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Crime Goes Global
Unraveling the New Criminal Nexus Louise Shelley
Louise Shelley is Professsor in the Department of Justice, Law, and Society in the School of International Service at American University and is Founder and Director of the Transnational Crime and Corruption Center.
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Despite the uncertainties that remain at the outset of the twenty-first century, one fact is certain: transnational crime in its myriad forms will be a defining global issue and a challenge to the international community. The growth of transnational crime is inevitable because of the rise in regional conflicts, decline in border controls, greater international mobility of goods and people, and the growing economic disparities between developed and developing countries. These factors have created an environment in which political terrorists and transnational crime groups can thrive with globalization. Despite the gravity of these threats, the international community is not effectively combating the rise of transnational crime. States and multilateral organizations are simply failing to impede the escalating risk of transnational crime. Moreover, law enforcement and military strategies implemented to address the problem have had little effect, as existing control measures are primarily nation-based, whereas the new breed of criminals operates internationally, evading the reach of sovereign state-based institutions. Even more disheartening, some extreme military strategies to combat transnational crime and terrorism, such as those employed in Afghanistan and Iraq, are proving counterproductive by exacerbating drug trafficking and other illicit activities.1 Transnational criminal activity has experienced rapid
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Focusing exclusively on the lowest elements of these organizations denies the complex and multi-faceted elements of the crime network that permit them to operate so effectively across borders.
The Impact of Organized Crime. Transnational crime—once perceived as peripheral to security and economic development—is increasingly seen as central to the discourse in political, social, and financial arenas. The earlier failure to recognize the centrality of these problems, particularly in post-conflict regions and transitional societies, has contributed to the inability to resolve many long-term conflicts induced more by the greed of the criminal actors than the original grievance. Though transnational crime and corruption affect every area of contemporary life, often their far-reaching impact is not easily recognizable. Among other consequences, these menaces lead to increased violence, personal insecurity, and reduced life expectancy. The drug trade, for example, undermines public health and fosters addiction, just as the trade in human beings contributes to the spread of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and venereal diseases.4 Transnational criminals cause major harm to the environment by trading in endangered species, harvesting and trading in timber without regard to future growth, and destroying land for a few seasons of drug production.5 Information technology, exploited by transnational criminals, has led to the spread of child pornography, global financial crime, and money laundering. Credit card fraud facilitated by the Internet provides enormous profits for criminal groups and is increasingly used to fund terrorism. The trafficking of women has had serious demographic consequences for some
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growth in recent decades because it has provided employment for many in the developing world. It should come as no surprise that transnational crime is often based in regions with limited capital and high unemployment and birth rates, as it proliferates in societies where citizens have limited legitimate economic opportunities. Criminal entrepreneurs in developing and transitional countries, therefore, capitalize on the demand by more affluent countries for goods and services such as drugs and cheap human labor. They have also profited from the rise of regional conflicts in the postCold War era, trading both small arms and military equipment for commodities that can be sold on the legitimate and illicit markets.2 A central ingredient of profitable transnational crime is corruption. Those corrupted can include members of law enforcement, border control, and other government officials in the home and transit countries. But corruption is by no means confined to the countries of origin. Major transnational crime groups, although based disproportionately in developing and transitional countries, cannot function without facilitators in the developed world. Much of the profits of transnational crime groups, like the commodities they provide, flow into the developed countries. Therefore, the criminals could not operate in these affluent countries without local facilitators—bankers, lawyers, and accountants—who are often aware of the nature of the clients they serve or fail to exercise due diligence before providing them services.3 As such, transnational crime tends to create strange bedfellows: high status individuals of developed countries, corrupt officials, and regular criminals. [ 6 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
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different phenomenon from other kinds of international organized crime. Transnational crime, according to the UN definition, incorporates all forms of illicit activity that crosses borders, integrating both international organized crime and terrorist groups. The definitional focus is not on the ideological divisions that separate terrorists from ordinary criminals, but rather on the outcome of their activities—the crimes that they commit. The UN definition is less concerned with the profits of the criminals than with the results of their activities. This definition includes both terrorists who engage in ordinary crimi-
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source countries. Art smuggling has deprived countries of important elements of their national heritage. The raid on the National Museum in Iraq after the invasion is one highly visible example, but it is unfortunately only part of a larger international trend. Despite the magnitude of transnational crime and corruption, these issues continue to be addressed more by journalists and policymakers than by the academic community. Many graduate programs that seek to train the current generation of international affairs students continue to focus their curriculum on traditional Cold War issues of the twentieth century
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Transnational crime tends to create
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strange bedfellows: high status individuals of developed countries, corrupt officials, and regular criminals.
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rather than in the newer security challenges posed by such non-state actors as transnational crime groups. European universities and research centers have paid much more attention to transnational crime, than institutions in the United States, which have focused much more on terrorism. But the two issues are not mutually exclusive. In fact, increasing research reveals that there are numerous links between transnational crime and terrorism. It is this emerging nexus that the international community must combat with innovative and effective measures.6
Defining the Problem. The United Nations has taken the lead in defining transnational crime as a fundamentally
nal activity as a way of supporting their larger political and ideological objectives and ordinary criminals who operate internationally to advance their profits. Both types of transnational criminals traffic in drugs, human beings, and counterfeit currency. Yet, while the crimes committed by these two groups do not differ in substance, they do differ in motive. The United Nations has been a vigorous driving force in conceptualizing the problem of transnational crime because so many of its member states have been adversely affected by this phenomenon. Several decades ago when the UN became active in this issue, transnational crime was a peripheral problem for many of the most developed states, most of whom had strong legal institutions that deterred Winter/Spring 2005 [ 7 ]
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the transnational nature of criminal groups. This definition accommodates a wide range of criminal actors and structures, and it allows for different crime organization structures that may be far removed from that of the traditional hierarchical mafia organization or the ethnically based traditional crime groups, such as the Chinese Triads or the Japanese Yakuza. Its focus is on criminals’ actions and accommodates the network structures that increasingly dominate international organized crime and terrorist groups. By focusing on transnational crime as a phenomenon, the UN definition allows states to address the intersection of organized crime and terrorism. It is important to note, however, that the UN definition differs in certain important respects from that developed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. According to the American definition— in force since the 1970 adoption of the Organized Crime Control Act—organized crime is a “continuing and selfperpetuating criminal conspiracy, having
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transnational crime. As such, the early impetus for legal action came primarily from the developing countries. But by the time the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime was adopted by the General Assembly in 2000, the United States and many developed countries felt so threatened by the rise of transnational crime that they became leaders in adopting the convention. This dramatic change in the supporters reflects the changing reality of transnational crime—it has increasingly become a major security threat to many European countries and the United States. The adoption of the Convention was the culmination of twenty-five years of work by the United Nations in this area. When first adopted by the United Nations, it included eighteen important politically and economically motivated cross-border crimes, such as terrorism, hijacking, and traditional organized crime activities.7 In recent years, the United Nations has focused
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The U.S. fails to address the nexus between
transnational crime and terrorism.
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on the most visible consequences of transnational crime: human trafficking and the illicit international trade in weapons. This approach culminated not only in the adoption of the Convention on Transnational Organized Crime, but it also led to several other companion protocols on Smuggling of Migrants, Trafficking in Persons, and Illicit Manufacturing and Trafficking in Firearms.8 The UN definition is comprehensive, addressing the issue of size, duration, and [ 8 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
an organized structure, fed by fear and corruption, and motivated by greed.”9 This definition focuses exclusively on ordinary criminals rather than political terrorists. Whereas prime importance is given to corruption in the American definition, it is not central to the UN definition. The failure to address the centrality of corruption in transnational crime in the UN definition may be due to the fact that corruption levels are very high among the leaderships of many of the countries needed to support the adop-
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Crime Goes Global
their pragmatism and financial interests prevent collusion. Working with terrorists would increase their risks of detection and prosecution. Since the end of the Cold War and the resulting increase in smaller regional conflicts, there has been a phenomenal rise in smaller crime groups in these areas racked by ethnic and political conflicts. Such regionally important transnational crime groups have sprouted in Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. These groups are particularly prominent in the conflict zones of former communist countries in the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. These groups benefit from the absence of any viable state authority, capitalizing on the weakness of border controls to move Transnational Crime: Inter- arms and contraband. The criminal national Diversity. Recent decades gangs in these areas are often motivated have seen a phenomenal rise in the num- more by greed than by the grievance that ber and diversity of transnational orga- initially fomented the conflict. The nized crime groups. The more estab- profits they reap from the perpetuation lished groups based in Italy, Japan, of the conflict provide an enormous disChina, Nigeria, and Colombia illustrate incentive to conflict resolution. These groups are opportunistic, with the fact that transnational crime can develop under a variety of political and short-term profit horizons, and care liteconomic conditions. All of these tle about investing their profits in safe groups benefit from weak law enforce- havens or ensuring their long-term viament in their home countries, and each bility. Unlike the Yakuza or the exploits the international community’s Colombian mafia, which have enormous disparate criminal, banking, and invest- profits invested in major international ment laws. Yet, all of these larger groups financial centers, these groups live for depend on the structures of established the short-term. Many will align with states to move their commodities, laun- international terrorist groups because der their funds, and create a market for they are not concerned with the stability their goods. Their larger multinational of financial markets, as they are willing to operations and international profits undermine states and global markets in often make them concerned with long- their search for profits. Therefore, it is term strategies. They are usually reluc- in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and in tant to associate with terrorists because Central Asia that one most often sees some, such as the Sicilian La Cosa crucial links between the new agile orgaNostra and the Japanese Boryodukan, nized crime groups and terrorist organiare highly nationalistic.11 For others, zations. These linkages often operate
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tion of the UN convention. Therefore, the corruption issue was addressed separately in the Convention against Corruption adopted by the United Nations in 2004.10 Yet the difference in definition has had more far-reaching consequences. By focusing on international organized crime that operates in more than one country, the United States fails to address the nexus between transnational crime and terrorism that is central to the UN conceptualization of the problem. This bifurcation of the issues reflects a very serious discrepancy between the American approach to the phenomenon and that adopted in Europe and in many developing and transitional countries.
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reduce the opportunities for criminal activity and minimize the infiltration of transnational organized crime groups into legitimate business. Extradition treaties and mutual legal assistance agreements among the broadest number of signatories help minimize the ability of transnational criminals to elude detection. Coordinated intelligence and law enforcement campaigns can help to ensure that criminals do not exploit differentiated enforcement strategies. The legal and financial approaches cited above should not be the only strategies used to combat transnational crime. Many activists also advocate an enhanced role for civil society and investigative journalism to expose the activities of transnational criminals and to raise citizen awareness. Although these are essential measures, they fail to address the root conditions that have facilitated the rapid rise and reach of transnational crime by only addressing the problem once it is fully developed. There is a pressing need to avert the Combating International Organized Crime. There are important lim- proliferation of transnational crime by its on the ability to detect, disrupt, and preventing its development. This eliminate crime networks. Transnational includes integrating transnational crime organized crime is now so multinational into economic development strategies, that it precludes countries from launch- conflict resolution, and the struggle ing an effective campaign against the against terrorism. These approaches groups that operate on their territory, must be coupled and integrated with even where the political will and state existing approaches to diminish capacity to investigate and prosecute transnational crime’s growth. Economic organized crime exist. Moreover, the development has been seen as a problem enforcement net has too many holes. quite apart from organized crime. Even if one state cracks down on mem- Multinational organizations such as the bers of a particular group, for example, World Bank and International Monetary these members can frequently find Fund have begun to recognize that correfuge in another country. A successful ruption impedes economic developpolicy must seek international harmo- ment, but they have failed to make that nization of legislation combating crimes link with transnational crime. Efforts to in the areas of banking, securities law, combat human smuggling and traffickcustoms, and extradition in order to ing have focused on prevention through
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across regions as well; Middle East terrorists link up with crime groups in the Tri-Border region of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay; al-Qaeda operatives have worked with crime groups in West Africa in the diamond trade; and Abu Sayef in the Philippines supported itself through piracy on the South Seas.12 The links between transnational crime groups and terrorists have the strongest impact in regions with very high levels of corruption. In the countries with the most severe corruption problems, there is no effective state capacity to guard borders, regulate the flow of goods, or investigate transnational crime because the members of the state control apparatus often collude with—or are even leaders of—their country’s crime organizations.13 The state capacity cannot combat these crimes because some officials are more concerned with their personal well being than with the viability of the state.
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between these two phenomena, resulting in the limited development of strategies that could prove effective in combating transnational crime. The isolation of the two phenomena has allowed for both terrorism and transnational crime to metastasize and feed off of each other.
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education, but not sufficiently on the development of economic alternatives that make poverty-stricken individuals vulnerable. Development strategies such as micro-credit, greater safeguards on the diversion of resources by corrupt leaders, and enhanced international investment can provide economic alternatives to illegal immigration. Transnational crime has especially flourished in conflict regions and postconflict situations. Many professionals engaged in conflict resolution address the grievances that initiated the conflict but not the criminality that contributes to its continuation. Much more attention must be paid to disrupting the criminal networks whose profits fund the perpetuation of the conflict. This is the case in
Crime Goes Global
Conclusion. It is clear that transnational crime is penetrating political institutions, undermining legitimate economic growth, threatening democracy, and thereby contributing to the eruption of small, regionally contained conflicts. The disintegrative effect on the world’s political, economic, and social order transcends the enforcement ability of the nation-state. Indeed, the proliferation
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Africa, for example, where the transnational weapons and diamond trade perpetuated the conflict in Sierra Leone. Transnational crime is also plaguing the former Yugoslavia, as the criminal activities of several groups have prevented the establishment of a durable peace in Kosovo and other regions.14 In these and many other cases, diplomats, negotiators, and peacekeepers have given too little consideration to the role of transnational crime in the perpetuation of the various conflicts. Transnational crime and terrorism are increasingly linked as criminal groups provide financial and logistical support for terrorists. They may also provide technical support and cover for their activities.15 Little attention has been paid to disrupting the linkages
of nations, each with its own legal system, and the lack of adequate border controls in vast geographical areas—including the former USSR, parts of Africa, Southern Europe, and the U.S.-Mexican border— have profoundly altered the previous world order based on relatively stable, unified nation-states. The recent decline in the importance of national borders has had many important consequences for transnational crime. The North American Free Trade Agreement, for example, has contributed to the growth of licit as well as illicit trade. Another example of this geopolitical change is the European Union, which also seeks the free movement of people and goods on a regional, transnational basis.16 In addition, there has been an enormous rise in human smuggling and trafficking Winter/Spring 2005 [ 1 1 ]
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crime groups have supplanted the functions of the state, they impede economic development and the transition to democracy, forcing some countries in a more authoritarian direction. The international community must act now to halt the pernicious social, political, and economic consequences of transnational crime. Countries must understand that the international community will never be able to achieve fully standardized policies and enforcement required to eradicate transnational organized crime, but such efforts can consistently thwart it. Internationally coordinated legislative and law enforcement efforts must be supported because, in their absence, transnational crime threatens to penetrate to the core of democratic states. The corrupting influences of organized crime on the democratic governments of Colombia and Italy made this all too clear in the 1980s. The number of examples in the 1990s has increased with the collapse of the Soviet Union as criminals have influenced the electoral process in Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, and many of the other Soviet successor states.18 In today's world, the chaos resulting from the war on terrorism is creating a new group of countries in which transnational crime groups are becoming increasingly important actors. Unless countries are willing to make a concerted effort against transnational crime, they threaten their own institutions and the stability and longevity of their governments by contributing to a decline in human welfare and security.
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into the countries of Western Europe as a result of the decline of border controls.17 What is more, many weak states in Africa, parts of Latin America, and Asia are unable to control their existing boundaries or establish proper internal legal institutions, creating enormous areas in which boundaries are no longer delineated by walls. These borders have become webs through which both organized criminals and legitimate travelers pass. In short, the threat to nation states is not that of a single, monolithic, international organized crime network. Rather, the multiplicity of politically and economically powerful crime groups operating both regionally and globally is what truly threatens political and economic security, as well as human security. In many countries, the infiltration of organized crime into political structures has paralyzed law enforcement from within. Moreover, in many parts of the world where organized crime groups have supplanted the functions of the state, they impede economic development and the transition to democracy, forcing some countries in a more authoritarian direction. In short, the threat to nation states is not that of a single monolithic international organized crime network. Rather, the multiplicity of politically and economically powerful crime groups operating both regionally and globally is what truly threatens political and economic security, as well as human security. In many countries, the infiltration of organized crime into political structures has paralyzed law enforcement from within. Moreover, in many parts of the world where organized
NOTES
1 See Michele Alliot-Marie, "Afghanistan's Drug Boom," Washington Post, 6 October 2004, A 27. 2 Mats Berdal and David M. Malone, Greed and Grievance Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (Boulder, CO:
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Lynne Rienner, 2000). 3 Margaret E. Beare, "Money Laundering: A Preferred Law Enforcement Target for the 1990s," in Contemporary Issues in Organized Crime ed. Jay
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Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones (Boulder, CO: Weatview), 186-188; Jeffrey Fields, "Islamist Terrorist Threat in the Tri-Border Region," Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Internet, http://www.nti.org/e_research/e3_16b.html (date accessed 11 October 2004). 13 Jack Blum, "Offshore Money," Transnational Crime in the Americas, ed. Tom Farer (New York: Routledge, 1999): 74-75. 14 Campbell, 59-78; "Lawless Rule versus Rule of Law in the Balkans," Internet, http://www.usip.org/ pubs/specialreports/sr97.html, based on a conference "Organized Crime and Political Extremism in the Balkans, conducted by the United States Institute of Peace and the Transnational Crime and Corruption Center, American University, 13 November 2001 (date accessed: 11 October 2004); Alexandre Kukhianidze, Alexandre Kupatadze and Roman Gotsiridze, "Smuggling through Abkhazia and Tskhinvali Region of Georgia," Internet, http://www.traccc.cdn.ge/publications/ index.html (date accessed: 11 October 2004). 15 Shelley and Picarelli. 16 Peter Andreas and Timothy Snyder, Wall Around the West: State Borders and Immigration Controls in North America and Europe (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001). 17 Ian Fisher and Richard Bernstein, "On Italian Isle, Migrant Plight Draws Scrutiny," The New York Times, 5 October 2004. 18 Louise I. Shelley, "Russia and Ukraine: Transition or Tragedy," Trends in Organized Crime Vol. 4, No.3 (Spring 1999): 81-107; Liudas Dapkus, "Lithuanian President Ousted," Internet, http://www.boston. com/news/world/europe/articles/2004/04/07/lithua nian_president_ousted_from_office/ (date accessed: 11 October 2004).
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Albanese Monsey (New York: Criminal Justice Press), reprinted in Trends in Organized Crime, vol.1, no.1, (1995): 99-100. 4 United Nations International Drug Control Programme, World Drug Report (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 71-100. 5 Ibid., 147. 6 Louise Shelley and John Picarelli, “Methods not Motives: Implications of the Convergence of International Organized Crime and Terrorism,” Police Practice and Research: An International Journal, Vol3, No.4 (2002): 305-18. 7 See Gerhard O.W. Mueller, “Transnational Crime: Definitions and Concepts,” Transnational Organized Crime 4, no. 3/4 (Autumn/Winter 1998): 13-21. 8.Internet, http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/ crime_cicp_convention.html. 9 The National Security Council, "International Crime Threat Assessment," Internet, http://clinton4.nara.gov/WH/EOP/NSC/html/ documents/pub45270/pub45270chap1.html (date accessed: October 2002). 10 "UN Convention Against Corruption," Internet, http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/corruption. html#UN (date accessed: 13 October 2004). 11 David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro, Yakuza Japan's Criminal Underworld (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 25. Also, interviews with Sicilian prosecutors in October 2002 on the intersection of Mafia groups and terrorist groups housed in the Balkans. 12 Dennis Blair, Interview by Singapore Straits Times, Internet, http://www.pacom.mil/speeches/ sst2001/011025straits.htm (date accessed: 12 October 2003); Greg Campbell, Blood Diamonds Tracing the
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Crime Goes Global
Facing Double Jeopardy Nuclear Proliferation and Terrorism
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Jon B. Wolfsthal
Jon B. Wolfsthal is Deputy Director for Non-Proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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As the world’s only superpower, the United States has a major interest in reducing the spread and use of nuclear weapons. Only nuclear weapons can strategically constrain U.S. action overseas, and only nuclear weapons can realistically threaten the fabric of American society. Alarmingly, given the consequences, the risk of a nuclear attack against the United States is increasing. In the near term, this concern focuses mainly on the possible acquisition of nuclear weapons by terror groups, particularly al-Qaeda. Traditional tools that have kept the nuclear peace, such as deterrence, are of little or no value against these terrorists. Therefore, the only hope for the United States is to prevent such groups from acquiring nuclear weapons. In the long term, the primary nuclear danger is a possible new wave of state proliferation that engulfs the Middle East and East Asia. As today’s international security is predicated on the existence of few nuclear states, the spread of nuclear weapons in these regions fundamentally challenges U.S. security. As disturbing as these realities are, the spread of nuclear weapons is not inevitable, and more can—and must—be done to prevent it from taking place. Throughout the nuclear age, the United States has kept proliferation in check with aggres-
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nuclear weapons to cause alarm. The good news is that terrorists do not yet possess the means to produce their own enriched uranium or separated plutonium—activities that require time and large, complex facilities.2 Thus, groups intent on acquiring nuclear weapons must steal or buy such materials from existing national stockpiles. The bad news is that many hundreds of tons of direct-use nuclear materials exist all over the world and hundreds of tons—enough for tens of thousands of nuclear weapons—are vulnerable to theft or diversion. Moreover, there is strong evidence that terrorists affiliated with alQaeda and others are actively seeking these materials in Russia, Pakistan, and elsewhere.3 Russian security officials have reported that Chechen groups linked to al-Qaeda have conducted surveillance of Russian nuclear facilities. Russian officials were sufficiently concerned in the wake of the 2004 Beslan school attack and dual airline bombings to order additional Interior Ministry troops to protect nuclear sites. Pakistani nuclear experts are also believed to have met with top alQaeda officials in 2001, possibly even with Osama bin Laden himself.4 Moreover, there is continued concern about the reliability of the security and personnel associated with Pakistan’s nuclear complex. In addition to the terror threat, there is a growing risk of five to ten new states acquiring nuclear weapons in the coming decade. Currently, only eight countries are known or firmly believed to possess nuclear weapons.5 North Korea may have enough nuclear material to produce up to Double Jeopardy. The full extent of eight nuclear weapons, although there is the terrorist threat to the international no conclusive evidence that it possesses community is unknown. Yet enough evi- any actual weapons. Iran has actively purdence exists of terrorist interest in sued a uranium enrichment capability
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sive, comprehensive, and focused policies. In the past thirty years alone, U.S. efforts have prevented and even rolled back proliferation in at least eight states. These successes have required the use of incentives, alliances, diplomacy, and, at times, sanctions.1 While not perfect, such nonproliferation efforts have enjoyed a positive track record. But state proliferation is no longer the international community’s primary concern, as the possibility of nuclear terrorism has become its central focus. Fortunately, nuclear terror is preventable. Terror groups do not have the capacity to produce their own nuclear materials. They must therefore rely on state nuclear stockpiles. The effective prevention of nuclear terror requires the cooperation of over fifty countries at a cost of billions of dollars. Compared to the economic, security, and political consequences—to say nothing of the loss of human lives—that would accompany the first terrorist use of a nuclear weapon, these efforts are vital. Overall, international efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism to date have been slow, uncoordinated, and piecemeal compared to what is required to win the race against time, as described by both International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohammed El Baradei and former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn. A combination of concerted effort and luck has left the international community fortunate, but few believe that such fortune will hold out as time progresses. Most believe more hard work will be essential.
