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1. The "Responsibility to Prevent": An International Crimes Approach to the Prevention of Mass Atrocities

Author:
Ruben Reike
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
On September 9, 2013, diplomats and civil society activists gathered in a ballroom in New York to welcome Jennifer Welsh as the UN Secretary-General's new Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP). In her first public appearance in that role, Special Adviser Welsh explained that one of her top priorities would be “to take prevention seriously and to make it meaningful in practice.” “In the context of RtoP,” Welsh added during the discussion, “we are talking about crimes, and crimes have implications in terms of how we deal with them. You'll hear me say that a lot.” Welsh's approach of treating RtoP as a principle that is primarily concerned with prevention and is firmly linked to international crimes neatly captures the evolution of RtoP since its formal acceptance by states at the 2005 UN World Summit. Paragraphs 138 to 140 of the World Summit's Outcome Document not only elevated the element of prevention to a prominent place within the principle of RtoP but also restricted the scope of RtoP to four specific crimes under international law: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. The crime and prevention–focused version of RtoP has subsequently been defended and promoted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and by UN member states. This article seeks to systematically explore some of the implications of linking RtoP to the concept of international crimes, with a particular focus on the preventive dimension of RtoP, the so-called responsibility to prevent. What, then, are the consequences of approaching the responsibility to prevent as the prevention of international crimes?
Political Geography:
New York

2. The Touch of Midas: Money, Markets, and Morality

Author:
Edward Skidelsky
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Money has always inspired obsession, both in those who amass it and in those who think about it. “Man will never be able to know what money is any more than he will be able to know what God is,” wrote the French financier Marcel Labordère to his friend John Maynard Keynes. The analogy is apt. Money, like God, injects infinity into human desires. To love it is to embark on a journey without end. Three new books testify to money's enduring power to fascinate and horrify. The most scholarly of them, The Invention of Market Freedom by political theorist Eric MacGilvray, traces the emergence of the distinctively modern or “market” conception of freedom out of its “republican” predecessor. The general story is somewhat familiar, but MacGilvray complicates it by showing that market freedom did not vanquish its republican competitor in open combat but subverted it from within, like a parasite devouring its host.
Topic:
Economics and Markets
Political Geography:
New York

3. Political Self-Sacrifice: Agency, Body and Emotion in International Relations

Author:
Andrew A.G. Ross
Publication Date:
04-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Political Self-Sacrifice: Agency, Body and Emotion in International Relations, K. M. Fierke (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 281 pp., $95 cloth. What could we learn from examining suicide bombing, self-immolation, or hunger strikes not through the lens of state security but from the position of those individuals who use such acts to achieve normative change? In addressing this question, Political Self-Sacrifice brings what seem like senseless acts of desperation into focus as strategically intelligible and culturally meaningful techniques of resistance. By disentangling the logic of “political self-sacrifice,” K. M. Fierke offers an important and timely account of the political strategies, cultural meanings, and normative aspirations associated with those participants in international affairs who, as she puts it, “play with a weak hand” (p. 8).
Topic:
International Relations, Politics, and Regime Change
Political Geography:
New York

4. On Amartya Sen and "The Idea of Justice"

Author:
Chris Brown
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
"The Idea of Justice" summarizes and extends many of the themes Amartya Sen has been engaged with for the last quarter century: economic versus political rights, cultural relativism and the origin of notions such as human rights, and entitlements and their relation to gender equality.
Political Geography:
New York

5. The Paradox of Partnership: Assessing New Forms of NGO Advocacy on Labor Rights

Author:
Shareen Hertel
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) involved in rule making on labor rights are as varied as the companies they seek to influence. Many of these NGOs consist of little more than a handful of staff cramped in a small office in New York or London, armed with an Internet connection, a list of contacts in developing countries, and a limited budget. Others have bigger budgets, more staff, wider networks of contacts, and greater public renown. Some focus only on the labor rights practices of a single corporation, while others seek to engage companies across a whole industry sector, country, or region. Regardless of their differences, NGOs involved in rule making on labor rights share a willingness to work astride a series of divides: the divide separating the for profit and not-for-profit sectors; separating governmental and nongovernmental entities; and separating the production of goods with ''public'' characteristics (such as environmental protection or public health) from the production of private goods (such as consumer durables).
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
New York and London

6. The Politics of Punishing Terrorists [Full Text]

Author:
Anthony F. Lang, Jr.
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Debates about trying and punishing terrorists reveal how the failure to construct a shared normative consensus in international criminal justice continues to bedevil the international community. The only way to achieve this consensus is to engage in the messy business of politics.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
United States, New York, and Europe

7. Terrorism, Resistance, and the Idea of "Unlawful Combatancy"

Author:
Christopher J. Finlay
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
When faced with security threats from terrorism and other forms of nonstate political violence, how should liberal-democratic states respond? Finlay discusses books by Tamar Meisels, Seumas Miller, and Timothy Shanahan.
Topic:
Security and War
Political Geography:
New York

8. The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days

Author:
Petra Bartosiewicz
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
The lesson of the first 100 days of Guantanamo is not one of how truth and justice triumphed, but of how efficiently a bureaucratic machine on a war footing circumvented ethical norms and suppressed dissent, writes reviewer Petra Bartosiewicz.
Topic:
Security
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, New York, America, and Washington

9. Briefly Noted

Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
This section contains a round-up of recent notable books in the field of international affairs.
Topic:
Security and Development
Political Geography:
Africa, New York, and Europe

10. "Messy Morality: The Challenge of Politics"

Author:
Christian Nadeau
Publication Date:
12-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
The principal and worthwhile contribution of this book is to resituate the debate about moral realism where it belongs, in terms of its pragmatic employment and its ability to accommodate ideals and values.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
New York