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31. Kicking Bodies and Damning Souls: The Danger of Harming "Innocent" Individuals While Punishing "Delinquent" States [Abstract]

Author:
Toni Erskine
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
The problem with trying to punish an institution that is judged to be ''delinquent''—whether a ''rogue state,'' the United Nations, BP, or the United States Army—might be understood as one of responding to an entity that (to invoke Edward, First Baron Thurlow's eighteenth-century account of the corporation) ''has no soul to be damned and no body to be kicked.'' Perhaps this seems a fairly obvious point. After all, even if one can draw some carefully qualified analogies between individual human actors and institutions (as I will attempt to do in the first part of this article), the two types of entity are different in important ways. One might thereby conclude that the corporeal—and, depending on one's beliefs, even the spiritual—nature of individual human beings renders them vulnerable to forms of punitive harm to which institutions, in the sense of formal organizations, are simply impervious. Alternatively, one might counter that such an observation has little relevance when we are talking about ''delinquent''
Political Geography:
United States and United Nations

32. United Nations Justice: Legal and Judicial Reform in Governance Operations

Author:
Scott N. Carlson
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Calin Trenkov-Wermuth's "United Nations Justice" provides a thoughtful and useful contribution to the understanding of how UN governance operations have evolved.
Topic:
United Nations
Political Geography:
United States

33. The United States and the UN's Targeted Sanctions of Suspected Terrorists: What Role for Human Rights?

Author:
Yvonne Terlingen
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
The UN Security Council's approach to counterterrorism, which the United States has greatly shaped, has generally shown a marked human rights deficit. The process for seizing the assets of and imposing travel bans on suspected terrorists and their financiers must be reformed.
Topic:
Human Rights
Political Geography:
United States

34. The Responsibility to Protect—Five Years On

Author:
Alex J. Bellamy
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
The Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) has become a prominent feature in international debates about preventing genocide and mass atrocities and about protecting potential victims. Adopted unanimously by heads of state and government at the 2005 UN World Summit and reaffirmed twice since by the UN Security Council, the principle of RtoP rests on three equally weighted and nonsequential pillars: (1) the primary responsibility of states to protect their own populations from the four crimes of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, as well as from their incitement; (2) the international community's responsibility to assist a state to fulfill its RtoP; and (3) the international community's responsibility to take timely and decisive action, in accordance with the UN Charter, in cases where the state has manifestly failed to protect its population from one or more of the four crimes. The principle differed from the older concept of humanitarian intervention by placing emphasis on the primary responsibility of the state to protect its own population, introducing the novel idea that the international community should assist states in this endeavor, and situating armed intervention within a broader continuum of measures that the international community might take to respond to genocide and mass atrocities. As agreed to by states, the principle also differed from the proposals brought forward by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty by (among other things) emphasizing international assistance to states (pillar two), downplaying the role of armed intervention, and rejecting criteria to guide decision-making on the use of force and the prospect of intervention not authorized by the UN Security Council. Five years on from its adoption, RtoP boasts a Global Centre and a network of regional affiliates dedicated to advocacy and research, an international coalition of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), a journal and book series, and a research fund sponsored by the Australian government. More important, RtoP has made its way onto the international diplomatic agenda. In 2008, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon challenged the UN membership to translate its 2005 commitment from ''words to deeds.'' This challenge was taken up by the General Assembly in 2009, when it agreed to give further consideration to the secretary-general's proposals. RtoP has also become part of the diplomatic language of humanitarian emergencies, used by governments, international organizations, NGOs, and independent commissions to justify behavior, cajole compliance, and demand international action.
Topic:
Security, Crime, Genocide, Government, and War
Political Geography:
United States and Australia

35. "Preemption: Military Action and Moral Justification" Edited by Henry Shue and David Rodin

Author:
Martin Cook
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Surveying a variety of perspectives on the uses and limits of preemption, this edited volume coalesces around three key themes: differences in just war terminology between disciplines; historical perspectives on changes in key concepts; and the evolution of preventive war thinking in the U.S.
Political Geography:
United States and Soviet Union