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that could allow it to produce nuclear weapons, although Tehran claims the program is intended for peaceful purposes only. Beyond that, no countries are known to be aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons, and one country, Libya, appears
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to think anew about their nuclear options. Thus, the changing international environment is approaching a global nuclear tipping point.6 Such rampant proliferation would seriously test the strength of the international security sys-
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There is growing concern that the
nonproliferation consensus is breaking down.
tem and greatly increase the odds of a nuclear attack. At a minimum, it would put global security at the mercy of a new balance of terror among multiple nuclear states with open religious, ethnic, economic, political, and territorial disputes.
Response to Date. The internation-
al community has taken several concrete steps to ensure that terrorists do not acquire nuclear materials. The most significant efforts to prevent nuclear theft focus on protecting weapons and materials in the former Soviet Union. Beginning in 1991, the United States began a long-term effort to help eliminate nuclear launchers, deactivate nuclear weapons, and secure nuclear weapons and materials in Russia and other former Soviet republics. Over the past thirteen years, these steps have resulted in the elimination of 2,400 intercontinental missiles, 48 nucleararmed submarines, 228 long-range bombers, and the deactivation of over 13,000 nuclear warheads. Three of the four former Soviet republics that possessed nuclear weapons in 1991 have been completely disarmed of those weapons. The security of over 260 metric tons of active nuclear material has been or will soon be improved. International programs have also helped employ thousands
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to have given up its interest in such devices. However, over forty countries possess the ability, if not the actual nuclear material, needed to produce a nuclear weapon. Many of these states have practiced nuclear abstinence because they believe their security has been better served by remaining a non-nuclear state, provided their neighbors do the same. In addition, some of these countries—such as Germany, Japan, and Taiwan—have traded their nuclear options for nuclear guarantees from the United States. This calculus may not hold for long. There is growing concern that the nonproliferation consensus is breaking down and that nuclear successes in Iran and North Korea could touch off a new wave of proliferation. North Korea’s nuclear program is already leading some in East Asia to reconsider their nuclear futures. The emergence of a full–fledged and unconstrained nuclear North Korea, especially in the face of a less than effective U.S. response, could lead key American allies to question Washington’s commitment to their security. This doubt, in turn, could lead South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan to reconsider their nonnuclear status. The same dynamic could easily envelop the Middle East, where a nuclear-armed Iran would force states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and even Turkey
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ately, by the Department of Energy’s own timeline, the program will take over a decade to complete. As for the growing risk of state proliferation, trends are not encouraging. Diplomatic efforts to end North Korea’s nuclear program produced the 1994 Agreed Framework between Washington and Pyongyang. While imperfect, the agreement prevented North Korea from producing any nuclear materials from 1994 until 2002. North Korea’s secret pursuit of a uranium enrichment program and the Bush administration’s eagerness to repudiate the 1994 agreement have ended outside inspections of and constraints over North Korea’s existing nuclear complex. As a result, U.S. intelligence now estimates North Korea may have enough plutonium to produce up to eight nuclear weapons. The six party talks engineered by the Bush administration—which include South Korea, Japan, China, Russia, the United States, and North Korea—are a success in structural terms. But the United States has steadfastly refused to use the forum as a real negotiating mechanism, pursuing instead a strategy of pressure and isolation that has not produced any tangible gains. U.S. noncha-
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of scientists with the know-how to make nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. All of these programs have helped in dealing with the risk that terrorist groups might acquire nuclear materials within the former Soviet Union, as well as slow national proliferation efforts. The sheer size of the nuclear complex in the former Soviet Union and the lack of political enthusiasm for cooperating on nuclear security in recent years have rendered efforts to date less than fully effective. Over 340 tons of weaponsgrade nuclear materials are still awaiting security upgrades. U.S. efforts have failed to secure Russia’s vast stocks of tactical, portable nuclear weapons. The incomplete efforts in Russia are further undermined by the fact that dozens of additional countries also possess inadequately secured nuclear materials that can be used in nuclear weapons production. Growing awareness of these concerns led the United States to resume repatriation of civilian materials from foreign research reactors in 1996 and to launch the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) in 2004, which expands and accelerates global programs to remove weapons-grade nuclear mate-
Over 340 tons of weapons–grade nuclear
materials are still awaiting security upgrades in the former Soviet Union. rials from civilian facilities worldwide. This important program aims to convert all of the world’s civilian research reactors to use non-weapon materials and to remove all weapon-usable materials from civilian applications. Unfortun-
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lance regarding North Korea’s activities undermines allied confidence in U.S. commitment to their security and to stability in the region. While North Korea is responsible for violating the 1994 deal, the current carrot-less and stick-less
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Next Steps. Defining the threat is the
easy part, but confronting the twin nuclear challenges of terrorism and state proliferation is more difficult. Most importantly, the United States and its partners must abandon the business-asusual approach that now dominates nonproliferation efforts. The international
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Bush approach has exacerbated regional instability and created longer-term momentum that could lead to further proliferation. Iran remains a moving target. Iran’s secret acquisition of uranium enrichment capabilities from the A.Q. Khan network is now well documented. Iran
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The U.S. must abandon the business-asusual approach to nonproliferation.
community must pursue three simultaneous goals: securing the global nuclear complex, ending the efforts by Iran and North Korea to go nuclear, and reducing the means and incentives for states to acquire nuclear weapons.
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maintains that it has the legal right to pursue nuclear activities, and its efforts to enrich uranium continue. To date, U.S. efforts to press Iran have actually increased Iranian domestic support for its nuclear programs. Moreover, the war in Iraq and the rhetoric used by Bush officials that painted Iraq as the beginning, not the end, of a global regime change strategy has clearly increased the desire for a nuclear deterrent in Tehran. The decision by Iran to temporarily freeze its enrichment activities while negotiating incentives with Europe has delayed the question of punishing Iran for its past treaty violations and put off the long-term question of Iran’s acquisition of a full uranium enrichment capability. The United States has reluctantly agreed to await the outcome of the EU-Iranian negotiations and to closely monitor Iran’s enrichment freeze, but remains convinced that Iran’s long-term intentions are anything but peaceful. In the end it is unlikely that negotiations with Iran will succeed unless the United States becomes involved or at least shows willingness to provide support for Europe’s entreaties.
Securing the Global Nuclear Complex. Preventing access by terrorists or black marketers to highly enriched uranium and plutonium should be the security priority of the United States. This requires enhanced action not only in Russia and Pakistan, but also in over forty countries around the world that currently possess weapons-grade nuclear materials. The two major initiatives in place to deal with these concerns are too narrow and will take too long to implement. The G-8 Global Partnership to Prevent the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction has pledged to spend $20 billion over ten years. But donors are still several billion dollars short of this goal, and funds to protect nuclear sites have not been forthcoming. Russia continues to block efforts to accelerate security improvements, despite its public partnership with the United States in the war on terror. Moreover, current plans to upgrade Winter/Spring 2005 [ 1 9 ]
FACING DOUBLE JEOPARDY
U.S. origin without delay, except in those few instances where the continued operation of research reactors is absolutely required for the provision of medical isotopes. In these few instances, however, the possibility of alternatives and subsidized supply should be fully investigated and aggressively pursued. These two initiatives, however, leave many nuclear stocks around the world unaddressed. Currently countries decide what levels of security are adequate for their own nuclear materials. Although the IAEA publishes guidelines for nuclear security, these guidelines are voluntary and considered by many security experts to be out of date, considering the increased risk of terrorist theft and use. As a start, a new standard should be established that requires all weaponsgrade nuclear materials to be protected as if they were nuclear weapons. This policy would require the right of guards to use deadly force to prevent unauthorized access to nuclear materials, the adoption of a two-man rule for access to any such materials, and extensive accounting methods and physical barriers to access and theft. These new requirements should be laid out in new IAEA guidelines and enshrined in a new UN Security Council Resolution that obligates countries to meet these standards. This binding security standard could be verified through effective and expanded use of the IAEA’s International Physical Protection Advisory Service (IPASS) and made financially feasible for all states by providing funds and technical assistance to meet these new standards.
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nuclear material security will take ten years to complete and even these improvements will not meet the highest current standards of nuclear security, which many experts consider inadequate. While additional funds would be helpful, accelerated progress is not simply a matter of money. The international community must reevaluate its priorities and break through chronic barriers to progress. Raising the threat reduction efforts in Russia out of the bureaucracy by naming a presidential representative—either the vice president or some successor to the previous U.S. position of ambassadorat-large—would be a positive step. Such an appointment would prove beneficial as long as the person has the ear of the president and the authority to break through budgetary, personnel, and political barriers to progress. Currently, Russia’s increasing intransigence in accepting and implementing security assistance is an indefensible neglect of its sovereign responsibilities and puts the international community at risk. The reversal of the troubling obstacles to progress must be made a top U.S.Russian presidential priority. Also, the GTRI program needs to be rethought and reprioritized. The timelines envisioned for this valuable program are completely disconnected from the threat at hand. The Department of Energy envisions an implementation period of thirteen years and delays of removal of highly enriched uranium fuel in most cases until alternative fuels for many research facilities are provided. These restrictions place the continued operation of largely outdated and unneeded reactors ahead of the security interests of the United States and its allies. The United States should require the immediate repatriation of all fuel of [ 2 0 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Dealing with Iran and North Korea. With regard to Iran and North
Korea, there are no silver bullets. It appears that the lack of U.S. commit-
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Crime Goes Global
tools, combined with the renewed emphasis on the potential benefits of nuclear weapons on the battlefield, is proving more than counterproductive. Fortunately, the United States can take several steps to reduce the role of nuclear weapons and the perceived incentives for other countries to pursue them without any significant negative implications for U.S. security. Key among these measures would be to scrap the administration’s plans to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons and a renewed commitment to abide by the terms of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, even if it remains unratified by the U.S. Senate. While the U.S. Congress refused to fund new weapons work in 2006, the administration remains committed to pursuing these new types of weapons. In addition, a renewed U.S. pledge not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against a Ending the Incentives. It is unlike- fully compliant non-nuclear state would ly that nonproliferation efforts, whether be a positive move. This pledge could also diplomatic or preemptive in nature, will be conditioned on non-possession of be successful over the long run as long as nuclear weapons-grade materials as an incentives for states to acquire nuclear added incentive for states to eliminate weapons continue to exist. Countries stocks of such materials. Lastly, can increasingly be expected to argue Washington’s recent decision to support that if nuclear weapons continue to a treaty to ban the production of fissile occupy an important and, perhaps, materials for use in nuclear weapons expanding role in international security, without any verification should be they may be forced to reconsider their reversed. The U.S. ended production of non-nuclear status. Thus, while some plutonium for weapons in 1988 and of
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ment to diplomatic efforts in North Korea and Iran has both undermined the chances for real diplomatic solutions and made allied support for more robust efforts harder to achieve. There is no guarantee that sincere diplomatic efforts in either case will produce success, but current U.S. efforts to create a self-fulfilling prophecy by undermining such efforts have cost time and reduced the willingness of other countries to take more aggressive actions against either state, including sanctions or the contemplation of the eventual use of military force. Thus, current U.S. “realism” regarding the nature of the North Korea and Iranian regimes may do little to resolve the twin challenges they represent. The situation will not improve until the United States alters its recalcitrant stance.
The danger is clear and present. The time to act is now.
Bush administration attempts to refocus nonproliferation efforts on the important areas of compliance and enforcement are valuable, the undermining of traditional nonproliferation
highly enriched uranium for weapons in 1968. Working to get other countries to do the same under effective verification would seem a logical step for United States officials to pursue. Winter/Spring 2005 [ 2 1 ]
FACING DOUBLE JEOPARDY
Ultimately, the United States, together with the international community, must pursue all of these measures, as the dual nuclear challenges facing the United States and its allies continue to become more acute. None of the required steps is beyond the demonstrated capabilities of
Washington; what is missing is the political will. The prospect is now very real that one day world leaders will have to look back through nuclear hindsight and wonder why the right solutions were so hard to implement. The danger, in short, is clear and present. The time to act is now.
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NOTES
4 Graham Alison, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe (New York: Times Books, 2004), 20-24. 5 China, France, Great Britain, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, and United States. 6 A new, excellent book by the same title refers to what issues might push individual states over the nuclear edge. The concept referred to here talks about the global nonproliferation consensus as a crossroads.
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1 South Africa, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan gave up weapons. Taiwan, South Korea, Argentina, and Brazil abandoned nuclear development programs. 2 These are the two essential materials needed to produce nuclear weapons. Enough of either material can produce a nuclear device. 3 See Matthew Bunn and Anthony Weir, Securing the Bomb: An Agenda for Action (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, May 2004), 9-38.
[ 2 2 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
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Crime Goes Global
Stemming the Contagion
Regional Efforts to Curb Afghan Heroin’s Impact
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Svante E. Cornell
Svante E. Cornell is Deputy Director of the Central Asia-Caucaus Institute, Johns Hopkins University SAIS and Associate Professor at the Silk Road Studies Program of Uppsala University in Sweden.
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Afghanistan’s heroin industry is one of the most intractable and far-reaching consequences of the violence that has racked that country since 1980. Producing on average three-quarters of the global supply of heroin since the mid-1990s, Afghanistan supplies the majority of heroin consumed in Europe and nearly all the heroin for Russia’s booming market. Even in the United States, a minor portion of the heroin consumed is of Afghan origin. The human and material costs of heroin addiction have been significant worldwide. In addition, money earned from the heroin industry has been a powerful part of financing rebellions. The Kosovo Liberation Army and the Marxist-Leninist Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey are the best-known rebel groups to have financed their activities through the heroin trade. The consequences of the Afghan heroin industry have been even worse for Afghanistan’s neighbors. Iran, Pakistan, and the Central Asian states of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have become major transit routes for Afghanistan’s opiates. Although many of these countries initially dismissed the transit of drugs through their territory as Afghanistan’s problem alone, they came to perceive this trade as a major and multi-
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national cooperation—a prerequisite for containing a problem that is transnational by nature. The often tense relations between the states of the region have not helped either. Given the importance of the region to U.S. national security interests, the adverse effect of the drug trade on the region’s stability is bound to harm U.S. interests in Central Asia. .
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faceted threat to their own social, eco1 nomic, and national security. The heroin industry brings crime and addiction that threaten the very fabric of society in states poorly equipped to handle such challenges. The drug trade has exacerbated corruption in the weak states bordering Afghanistan, impairing their economic and political functioning and infiltrating their governments to an unknown extent. With links to insurgency and terrorism, the drug trade threatens national and regional security. Militant organizations such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) have financed their operations through drugs.2 Although systematic research into the phenomenon has been relatively scant, it is clear that the region’s security has become inseparable from Afghanistan’s illicit crops. With limited international resources and attention, the region has been left alone to deal with the fallout of the drug trade. The total budget of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is roughly $100 million per
Waking Up to the Problem.
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Afghanistan has grown opium for centuries, yet other countries, such as Iran and Pakistan, were the primary producers.3 By the late 1990s, however, Afghanistan was the center of production, and both Pakistan and Iran were declared virtually poppy-free. The growth of narcotics production in Afghanistan resulted in two major changes in production patterns: a major increase in the quantity of opiates and the growth of heroin processing inside Afghanistan. Until the late 1990s, Afghanistan mainly produced raw opium or morphine base, which was refined into heroin in Pakistan, southeastern Turkey,
Pakistan, which had 20,000 heroin
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addicts in 1980, now has a half million chronic heroin users. The prevalence rate among the adult male population is over 2 percent. year globally. This figure is miniscule compared to the estimated $1 billion generated annually by the cultivation of opium in Afghanistan, in addition to the proceeds of heroin processing and smuggling. This disparity has impaired efforts to establish meaningful inter-
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or the Balkans. Today, the overwhelming majority of heroin processing takes place inside Afghanistan. Both Iran and Pakistan have seen addicts turning from opium to heroin use, exacerbating their domestic drug problem as a result of heroin’s extremely addictive nature and
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Crime Goes Global
In spite of drug control efforts, Iran
remains the main transit route for Afghan drugs destined for Europe. lion a year.8 It spent the lion’s share of these resources on supply reduction, including the posting of 30,000 law enforcement officers on the Pakistani border. Over 3,500 officers have been killed in encounters with heavily armed drug traffickers, especially in the tri-border area linking Iran’s SistanBaluchistan province with Afghanistan’s Nimroz province and Pakistani Baluchistan. Iran has invested in physical installations along the border with Afghanistan. Such measures include patrol roads, several twenty-mile long ditches, and huge concrete walls to stem drug traffickers. In spite of these efforts, Iran remains the main transit route for Afghan drugs destined for Europe, with police seizing 72 tons of opium, 9 tons of morphine, and 4 tons of heroin in 2002.9 In recent years, the Iranian government has begun to spend a larger portion of its resources on demand reduction, realizing that supply reduction alone has thus far proved fruitless.10 In Pakistan, narcotics acquired a prominent place in the country’s economic and political life in the 1980s and 1990s. It was not until the late 1990s, following the coup of General Pervez Musharraf, that the government stepped up its counter-narcotics efforts. The first priority was to control opium production in the country. Pakistan eradicated almost all opium cultivation, an impressive feat considering opium is cultivated primarily in the unruly Federally Administered Tribal Areas
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the spread of HIV through needle sharing. The same problems also occurred in Russia and the states of Central Asia. Hence Pakistan, which had 20,000 heroin addicts in 1980, now has a half million chronic heroin users. The prevalence rate among the adult male population is over 2 percent. The proportion of injecting drug users is also rapidly increasing, especially in urban areas.4 Iran’s drug problem is even larger. In 2003, the Iranian Drug Control Headquarters estimated that the country had two million ‘serious drug users,’ including over 300,000 injecting heroin users.5 Unlike in Pakistan, heroin has not yet eclipsed opium as the main drug. That said, a trend toward increasing heroin use is obvious.6 A 2000 study estimated that 2.8 percent of the population over fifteen years of age abused opiates.7 In Central Asia, the problem has not reached such proportions, although heroin addiction has risen sharply to an estimated 1 percent of the population across the region today. An HIV epidemic and substantial problems with Hepatitis C have followed as well.
National Responses. Afghanistan’s
neighbors have responded to the problem with a variety of counter-narcotics measures. While these steps initially focused on supply reduction, they eventually acquired a prominent demand control aspect. Iran has invested the most significant resources in drug control efforts, spending upwards of $250 mil-
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opiates and, with Kazakhstan, the largest addiction and HIV problems. These problems are less severe in Uzbekistan, while Turkmenistan does not report figures on such issues. Tajikistan reports yearly seizures of approximately 4 tons of heroin, with seizure rates in Kyrgyzstan also increasing rapidly.14 The Central Asian states have wrestled with the question of how to institutionalize drug control in the government hierarchy. Iran operates its counter-narcotics efforts primarily through a Drug Control Headquarters, created in 1989, that coordinates efforts among at least eleven agencies and ministries. The unwieldy structure has had only moderate success at coordination.15 Insofar as supply reduction is concerned, Iran has a special and well-funded police force responsible for patrolling the border with Afghanistan. Still, Iranian customs are not fully integrated into the drug control program.16 In Pakistan, a Narcotics Board, renamed the Narcotics Control Board (NCB) in 1973, was established under the Revenue Division in 1957. An AntiNarcotics Task Force was created in 1991, forming the law enforcement arm of anti-narcotics; this branch merged with
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(FATA) along the Afghan border.11 Though opium cultivation increased again in the FATA in 2003, Pakistan’s government has addressed the narcotics situation seriously.12 Substantial increases in heroin seizures and the arrest and extradition of traffickers have also taken place after the government approved and implemented a drug control master plan in 1999. Pakistan in 2001 seized 2.6 tons of opium, almost 7 tons of morphine, and almost 6 tons of heroin. As in Iran, efforts aimed at demand reduction and treatment have increased, though they remain inadequate.13 The states of Central Asia vary widely in their counter-narcotics efforts. Two main trafficking routes are known to exist. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan form a crucial corridor for heroin traffickers from northern Afghanistan toward Russia and Europe. UNODC and independent experts estimate that another, perhaps equally significant route, transits Turkmenistan, the Caspian Sea, and Russia or the South Caucasus on its way to Europe. Yet, since the late 1990s isolationist Turkmenistan has minimized its cooperation with both regional and international counter-narcotics efforts,
Countries fighting the tide of
Afghanistan's opiates face a severe deficit in regional cooperation. attracting much international criticism. Uzbekistan, sandwiched between these two routes, has a strict border regime with its neighbors, but it still receives a fair share of drug trafficking. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan report the highest seizures of [ 2 6 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
the NCB in 1995, creating a unified AntiNarcotics Force with 1,500 personnel. For their part, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan eventually formed specific Drug Control Agencies, funded by and in cooperation with the UNODC, with
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tion of most types of international cooperation is the most extreme case. Tension between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan or between Uzbekistan and its smaller neighbors complicates cooperation in Central Asia, and the Central Asian states distrust the regional intentions of Iran and Pakistan. Given this regional dynamic and the diverse challenges narcotics pose, the lack of effective cooperation in drug control is not surprising.18 Afghanistan’s immediate neighbors have attempted to coordinate and cooperate, but such efforts have remained largely ineffective at the bilateral and especially multilateral levels. Only the ECO includes the Central Asian states as well as Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan. The ECO, which has thus far been the best-placed organization to coordinate regional counter-narcotics efforts, made drug control a priority in 1993. With UNODC support, it established a Drug Control Coordination Unit in 1999.19 However, this body has not yet established itself as an effective actor in regional drug control. Likewise, more minor regional bodies have added drug control to their agenda. The Commonwealth of Independent States, the CSTO, the Central Asian Cooperation Organization (CACO), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization have all discussed counter-narcotics strategy, proclaimed it a major concern, and established specialized units to work on the issue. The CACO, for example, founded an Interstate Drug Control Commission, and the CSTO has discussed setting up a counter-narcotics body in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. In spite of this flurry of activity, few concrete steps have been taken to advance meaningful drug control. Most importantly, close to nothing has been done to devise a com-
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the largest donations coming from the United States. These agencies have relatively broad responsibilities and are law enforcement bodies in their own right. Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, on the other hand, operate State Commissions on Narcotics whose primary function is to coordinate with other state agencies. These bodies have much fewer capabilities and personnel than the Tajik and Kyrgyz Drug Control Agencies that have a staff of 360 and 240 persons, respectively.17 In short, the multifaceted security, border control, and health challenges posed by the narcotics trade have contributed to the divergent strategies adopted by Afghanistan’s neighbors. Such divergent approaches have, in turn, impeded meaningful cooperation in the fight to curb the flow of illicit drugs in the region.
