s good offices may be needed.
“Such is the nature of the Responsibility to Protect. It can be a minefield of nuance, political calculation and competing national interests. The result too often is hesitation or inaction. This we can not afford.”
He said that, in a short period of time, the world has embraced the Responsibility to Protect – not because it is easy, but because it is right.
“We therefore have a moral responsibility to push ahead,” he stated. “Together, let us work... with optimism and determination... to make the Responsibility to Protect a living reality for the peoples of the world.”
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.as...to+protect&Cr1