36. 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

37. The Politics of Carbon Leakage and the Fairness of Border Measures

Author:
Robyn Eckersley
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
The article critically examines domestic political concerns about the competitive disadvantages and possible carbon leakage arising from the introduction of domestic emission trading legislation and the fairness of applying carbon equalization measures at the border as a response to these concerns. I argue that the border adjustment measures proposed in the emissions trading bills that have been presented to Congress amount to an evasion of the U.S.'s leadership responsibilities under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). I also show how the "level commercial playing field" justification for border measures that has dominated U.S. domestic debates is narrow and lopsided because it focuses only on the competitive disadvantages and direct carbon leakage that may flow from climate regulation while ignoring general shifts in the production and consumption of emissions in the global economy, which have enabled the outsourcing of emission to developing countries.
Topic:
Climate Change
Political Geography:
United States

38. Implementing the Responsibility to Protect: Where Expectations Meet Reality

Author:
Jennifer Welsh
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Responsibility to Protect: The Global Effort to End Mass Atrocities, Alex J. Bellamy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), 249 pp., $70 cloth, $25 paper. The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All, Gareth Evans (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2008), 349 pp., $37 cloth, $20 paper. Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Who Should Intervene?, James Pattison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 284 pp., $95 cloth. In June 2010 intercommunal violence exploded in Kyrgyzstan's southern cities of Osh and Jalalabad, resulting in the dramatic scene of thousands of ethnic Uzbeks fleeing their homes to avoid persecution by groups of ethnic Kyrgyz (allegedly backed by government troops). Reports of arson, rape, and other atrocities were widespread, accompanied by varying accounts of the number of civilians killed.1 The response to the persecution and displacement followed a pattern that we have seen before: calls for urgent international action by nongovernmental organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group, followed by a muted response on the part of international organizations (in this case, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the United Nations Security Council). While both Russia and the United States were active in supporting efforts to organize humanitarian assistance to those affected by the violence, neither state was prepared to tackle the political and logistical challenge of deploying military forces to the region to protect civilians.
Topic:
Security and United Nations
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Washington

39. "Genocide: A Normative Account" by Larry May

Author:
Roger Smith
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
This new book from Larry May is not a study of genocide, but rather an attempt to draw attention to the conceptual and practical difficulties and ''puzzles'' of conceptualizing and prosecuting genocide under international law. May also argues for expanding the list of groups that are protected under international law against genocide to include gender, culture, and language in addition to race, ethnicity, religion, and national origin. The book's central thesis, however, is that genocide is not ''the crime of crimes,'' and that it differs little from various crimes against humanity. May reminds us that under international law genocide does not necessarily even involve killing, and he goes on to ask why it should be regarded as worse than other crimes committed systematically against civilians. Since genocide is about the destruction of groups, not individuals, what is special about groups, and what is the ''unique harm'' that genocide involves as a result of the destruction of a group?
Topic:
International Law
Political Geography:
United States and America

40. "Women and States: Norms and Hierarchies in International Society" by Ann E. Towns

Author:
Shirin Saeidi
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
This new work by Ann Towns is an intelligent and timely addition not only to the field of International Relations but also to interdisciplinary scholarship that is interested in the relationships between the status of women, state behavior, and approaches to global governance. Women and States has two primary objectives. On a theoretical level, it claims that international norms, in addition to creating policy convergence, generate social hierarchies and rankings among states. The study uses empirical data to show that state approaches to global governance and the making of social distinctions explicitly incorporate the political status of women to achieve different national interests. These forms of social and cultural distinction, as the book goes on to demonstrate, affect the making of international order. Firmly situated within and contributing to constructivist studies of international relations, Towns's work relies on extensive and multilingual primary and secondary archival research to substantiate these core claims.
Topic:
International Relations and Governance
Political Geography:
United States