Crime Goes Global
Regional Cooperative Efforts.
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Countries fighting the tide of Afghanistan’s opiates face a severe deficit in regional cooperation. Aside from the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), no multilateral initiatives include all of the region’s states. The organizations that exist, moreover, are more often than not dominated by one powerful state and mainly seek to advance the national interest of that state, as is the case with Russia and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The lack of genuine regional cooperation mechanisms, such as the EU in Europe and ASEAN in Southeast Asia, has impeded regional cooperation in counter-narcotics efforts across the region. Even more problematic, mutual suspicion between regional states continues to prevent cooperation. Turkmenistan’s isolationist policy and instinctive rejec-
Winter/Spring 2005 [ 2 7 ]
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resulted less from regional cooperation than from bilateral cooperation with the countries of the region. Its main effort at cross-border cooperation, the so-called ‘Osh Knot’ project in the Ferghana valley area involving Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, made some headway in coordinating law enforcement bodies in the late 1990s.21 It was, nevertheless, dismantled despite growing narcotics problems in the Ferghana valley. For its part, the United States has funded and supported UNODC efforts in Central Asia. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has field offices in Islamabad and Tashkent that seek to work bilaterally within the region. U.S. efforts are limited, given the priority accorded to Latin America, the main supplier of opiates, cocaine, and cannabis to the United States. For political reasons, the DEA cannot operate in Iran or cooperate with Iranian drug control officials. In comparison to the United States, the performance of the European Union and of individual European states has been disappointing. Europe is the main destination of the Afghan heroin industry, but its attention to counter-narcotics in Central and Southwest Asia has been feeble. Far from approximating U.S. efforts in Latin America, European assistance to Central Asia does not even match the U.S. commitment to the region. European measures focus on the Central Asia Drug Action Program (CADAP) and on the Border Management Program (BOMCA). The budget of these initiatives is approximately 36 million euros over seven years. Several European states contribute individually to the UNODC efforts in the region. 22 The European contribution is vastly inadequate to address the size of the
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mon regional strategy. Regional talks have focused on supply reduction and interdiction, but they have not addressed the varying positions states have taken on the larger strategies of drug control. That said, some bilateral cooperative efforts have taken root. Iranian and Pakistani law enforcement bodies have enjoyed fruitful cross-border communications, helping to interdict shipments crossing into Iran from Pakistan. In the past, drug shipments just turned back into Pakistan once intercepted by Iranian law enforcement, but the Iranians can warn Pakistani authorities of the location of a returning drug convoy, leading to a higher rate of interdiction.20 Likewise, the Kyrgyz and Tajik Drug Control Agencies have begun coordinating some of their activities, though much remains to be done.
International Support and Western Response. Against the
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weakness of national and regional counter-narcotics efforts, international organizations have provided advice and financing. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime is the main international body operating in the region. With offices in most regional states, the UNODC played a leading role in establishing the Drug Control Agencies in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The UNODC has since become a crucial actor in regional drug control in spite of its limited resources and bureaucratic impediments. UNODC activities have facilitated the limited level of coordination that exists between regional states in counter-narcotics. Moreover, it has helped develop the institutional abilities of several countries to intercept narcotics shipments and formulate counter-narcotics policies. Yet the UNODC’s main successes have
[ 2 8 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
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problem. The EU’s initiatives have a different focus than those of the United States and the UNODC. Despite the success of the BOMCA and CADAP in supporting the Drug Control Agencies of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, EU programs
Crime Goes Global
naught. Very little suggests that a meaningful reduction in Afghanistan’s opium and heroin production will occur in the short- to medium-term. With ever growing amounts of heroin transiting their borders, Afghan’s neighbors seem help-
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The dangers of unabated drug trafficking are clear; unless the trend is reversed, rising addiction and epidemics will continue to hamper economic and social development.
less as the social, economic, political, and even military implications of the drug trade ravage the region. Most states in the region are poor, impeded by significant corruption, have porous borders, and have limited resources to deploy to counter-narcotics efforts. Inevitably, the resources they can muster are diverted from crucial and necessary development tasks. The situation in Iran is particularly disheartening; in spite of spending more than twice the UNODC’s global budget on counternarcotics programs, Iran has been able to make no more than a dent in the quantity of drugs crossing the border. Central Asian states, on the other hand, have no such resources to divert, and the drug trade will, therefore, continue to disrupt their societies. The international response to this crisis has been far from adequate. The UNODC has spent an increasing proportion of its resources in the region, but it remains largely impotent because of the reluctance on the part of member states to contribute. Moreover, its bureaucratic character makes it difficult for the UNODC to criticize government
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have long been skeptical of creating agencies similar to them. Instead, European efforts have focused on the coordination of existing institutions.23 This approach is questionable considering the endemic corruption in these institutions. Regional experts estimate that up to 70 percent of law enforcement officials are corrupt.24
Conclusions. The production of
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opium in Afghanistan continues to grow at an alarming pace. At 131,000 hectares, the 2004 crop was the largest in the country’s history and a 64 percent increase over 2003. Due to poor climate conditions, opium yield was relatively low this year. The 4,200 tons of opium that were produced did not break the 1999 record of 4,500 tons, although it did imply a 17 percent increase over 2003.25 More worrying, every province in Afghanistan now cultivates opium, which indicates a qualitative shift in opium production. In spite of international support for the current Afghan regime, the heroin industry seems to thrive unabated. Hopes in 2001 and 2002 that opium production in Afghanistan would go the way of the Taliban have come to
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STEMMING THE CONTAGION
tions for development, stability, and security. The dangers of unabated drug trafficking are clear; unless the trend is reversed, rising addiction and epidemics will continue to hamper economic and social development. Criminal interests will continue to infiltrate political systems, whose power lies primarily in the great financial assets available to them. As a result, the domestic and international legitimacy of the region’s governing elites, especially those in Central Asia, will inevitably erode. Finally, the link between narcotics and terrorism in the region will undermine the quest for peace and stability. Regional volatility will dampen the region’s attractiveness to investors and widen the obstacles to development. Barring significant increases in external assistance or the unlikely event of a rapid downturn in opium production in Afghanistan, these processes are likely to escalate in the coming years. But such adverse consequences will not remain limited to the region. To the contrary, they will directly impede the international community’s efforts to build stable, accountable states in this volatile region.
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corruption or the infiltration of states by criminal elements. Among industrialized countries, the United States has spent far more than its share on counter-narcotics in Central Asia. It is the leading contributor to the UN efforts in the region, supporting its limited bilateral initiatives. This is despite the fact that only a small portion of drugs consumed in the United States comes from, or through, Central and Southwest Asia. The growing realization of a link between narcotics and terrorism is raising U.S. awareness of the problem. Although American counter-narcotics efforts in the region are likely to increase, the United States will on the whole remain preoccupied with Latin America. European states, by contrast, have failed to take responsibility. Some European leaders have gone as far as to malign Afghanistan and the transit states of Central and Southwest Asia for failing to stem the drug trade that harms their societies. But the drug trade is a demanddriven industry. Thus, the addicts in European societies contribute to the crisis. So far, Europe has shown little interest in recognizing its responsibility or acting on the issue. With little prospect of reduction in opium production in Afghanistan in the foreseeable future, Afghanistan’s neighbors are likely to continue to face the adverse consequences of drug trafficking. This fact has important implica-
[ 3 0 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Author’s Note: Research for this article was made possible by grants from the Office of the Swedish National Drug Policy Coordinator and the Swedish Crisis Management Agency.
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NOTES
and Organized Crime in Eurasia Project at http://www.sikroadstudies.org/db/silkroad/sk.html. 15 A. William Samii, “Drug Abuse: Iran’s ‘Thorniest’ Problem,” The Brown Journal of World Affairs 9, no. 2 (Winter/Spring 2003): 291. 16 Mohammed Fallah, “‘In the Front line, Iran Cannot Act Alone’ – Drug Trafficking Control,” UN Chronicle (Fall 1999). 17 Kairat Osmonaliev, Counter-Narcotics Efforts in Central Asia: Challenges and Achievements (Washington, DC: Silk Road Studies Program and Central AsiaCaucasus Institute, Silk Road Paper, 2004), 40. 18 Niklas Swanström and Maral Madi, “The Emperor’s New Clothes: International Cooperation against Drug Trafficking in Central Asia,” in United Nations, Multilateralism and International Security, ed. K. Santhanam (New Delhi: Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis, 2004). 19 Osmonaliev, 49. 20 Iranian Counter-Narcotics Police Force, interviews by author, Tehran, December 2003; Ali, op. cit. 21 Alexander Zelitchenko, Afghan Narco-Expansion in the 1990s and Kyrgyzstan’s National Security Problem (Bishkek: Kyrgyz-Russian Slavonic University, 2003). 22 “European Union Assists Central Asian States in Reinforcing Their Security,” UN Link no. 219, 2 April 2004. 23 EU and Central Asian counter-narcotics officials, interviews by author, Bishkek, July 2004. 24 Osmonaliev, 11-20. Also Kairat Osmonaliev, Presentation at the Office of the Swedish National Drug Policy Coordinator, Stockholm, May 2004. 25 UNODC, Afghanistan Annual Opium Poppy Survey 2004 (October 2004).
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1 Melvin Levitzky, “Transnational Criminal Networks and International Security,” Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce 30 (2003): 227-40; Svante Cornell, “Crime Without Borders,” Axess Magazine, No. 6, Internet, http://www.silkroadstudies.org/pub/ 0408Axess_EN.htm, 18-21. 2 Svante E. Cornell, “The Drug Trade and Armed Conflict: Narcotics as A Threat to Security in Central Asia,” Terrorism and Political Violence, forthcoming. 3 Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, Les Territoires de l’Opium: Conflits et Trafics du Triangle d’Or et du Croissant d’Or (Geneva: Editions Olizane, 2002). 4 UNODCCP, Drug Abuse in Pakistan: Results from the Year 2000 National Assessment Study (2002). 5 Iranian DCHQ, interviews by author, Tehran, December 2003. 6 UNDCP, “Drug Situation in the I.R. of Iran” (2002), 3. 7 Drug Control Headquarters. See also UNODC, The Opium Economy in Afghanistan: An International Problem (2002). 8 U.S. Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report 2004 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government, 2004), 505. 9 World Drug Report, 287. 10 “Quiet Revolution as Iran Widens Arsenal in War on Drugs,” Associated Press, 11 July 2004. 11 Syed Asad Ali, “Role of Government of Pakistan in Narcotics Control,” Globe, June 2001. 12 U.S. Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report 2002 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government, 2003), VII-21. 13 Pakistan Anti-Narcotics Force, Yearly Digest 2003-2004, passim. 14 Consult the Drugs Database of the Narcotics
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The Silent Struggle Against Terrorist Financing
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Joseph M. Myers
Joseph M. Myers is an attorney at the law firm of Katten Muchin Zavis Rosenman. He served as Director of International Financial Affairs in the Office of Combating Terrorism at the National Security Council.
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In the more than three years since the 9/11 attacks, the “war on terrorism” has been fought on many fronts. Much attention has been paid to military action in Afghanistan and Iraq and to prosecutions and preventive measures taken by the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security in the United States. Meanwhile, a somewhat quieter, complex campaign against terrorist financing has shown that financial intelligence, investigations, prosecutions, sanctions, and diplomacy, when carefully coordinated among national authorities and with the private sector, can make a meaningful contribution to the security of the United States against the threat of Islamist terrorism. Going forward, U.S. policymakers should invest in building infrastructure, both in the United States and around the world, to deepen and broaden the role of financial intelligence investigators and analysts. Contrary to the occasional claims of politicians, following and interdicting money will never “eliminate” terrorism or even “cut off” financial support to particular terrorist groups; so long as people are motivated to commit acts of terrorism, funds will flow to support them. Indeed, the level of financial support provided to a particular terrorist group may be a useful indicator of the depth of its political support, and vice versa. Unfortunately,
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THE SILENT STRUGGLE AGAINST TERRORIST FINANCING
unprecedented levels of anger and resentment in the Arab and Muslim worlds over U.S. foreign policy threaten to undermine efforts to control terrorist financing, and perhaps the “war on terrorism” more broadly. Policymakers
never made the development of such intelligence a priority. It has become cliché to report that everything changed after 9/11, but with respect to efforts to combat terrorist financing, much did, indeed, change.
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Contrary to the claims of politicians,
following and interdicting money will never eliminate terrorism or even cut off financial support to particular groups. need to take a longer view, develop metrics to evaluate whether we are winning or losing the hearts and minds of potential Islamist terrorists, and act accordingly.
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Following the Money. Efforts to combat financing of Islamist terrorism prior to 9/11 have been well documented by the so-called “9/11 Commission” and by insider accounts of former National Security Council officials Richard A. Clarke, William Wechsler, Daniel Benjamin, and Steven Simon.1 Despite the best efforts of these and other officials, the problem was and remains a difficult one. In short, efforts to address terrorist financing were sporadic and largely ineffective. As the 9/11 Commission staff concluded, “[t]errorist financing was not a priority for either domestic or foreign intelligence collection. As a result, intelligence reporting on the issue was episodic, insufficient, and often inaccurate.”2 The lack of actionable intelligence fundamentally limited the ability of the government to take effective steps to limit funding streams directed toward Islamist extremist groups, and government policymakers
For the first time, the U.S. government focused on the issue and devoted resources to address it. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, financial investigators and analysts descended on the FBI’s Secure Intelligence and Operations Center (SIOC) to assist in unraveling the financial trail of the alQaeda hijackers. This effort proved its value quickly, persuading FBI Director Robert Mueller to incorporate financial investigators into the FBI’s Counter-terrorism Division and its joint terrorism task forces across the country. In addition to the financial investigation, one of the first concrete steps taken after 9/11 was the UN Security Council’s endorsement on 28 September 2001 of Resolution 1373, which was followed by Resolution 1390 in January 2002.3 Although Resolution 1373 neither defines terrorism nor requires sanctions against particular terrorist groups, it does broadly require all nations to take concrete steps to deny financial and other forms of support to terrorists, and it establishes a reporting mechanism to ensure follow-up. The UN had approved, but never enforced, sanctions
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Tactical Law Enforcement and Intelligence Support. Financial
intelligence contributes to understanding terrorist networks, and since 9/11 U.S. authorities have demonstrated its tactical value. In feats evocative of the “pre-crime” police unit imagined by Philip K. Dick in his science fiction story The Minority Report, U.S. authorities have shown that money flows can help to identify suspected terrorists and even prevent attacks. As noted in the 9/11 Monograph,
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against the Taliban and al-Qaeda prior to 9/11, but Resolution 1390 required a “monitoring group” to report on progress in implementing sanctions against them. The UN resolutions reflected an unprecedented level of global support for a U.S.-initiated sanctions program. For several months, the U.S. interagency process was consumed by a desire to take advantage of this momentum and to refer as many al-Qaedarelated names as possible to the UN Sanctions Committee for inclusion on its global “black list.” During the same period, domestic political opposition to more stringent money laundering controls melted away. This permissive political environment allowed for the passage of most of the legislative provisions that the law enforcement community had unsuccessfully sought prior to 9/11 as Title III of the USA PATRIOT Act. The financial services sector, which had previously opposed many of the PATRIOT Act provisions, was extraordinarily cooperative and patient with the United States and other countries trying to unravel the financial trail left by the 9/11 hijackers. In addition, the United States leveraged international support to forge agreements around eight “special recommendations on terrorist finance” in the Financial Action Task Force and a twenty-five point action plan in the G-8 working groups on crime and counterterrorism, both of which seek to increase transparency and impose tighter controls against illicit financial flows. Since these first days, the initial post9/11 flurry of activity has evolved into a nuanced and integrated strategy to balance intelligence, law enforcement, economic sanctions, and diplomatic initiatives.
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Intelligence and law enforcement agencies have targeted the relatively small number of financial facilitators ... at the core of al Qaeda’s revenue stream ... The death and capture of several important facilitators have decreased the amount of money al Qaeda has raised and have increased the costs and difficulty of raising and moving that money, [and] provided a windfall of intelligence…4
Still, financial investigations are painstaking, and prosecutions for “material support” to terrorist groups—though more frequent than ever before—remain difficult.5 Material support cases have been brought successfully against individuals in the United States training for violence overseas, raising funds for terrorist organizations, and participating in plots to commit terrorist acts. But other prosecutions have failed; perhaps the most significant setback for the government in this area was the June 2004 acquittal of Saudi student Sami Omar Hussayen on charges of providing material support to terrorism in connection with his creation and administration of an extremist Islamic website. In that case, the First Amendment limited the govWinter/Spring 2005 [ 3 5 ]
THE SILENT STRUGGLE AGAINST TERRORIST FINANCING
for other violations. Meanwhile, the CIA leads the effort in identifying key financial facilitators, suggesting priority targets, and assessing al-Qaeda’s financial situation. The intelligence community has had difficulty, however, using financial intelligence to identify donors to terrorist causes. This task is especially challenging given the layers of complexity typically involved in the trail between the donor and the terrorist operative. The CIA is still working to build and integrate intelligence activities, such as developing better sources, improving collection, and incorporating financial questions into detainee interrogations. But the financial intelligence community suffers from the relative paucity of Arabic and other key language translators available to the U.S. government and from a general failure to manage the use of document exploitation technology.
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ernment’s ability to convict Hussayen of material support. In a little-understood but important development, the Justice Department is also prosecuting suspected terrorists on non-terrorist related violations. Prosecutors employ this strategy when the evidence is not strong enough to support a terrorism related charge. For example, during the FBI’s 9/11 investigation known as “PENTBOMB,” the Bureau scrutinized thousands of individuals and organizations to determine whether they supported the hijackers. While the vast majority of those investigated were cleared, the FBI did file fraud charges against hundreds of individuals.6 The most notable result of this investigation was the February 2003 guilty plea of Enaam Arnout, the head of the Benevolence International Foundation, a U.S. charity previously closed by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for racketeering charges. More generally, a careful scan of crime reports in the newspapers reveals a clear trend of increasing prosecutions of Arabs, North Africans, Pakistanis, and others for contraband cigarette trafficking, immigration violations, human
Sanctions. Public designation of ter-
rorist financiers and organizations by the UN Security Council helps to constrict the financial operations of designated parties, inform third parties of their association with supporters of terrorism, and
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Even with political support for
sanctions, few countries have the capacity to implement them. smuggling, credit card fraud, tax viola- deter others who might otherwise be willtions, sanctions busting, money launder- ing to finance terrorist activity. It may also ing, and Bank Secrecy Act violations. drive terrorists to use potentially more This trend reflects a kind of national costly, less efficient, and less reliable “community policing” strategy, in which means of financing.7 But U.S.-initiated individuals who may be suspected of ties sanctions programs are limited by the to terrorist groups are being prosecuted extent to which they are supported and
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Crime Goes Global
ing regulations to implement these provisions, and numerous Congressional committees are paying close attention to this aspect of the campaign against terrorist financing fight. After revelations of widespread and longstanding failures of the anti-money laundering compliance programs at Riggs Bank, N.A., the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency admitted that it failed to act quickly enough to force Riggs to take corrective action.10 In response to more active oversight from the Treasury Department, the regulators appear to have significantly ramped up the intensity of both examinations and enforcement actions.11 The Congressional and regulatory oversight has put pressure on financial institutions to improve their anti-money laundering controls, but these institutions face a dilemma as they try to combat terrorist financing. Even though law enforcement agencies are focused almost exclusively on Islamist extremist terrorist groups, efforts to develop terrorist financing profiles for financial institutions to detect suspicious activity have not succeeded. The legal obligations of financial institutions to detect and report suspicious activity extend to financial support for any of the dozens of designated terrorist groups, without regard to their particular ideological orientation. Financial institutions would risk legal and public relations exposure if they were to rely primarily on religious, geographic, or ethnic profiling in articulating criteria helpful to identify terrorist financing. To address the lack of meaningful Tighter Financial Controls. As previously noted, Title III of the USA indicators that financial institutions can PATRIOT Act includes a range of provi- use to detect suspicious transactions, the sions designed to strengthen the U.S. Treasury Department is trying to develop anti-money laundering regime. The better mechanisms for the government to Treasury Department has been develop- share more information with the private
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implemented abroad.8 This international support depends upon both sharing sensitive information between countries and on the political will of the international community. Although international political support for sanctions against the Taliban and al-Qaeda was unprecedented after 9/11, the UN resolutions in place reflect the fact that al-Qaeda remains the only terrorist group to garner universal condemnation. The European Union, for example, has only belatedly recognized HAMAS as a terrorist organization and has yet to take any significant practical steps to impede its extensive fundraising network in Europe. Meanwhile, Hizbollah is still widely viewed as a political organization, not a terrorist group. Whereas U.S. efforts to sanction HAMAS and Hizbollah affect their ability to raise funds in the United States, these measures have had little practical impact on their global financial support networks. Moreover, even where there is political support for sanctions, relatively few countries have the capacity to implement and enforce such actions. Just as troubling, there is only nascent agreement— hammered out only last year in the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)—on how to implement sanctions against terrorist groups most effectively.9 Significant diplomatic energy, along with a substantial increase in technical assistance, will be required to see those practices widely and effectively implemented around the world.
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deterring others. But the United States and its allies have a limited capacity to pursue specific, tactical objectives, and fear of sanction is only one factor determining whether a person will support a terrorist cause. On a basic level, the hearts and minds struggle is one that must take place within the Arab and Muslim communities around the world. The Bush administration has incorporated this notion into its bilateral agenda with Saudi Arabia and other key Islamic regimes. In an important sense, the current internal conflicts over reform inside Saudi Arabia lie at the center of the global conflict between bin Ladinism and the rest of Islam. Factions—including schisms within the royal family—are struggling for control over the future direction of Saudi society.16 The 12 May 2003 al-Qaeda bombings in Riyadh strengthened Crown Prince Abdullah’s hand in promoting a reform agenda and created an opening for closer counterterrorism work with the United States and others. U.S. engagement has prompted Saudi efforts to reduce ideological support within the Kingdom for al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist terrorist groups through educational reforms, public recantations by prominent clerics, withdrawal of official support to HAMAS, and orchestrated media activity.17 More broadly, however, the Bush administration has conducted the war on terrorism in a manner apparently oblivious—or stubbornly blind (at least in the short term)—to whether its policies are reducing or increasing support for Islamist terrorists. Although there clearly was hostility toward U.S. policies in the Arab world before 9/11, the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks was marked by a period of almost universal sympathy for the United
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sector.12 Meanwhile, financial institutions can still assist law enforcement in tracking particular networks of individuals by responding quickly to grand jury subpoenas, national security letters, and “section 314 requests” through the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).13 While the challenges outlined above are significant for the United States, they are equally, if not even more, daunting for the rest of the world. International efforts to encourage financial transparency through the FATF, and more recently through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, are critically important to control terrorist financing. As indicated above, the FATF initially responded to 9/11 with eight special recommendations on terrorist financing. With these standards now agreed upon, multilateral efforts should be focused on implementation and measures of effectiveness, including ways to improve implementation of sanctions.14 The international community must also work to regulate international charities and to control money laundering through diamonds, precious metals, and stones.15
Hearts,Minds, and Wallets. The
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most troubling aspect of the campaign against terrorist financing is the extent to which it appears to have been undermined by the broader failure of the socalled “hearts and minds” campaign. As described above, the counterterrorism community as a whole has made great strides to incorporate measures to identify and interdict the flow of funds to terrorists. And tactical success against key sources of financial support—whether they are killed, captured, sanctioned, or sometimes simply publicly exposed— apparently has the salutary effect of
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States.18 In a troubling reversal, not only Arabs but also increasingly Muslims view the United States with unprecedented hostility.19 In public, Bush administra-
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jihad” against the United States, U.S. demagoguery—labeling even violence against military targets in Iraq as “terrorism”—undermines its moral authority
As a result of certain U.S. policies, radical
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jihadists will continue to garner financial support.
and threatens to erode international support for the U.S. counterterrorism agenda more broadly. Perhaps most troubling is the simple fact that the government still has neither standardized metrics nor hard information to determine whether the United States is winning or losing the vaguely defined war on terrorism.26 Defense Secretary Rumsfeld articulated the still unanswered questions directly in an 16 October 2003 memorandum:
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tion spokespersons have either ignored this trend or discounted it as insignificant.20 But career military, intelligence, and counterterrorism officials overwhelmingly agree that the hostility toward the United States is alarming.21 To the extent that particular U.S. policies—including the war in Iraq and unqualified American support for Israel—inflame anger and resentment, radical Islamist mujahadeen will continue to garner financial and physical support. Recent reports suggest that intelligence agencies have detected outside Islamist financial support for the Iraqi insurgency.22 In early October 2004, moreover, the “First Arab, Islamic Congress” convened over 500 Islamists in Berlin to form “a unified response” to the American presence in Iraq and to Israel’s existence.23 In Jordan, Islamist activists associated with a relatively moderate branch of the Muslim Brotherhood have intensified their rhetoric denouncing the Jordanian government, the United States, and Israel.24 This is a potentially alarming bellwether because the secretive Muslim Brotherhood constitutes a worldwide economic cadre with significant resources that, if further radicalized, can apply those resources to support terrorist groups.25 As post-invasion Iraq has become a focus of the “international
Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us? Does the U.S. need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists?27
The latter question should not have to be asked; the debate over the contours of such a plan, however, should raise fundamental questions about the direction of U.S. foreign policy.
Conclusion. The still nascent cam-
paign against terrorist financing has demonstrated enough success to justify expanded, deepened, and institutionalized deployment of financial investigaWinter/Spring 2005 [ 3 9 ]
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effective risk assessment and detection procedures. Finally and most importantly, the U.S. government urgently needs to develop meaningful metrics for the war on terrorism generally and for the campaign against terrorist financing in particular. Any rational measures of successes would need to gauge U.S. effectiveness in urging Arabs and Muslims to reject Islamist extremist violence. Specific terrorist financing metrics should take into account the lessons documented in the 9/11 Monograph, as well as the impact anti-U.S. sentiment in the Muslim world has had on fundraising for Islamist terrorist groups. With meaningful metrics in place, the limited resources available for the “financial war on terrorism” should be integrated into the overall counterterrorism effort and arrayed under a formal strategic plan, every aspect of which should be designed to contribute to achieving those metrics. This effort to counter terrorist financing is a crucial element in the battle against Islamist terror, and its success or failure may itself be an important metric in the overall counterterrorism effort. But the battle against terrorist financing cannot be won while losing the war on terror. The two are inextricably linked, and the so far remarkably counterproductive U.S. performance in the latter is not an especially good omen for the former.
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tions in support of the counterterrorism effort. Unfortunately, there are more significant financial trails to follow than there are investigators to follow them. As resources expand, they should be applied to priority matters, including financial networks that support the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Efforts to sanction al-Qaeda supporters have exposed limitations in the ability of the international community to apply sanctions on a multilateral basis against non-state actors. These limitations should be addressed through a combination of means, including the implementation of newly standardized international practices, as well as through continued unilateral steps to expose terrorist fundraising mechanisms publicly. Legislative and regulatory tools to increase transparency and tighten controls over illicit financial flows are long overdue, but they will still take time to implement. The Treasury Department should consider responding to the financial industry’s calls for guidance on detecting terrorist financing in part by admitting what the 9/11 Commission has already stated plainly: the real enemy is not the tactic of terrorism per se, but rather the threat posed by Islamist terrorism.28 Such a step would risk some backlash in the Islamic community, but it might provide financial institutions the cover they need to implement more
NOTES
1 The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Authorized Edition (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2004); Monograph on Terrorist Financing, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Staff Report to the Commission (9/11 Monograph). 2 9/11 Monograph, 4. 3 United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373, 28 Sept. 2001, Internet, http://www.un.org/docs/scres/2001/sc2001.htm; Resolution 1390, 16 Jan. 2002, Internet,
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http://www.un.org/docs/scres/2002/sc2002.htm. 4 9/11 Monograph, 48. 5 See cases compiled in Testimony of Gary M. Bald, Acting Assistant Director of FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, Before the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, 4 March 2004; Statement of Gary M. Bald Before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 5 May 2004; and FBI Report to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States: The FBI’s Counterterrorism Program Since September 2001, 14 April 2004.
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tion systems generally upgraded, then 314 requests could become a powerful tool for tracking potential terrorists in the United States. 14 See Statement of Joseph M. Myers, Before the United States Senate Committee on Finance, 19 May 2004. 15 See Testimony of Jonathan M. Winer, Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, 19 May 2004. See Douglas Farah, Blood from Stones: The Secret Financial Network of Terror (New York: Broadway Books, 2004). 16 Michael Scott Doran, “The Saudi Paradox,” Foreign Affairs (January/February 2004): 35-51. 17 See, for example, “Statement Regarding Saudi Education System,” Press Release by the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, 4 February 2004, reprinted in “Public Statements by Senior Saudi Officials Condemning Extremism and Promoting Moderation,” September 2004, Internet, http://www.saudiembassy.net, 26; News Conference with Adel Al-Jubeir, Advisor to the Saudi Crown Prince, 12 June 2003, Embassy of Saudi Arabia, Washington, DC; Initiatives and Actions Taken by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to Combat Terrorism, September 2004, 11. 18 See for example Fouad Ajami, “The Uneasy Imperium: Pax Americana in the Middle East,” in How Did This Happen? Terrorism and the New War, eds. James F. Hoge, Jr. and Gideon Rose (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), 15-30. 19 See Zbigniew Brzezinski, “America’s Policy Blunders Were Compounded by Britain,” The Financial Times, 6 August 2004, citing polls by Shibley Telhami. 20 See for example Barton Gellman and Dafna Lizner, “Afghanistan, Iraq: Two Wars Collide,” The Washington Post, 22 October 2004. 21 Ibid., A-14. 22 See Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanke, “Estimates by U.S. See More Rebels with More Funds,” The New York Times, 22 October 2004. 23 See Matthew Schofield, “Islamists will met to respond to ‘American Zionist terror’,” Knight Ridder Newspapers, 14 September 2004. 24 Scott Wilson, “Jordan Acts to Curb a Rising Chorus of Critics,” The Washington Post, 30 September 2004. 25 See John Mintz and Douglas Farah, “In Search of Friends Among the Foes,” The Washington Post, 11 September 2004. 26 See Josh Meyer, “Measuring Progress in Terror War No Sure Thing,” The Los Angeles Times, reprinted by the SITE Institute, 29 October 2004. 27 See Donald Rumsfeld Memorandum to Gen. Dick Myers, et al., “Global War on Terrorism,” 16 October 2003, Internet, http://www.usatoday.com/ news/washington/executive/rumsfeld-memo.htm. 28 9/11 Report, 362.
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6 Testimony of Gary M. Bald, Acting Assistant Director Counterterrorism Division, FBI, Before the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, 4 March 2004. 7 Testimony of Stuart A. Levey, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Before the Senate Committee on Banking and Urban Affairs, 29 Sept. 2004, Internet, http://www.treas. gov/press/releases/js1965.htm. 8 9/11 Commission Report, 382. 9 See FATF Special Recommendations on Terrorist Financing, Interpretive Note and International Best Practices for Implementing Special Recommendation III, Internet, http://www.oecd.org/ fatf/SrecsTF_en.htm. 10 See generally United States Senate, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Committee on Governmental Affairs, Money Laundering and Foreign Corruption: Enforcement and Effectiveness of the Patriot Act–Case Study Involving Riggs Bank, Prepared by the Minority Staff and Released in Conjunction with the Permanent Subcommittee’s Hearing, 15 July 2004. See also Testimony of John D. Hawke, Jr., Comptroller of the Currency, Before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, of the United States Senate, 3 June 2004, Internet, http://www.occ.treas. gov/ftp/release/2004-43b.pdf. 11 See Department of the Treasury Press Release, “Treasury Announces MOU to Strengthen BSA Compliance”, 1 October 2004, Internet, www.treas.gov/press/releases/js1973.htm. See Bank Secrecy Act enforcement actions, Internet, http://www.fincen.gov/reg_enforcement.html. 12 See Testimony of Stuart A. Levey, Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Before the Senate Committee on Banking and Urban Affairs, 29 September 2004, citing FinCEN Director Bill Fox, Internet, http://treas.gov/press/releases/js1965.htm. 13 See 9/11 Monograph, 59-60; Section 314(a) of the USA PATRIOT Act and regulations issued by Treasury pursuant to that section, provide a mechanism for law enforcement agencies to broadcast confidential queries to the U.S. financial sector to find out whether any institutions might have information concerning particular individuals or entities in connection with terrorism or money laundering investigations. Institutions are obliged to follow certain procedures in responding to the requests and to indicate whether or not they have responsive information. See 31 C.F.R. §103.100. Despite regulations to prevent disclosure of such requests, however, some 314 requests have been leaked to the media, and as a result the FBI now conducts a risk-benefit analysis before making such requests. If this problem could be resolved and financial institutions’ internal automa-
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Crime Goes Global
Ancient Evil, Modern Face The Fight Against Human Trafficking
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Terry Coonan and Robin Thompson
Terry Coonan is Executive Director of the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights at Florida State University. Robin Thompson is an attorney and consultant based in Tallahassee, Florida.
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Among the evils that will compel the attention of the international community in the twenty-first century, human trafficking will rank as one of the most ubiquitous. Human trafficking, a new term for the ancient scourge of slavery, poses one of the most formidable challenges to global hopes for equality and human rights in the new millennium. Efforts have been underway for almost two decades to turn the tide against modern enslavers. Such efforts, however, have been uneven and have revealed startling gaps in the ranks of those who oppose this illicit trade. In order to curtail human trafficking, both the United States and the international community must redouble their current efforts, and in so doing, should take further advantage of the established infrastructure of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) worldwide. Even more fundamentally, the law enforcement paradigm that to date has characterized international efforts to counter trafficking must evolve into a model better grounded in human rights considerations.
A Growing Problem. Porous borders and the free-market demand for cheap labor sustain a shadow slave industry that annually yields an estimated $9 billion in profits. The global human trafficking industry operates on a simple
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ries of this geopolitical change were human smugglers, who exploited the newfound mobility of the world’s poor who were desperate to leave countries where economic opportunities were increasingly scarce. The allure of jobs in the developed world—and the necessity of crossing borders to secure such work— led to a proliferation of human trafficking in the 1990s. NGOs around the world, particularly human rights and immigrant advocacy groups, rallied to oppose this growing exploitation. Groups such as the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, the International Human Rights Law Group, the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women and ECPAT International (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) played a prominent role. Of prime concern to them was the commercial sexual exploitation of women and children that the international trafficking industry both engendered and perpetuated. However, this loose alliance of NGOs had meager resources in comparison to the deep-pocketed multinational criminal syndicates they sought to combat.
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premise: as poverty has increased worldwide, desperate immigrants seek economic opportunities beyond their national borders. As legal immigration has likewise been restricted in recent decades, the world’s poor—with an increasingly feminine face—are left with no recourse but to depend on smugglers and human traffickers to negotiate borders and locate work far from home. Such dependence leads to the virtual enslavement of an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 immigrants annually, who are trafficked worldwide across international borders.1 Trafficking is a clandestine industry, and the illegal status of many of its victims forces them into silence. While many trafficking schemes are “mom-and-pop” operations, trafficking is rapidly becoming the preferred business for international criminal syndicates. Mafias thrive in countries where law enforcement is weak or in regions where transnational law enforcement cooperation is lacking. Human trafficking is now second only to drug trafficking in the portfolio of international organized crime. Moreover, the exploitation of trafficking victims in brothels, sweatshops, and fields around the world knows no geographic limitations. This problem is not confined to the developing world, and it is, in fact, the labor intensive needs of developed nations that fuel the trafficking industry. The United States is no exception; an estimated 15,000 to 18,000 persons are trafficked into the United States every year for forced labor.2
Legal Efforts on the International Front. Mindful that
human trafficking was increasing exponentially, the international legal community mobilized in the 1990s to meet this post-Cold War threat. Approaching the crisis primarily as a law enforcement and migration issue, the UN began drafting what would eventually become NGOs Sound the Alarm. the UN Convention Against Following the demise of communism in Transnational Organized Crime (the 1989, international borders that once Convention). Opened for signatures in separated the East and the West became 2000, the Convention garnered rapid much easier to cross. Prime beneficia- support and entered into force on 29 [ 4 4 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
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ficking. Equally important, the treaty establishes a uniform international definition of human trafficking that identifies three requisite elements of the offense: (1) the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons; (2) by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, abduc-
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September 2003, once forty countries had ratified it.3 The process by which the Convention evolved is significant. Historically the world’s NGOs have been most at home lobbying and working with the human rights organs of the UN. But the Convention evolved through a very dif-
Crime Goes Global
Porous borders and the free market
demand for cheap labor sustain a shadow slave industry that annually yields an estimated $9 billion in profits.
tion, fraud, deception, abuse of power or position of vulnerability, giving or receiving payments or benefits to achieve consent of a person having control over another; (3) for the purpose of exploitation (including, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others, or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude, or the removal of organs). The definition requires that all three elements be met, though the “means” requirement, the second component, need not be met in cases involving children. Consistent with its parent document, the Trafficking Protocol limits its purview to cases involving organized criminal syndicates. It is a credit to the international legal community that both the Convention and the Protocol have entered into force in less than three years. Establishing a consensus under international law that human trafficking must be criminalized remains the vital legacy of these international accords. An important international precedent was
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ferent component of the UN; it took root in its crime prevention regime. This was a new area of engagement for NGOs, and it foreshadowed a trend that has since emerged with remarkable consistency around the world. If human trafficking is to be countered effectively, human rights groups and law enforcement must work closely with one another—a partnership that is not without tensions. Early in the drafting process, the UN decided that separate protocols should address human trafficking and migrant smuggling. NGO consultations came to focus not on the main treaty body of the Convention but rather on an additional treaty that emerged as the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (the Protocol).4 Like its parent convention, the Protocol adopts a law enforcement rather than human rights paradigm. The Protocol entered into force on 29 December 2003, and its great success lies in its basic requirement that signatories to the Protocol criminalize and prosecute traf-
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number of high profile and remarkably brutal human trafficking operations across America. Public and congressional outrage over these cases, fueled by extensive lobbying efforts on the part of human rights NGOs, led to the implementation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA).5 The law has proved groundbreaking in numerous respects. It provides a comprehensive approach to combating trafficking, based broadly on what are termed “the three Ps”— prosecutorial enhancements, prevention efforts, and protection measures for trafficking victims. Prior to the TVPA, criminal sanctions were lower for trafficking humans than for trafficking drugs or arms. The TVPA rectified this legal lacuna, raising sentences from ten to twenty years, and permitting life sentences for cases involving the death, kidnapping, or sexual abuse of a victim. The TVPA also created a U.S. definition of “severe forms of trafficking,” which conforms in large part to that established by the UN Trafficking Protocol: (1) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the victim is under eighteen years of age; or (2) forced labor (the recruitment, harboring, provision, or obtaining of a person; for labor or services) through force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of The U.S. Legal Response. The involuntary servitude, peonage, debt U.S. response to human trafficking both bondage, or slavery. The final prosecutorial enhancement meets and exceeds the minimum threshold established under international law. of the TVPA is a provision that allows Much to the shock of the public and U.S. findings not merely of physical force but law enforcement officials, the 1990s pro- also of fraud and psychological coercion vided ample evidence that the United to sustain human trafficking charges.6 States was not immune to the growing As part of a broad-based prevention scourge of human trafficking. The campaign, the United States allocates decade witnessed the exposure of a over $70 million annually for supporting
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likewise achieved in the Protocol’s explicit and repeated reference to trafficked persons as “victims.” This stands in marked contrast to its sister Protocol on Smuggling that refers merely to “migrants.” Critics note that the Protocol focuses on law enforcement to the detriment of victim protection. Countries that ratify the Protocol are required to criminalize human trafficking, but are enjoined only to consider implementing protective measures for victims. NGOs and victim advocates decry the discretionary nature of victim protection in the Protocol and the fact that nations embrace little in the way of hard obligations when they ratify either the Convention or the Protocol. It must be recognized, however, that migration and security issues—concern over border controls, in particular—were the compelling priorities that drove nations to ratify these instruments. Broad international consensus could necessarily only be achieved by setting the bar relatively low in terms of required compliance. The ultimate objective of the Protocol is to promote international cooperation in preventing and combating trafficking in persons. Having established a consensus on this basic imperative, the details of both prosecution and victim protection are left to individual states to legislate.
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explain how victims can receive protections under the law; and NGOs’ direct services protect victims and allow them to heal. Since 2000, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has awarded more than $8 million in grants to organizations that provide services to victims of human trafficking. NGOs working in the domestic violence field are natural partners in the U.S. campaign to identify and care for victims of trafficking. The services they offer include temporary housing and legal assistance as well as counseling and children’s programming. The Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence (FCADV) received one of the HHS grants and undertook to build capacity among Florida’s forty domestic violence
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anti-tafficking programs abroad. The State Department also created a new “Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons,” which is tasked with assessing anti-trafficking efforts worldwide on a country-by-country basis. The office submits its findings annually to Congress in a Trafficking in Persons Report. In perhaps the greatest departure from the UN Trafficking Protocol, the TVPA also creates unprecedented new legal remedies and protective measures for victims of trafficking. Most significantly, the TVPA “reclassifies” their legal status, viewing them as victims of crime more so than as illegal aliens. Victims who cooperate in the prosecution of their traffickers are eligible for immigration reme-
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required to criminalize human trafficking, but are enjoined only to consider implementing protective measures for victims.
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dies, including a newly available “T” trafficking visa. Those who ultimately receive government certification as “victims of a severe form of human trafficking” may receive the same social services and medical benefits as are accorded refugees.
NGOs Implement the TVPA. Non-governmental organizations in the United States have proved essential to the “three P’s” of prosecution, prevention and protection in the TVPA. NGOs can help assure victims’ readiness and ability to be good witnesses for the prosecution; NGO community outreach can relay a strong prevention message as well as
programs to assist victims of trafficking. This grant, now in its third year, is the only one of its kind in the nation, although the premise of the project is hardly unique. That is, it seeks to build upon the experiences of advocates who already assist victims of violence, conduct community outreach, lead public awareness campaigns, and who have created and sustain community networks. Professionals working to meet the needs of domestic violence victims are likewise uniquely situated to meet the needs of trafficking victims. Domestic violence programs such as those operating under the auspices of FCADV are Winter/Spring 2005 [ 4 7 ]
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responses.” In these, officials from the justice system such as judges, prosecutors, defense counsel, police, probation; social services offering child protection, domestic violence shelters, health care/public health, welfare; and assorted others meet regularly to strategize about how best to combat intimate partner violence. This collaborative communitybased model is readily applicable to fighting human trafficking. The FCADV anti-trafficking project is but one of many funded by the U.S. government. While these funding efforts focus on U.S.-based NGOs, it is rare—if not impossible—to find a program that does not have established international linkages. For example, the Freedom Network USA: To Empower Trafficked and Enslaved Persons is an association of sixteen NGOs. The mission of this advocacy organization centers on victim service provision, public awareness, international and national advocacy on behalf of trafficked persons, and working to establish local, national and internation-
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oriented to address key needs that both victims of trafficking and domestic violence victims face, including crisis response, safety planning, understanding the life-and-death implications of confidentiality, health care, and the many other needs facing victims. It makes sense that domestic violence shelters are looked to for human trafficking service provision. In fact, in one of the most notorious human trafficking cases in Florida, more than a dozen survivors were housed together at a local domestic violence shelter for more than a year pending the federal trafficking prosecution. The fact that domestic violence programs are well established in many places and have linkages throughout communities is another reason that they are natural allies in service provision to victims of trafficking. Many domestic violence programs already house and assist immigrant women who are victims of servile marriage or who are trafficked into prostitution and come for services after they are battered. As such, the HHS recently
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international efforts must be redoubled, and critical gaps in both anti-trafficking laws and victim service provision must be addressed. announced that the national domestic violence hotline will be linked with the national anti-trafficking hotline. Public awareness and community organizing efforts of the domestic violence movement can further inform anti-human trafficking campaigns. For instance, domestic violence advocates have formed “coordinated community [ 4 8 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
al linkages to help carry out their goals. Vital Voices Global Partnership has helped to foster anti-trafficking efforts worldwide, by enhancing women’s capacities to fight trafficking in their own countries and raising awareness about trafficking as a human rights violation. These programs, and many more, are integral to the U.S.-based response to
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human trafficking as a national and international human rights violation. In addition to U.S.-based and funded NGO efforts, the U.S. Department of State awarded grants to over 200 NGOs
Crime Goes Global
al efforts must be redoubled, and critical gaps in both anti-trafficking laws and victim service provision must be addressed. Legally, the parameters of the trafficking debate must be clarified, and certain
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There needs to be greater recognition that
men are also victims of human trafficking, especially in restaurants, sweatshops, and field labor.
erroneous arguments refuted. There are some who suggest that legalizing prostitution would reduce human trafficking and better honor the right of women to use their bodies for commercial benefit if they so choose. Such an argument is unfounded; there is no empirical evidence to suggest that legalizing prostitution reduces human trafficking. In fact, just the opposite appears to be true. Where prostitution is legal and state-regulated, black market prostitution with lower costs also flourishes, and the amount of trafficking increases. Conversely, some advocates make the mistake of equating all forms of prostitution with human trafficking. These are separate though not unrelated issues. There is a vital difference between prostitution and forced prostitution, or sex trafficking. Legally, consent still remains a bright line in the sand, and the law has The Road Forward—Gaps That always appropriately recognized that perMust Be Closed. While much has sons at times choose to engage in prostibeen accomplished in the global anti-traf- tution. The TVPA has it correct; prostificking campaign, much remains unfin- tution, when it is induced by force, ished. In fact, notwithstanding interna- fraud, or coercion, negates consent and tional efforts to date, human trafficking only then becomes sex trafficking. In general, governments and NGOs continues to increase worldwide. If the tide is to be turned, U.S. and internation- dedicated to eliminating human traffick-
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in 2003 to address human trafficking in their own countries. These grants cover a wide range of programming organized under the goals of prevention, protection, and prosecution. Several specifically target gender-based violence and helping victims of domestic violence, and many focus on children and anti-trafficking educational efforts.7 One example of international NGO collaboration, not funded by the United States or under the TVPA, is the European network called Women Against Violence Europe (WAVE), an alliance of over 1000 European women’s NGOs working to combat violence against women and children.8 At their October 2004 meeting in Vienna, WAVE representatives conferred on a wide variety of topics including the growing need to coordinate their antitrafficking efforts.
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crisis centers, to farm worker rights groups—that are already working with populations that include trafficked persons. The international community should support the capacity of these organizations to understand human trafficking and provide them with technical assistance to link with one another and with existing anti-trafficking NGOs. Governmental funding for NGOs engaged in the campaign to eliminate human trafficking will remain absolutely vital in the new century. What is more, states should form local alliances and chart programs for action. “Florida Responds to Human Trafficking,” a publication of Florida State University’s Center for the Advancement of Human Rights, lists sixty recommendations for individuals and organizations to take to address human trafficking.10 These recommendations are directed toward businesses, the media, law enforcement, child protection, non-profit/non-governmental organizations, and many others. This kind of targeted, organized effort can help to advance awareness of human trafficking and promote forward actions to address and end it. At its most fundamental level, the anti–trafficking movement, especially as regards governments, must now embrace a paradigm shift that moves from prioritizing law enforcement concerns to one that focuses on the human rights of trafficking victims. For a start, current laws such as the TVPA should not be confused for human rights law. Because it restricts eligibility for benefits and legal status to victims willing to collaborate in prosecutions, the TVPA is clearly not concerned first and foremost with victim protection. Until victims are provided protection and services for simple
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ing must not allow their efforts to devolve into the debate of whether prostitution should be legalized or not. This debate has inflamed governmental and non-governmental discussions in recent years, becoming a wedge issue that has polarized the larger anti-trafficking efforts of the international community. Allowing this debate to dominate the discussion risks losing sight of the fact that sex trafficking is but one dimension of the human trafficking industry. In their well-intentioned efforts to combat the sexual exploitation of women and children, some governments and advocates have fixated on sex trafficking, to the detriment of efforts targeting wider and more pervasive forms of non-sexual forced labor that abound globally. While sex trafficking is more sensationalist and appealing to the media, the anti-trafficking movement must recall that its battle is ultimately one of eradicating all forms of forced labor. In this vein, there needs to be greater recognition that men are also victims of human trafficking, especially in restaurants, sweatshops, and field labor.9 For its part, U.S. law evidences a potentially problematic focus on sex trafficking. Whereas the sex trafficking of minors does not require demonstrating that force, fraud, or coercion have been used to exploit a child, labor trafficking of minors still requires such a burden of proof under the current code. If this discrepancy implies that sex trafficking of minors is inherently worse than labor trafficking, it should be critically re-examined. At a practical level, more must be done to build the capacity of human rights and anti-domestic violence NGOs to understand trafficking and assist victims of trafficking. There are many programs— from child protection services, to rape [ 5 0 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
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victims—another explanation lies in the simple fact that trafficking victims may, correctly, perceive that the government’s interest in their well-being extends only as far as the value of their testimony in court proceedings. Ultimately, the TVPA and the UN Protocol on Trafficking have achieved a modicum of success as vehicles of law enforcement. While a step in the right direction, these achievements are only half-victories. Until law enforcement mechanisms are complemented by laws enacted through a more robust human rights paradigm, the challenge of combating human trafficking will remain.
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humanitarian reasons, laws like the TVPA will remain open to the criticism that they use trafficking victims in order to secure the criminal convictions of their traffickers. The U.S. government remains baffled by the fact that only slightly more than 500 victims have come forward to be officially certified to date, given that 15,000 to 18,000 victims are believed to be brought into the country annually. While a number of reasons may account for this discrepancy—the fear instilled in victims by their traffickers, distrust of government that immigrants bring with them, or the linguistic and physical isolation of many
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of work or marriage to victims to induce them to immigrate. Coercion refers to psychological coercion as distinct from actual physical force. Examples would be threats against a victim's family in his or her homeland, threats that the victim will be turned over by the traffickers to immigration officials to face deportation, or traffickers withholding a victim's passport or identity documents. 7 Internet, http://www.state.gov. 8 Internet, http://www.wave-network.org/Main_ frame.html. 9 Free the Slaves & Human Rights Center, University of California, Berkeley, Hidden Slaves: Forced Labor in the United States (2004). 10 Florida State University Center for the Advancement of Human Rights, “Florida Responds to Human Trafficking,” Fall 2003. Available at http://www.cahr.fsu.edu.
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1 U.S. State Department, Trafficking in Persons Report (June 2004): 6. 2 Ibid., 23. 3 United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, opened for signature 12 Dec. 2000, U.N. GAOR , 55th Sess., Annex 1, Agenda Item 105, at 25, UN Doc. A/55/383 (2000). 4 Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, UN Doc. A/55/383, Annex II (2000). 5 Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, Pub. L. No. 106-386, 114 Stat. 1464. (VTVPA). Division A of the VTVPA is further termed “The Trafficking Victim Protection Act of 2000” (TVPA). 6 Examples of fraud would include false promises
Winter/Spring 2005 [ 5 1 ]
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Conflict&Security Transforming U.S. Espionage A Contrarian’s Approach
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Jennifer Sims
Jennifer Sims is Visiting Professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence Coordination and the Department of State's first Coordinator for Intelligence Resources and Planning.
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Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, national security experts have tried to identify the causes of U.S. intelligence failures and propose structural reforms to remedy them. Yet in designing proposals for reform, experts have overlooked a contradiction with important implications for intelligence. On the one hand, academic and government-sponsored research has substantiated a disturbing trend of which the growing terrorist threat is just one part—the rise of hostile networks, net-centric warfare, and “smart mobs” empowered by modern personalized communications and the Internet.1 The prescription: de-emphasize central authority and empower lower levels of decision making because, according to this view, “it takes networks to fight networks.”2 On the other hand, the 9/11 Commission, which substantiated the failures of U.S. government bureaucracies before the attacks, has noted the dangers of uncoordinated decision making at lower levels. The prescription: bureaucratic reforms that call for new authorities and centralized command at the highest levels of Washington’s intelligence establishment.”3 In other words, looking at what went wrong on 9/11, we have a near consensus that the United States needs a more powerful manager at the top of a more centralized intelligence community.4 But, looking at the future of warfare, communications,
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The Conventional Wisdom on Espionage. Expert observers generally
hold to three “truths” about human intelligence: it is the most important mode of intelligence collection against transnational networks such as al-Qaeda, especially when married to timely law enforcement information; reconstituting American capabilities in this area will take at least five years; and, in the meantime, gaps in espionage capabilities can be filled through foreign intelligence liaison. Insiders quietly discuss a fourth “truth”: spies posing as diplomats will no longer be effective in the new “war” against terrorism and its allies in international organized crime. Whereas all four assertions contain kernels of truth, they also involve dangerous misperceptions. For example, foreign intelligence liaison provides intelligence with a catch; allies often want to help, but they have their own agendas, including influencing U.S. decisions and keeping terrorists from turning on them or crossing their own borders. Intelligence liaison demands superb counterintelligence capabilities or it risks distorting operations and misleading decision makers. Witness the results of “liaising” with Iraqi dissidents prior to the Iraq war—significant overestimation of the WMD threat. Unfortunately, counterintelligence is hardly U.S. intelligence’s strongest suit. While there are gains to be had from liaison, there is, perhaps, no way for it to fill near-term gaps in unilateral human intelligence capabilities. If this is true, and considering the likely time it will take to rebuild U.S. HUMINT, is there no other collector that can accomplish HUMINT’s counterterrorist mission in the short term? Probably not. Espionage against terror-
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and interstate competition, we also have a near consensus that decentralized authority and the ability to rapidly build and disassemble teams for field operations against a networked adversary is most essential.5 This contradiction in analysis and prescription is less interesting on its merits than it is for illustrative use in classroom discussions of the public policy process. It is, after all, far harder to legislate better intelligence policies and practices than it is to centralize and augment bureaucratic power in the hopes that someone with “real authority” at the top can do so. Academics, free from policy responsibilities, too frequently offer creative prescriptions that lack roadmaps for implementing them.6 This article bridges this gap by focusing less on structures than on the policies and practices of intelligence—the “how–to’s” of getting the job done. It will also focus on one of the most important domains of intelligence— human intelligence (HUMINT) or espionage, widely regarded to be under-powered as a result of years of budget cuts.7 Of course, such an approach does not mean that governmental structures are irrelevant to success. It does mean that, if one goes to the meat of the matter and asks intelligence professionals what capabilities U.S. intelligence needs that it does not have now, the first answer will not likely be a new office in Washington. Instead, it will be to provide them with the policies and practices necessary for intelligence to succeed in the twenty-first century. If we begin with this issue of necessary capabilities and attendant constraints, it may be possible to suggest reforms that follow function and to satisfy perhaps the greatest deficiency the 9/11 Commission identified: a lack of imagination, practically employed. [ 5 4 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
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signals and imagery satellites have so far withstood premature pronouncements of their demise or, at least, obsolescence. In fact, methods of denial and deception currently employed by foreign governments to “harden targets” are as rigorous as they are in part because sophisticated U.S. technical systems have driven adversaries seeking to avoid technical collectors deeper underground and into the
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ists is indeed crucial. Human intelligence has the capacity to establish relationships of influence, expose an adversary’s plans, and thus provide strategic warning of attack. But concluding that HUMINT is essential does not mean that it is the sole answer to the collection problem against terrorism. In fact, the best collection against any target is synergistic, employing various sensors and
Conflict & Security
U.S. technical systems have driven
adversaries deeper underground and into the dark.
dark. The United States has responded, and continues to respond, by carefully nurturing its technical research and development, adding to the capabilities of collectors to look where they previously could not see. If well done, such innovation forces the adversary to hide where the U.S. government wants him to—that is, where he thinks he is safe but is not. This is a standard, iterative process similar to caging a king in the game of chess. Just as in chess, one does not willingly give up any of the pieces controlling spaces on the game board.8 Besides, for all the importance of the transnational actor on the international stage, the policies of foreign governments—some as hostile as North Korea and some as enigmatic as Pakistan—will still be a first-order concern to U.S. policymakers. Both close-access and stand-off capabilities to collect against them will be required. Clandestine HUMINT cannot be expected to do the job alone or without its classic mode of access to foreign government decision making—official cover.
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platforms in a combined effort. And synergy is becoming more, not less, important. The network and Internet capabilities of the adversary require that human agents employ technology in ways they never have before. As one expert has noted in a powerful paper on the subject, document stealing is out, computer rip-offs are in. The issue is thus not just rebuilding past HUMINT capabilities, it is creating new collaborative relationships between technical sensors and human “platforms” capable of providing those sensors with access to their elusive targets and of processing the results in real time. Through such synergies, HUMINT could go beyond rebuilding to exponentially improving its capabilities against certain targets—possibly in less than five years. However, such progress will not occur if clandestine HUMINT is asked to work targets for which it is unsuited and illequipped because other collectors, such as traditional signals and imagery intelligence systems, have been allowed to atrophy. Agencies responsible for employing
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Espionage for the Future. The succeeded in providing tactical warn-
ing of Axis intentions at the outbreak of the Second World War. Interestingly, both Sorge’s and Burton’s morals were anathema to their respective employers; their sexual exploits in particular apparently alienated them from their sponsors. But there is an especially interesting side lesson involved in a review of Trepper’s operation, known by its codename, Red Orchestra. Whereas Burton and Sorge were penetration agents, Trepper ran a network of cells. Referred to as “The Conductor,” Trepper employed the latest technology to maximize his results—small, wireless radios. Although the ease of interception of the cells’ transmissions ultimately resulted in the roll-up of the network, the sophisticated employment of the technology enabled the Red Orchestra’s cell system to function as a network, achieve tactical surprise, and even provide Stalin with accurate, tactical warning of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s surprise attack against the Soviet Union. Hitler achieved surprise largely because Stalin did not believe what his agents were collecting, not because the collection methods failed to produce results. Apart from reminding reformers that intelligence failures can be traced to the users as well as the producers of secrets, the example of the Red Orchestra suggests something more: that the United States should integrate the latest innovations in private sector technologies, such as small, encrypted and digitalized communications, data handling and inferencing engines, and robotics, to aid the cover, mobility, and situational awareness of any new class of roving agents the United States might employ.
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foregoing analysis suggests five imperatives for redesigning human intelligence. First, it makes sense to consider new models for human intelligence collection—models that include the use of penetration agents, sleeper cells, and roving clandestine agents. The point is not to use these agents as U.S. adversaries do, to run covert action and sabotage operations, although such capabilities would be implicit. Rather, the principal purpose would be to insinuate them into societies now opaque to U.S. decision makers for the purpose of simple collection against disaffected groups and potential criminal and terrorist groups. Their metric for success would be less reporting on high-priority targets than establishing networks within societies for the purpose of future collection and in anticipation of priorities not yet envisioned by policymakers. Such techniques are not new. Britain employed Captain Sir Richard Burton in its expansion of empire towards the end of the nineteenth century.9 An intelligence agent who spoke seven languages and rarely wrote home, Burton served as a one-man advance team for British interests in India, the Middle East, and North Africa over the course of several decades of bold and risky travel. Similarly, and only slightly less grandly, Stalin employed Leopold Trepper and Richard Sorge as roving agents in Europe and Asia, setting up networks for collection against Nazi Germany and Japan well before the Second World War.10 Eventually, Trepper’s and Sorge’s reporting put the lie to those in the United States who claimed the Japanese emperor’s inner circle and the Nazi SS could not be penetrated by human agents. Both [ 5 6 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
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tion of intelligence operations out of the White House and, specifically, out of the National Security Council. While no one would argue that backstopped coordination is unimportant, the U.S. government can no longer afford a top-down approach to the management of field-based intelligence operations. Instead, chiefs of station and ambassadors, who are statutorily responsible for all U.S. government activities overseas and directly accountable to the president, should have their authorities reinforced and reinvigorated. In doing so, new authorities may be required to enhance their ability to coordinate activities in collaboration with the relevant regional military commander. Given the
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A second recommendation worth considering also comes from the past, and concerns the use of covert HUMINT. During the First World War, the British developed a network of spies called the White Lady that openly and accurately collected information on German railway traffic in northern Europe.11 That their collection was conducted overtly against unclassified targets while their sponsorship was secret made the network covert rather than clandestine. The new importance of open sources to the tracking of U.S. adversaries and the ease of networking offered by the Internet revolution suggest that the British model, a kind of neighborhood watch, might have relevance today.
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The U.S. government can no longer
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afford a top-down approach to the management of field-based intelligence operations.
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Lastly, and probably most importantly, the analysis above suggests that synergy in U.S. field operations is crucial. If it is true that technical and human sensors need to work flexibly and interactively with stand-off collection capabilities, then the ability to coordinate fast-moving intelligence operations on the ground is essential. It will also be risky. Responsibility for such coordination in any given country has traditionally been ascribed to the CIA chief of station. He or she has always been directly accountable to the director of central intelligence and the relevant bilateral ambassador for the coordination of all intelligence operations in country. Over time, however, this role has been eclipsed by Washington’s preference for coordina-
nature of the war on terror, a war that is conducted more within societies than on a classic battlefield, delays in implementing this recommendation will have a direct impact on the U.S. capacity to win. The corollary is, of course, the need to strengthen the role of embassies in general and ambassadors in particular. If the earlier analysis of HUMINT is correct, the serious decline in the ranks of the Foreign Service and its funds for field reporting is an intelligence disaster. It is a disaster as yet unrecognized by analysts who approach intelligence reform with deeper understanding of budget programs and line charts than intelligence functions and methods. Of course, added funding for embassies and revitalized authorities for Winter/Spring 2005 [ 5 7 ]
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illustrate the problem. If, as now seems likely, the U.S. intelligence community is topped by a new national intelligence director (NID), what will be that director’s relationship with the directorate of operations’ chiefs of station (COS) overseas? Having each COS report to the NID on community-wide collection and to the director of central intelligence— now head of just the CIA—on human intelligence would complicate the chain of command and thus likely reduce flexibility in the field. However, having the COS report to the CIA director alone would eliminate their standing as the president’s representatives for all intelligence activities overseas and leave ambassadors without effective counterparts. This need for a dual-hatted chief has been the long-standing argument for making the director of central intelligence both an intelligence community chief and the head of clandestine collection and covert action. The president too needs a single, effective counterpart for overseeing intelligence operations. That the authorities for the DCI have been compromised over the years is not necessarily an argument for their bifurcation and transfer to another management level in Washington. Other examples of ways in which structural change can bring unforeseen problems exist, but they cannot all be detailed here. The point remains; regardless of what structure the United States adopts for its intelligence service, transformation Conclusion: The Impact of of capabilities depends on perfecting the Structural Change and Current policies and practices of intelligence Proposals for Reform. The danger against adversaries, many of whom are in proceeding with structural reform of much less bureaucratically encumbered. the U.S. intelligence community before For all the work underway on intelligence correcting policies and practices is that reform, we are off to a late start on such changes may make matters worse. encouraging intelligence “insiders” to Perhaps one example will adequately develop those new capabilities.
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ambassadors and chiefs of station will come with certain costs, some of which will be politically difficult to swallow: a higher professional threshold for political appointees seeking ambassadorial ranks; better training within the Foreign Service and the CIA’s operations directorate concerning each other’s role; and enhanced cross-agency training and teamwork, based on greater discipline within the ranks. The point here will not be to break down institutional cultures but to regain respect for them and to use them to U.S. advantage overseas. It is also useful to point out that there will be another cost of empowering chiefs of station that is less political and more serious. To the extent that law enforcement information is increasingly considered intelligence within the U.S. context, chiefs of station will want and expect control of its dissemination to foreign governments. However, law enforcement officers, rightly interested in prosecuting crimes and liaising with foreign law enforcement entities, will be wary of ceding control over this material to intelligence interests alone. Indeed, there is some risk that the value gained in even partial disassembly of the “wall” between law enforcement and intelligence in this country will lead to a shutting down of information-sharing through law enforcement channels. If this is so, then the U.S. system will suffer serious intelligence losses.
[ 5 8 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
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may not. We may find, in fact, that the cultures that permeate the U.S. intelligence establishment are more strengths than weaknesses, as they guard against myopia and group-think. What the United States may be missing most is not unity within the intelligence community but the kind of collective creativity that might emerge from allowing the insiders to “go large” and redesign their policies and practices. This inside reform can meet “outside” proposals in a collective strategy patiently conceived. This will only happen if a concerted effort is made in Congress to energize the intelligence community and offer it a measure of trust. The new director of central intelligence requires the mandate and the resources to bring effective change. Nowhere is this needed more than in the realm of HUMINT, where business is more art than science.
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Given the importance of intelligence to winning against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, reform of U.S. intelligence institutions should proceed with more caution than haste. The first rule must be to do no harm. The results of the 9/11 Commission merit careful review and comparison with the results of the Commission on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, which should release its report in early 2005. The latter Commission should be allowed to finish its analysis and publish its findings before major institutional changes are made. Second, the new director of central intelligence should be given an opportunity to develop his own recommendations based on careful review by his staff and the insiders who know, in many cases, where their greatest strengths and difficulties lie. Some of the problems may require legislative fixes, while others
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1 See, for example, Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs, The Next Social Revolution (New York: Perseus Publishing, 2002). 2 John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy (Santa Monica, CA: RAND National Defense Research Institute, 2001), 15. 3 The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (New York: WW Norton and Co., 2004). 4 See the latest bipartisan legislation offered in the Senate, the Collins-Lieberman National Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 (S.2845). 5 Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1-22. 6 This divide between policy and academia has been explored in the work of Joseph Lepgold and Miroslav Nincic. See their co-authored book, Beyond the Ivory Tower (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). For an effort that succeeds in being both theoretical and prescriptive in a practical sense, see Bruce
D. Berkowitz and Allan E. Goodman, Best Truth: Intelligence in the Information Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). 7 See John Diamond, “CIA’s Spy Network Thin,” USA Today, 22 September 2004, A(13). 8 I owe this insight, if not the analogy, to Keith Hall, former Director NRO, in a roundtable on intelligence reform 22 June 2004. 9 See Edward Rice, Captain Sir Richard Burton (New York: DaCapro Press, 2001). 10 See Robert Whymant, Stalin’s Spy: Richard Sorge and the Tokyo Espionage Ring (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998); and V.E. Trarant, The Red Orchestra, (New York: Wiley Press, 1996). 11 For more on the White Lady network, see Jeffrey T. Richelson, A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 22-3. Of course the technique was also used by the United States during the Second World War with its system of “port watchers” in the Pacific.
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Conflict & Security
Proliferation Security Initiative: A Piece of the Arms Control Puzzle
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Wade Boese
Wade Boese is Research Director at the Arms Control Association and reports for Arms Control Today.
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Libya’s December 2003 renunciation of its chemical and nuclear weapons programs and the exposure of the A.Q. Khan nuclear black market network two months later rank as the most prominent nonproliferation successes of the last several years. Bush administration officials attributed both developments, in part, to an earlier interdiction of the ship BBC China, steaming toward Libya loaded with nuclear contraband. This seizure occurred as part of the administration’s Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) to intercept shipments of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their components worldwide. With the Bush administration hyping the initiative as one of its leading achievements, PSI soon became the poster child for stopping proliferation. In truth, interdiction is not a novel concept, and the Libyan interception might well have happened without PSI. One State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, explained that the initiative marks a “better way of doing what we have been doing for a long time.”1 PSI, which does not legally empower countries to do anything that they could not have done before, is no panacea for halting proliferation. Shipments will get through, as the mixed success of the United States in the war on drugs suggests. North Korea and Iran, the two countries believed to be closest to barging into the nuclear weapons club,
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world’s most destructive weapons away from our shores and out of the hands of our common enemies.”4 Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom formed the original PSI group with the United States. Over the next year, Canada, Norway, Russia, and Singapore joined, and over forty additional countries voiced their support for the initiative’s mission. PSI participants pledge to interdict shipments of WMD, delivery systems, and related materials at sea, on land, and in the air to states and non-state actors of concern. To enhance their chances of success, PSI participants commit to sharing intelligence and improving cooperation between their militaries and law enforcement agencies. But no participant is ever obliged to act. In addition, there is no special register of goods to intercept, though PSI is meant to reinforce treaties and export control regimes that proscribe or restrict the possession and trade in specific weapons, technologies, and materials. This flexibility reflects the informal structure of PSI, which participating countries describe as “an activity, not an organization.” President Bush’s top arms control official and primary PSI architect, John Bolton, brags frequently about the initiative’s casualness. “It doesn’t have a secretariat; it doesn’t have a headquarters building; it doesn’t rely on mass meetings of diplomats,” he stated on 28 September 2004.5 In this respect PSI is very much the mirror image of its creator, who favors preserving U.S. freedom of action over legally binding obligations. All PSI activities, including interdictions, exercises, intelligence sharing, and war-gaming, are voluntary. More than a dozen high-profile exer-
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have arguably advanced their known or suspected weapons programs far enough that intermittent PSI interdictions would be insufficient to stymie or roll back these two states’ arms efforts. Ending foreign WMD programs and denying terrorists the lethal weapons they seek still require a multi-pronged strategy, of which interdiction is one component.
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December 2002, Spanish naval forces, with American urging, stopped and boarded the So San in the Arabian Sea on its way from North Korea toward the Middle East. Onboard, they discovered fifteen short-range Scud-B ballistic missiles and conventional warheads. Two days later, the United States announced that the ship and its cargo were released and heading for Yemen, the purchaser of the missiles. U.S. government spokesmen explained that no legal basis existed for confiscating the cargo as no international agreement outlawed ballistic missiles.2 Still, the fact that North Korea—a member of President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil”—was able to deliver its lethal wares did not sit well with many administration officials. The So San’s release ironically coincided with the administration’s unveiling of its National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, a document outlining how Washington planned to stem proliferation. Identified as a “critical part” of stemming the spread of ballistic missiles and WMD, interdiction appeared first under the strategy’s counterproliferation pillar.3
PSI Emerges. Not long after the vex-
ing So San incident, President Bush announced on 31 May 2003 that the United States and several of its close allies were banding together to “keep the [ 6 2 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
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Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States from owning nuclear weapons. North Korea, which has enough nuclear material for several bombs, announced its NPT withdrawal in January 2003, but the other treaty statesparties have not recognized the move. The Bush administration has excluded India, Israel, and Pakistan from its PSI watch list, reflecting its general approach to proliferation. In short, the emphasis is on “bad actors” rather than “bad weapons.” Stopping arms and technology flows to specific states takes precedence over policing the behavior and exports of all governments. “The country of origin is obviously important, but destination is much more important,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters on 18 August 2003.
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cises and war-gaming sessions have been held since the initiative’s inception. Their purpose is two-fold: to improve multinational interdiction capabilities and to put on a public show. The aim is to make proliferators think twice about their dealings and take greater pains to hide them, raising their transaction costs and perceived risks. PSI does not formally target any specific states, but participating countries have indicated that Iran and North Korea warrant special attention. Some initial press reports erroneously described PSI as a blockade of North Korea, but government officials from several countries, including the United States, refuted this notion. Nevertheless, North Korea, Iran, and Syria are three known countries in Washington’s PSI bull’s-eye. Bolton also indicated that there are countries outside the realm of PSI. “There are unquestionably states that are not within existing treaty regimes that possess weapons of mass destruction legitimately. We’re not trying to have a policy that attempts to cover each and every one of those circumstances,” the undersecretary explained.6 India, Israel,
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Legal Limits of Interdiction.
Regardless of a shipment’s suspected destination, international law imposes constraints on PSI, limiting a country’s ability to seize cargo at any time and place. PSI participants emphasize that their activities will conform to existing national and international law. To promote worldwide trade and trav-
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The aim is to make proliferators think
twice about their dealings and take greater pains to hide them, raising their transaction costs and perceived risks. and Pakistan possess nuclear arsenals and stand outside the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which entered into force in 1970 and bars all of its states-parties except China, France,
el, international law limits the authority of countries to interfere with global transportation. However, governments retain clear authority to act when foreign shipments cross their borders or enter Winter/Spring 2005 [ 6 3 ]
PROLIFERATION SECURITY INITIATIVE
laws to provide more robust interdiction powers and to cooperate in changing international law to facilitate interdictions. The United States has concluded reciprocal, bilateral ship-boarding agreements with the governments of Liberia, the Marshall Islands, and Panama, all of which are “flags of convenience” countries that permit foreign vessels to fly their flags. Ship owners are entitled to choose the government with which they register their vessel and often seek out registries with cheaper fees and less cumbersome rules. Panama and Liberia are prime examples, as they possess the two largest registered foreign ship fleets, accounting for more than 6200 of the roughly 29,000 oceangoing vessels that displace over 1000 gross tons.9 Each boarding agreement conveys the willingness of the governments involved to allow their ships to be stopped and searched on a case-by-case basis if they are suspected of transporting WMD or related materials. These arrangements estab-
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their airspace. Jurisdiction is less clear when dealing with ships passing through a country’s territorial waters, which extend to twelve nautical miles from a country’s coastline. Foreign vessels have a right to “innocent passage” through territorial waters, but a case could be made that the ship had forfeited this privilege by transporting WMD or related material. Because ships carry approximately 90 percent of international trade and often are the most convenient and inexpensive transportation options available, much of PSI’s initial attention has centered upon maritime interdictions.7 The UN Law of the Sea Convention prohibits a government from boarding foreign ships outside its territorial waters unless they lack a national flag or are suspected of piracy, slavery, or illegal broadcasting. Spain’s interdiction of the So San was legal because it was not flying a flag of convenience. A flagged ship in international waters may also be boarded if permission is granted by the government
All told, PSI covers more than 50 percent
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of global commercial shipping.
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whose flag the vessel is flying. U.S. officials have implied that, despite the legal limits on conducting interdictions, a legitimate rationale to act can always be found. Mark Esper, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for negotiations policy, wrote that an interdiction could be justified by a country’s right to selfdefense under Article 51 of the UN Charter.8
Expanding PSI’s Reach. PSI participants have pledged to review and amend if necessary their own domestic
[ 6 4 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
lish an expedited process to ask for boarding permission. A failure to respond to the request within two hours will be treated as a green light to board the ship. All told, PSI participants and the three countries that have boarding agreements with the United States make up more than 50 percent of the global commercial shipping fleet calculated by share of total dead weight tonnage.10 U.S. negotiators are currently working with twenty other governments on similar arrangements that will eventually allow PSI inspection access to even more of the world’s shipping.
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Conflict & Security
and crack down on the network, which also allegedly transferred items to Iran and North Korea. To this day, however, it remains unclear whether the network is completely disbanded. Though Libya had engaged in secret talks with the United States and the United Kingdom since March 2003 regarding international concerns about its WMD program, U.S. officials contended that the interdiction finally convinced Tripoli to admit to its nuclear weapons program. Libya consequently opened up its borders and weapons-related sites to American and British arms control inspection teams. Two months later, the country publicly committed to forsake its chemical and nuclear weapons programs and ballistic missiles with ranges greater than 186 miles. Bush administration officials point to the U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf to confront Saddam Hussein over his suspected illicit arms stockpiles as bringing Libya to the table, with the PSI interdiction helping to close the deal. Bolton proclaimed in a 28 September PSI in Action. In early October 2004 speech that the move “had a major, 2003 PSI scored its only publicly perhaps dispositive, role in Libya’s deciacknowledged success. Germany, Italy, sion to give up the pursuit of weapons of the United Kingdom, and the United mass destruction last year.”13 States worked together to divert a shipThe BBC China interdiction surely had a ment of gas centrifuge parts bound for positive impact on Libya’s disarmament Libya onboard the German-owned BBC decision, but the interception might have China to an Italian port, where the cargo occurred even without PSI. Many govwas held pending further investigation. ernments, including those involved in Gas centrifuges can be used to enrich halting the Libyan shipment, had previuranium for use as fuel in nuclear power ously intercepted suspicious and dangerreactors or to develop nuclear weapons. ous arms shipments. For instance, the These particular centrifuges originated United Kingdom blocked a shipment of from a secret nuclear supply network run missile parts to Libya in January 2000, by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the “father” of and German and French authorities Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. pocketed goods destined for North Washington utilized the BBC China case as Korea’s weapons programs just prior to leverage to compel Islamabad to expose PSI’s initiation.14 Although they have
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The UN Security Council’s unanimous April 2004 passage of Resolution 1540 also bolstered PSI by ordering countries to do more to prevent illegal transfers of deadly arms and materials to non-state actors. In addition to requiring all countries to “adopt and enforce appropriate, effective laws” to deny nonstate actors WMD and their delivery means, the resolution called upon governments to “take cooperative action to prevent illicit trafficking in nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, their means of delivery, and related materials.”11 Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation Andrew Semmel told a 12 October 2004 London conference, “The PSI and 1540 are complementary.” Even though its emphasis is on non-state actors, Semmel further noted “the resolution maintains a broader thrust that WMD proliferation writ large should be stopped.”12 Since the resolution was adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the door is open for possible punitive actions for noncompliance.
Winter/Spring 2005 [ 6 5 ]
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attractiveness to additional countries would be to secure even stronger international endorsement of the mission. Resolution 1540 helps in this regard, as would the adoption of proposed amendments to the 1988 Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Maritime Navigation Convention, which would criminalize transportation of WMD and related materials by commercial vessels. Still, a Security Council resolution on PSI or interdicting WMD in international Bolstering PSI. For PSI to be suc- waters or airspace would constitute a crucessful, the most important step will be cial boost to nonproliferation.18 continuing its expansion by adding new Another step that could curry greater participants and cementing more board- international goodwill for PSI would be ing agreements. As the list of countries U.S. accession to the UN Law of the Sea enlisted in both grows, the number of Convention. The treaty, which both the safe transportation carriers and routes Clinton and Bush administrations supwill likely diminish for proliferators. ported, has been before the Senate since Asia should be the regional focus for 1994. Led by Senator Richard Lugar (Rrecruitment, as winning Chinese partic- IN), the Senate Committee on Foreign ipation would be a great boon. Any rea- Relations unanimously backed approval sonable hope of stemming proliferation of the accord in February 2004, but it from and to North Korea requires has not been brought up for a full China’s support. However, Beijing’s Senate vote. Some Republican senators relationship with Pyongyang makes it raised strong objections that the conunlikely that China would turn the screws vention would impinge upon U.S. sovon its impoverished neighbor out of fear ereignty, including the right to conduct of a backlash or collapse of the North interdictions. Top Pentagon officials
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been unwilling to discuss specifics, Bush administration officials repeatedly claim that PSI has resulted in other interdictions. Concerns about revealing intelligence sources or tipping off proliferators about ongoing operations are the expressed rationales for remaining tightlipped.15 However, several diplomatic sources from PSI participants have said that they were unaware of other interdictions under the initiative’s rubric.16
Standards that hold allies accountable for
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the same transgressions as enemies are essential for protecting against proliferation. Korean regime. The same holds true for South Korea, which has also kept its distance from PSI. North Korea has denounced the initiative as “preemptive military operations” that could drive U.S.-North Korean relations to an “explosive phase.”17 One approach to increasing PSI’s [ 6 6 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
have stated otherwise. Esper testified on 21 October 2003 that the Law of the Sea “doesn’t present any difficulties” with regard to PSI. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard B. Myers wrote in a 7 April 2004 letter, “The rules under which U.S. forces have operated for over forty years to board and search
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dards that hold allies accountable for the same transgressions as enemies is essential for protecting against the long-term dangers posed by proliferation. Finally, PSI participants could help ensure the initiative’s longevity by making specific financial appropriations for its continued viability. The United States and other PSI partners currently do not
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ships or to conduct intelligence activities will not be affected.”19 The effectiveness of future interdictions will hinge on obtaining intelligence that warns of impending WMD shipments. The largest hurdle to curbing illicit or dangerous trade does not stem from the difficulty in obtaining sufficient legal authority, but from identifying
Conflict & Security
PSI could fall victim victim to changes in administrations or financial belt-tightening.
have special initiative budgets. Without vested budgets or bureaucrats, PSI could fall victim to changes in administrations or financial belt-tightening.
Keeping PSI in Perspective.
Despite PSI’s useful role in helping to convince Libya to abandon its nuclear ambitions, the international community must not overestimate its value nor ignore its limitations. North Korea, Iran, and others present different challenges than those posed by Libya. North Korea, for instance, already has enough material for several nuclear weapons. Whether Pyongyang would sell nuclear weapons or materials is uncertain, but it would be folly to rely on PSI to contain North Korean proliferation, while simply trying to isolate the regime and hoping for its capitulation or collapse. The only viable, peaceful way of ending North Korea’s trade in ballistic missiles and forestalling the possibility of nuclear exports is through hard-nosed engagement and the verifiable elimination of its arms programs. Achieving North Korea’s WMD disarmament, as well as addressing other proliferation dangers, will require that the
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where the threatening cargo is located. Recognizing this challenge, PSI governments should invest more in intelligence activities to uncover and track proliferation. Instead of the ad hoc, bilateral approach currently in place, formalizing a channel for regular information sharing among all initiative participants would go far in creating an intelligence sharing network that strengthens PSI. Improved intelligence is also essential to the administration’s February 2004 proposal to enable PSI to ferret out and prosecute laboratories, front companies, and middlemen marketing WMD and related materials. Initiative participants pledged to pursue this recommended course, but little has been done multilaterally as Washington is still crafting various strategies internally.20 The initiative’s focus should be broadened further, beyond keeping tabs on rogue states and countries hostile to U.S. interests. As the A.Q. Khan network amply demonstrated, proliferation has many sources, including perceived allies, whose allegiances and motivations are always subject to change and who may not always be aware of the actions of their companies and citizens. Setting stan-
Winter/Spring 2005 [ 6 7 ]
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doning research into new and modified nuclear warheads; expanding and accelerating programs to dispose of nuclear materials worldwide, particularly in the former Soviet Union, which remains the largest potential source of weapons and materials for terrorists and other proliferators; and withdrawing the last 480 U.S. nuclear weapons stationed in Europe. To be sure, every government has its own reasons for pursuing terrible weapons, but widespread international adherence to certain internationally recognized rules and standards of behavior will make it more difficult for other countries to defy the international community. And as long as WMD remain in arsenals around the world, so will the risk that terrorists might find a way to buy, steal, or somehow acquire these weapons to bring about the ultimate catastrophe.
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United States and the international community marshal their diplomatic, arms control, export control, threat reduction, and if necessary, military resources to restrain both the supply and demand sides of the proliferation equation. PSI only addresses the symptoms, not the root political, financial, and security causes of the worldwide trade in WMDrelated materials. Promoting regional confidence-building measures and security talks, particularly in the Middle East, will be necessary to tackle this problem. Finally, making greater progress toward universalizing the prohibition of WMD is an integral component in preventing global proliferation. Some key steps in this direction that Washington could take include ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which bars nuclear weapons tests; aban-
NOTES
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1 State Department official, interview by author, Washington, DC, 22 December 2003. 2 Whether the United States would have found international law so compelling if the final destination had been a country, such as Iran or Syria, which had not aligned itself with the U.S.-led war on terror, as Yemen had, remains open to speculation. 3 “Strengthened Nonproliferation to Combat WMD Proliferation” and “Consequence Management to Respond to WMD Use” were the other two pillars. The full strategy is available at http://www.state.gov/ documents/organization/16092.pdf. 4 George W. Bush, “Remarks by the President to the People of Poland,” 31 May 2003, available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/ 20030531-3.html. 5 Assistant Secretary John Bolton at American Enterprise Institute conference, “The International Atomic Energy Agency: The World’s Enforcer or the Paper Tiger?” 28 September 2004, Washington, DC. Available at http://www.aei.org/events/filter.all, eventID.911/transcript.asp. 6 Wade Boese, “The Proliferation Security Initiative: An Interview With John Bolton,” Arms Control Today 33 (December 2003): 37. 7 International Chamber of Shipping and the International Shipping Federation at http:// www.marisec.org/shippingfacts/keyfacts.htm. The United Nations International Maritime Organization recommended this site for shipping statistics. [ 6 8 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
8 Mark Esper and Charles Allen, “The PSI: Taking Action Against WMD Proliferation,” The Monitor 10 (Spring 2004): 4-6. 9 These figures are from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration website, available at http://www.marad.dot.gov/Marad_ Statistics/Flag-MFW-7-04.pdf. 10 Department of State, “The United States and the Republic of the Marshall Islands Proliferation Security Initiative Shipboarding Agreement,” Fact Sheet (Washington, DC: U.S. Government, 2004). 11 UN Security Council, Resolution 1540, 28 April 2004, available at http://ods-ddsny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N04/328/43/PDF/N 0432843.pdf?OpenElement. 12 Department of State, “UN Measure Called New Tool Against Proliferators,” available at http://usinfo.state.gov/is/Archive/2004/Oct/21-694223.html. 13 Bolton, op cit. 14 Various author interviews with U.S. and foreign government officials. See also Andre de Nesnera, Voice of America, 13 January 2000, and John Bolton’s 4 June 2003 testimony before theHouse International Relations Committee. 15 Boese, op cit. 16 Author interviews with diplomatic sources between 25 and 27 October 2004. 17 Korean Central News Agency, “U.S. Moves Against DPRK Under Fire,” 13 September 2003. 18 For more in-depth explorations of possible
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Information Council (June 2004). 19 Wade Boese, “Law of the Sea Convention Marooned in Senate,” Arms Control Today 34 (May 2004) available at http://www.armscontrol.org/ act/2004_05/PSI.asp. 20 Author interviews with diplomatic and U.S. government sources between 25 October and 1 November 2004.
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Security Council resolutions, see Benjamin Friedman, The Proliferation Security Initiative: The Legal Challenge, Bipartisan Security Group, 4 September 2003; Jofi Joseph, “The Proliferation Security Initiative: Can Interdiction Stop Proliferation?” Arms Control Today 34 (June 2004): 6-13; and Andreas Persbo and Ian Davis, Sailing Into Uncharted Waters? The Proliferation Security Initiative and the Law of the Sea,” British American Security
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Winter/Spring 2005 [ 6 9 ]
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Culture&Society Losing Hearts and Minds Understanding America’s Failure in Iraq
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Samer Shehata
Samer Shehata teaches Middle East and Arab politics at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He traveled to Iraq both before and after the war.
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Although the future of Iraq remains uncertain, the United States has already lost the war for Iraqi hearts and minds. The war of diplomacy was lost not because of biased reporting in the Arab media or the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, but primarily because of a series of policy mistakes, broken promises, and the failure to meet basic obligations. Nearly two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, significant parts of Iraq remain entrenched in a Hobbesian nightmare. In addition to the absence of law and order, basic services have only recently reached prewar levels in much of the country. In Tikrit, Fallujah, and Baghdad, cities favored under the previous regime, residents have less electricity and clean water than they did before the war. No amount of refurbished schools, democracy programs, or good intentions can compensate for these conditions, which many blame—rightly or wrongly—on the United States and the now defunct Coalitional Provisional Authority (CPA). By faulting the old regime, the condition of the country’s infrastructure before the war, or the continuing violence, the United States is unlikely to win the sympathy of ordinary Iraqis. Even if elections in January 2005 are “successful,” it is unlikely that this will be sufficient to convince Iraqis that America is trustworthy and deserving of their support.
Winter/Spring 2005 [ 7 1 ]
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from experts was employed by administration officials to sell the war to the American public.2 One of the many problems with such naively optimistic predictions is that they failed to “We shall be mobbed when we go there, by people who are recognize the possibility eager for deliverance from the tyranny and the great big prison that Iraqis, while welcomof Saddam Hussein. … We shall be greeted, I think, in Baghdad ing the end of Saddam’s and Basra with kites and boom boxes, and we should under- regime, simultaneously disdained the idea of forstand this.” eign troops in their -Fouad Ajami country. The course of Testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee1 the occupation has only made matters worse. An Army War College report, Reconstructing Iraq: that will further embitter Iraqis. From Insights, Challenges and Missions for Military Forces the perspective of most citizens, the in a Post-Conflict Scenario, presciently stated , United States and the CPA received fail- “Long-term gratitude is unlikely and suspicion of U.S. motives will increase as ing grades long ago. What mistakes did the United States the occupation continues. A force iniand the CPA make that resulted in the tially viewed as liberators can rapidly be present state of affairs? What do Iraqis relegated to the status of invaders should think of the current situation, the coali- an unwelcome occupation continue for a tion forces, and the continued American prolonged time. Occupation problems presence? And how will the continuing may be especially acute if the United violence likely impact Iraqi opinion of States must implement the bulk of the the interim government and the United occupation itself rather than turn these States? Answering these questions is duties over to a postwar international essential for assessing the prospects for force.”3 Iraq’s future. Polling data has confirmed this assessment. When Iraqis were asked in late “Kites and Boom Boxes.” Those March and April of 2004 how they who spoke before the war about Iraqis viewed Coalition forces at the time of the welcoming American troops with “kites invasion, they were equally divided with and boom boxes,” such as Fouad Ajami, 43 percent responding that they viewed a professor at Johns Hopkins University, forces as “liberators” and 43 percent saymischaracterized the situation. Kanan ing that they saw them as “occupiers.” Makiya, an Iraqi Professor at Brandeis When asked how they viewed Coalition University, told President Bush during a forces one year later, 71 percent said they visit to the Oval Office that invading viewed them as “occupiers.”4 More recent American troops would be greeted with polling conducted by Oxford Research “sweets and flowers.”1 This kind of polit- International in June 2004 produced ically motivated misinformation coming similar findings. When asked whether the
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The future will likely bring intensified counterinsurgency operations, increased urban fighting, corresponding resistance, and inevitable civilian casualties,
[ 7 2 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
SHEHATA
dependent upon security, and the absence of it restricts what can be achieved. Following the fall of the regime in April 2003, the unwillingness or inability of Coalition forces to stop widespread looting produced an environment of chaos, encouraged criminal elements, and amplified the difficulties of reconstruction. Andrew Natsios, the head of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), explained, “The war damaged very little. The larger damage was from the looting, which is a serious problem, but the biggest problem was the lack of maintenance over the last 20 years.”8 The decision to disband the Iraqi army and police force after the fall of Baghdad have also directly contributed to the continuing security problem, producing at least two negative outcomes. First, the country was left without the institutions most capable of maintaining law and order: security personnel familiar with
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U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was right or wrong, 59.2 percent of respondents said that it was wrong.5 Iraqis, even those who wanted the removal of Saddam Hussein, were ambivalent about a foreign occupation. The course of the occupation—a series of policy mistakes and failures to meet basic obligations combined with high Iraqi expectations—paved the way for America’s defeat in the war for Iraqi hearts and minds.
Culture & Society
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Security Failures. Security remains the primary concern among Iraqis. The failure of the CPA and Coalition forces to provide security against car-jackings, kidnappings, armed robbery, rape, and other kinds of banditry—in addition to the insecurity caused by attacks on troops and Iraqi security forces—is the chief complaint.6 Iraqis simply do not feel safe, and many—quite possibly the majority— hold the United States responsible for
Iraqis simply do not feel safe, and many—
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this situation.7 We must precisely understand, however, what Iraqis mean by “security.” When Iraqis speak of security, they are referring to the safety of ordinary citizens. Naturally, Iraqis are more concerned about their own safety than the safety of American GIs, just as Americans pay more attention to lost American lives than to Iraqi casualties. Security is fundamental to postwar reconstruction, investment, commerce, civic involvement, education, and everyday life. Every element of Iraqi society is
local communities and neighborhoods, fluent in Arabic, and knowledgeable of Iraqi culture. Second, disbanding the army and police produced thousands of disenfranchised men, trained in military and security operations, now without jobs or income, unsure of their future in the new Iraq, and embittered at the CPA and the United States. A more narrow elimination of Saddam loyalists in both institutions could have proven more effective at maintaining security in the postwar environment. Winter/Spring 2005 [ 7 3 ]
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only recently reached prewar levels of electricity production. For some, electricity is the metric for measuring America’s success—or lack thereof—in terms of public service delivery. The Department of Defense estimated prewar levels of electricity production in Iraq to be 4,400 megawatts daily. In the entire period of the CPA’s existence, the seven-day average of peak electricity production never reached prewar levels. Only in July 2004 did nationwide average electricity production begin to creep above these levels.13 This corresponds to Iraqi impressions revealed through
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Insufficient troop presence coupled with the wrong types of forces—combat soldiers as opposed to trained peacekeepers and military police—also negatively impacted the security situation.9 General Eric Shinseki, former Army Chief of Staff, asserted, “several hundred thousand soldiers” would be needed for a postwar occupying force, based on his experience in postwar Bosnia.10 This sentiment was later contradicted by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who went on to say that Iraq had no history of ethnic strife.11 Experts on post-conflict situations have stated that, based on past
Every house raid on law-abiding families
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turns an entire street against Coalition forces; every wrongful detention creates a neighborhood opposed to the American presence.
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peacekeeping missions, the ratio of troops/peacekeepers to civilians in Iraq has been woefully inadequate. The ratio of foreign troops to civilians in Iraq is presently less than one to one hundred, but many specialists believe the appropriate ratio in such situations to be two peacekeepers for every one hundred civilians. In order for this ratio to be met, approximately 480,000 troops would need to be deployed.12 In Iraq, too few troops have been asked to act as peacekeepers, something they are not well equipped to do in the first place.
Public Services. Electricity is the sin-
gle most important public service affecting Iraqi opinion of the U.S. presence because it has a direct impact on many aspects of daily life. Much of Iraq has
[ 7 4 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
polling data. In Spring 2004, 100 percent of Iraqis surveyed said they “go without electricity for long periods of time.” Remarkably, this figure was up from 99 percent in 2003.14 More recently a report published in September 2004 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies stated, “Across the board, Iraqis remain unhappy with the level of basic services they are receiving.”15 After security, electricity is the second leading source of criticism of the current situation. It remains a topic of daily conversation, with many Iraqis incredulous that the most powerful country in the world cannot significantly increase electricity production in the country, nearly two years after the war. Many Iraqis believe this is a deliberate policy on the
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water and sewage systems remain woefully inadequate.
Unemployment. Mass unemployment continues to be a serious problem that directly impacts Iraqis’ assessments of the current situation. Unemployment is also a security issue. In addition to fueling frustration and resentment toward the U.S. presence, large pools of jobless men have become a source of potential recruits for the insurgency. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget described the unemployment as “a persistent source of insecurity and instability for the country,” and estimated it to be between 20 and 30 percent of the workforce in March 2004.20 The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) put the figure at 60 percent for the same month. They went on to warn, “The regional picture in Iraq is extremely mixed, with some recent reports suggesting that unemployment throughout the more impoverished and long-underdeveloped Shia-dominated South could be running as high as 80 percent.”21 There is insufficient space here to compare the level of other public services, infrastructure, and economic activity in Iraq before the war, at the time of the handover in June 2004, and in the second half of 2004. It should be noted, however, that on every account Iraqi expectations were far greater than what the United States delivered.22
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part of the United States, with some observers dubbing this “the man on the moon syndrome,” because Iraqis have been asking, “If the U.S. can put a man on the moon, why can’t they turn the lights back on in Baghdad?”16 The availability of clean water and adequate sewage is in large part dependent upon adequate electricity production. By many accounts, “Sewage systems are worse than they were under Saddam, causing spillover health and environmental problems.”17 According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Before the war, Iraq pumped 3 million cubic meters of water per day from 140 water treatment facilities.” More than a year after the war, however, facilities operated “at about 65 percent of that capacity, mainly because of electricity shortages and the looting of water plant generators used to pump water and sewage.”18 In June 2004, USAID found that
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Baghdad’s three sewage treatment plants, which together comprise three-quarters of the nation’s sewage treatment capacity, are inoperable, allowing the waste from 3.8 million people to flow untreated directly into the Tigris River. In the rest of the country, most sewage treatment plants were only partially operational prior to the conflict, and shortages of electricity, parts, and chemicals have exacerbated the situation.19
By the end of June 2004, Bechtel, the firm contracted to rebuild Iraq’s sewage system, had opened only one of Baghdad’s water treatment plants. Despite the work that has been completed by USAID and its contractors, Iraq’s
How Iraqis Experience the U.S. Presence. How some Iraqis experience
the American military presence in their country also negatively affects attitudes and opinions toward the United States. Stories of house raids in the middle of the night—with heavily armed troops kicking down doors, frightening women and Summer/Fall 2004 [ 7 5 ]
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operations necessarily result in urban fighting, damage to neighborhoods, and civilian casualties. Nervous soldiers, risking their lives and under attack, are understandably more interested in staying alive than in winning public favor. Political success cannot be achieved primarily through military means. The case of Fallujah is particularly illustrative.
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children, and humiliating family members in the process—circulate and have embittered Iraqis, whether or not they have been involved in the insurgency. Long, seemingly arbitrary detentions, with little or no justification, have been a grievance voiced by many. On some accounts, Iraqis also resent U.S. military convoys because they inspire insurgent violence in urban areas and at checkpoints. Civilian casualties, of course, are an altogether different matter. Iraqis have an overall negative impression of U.S. military forces according to various polls. In June 2004, CPA polling found that 80 percent of Iraqis have an unfavorable opinion of American troops.23 A CNN/USAToday/Gallup Poll, taken two months earlier found that 58 percent of Iraqis said that U.S. forces had conducted themselves either “fairly badly” or “very badly.” Another worrisome finding was that the number of respondents who said that attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq could be justified increased sharply from last year. In 2003, 42 percent of respondents in Baghdad said that attacks against U.S. forces “cannot be justified at all.” That figure fell to 14 percent in 2004. The impact of house raids, wrongful detention, the disproportionate use of force, and civilian casualties goes well beyond the individuals directly involved. Every house raid on law-abiding families turns an entire street against Coalition forces; every wrongful detention creates a neighborhood opposed to the American presence; and every civilian casualty produces an extended family embittered against the United States. The logic of defeating an insurgency militarily runs counter to the logic of winning the war for the hearts and minds of the general population. Counterinsurgency
Iraqi Reaction to Fallujah. The
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overwhelming majority of Iraqis perceived U.S. military conduct in Fallujah in March 2004 as an unjustified and disproportionate use of force against a civilian population. From the perspective of the war for hearts and minds, the events of Fallujah were disastrous, infuriating most Iraqis and inflaming antiAmerican sentiment. The murder of four security contract workers on 31 March 2004 and the gruesome mutilation of two of their bodies were unconscionable. The response of the U.S. military, however, was perceived as excessively brutal and was denounced across the country. An entire town of nearly three hundred thousand residents was under siege for more than a week while U.S. Marines used heavy weaponry in civilian neighborhoods. The result was more than 700 killed and over 1200 wounded, many of whom were women and children.24 Scenes of families burying their dead in the courtyards of their homes, in soccer fields, and in hospital parking lots elicited outrage and condemnation from all quarters of Iraqi society. Images of scores of wounded pouring into hospitals with insufficient medicines and supplies produced feelings of solidarity with the residents of Fallujah across Iraq. This was seen as a battle between David and Goliath with the U.S. military as Goliath. Dozens of
[ 7 6 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
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election boycott while Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and Moqtada al-Sadr denounced the offensive, with Sadr calling on Iraqis not to participate in the fighting. Even Ghazi al-Yawer publicly distanced himself from the attack on Fallujah.
Conclusions. Although the fighting
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convoys of food, humanitarian supplies, and medicine from all over Iraq, including from the Turkmen minority in Kirkuk, the Chaldean Christians in Baghdad, and the country’s Shiite majority demonstrated the extent to which Iraqis of all stripes sympathized with the residents of Fallujah. At that time, Iraq’s human rights minister and its interior minister resigned in protest of against U.S. military conduct, calling it a clear violation of human rights.25 The current president, Ghazi alYawer, who served on the Iraqi Governing Council at the time, threatened to resign and described the crisis as “genocide.”26 Adnan Pachachi, a former ambassador and presidential nominee, declared the U.S. military action “illegal and unacceptable” and described it as
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continues in Iraq, the war for hearts and minds has already been lost. The inability to provide security, basic services, and employment are the main reasons behind America’s failure in the war of diplomacy. Iraqis, like Americans, base their judgments on performance, and the U.S. performance in Iraq has so far been disastrous.28 However, according to various polling data, Iraqis, by and large, remain opti-
Plans to establish a permanent U.S.
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military presence in Iraq must be immediately abandoned. Such a presence would be a continuing source of instability.
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“collective punishment.”27 The siege of Fallujah in March and April 2004 solidified and exacerbated anti-Coalition and anti-American sentiment. The second Fallujah campaign in November 2004 also elicited intense criticism. The Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), the largest Sunni political organization, withdrew from the interim government and vowed to boycott the upcoming elections. The IIP also announced that forty other organizations would boycott the elections as a result of the Fallujah offensive. The influential Association of Muslim Scholars also called for an
mistic about the future. Sixty-six percent of Iraqis feel their lives will be better one year from now, according to a poll commissioned by the International Republican Institute in August 2004.29 Moreover, in June 2004, the Oxford Survey of Iraq found approximately 86 percent of Iraqis optimistic that the security situation would improve after elections in January 2005. It would be a mistake, however, to take comfort in these figures. Rather than reflecting either satisfaction with the current situation or optimism about the future, unmet Iraqi expectations could Winter/Spring 2005 [ 7 7 ]
LOSING HEARTS AND MINDS
sands of Iraqis, especially young men, must be initiated. Money alone will not stabilize Iraq, but it can help if appropriately targeted. Fourth, plans of establishing a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq—there has been talk of fourteen military bases—must be immediately abandoned. Such a presence would surely become a continuing source of instability. Finally, Syria, Iran, and Turkey must be positively induced to play a role in facilitating the development of a prosperous, secure Iraq at peace with its neighbors. None of these recommendations is likely to be adopted by the current U.S. administration. Not doing so, however, risks a continuation—if not deterioration—of the current Iraqi situation. The struggle for the sympathies of ordinary Iraqis will affect whether Iraqis side with Coalition forces and the interim government against the insurgency or whether they place their trust and support elsewhere. In the long run, this campaign for the hearts and minds will affect how Iraqis, Arabs, and other Muslims perceive and act towards the United States. The battle for Iraqi public opinion will also affect whether the Iraq war ultimately makes America safer or more vulnerable. It will determine whether the human and financial cost incurred in Fallujah, Ramadi, Samara, and Najaf will serve to increase resentment, that could metastasize into violence and new recruits in the war against America, or whether it will greatly reduce terrorist recruiting pools. The bad news is that American failure is not merely expected; it is a fait accompli.
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produce even more instability in the future. If these expectations are not met, attitudes toward Coalition forces, the United States, and by extension the Iraqi interim government could deteriorate further. Unfulfilled expectations have long been considered a cause of resentment, frustration, instability, and even violent political activity.30 Increased offensive operations before the proposed Iraqi elections could also result in increased hostility toward the United States and Coalition forces. Counterinsurgency operations produce the perception of heavy-handedness, the indiscriminate use of force, and collective punishment. Occupation and counterinsurgency are, therefore, selfdefeating.31 Pursuing a new strategy is likely to be more effective than continuing the present policy. The character of the occupation, including the foreign military presence in Iraq, must drastically change. The United States must be willing to give up control in exchange for a commitment of troops and security forces from other countries, including Muslim nations. In short, this means internationalizing the occupation and significantly increasing the numbers of troops and international peacekeepers in the country. Second, more attention must be focused on providing security for ordinary Iraqis—in addition to more narrowly targeted efforts at combating the insurgency. Third, the United States must pour massive amounts of money into the country. Large-scale public works programs employing tens of thou-
[ 7 8 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
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Culture & Society
NOTES
Iraqis,” Internet, http://www.usatoday.com/ news/world/iraq/2004-04-28-gallup-iraq-findings.htm, 30 April 2004. 15 The Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project, Progress or Peril? Measuring Iraq’s Reconstruction, (Washington DC: CSIS, September 2004), 56. Available at http://www.csis.org/isp/pcr/0409_progress peril.pdf. 16 Remarks by Iraqi representative to the United States Rend Rahim to House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Affairs, 15 June 2004. 17 The Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project, Progress or Peril?, viii. 18 Iraq: Briefing Paper on Water and Sanitation (24 May 2004). Available at: http://www.irinnews. org/print.asp?ReportID=41227. 19 “Water and Sanitation,” Internet, http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/accomplishments/watsan.ht ml, 7 June 2004. 20 Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Report: Iraq (1 March 2004). 21 Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Report: Iraq (September 2004): 26. 22 Sixty-four percent of respondents in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll said, “the actions taken by the CPA have turned out worse than expected.” See http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2004/WORLD/meast/04/28/ iraq.poll/iraq.poll.4.28.pdf. 23 Edward Cody, “Iraqis Put Contempt for Troops on Display,” Washington Post, 12 June 2004. 24 Dan Murphy, “Siege of Fallujah Polarizing Iraqis,” Christian Science Monitor, 15 April 2004. 25 “Turki resigns from Iraqi Governing Council,” Internet, http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=9596, 9 April 2004. 26 “U.S.-picked Iraqi Leaders Blast Fallujah Offensive,” Internet, http://www.abc.net.au/news/ newsitems/s1084808.htm, 10 April 2004. 27 Ibid. 28 The CSIS study states, “Iraqis are judging U.S. actions and achievements by several standards: in contrast to those of Saddam Hussein, in light of Iraq’s many desperate, unmet needs, and by what they assume U.S. wealth and power should be able to achieve.” See p. 7. 29 “Iraq: National Voter Attitudes and Awareness,” International Republican Institute in cooperation with an affiliated polling firm, 10-20 August 2004. 30 Tedd Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). 31 Karl Vick, "Out of Hiding in Samara," The Washington Post, 4 October 2004.
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1 George Packer, “Dreaming of Democracy,” New York Times, 2 March 2003. 2 Remarks by Vice-President Cheney (quoted Fouad Ajami) at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention in Nashville, Tennessee in August 2002. 3 Conrad C. Crane and W. Andrew Terrill, Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario (Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College: February 2003): 18, 35. 4 “CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll: Nationwide Poll of Iraq,” Internet, http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2004/ WORLD/meast/04/28/iraq.poll/iraq.poll.4.28.pdf. 5 “National Survey of Iraq: June 2004,” Oxford Research International. Internet, http://news. bbc.co.uk/nol/ shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/15_03_04_iraqsurvey.pdf. 6 State Department Study of Iraqi Public Opinion (December 31-January 7), figures provided in Iraq Index: Tracking Variables of Reconstruction & Security in Post-Saddam Iraq, Brookings, Internet, http://www.brookings.edu/ iraqindex, June 9, 2004. See also the CNN/USAToday/Gallup poll conducted in March and April 2004. The key findings are available at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/ iraq/2004-04-28-gallup-iraq-findings.htm. 7 Samer Shehata, “Streets of Fear,” Salon, 12 November 2003. Available at http://www.salon.com/ opinion/feature/2003/11/12/fear/index_np.html. 8 “Briefing by Andrew Natsios, Administrator of USAID,” Internet, http://www.usaid.gov/press/ speeches/2004/sp040317.html,17 March 2004. Also, “Interview: James Fallows,” Internet, http://www.pbs. org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/invasion/interviews/f allows.html. 9 Eric Schmitt, “Pentagon Contradicts General on Iraq Occupation Force’s Size,” New York Times, 28 February 2003; United States Institute of Peace Coalition, Establishing the Rule of Law in Iraq Special Report 104 (April 2003), 11. 10 “Army Chief: Forces to Occupy Iraq Massive,” USA Today, 25 February 2003. 11 Schmitt, “Pentagon Contradicts General on Iraq Occupation Force’s Size.” 12 See James Dobbins, et. al., America’s Role in NationBuilding: From Germany to Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2003). For comparisons of ratios of peacekeepers to civilians in other post-conflict situations, see Barbara Slavin and Dave Moniz, “How Peace in Iraq Became So Elusive,” USA Today, 22 July 2003. 13 Brookings Institute, “Iraq Index,” Internet, http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/iraq/index.pdf , 11 October 2004. 14 “Key Findings: Nationwide Survey of 3,500
Winter/Spring 2005 [ 7 9 ]
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Law&Ethics The Extradition Question Immunity and the Head of State
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Sara Criscitelli
Sara Criscitelli served as Assistant Director in the Office of International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice.
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In 1999 the United Kingdom’s House of Lords justified the possible extradition of Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s former head of state, to Spain for prosecution on torture-related charges. Its decision in Regina v Bartle and the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis and Others Ex Parte Pinochet recognized that heads of state generally enjoy immunity under international law; a British statute also confers immunity upon them. Nonetheless, it concluded, in the narrow circumstances presented in that case, that the UN Convention Against Torture or Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment (the Torture Convention) and British domestic legislation trumped Pinochet’s head of state immunity.1 Human rights advocates hoped the decision would impel other nations to bring heads of state to justice who commit atrocities in their official capacities and presume impunity.2 Despite international pressure to follow the House of Lords’ lead in Pinochet, the extradition of a sitting head of state remains virtually unthinkable. Although the decision was significant, it has not substantially enabled national prosecutions of foreign heads of state or actually eroded head of state immunity. Indeed, the decision affirmed the immunity’s viability by finding that it may be overridden only in narrow circumstances. Moreover, Pinochet has not inspired any other state to extradite a
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Liability of State Actors: Historical Precedence. Head of
state immunity has long been accepted in international law, though its justification and contours have been varied and imprecise. The ICJ’s own observation regarding head of state immunity echoes the view of many international law authorities that there exists a tradition of absolute immunity of a sitting head of state from the criminal jurisdiction of other states.4 Head of state immunity is also not formally provided for in international agreements and is furthermore not based on any single commonly accepted principle. Nevertheless, over the last sixty years, the once absolute immunity of heads of state has eroded with respect to a narrow class of universally condemned acts. This erosion originated with the Nuremberg Tribunal, which was constituted specifically to prosecute high-ranking government officials in a court of law for war crimes. The tribunal’s mandate also required the denial of official immunity to the defendants. Article 7 of the London Agreement, which established the Nuremberg Tribunal, provided that “[t]he official position of defendants,
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sitting or former head of state to answer criminal charges. In 2002 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered that an arrest warrant issued by Belgium for another country’s serving minister of justice be quashed on grounds of head of state immunity. The Court stated that “in international law, it is firmly established that, as also diplomatic and consular agents, certain holders of high-ranking office in a State, such as the Head of State, Head of Government and Minister for Foreign Affairs, enjoy immunities from jurisdiction in other States, both civil and criminal.”3 When a state brings criminal charges against someone outside its territory, it often looks to extradition as the process for acquiring in personam jurisdiction over the defendant; and when that defendant is a present or former head of another state, additional and sometimes disabling complications ensue. The extradition request often triggers a clash between the existing protection of head of state immunity and the treaty-based obligations of the requested state to extradite persons located within its territories. The Pinochet decision may support the principle that it can be acceptable under inter-
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Over the last sixty years, the once absolute immunity of heads of state has eroded with respect to a narrow class of universally condemned acts. national law to extradite a former head of state, but it clearly does not guarantee that any state will deny the extradition of the former head of another state in response to a treaty request. [ 8 2 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
whether as Heads of State or responsible officials in Government Departments, shall not be considered in freeing them from responsibility or mitigating punishment.”5 The denial of immunity was later
CRISCITELLI
obligations undertaken implicitly include prosecution and extradition of state actors, seemingly without limitation, though the Torture Convention does not expressly deny immunity.8 Finally, ad hoc international tribunals established by the UN to prosecute
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echoed in the UN International Law Committee’s Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal.6 Principle III of this document states that “[t]he fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international
Law & Ethics
The U.S. Department of Justice has
proceeded, albeit rarely, in criminal investigations or prosecutions of foreign heads of states.
offenders for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes expressly deny immunity to heads of state; in similar fashion, the International Criminal Court (ICC) also denies head of state immunity.9 The ongoing International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic, former president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, affirms that these tribunals’ authority to prosecute a head of state without regard to immunity is not merely an abstract principle; so does the case of another head of state, Bijana Plavsic, who had served as one of a three-member joint presidency of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and pleaded guilty in the ICTY to charges of persecution on political, racial, and religious grounds.10 Though authorities assume the existence in international law of head of state immunity, there remains considerable confusion and inconsistency as to the parameters, justification, and the scope of its application to head of state immunity for former heads of state.11 Some states
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law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.” In 1951, following Nuremberg, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention) entered into effect.7 It obligates state parties to undertake prevention and punishment of genocide and to carry out these duties without affording any immunity protection to heads of state or other official state actors. Article IV of the Genocide Convention provides that “[p]ersons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.” The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment imposes similar obligations on states-parties to criminalize, prosecute, and extradite for acts of torture. The definition of torture in Article I links the proscribed conduct to persons acting in an official capacity. Thus, the
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expressly grant immunity by statute. The United Kingdom provides immunity in the State Immunity Act of 1978. However, the United States’s authority is not statutorily limited, and the U.S. Department of Justice has proceeded,
under international law: (1) if the head of state’s own authorities undertake the prosecution; (2) if those authorities waive the head of state’s immunity and thus agree to the person’s prosecution in courts of another state; (3) if the person
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Ultimately, the requested state must
have both the legal authority and the political will to extradite. The influence of political will cannot be emphasized enough.
(a) is no longer a head of state and (b) faces criminal liability for purely private acts or acts committed at a time when he or she was not head of state; or finally (4) if the head of state faces criminal charges brought by an international tribunal.14 It should be emphasized for clarity, however, that head of state immunity is only an issue if extradition of the head of state is being sought by a second state with regards to national legislation or a bilatImmunity Today. Notwithstanding eral treaty. As the ICJ made clear in these developing exceptions, the general Democratic Republic of the Congo v Belgium, if a doctrine of head of state immunity con- country proceeds criminally against its tinues to elicit international adherence. own sitting or former head of state, that In 2002, for example, the ICJ recog- prosecution does not involve or implinized and reiterated the “firmly estab- cate the international law doctrine of lished” international law doctrine that head of state immunity. The ICJ decision grants immunity to sitting heads of state also affirms that if the head of state is and other high government officials outside the territory of his state, and he is from the criminal jurisdiction of other charged in his own state with a crime, his states. Consistent with that doctrine, in extradition cannot be contested under Democratic Republic of the Congo v Belgium, the head of state immunity; his state, implicICJ determined that Belgium could not itly and possibly explicitly as well, has attempt to arrest and prosecute a sitting waived immunity. Thus, for example, foreign minister.13 The ICJ posited only U.S. courts authorized the extradition of four circumstances in which criminal a former Venezuelan head of state, prosecution of a head of state or high Marcos Jiminez, to Venezuela.15 In addigovernment official would be allowed tion, Security Council resolutions estab-
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albeit rarely, in criminal investigations or prosecutions of foreign heads of state. For example, the United States indicted and thereafter prosecuted the de facto head of Panama, declining to recognize his immunity as a head of state.12 The United States also investigated criminal activities of former President Marcos after the Philippines waived his head of state immunity.
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CRISCITELLI
ters of which are rarely defined in the treaties themselves. National courts instead interpret political offense in accordance with their own laws and reasoning; the political offense doctrine protects the requested state from becoming involved with and taking sides in the internal political conflict of another state.17 Some states, by treaty or by domestic legislation, preclude extradition if, in the view of the requested state, the request for extradition is “politically motivated”—and, not surprisingly, there is considerable leeway in determining the motivation underlying a request. Finally, domestic legislation or constitutions may grant head of state immunity and prevent extradition even if all of the treaty requirements are satisfied. The UN resolutions and Article 89 of the Rome Statute impose an obligation to “surrender” but not to “extradite.” Article 102 of the Rome Statute explains: “For the purposes of this Statute: (a) ‘surrender’ means the delivering up of a person by a State to the Court, pursuant to this Statute; (b) ‘extradition’ means the delivering up of a person by one State to another as provided by treaty, convention, or national legislation.” The use of the term surrender instead of extradite had several purposes, including the need to overcome individual countries’ statutory or constitutional provisions that would otherwise preclude legal actions against sitting or former heads of state or high government officials. Thus, the relaxation of immunity protections and the availability of “surrender”—explicitly distinguished from extradition—as a mechanism for bringing a head of state to justice before an international tribunal do not necessarily signal a willingness to relax head of state immunity in response to a bilateral extradition request.
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lishing the ICTY and the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda (ICTR) obligate all UN member states to surrender persons to those tribunals without regard for the person’s status as an existing or former head of state. Furthermore, states that join the ICC also accept the obligation to surrender heads of state to that body.
Law & Ethics
Continuing Difficulties. In cases
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that do implicate head of state immunity, substantial obstacles continue to impede the extradition of heads of state—despite the House of Lords’s decision in Pinochet and the rejection of immunity by international tribunals. First, as previously noted, the ICJ judgment in Democratic Republic of the Congo v Belgium, which postdates Pinochet, unambiguously affirms that (a) sitting heads of state are immune from arrest for extradition regarding domestic prosecutions undertaken by second states (though not by international tribunals); and (b) subject to very narrow exceptions, head of state immunity remains a viable principle of international law. Second, bilateral treaties or the requested state’s domestic legislation may provide alternative grounds for the denial of extradition. Japan, for instance, has refused Peru’s request for the extradition of its former head of state, Japanese national Alberto Fujimori, on the grounds that Japan does not extradite its nationals.16 As the Pinochet decision recognizes, extradition may be denied if the requesting state has charged the offender with an extraterritorial offense for which the requested state has no clear analogue in its own criminal code. The failure to establish dual criminality can defeat an extradition request. Extradition treaties also commonly authorize denial of extradition for political offenses, the parame-
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of states to extradite former heads of state: Senegal refuses to extradite the former president of Chad for prosecution; Zimbabwe continues to refuse to surrender the former head of state of Ethiopia to that country; and Nigeria, having granted asylum to Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, has thus far resisted requests from the Special Court for Sierra Leone for his surrender.18 While there continues to be hope that future extradition requests may be successful, it is premature to conclude that Pinochet has effected a fundamental change in international practice.
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Ultimately, the requested state must have both the legal authority and the political will to extradite. The influence of political will cannot be emphasized enough. Even after receiving the authority to extradite Pinochet, the government of the United Kingdom ultimately opted against extradition. Rejections of requests for extradition of other former heads of state for serious crimes in the wake of the Pinochet decision further demonstrate that Pinochet may ultimately have a minimal effect on international practice. The realities of today show the continuing unwillingness
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(ICTR), www.ictr.org/ENGLISH/basicdocs/statute. html. The Rome Statute defining the jurisdiction and processes of the International Criminal Court also disallows head of state immunity in Article 27, headed “Irrelevance of official capacity.” 2187 U.N.T.S. 3 (entered into force 1 July 2002); see www.icccpi.int/officialjournal/legalinstruments.html. 10 Case Nos. IT-00-39 and 40/1-S, Judgment (27 February 2003). See http://www.un.org/ icty/glance/Plavsic.htm. 11 For example, see “Comment, Resolving the Confusion over Head of State Immunity: The Defined Right of Kings,” Columbia Law Review 86 (1986): 169, 177-179. 12 United States v Noriega, 117 F.3d 1206, 1211-1212 (11th Cir. 1997). 13 See Democratic Republic of the Congo v Belgium, n. 3, supra. 14 Ibid. 15 See Jiminez v Aristegueta, 311 F.2d 547 (5th Cir. 1962), cert. denied, 373 U.S. 914 (1963). 16 See Arnd Duker, “The Extradition of Nationals: Comments on the Extradition Request for Alberto Fujimori,” German Law Journal 11 (November 2003), available at http://www/germanlawjournal.com/article/php?id=334. 17 Many multilateral conventions that obligate state parties to criminalize and prosecute conduct deemed extremely serious by the world community—such as genocide, torture, and terrorist offenses—also impose extradition obligations and require that state parties not deny extradition on political offense grounds. For example, Article VII, Genocide Convention.
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1 See R. v Bartle and the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis and Others Ex Parte Pinochet, 3 W.L.R. 827 (H.L. 1999). On humanitarian grounds the Home Secretary thereafter declined to order Pinchocet’s extradition, and he was allowed to return to Chile. 2 For example, see Human Rights Watch, available at http://hrw.org/reports/1999/chile; Human Rights First, available at http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/ media/2001_1996/pino1198-2.htm). 3 Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Democratic Republic of the Congo v Belgium), Judgment (I.C.J. Reports 2002). Id. at p. 18 para. 51. 4 For examples, see Oppenheim’s International Law, vol I, (Jennings and Watts 9th ed, 1992), 1038. 5 Agreement by the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Government of the United States of America, the Provisional Government of the French Republic, and the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics for the Prosecution and Punishment of Major War Criminals of the European Axis and Charter of the International Military Tribunal, concluded at London, 8 August 1945, entered into force, 8 August 1945, 82 U.N.T.S. 279, 59 Stat. 1544. 6 UN Doc. A/1316, 2 Y.B.I.L.C. 374 (1950). 7 78 U.N.T.S. 277, entered into force 1951. 8 G.A. Res. 39/46 (Annex), UN GAOR, 39th Sess., Supp. No. 51, at 197, UN Doc. A/39/51 (1985). 9 See Security Council resolutions establishing the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR): S/Res/827 (1993), Article 7.2 (ICTY), www.un.org/icty/legaldoc/index.html; S/Res/955 (1994), Article 6.2
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Politics&Diplomacy Troubled Marriage The United States and the UN
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Interview with Ambassador William H. Luers
William H. Luers is President and CEO of the United Nations Association of the United States of America. He served as Ambassador to Czechoslavakia and Italy.
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The United Nations. No other organization better symbolizes global cooperation and shared values than the sixty-nine year old institution headquartered on the eastern shore of Manhattan. Consequently, as rifts have opened on global questions of peace and security, doubts have arisen about the effectiveness of the United Nations. Many in the United States and specifically the second Bush administration remain unconvinced as to the UN’s ability to successfully address pressing security questions. Circumstances in Iraq, Iran, and Darfur have exacerbated underlying tensions, making the relationship between the United States and the UN a rocky one of late. The Journal spoke with Ambassador William Luers, the head of the United Nations Association of the United States, to discuss the UN’s strengths, weaknesses, and role in the twenty-first century. : Are discussions concerning the relevance of the UN that took place before the war in Iraq over? Or is this a challenge that should be discussed on an ongoing basis?
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That discussion is probably over for the time being. But I think it raises a far more serious question about the role of the UN. The UN’s relevance is unquestionable in so many dif-
LUERS:
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ing degrees. Another way the UN responds to these non-state threats is by focusing on individual rights and the growth of civil society throughout the world. This is becoming an increasingly important component of the UN’s mission. How can the UN avoid the perception of U.S. preponderance in directing the actions of the organization, particularly in the context of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction? Or is this unavoidable?
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ferent areas. What needs to be determined is how the UN can play a meaningful role in this increasingly complex environment in which two issues, humanitarian intervention and combating terrorism, especially with regards to weapons of mass destruction, have become such dominant themes. First, the Secretary General is a believer in humanitarian intervention, which involves some type of political—or even military—intervention in cases of genocide or when leaders perpetrate particularly heinous crimes, such as the cases of Rwanda or Saddam Hussein. Second, President Bush’s justifiable obsession with the issues of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction has sparked a debate about whether a valid basis exists to take urgent action to authorize military force to head this off. In the context of these two issues, how does the UN get itself reorganized? How can we start thinking differently about the UN? How can we define its role in maintaining international peace and security?
GJ I A:
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L U E R S : The UN faces a paradox, as you pointed out. Without U.S. power, support, financial backing, and general endorsement, the UN is ineffective. But since the UN is a universal organization, this raises the question of how to balance U.S. interests with the interests of all the other member states. The issue out there as the UN looks to reform is the U.S. concern that the UN’s basic interest now is to restrain American power. The nations of the world are encouraging the United States to abide by certain rules in its pursuit of security, G J I A : The UN Charter is explicitly rooted in the principles of sovereignty and particularly when it involves the use of non-interference in the internal affairs force. That tension exists now, and it has of other states. How does one reconcile always existed. I think it is more prothis with the increasing role of non-state found today under this president than it actors in terrorism and the proliferation has been in any other moment since the of weapons of mass destruction? Do you organization was founded. The United States, I think, is very feel that this heightens the relevance of the UN through the needs for increased concerned about the legitimacy of its actions abroad as it defends its sovereigncooperation between state actors? ty. This administration, however, decreasingly concerns itself with internaL U E R S : Almost by definition the threats today to sovereign states come from non- tional law. While we claim to adhere sovereign actors. This argues for greater strongly to international norms, there is coherency and collaboration among no doubt that there is a diminishing states, all of which have a common con- respect for and observance of the rules of cern about these threats, though to vary- the road. Internationally we are even less
[ 8 8 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
LUERS
Politics & Diplomacy
Germany, Japan, Brazil, and India have made it clear to the Secretary General that they do not like this structure. Germany does not want to be second tier to France, nor India to China. Can the Secretary General, before he leaves office G J I A : Many argue that the Security Council should be reformed to include in 2006, resolve this disagreement? countries such as India, China, Japan, Whether or not he can conclude this Germany, and Brazil. Do you think there process by the end of his term, it is clear that the Security Council must include is a solution? more voices. L U E R S : There is no question that the Security Council has to be expanded. G J I A : Aside from the Security Council, The second largest contributor to the what other challenges face the UN as an UN, Japan, and the third largest econo- organization? How do you see the UN’s my in the world, Germany, are not in it. role evolving in the twenty-first century? The council also excludes Brazil, the largest country in the western hemi- L U E R S : I think the challenge for the UN, sphere after the United States, and India, as with many different entities active the world’s largest democracy. These around the globe, is to pick those areas countries have a role to play, and I think where it believes it could be most effecit became very clear during the build-up tive, and persuade the United States and to the Iraq war that these countries want- others to help them improve. For examed a greater voice. The Secretary General ple, the UN umbrella of organizations, has set up a high-level panel to address including the WHO, UNICEF, and this and has urged it to be bold and to UNAIDS, constitute the most effective make a recommendation. means for addressing issues of internaThe problem, however, is not so easi- tional public health, such as HIV/AIDS, ly solved. The panel is considering a the SARS episode, and Avian flu. Only twenty-four member Council, in which through the UN structure can one forthe five permanent representatives would mulate an international strategy for dealretain their vetoes. A separate group of ing with rapidly developing pandemics. seven or eight would be semi-permanent The SARS episode began during the Iraq
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convinced of it. This phenomenon has been on the rise since the end of the Cold War, and it is disturbing for many nations of the world.
The UN responds to non-state threats by
focusing on individual rights and the growth of civil society. and would not have a veto. A third group of 10 countries would round out the Council and would be selected more or less like the existing non-permanent members. However, countries like
war, in the spring of 2003. Around that time, the Wall Street Journal printed yet another editorial lambasting the relevance of the UN, yet the lead article on the front page detailed the indispensable Winter/Spring 2005 [ 8 9 ]
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Delegating international tasks according to comparative advantage brings up difficult problems of coordination between sovereign nations and international agencies. Do you think that is a challenge that can be overcome?
GJ I A:
I think that nations in general are becoming increasingly comfortable with collaboration with international agencies. The Europeans put their faith in collaboration after the traumatic first half of the twentieth century. Given the success of the European Union, they tend to think more regionally and internationally. Many Americans would argue that this makes them indecisive and less powerful, which is probably true. But I think that there are increasing numbers of instances around the world in which collaboration has proven to be the only way to solve certain problems.
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role the WHO had played in containing the SARS outbreak in China. In practice, then, the UN has a very important role to play. I think global health, although soft, is probably the biggest threat to humanity right now. Consequently, strengthening agencies within the UN system, such as the WHO, is critical. A second set of issues has to do with post-conflict intervention, peace-building, and rule of law. How does one build or rebuild a relatively fair system of governance in the increasing number of chronically unstable countries? Here the UN has both strengths and weaknesses. It is not good at peace making – it has not demonstrated great success in enforcing peace with force. It has, however, had more success than any other actor in peacekeeping and in the very difficult task of building societies that do not immediately return to violence. In comparing UN-led and U.S.-led peace-building operations, the UN has a much higher level of enduring success. There are a couple of areas in which the UN has a strong comparative advantage, and it should devote lobbying, attention, and its own energy towards improving those areas. For example, the UN has unparalleled experience in establishing rule of law, including building a police force, a court system, a jailing system, a criminal code, and other institutions so critical in post-conflict situations. At the same time, the UN must improve the training of its personnel, from technicians to senior leaders. Most successful organizations have a continuing training program for career-track employees. Not everyone can be a Sergio Vieira de Mello or a Lakhdar Brahimi, but you can impart the lessons learned from their experiences in peacekeeping to new leaders.
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Do you think the power transitions in Iraq were a success? In general, what role should the UN play in Iraq going forward, particularly in light of impending new demands, such as Sudan and other ongoing conflicts in the world? GJ I A:
L U E R S : On the question of the power transfer, I welcomed the fact that they were able to find a way in Iraq, with the help of the United Nations, to assemble a group that ostensibly assumes some type of sovereign right. It is obviously in the interest of the coalition to make the Iraqi interim government appear and feel as much in charge as possible. It is not evident to me that the coalition has succeeded in doing this. It may happen over time, but the security situation has worsened so much that it is hard to gauge exactly how much power has actually been
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this relationship and balance credibility with contribution? While the security situation is as bad as it is, the UN will probably not have a mission in Iraq. It will conduct most of its activities in the humanitarian area through Iraqi affiliates of the UN and maintain a very small presence. UN personnel will not go into the field and get to know the local society, which is usually their strength. Until the security situation improves, I do not see the Secretary General risking the lives of UN workers. What remains to be seen is whether the UN can utilize its other strengths, such as designing and administering elections, without the component on the ground.
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transferred to the Iraqis from the coalition forces. I do not think the transfer of power has really happened. It may be in transition, but it is befuddling both for the Iraqis and the world. I think that we are in a major phase of U.S. foreign policy that could turn very sour, and I do not know how we are going to manage it. I do not think the UN can help much, except with diplomacy and negotiations. The most profound thing that happened to the UN, I think, since its founding, was the shock and surprise of having its headquarters blown up in Baghdad. This direct terrorist attack against the UN was an eye opener. This organization prides itself on its universality and respect by all. There was great debate over whether the UN should enter Baghdad in the wake of the occupying forces and whether the UN would be perceived as an independent and impartial entity. They chose to go in; that the terrorists decided that the UN was a part of the enemy and a part of the problem was a shock. Given the position of many member states regarding the war in Iraq, the UN had to seriously consider the implications of association with the United States. At the same time, the United States
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G J I A : Do you think that the United States can enhance UN legitimacy by allowing other pressing global issues, such as Darfur, to be handled through the UN and the Security Council?
What the Security Council decides depends upon the fifteen member states that make resolutions. If the Chinese and the Russians do not want to call Darfur genocide, the Security Council’s options are limited. If that is
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are ranting and raving against a world in disarray. remains the biggest donor to the UN, and therefore the UN has an obligation to the United States. Moreover, the United States is a very important player in maintaining global security. How does the Secretary General now manage
their decision, nothing the Secretary General says, or even the United States says, can stop them. The Secretary General has been personally involved, as has Secretary Powell, in trying to get humanitarian assistance in and trying to Winter/Spring 2005 [ 9 1 ]
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Well, the Iranians say, sort of amusingly, that we have done them a great favor. We have done three things: we have eliminated their major enemy to the east, the Taliban. We have eliminated their major enemy to the west, Saddam Hussein. And these situations have eliminated us because we are now bogged down militarily in both places. So they achieved a three-fold victory over us. This, it seems to me, could drive them to not behaving very wisely. I would say simply that we have to make a choice now because time is running out. Do we have a hard-line option that will work in Iran? We could take the issue to the UN, start the sanctions process, or maybe we or the Israelis could bomb their nuclear sites. If these fail, what would we do next? The Iranians will continue to build their nuclear capacity underground, and we will have forced them into it. They have no choice. If we are not ready to use military force there, that route is a dead end. We would end up with the worst of both worlds: nuclear weapons and an alienated country. My solution, not surprisingly, is to go the other route. Try to work with them. Accept the fact that they are going to have a nuclear program, which does not mean nuclear weapons. The United States can say to Iran, “We recognize your right to have a nuclear program. You agreed to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty. You signed the additional protocol, which calls for more intrusive inspections on the ground. We are going to hold you to G J I A : You testified before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in that, so go ahead and start your proOctober 2003 that the United States gram.” Until more confidence is built, should normalize relations with Iran. Is Iran should import its fuel and should that still your opinion? Has the removal not have a centrifuge or enrichment of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban capability. The argument that Iran’s large changed the dynamic in the region and oil reserves preclude them from the development of a nuclear energy proaffected U.S. policy towards Iran? LUERS:
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get the Sudanese government to change its policy. But the Security Council’s refusal to act is an inherent problem in achieving consensus within the larger community of nations. For a variety of reasons, the Chinese and the Russians do not want to go along with what the Secretary General would like to do and what the Americans have actually proposed. Even if the Security Council were to pass a resolution on genocide, the logistical and operational problems of securing an area the size of France would be immense. How many thousands of troops would be needed? As far as I can see, no one in Europe, or certainly in the United States, is prepared to commit any forces to an operation of this scale. The United States can say all it wants about genocide, but it will not take the action, just like it did not in Rwanda, because it does not want to put troops on the ground. The UN is taking a hit for what the member states on the Security Council will not decide upon. At the same time, if the Security Council did not exist, as imperfect as it is, where would people meet to talk? Where would people try to reach agreements? It is a fundamental challenge to figure out what we would do if we did no have a UN to go to. What people who rant and rave against the UN are ranting and raving against is a world in disarray. They are mad at the world because what you see at the UN is a reflection the world.
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on nuclear weapons, on terrorism, and helping them to become a member of the international community of nations should be a major objective of the United States. I suggest that there be a Shanghaitype declaration in which Iran and the United States identify shared concerns, including a reduction in nuclear weapons in the region, and discuss points of disagreement. I think we are in a very treacherous moment, a point at which we cannot go back if we make the wrong decisions. If we continue our current policy and refuse to talk directly to Iran, we will close the doors to any possibility of a deal. And then, there is no way out.
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gram is tenuous. Iran is the largest and most powerful country in the Middle East. Having a nuclear energy capacity is a measure of power and a hallmark of a scientific, modern society. Admittedly, it is risky either way. But the bigger risk is to drive them to nuclear weapons by isolating them, by bombing them, and by infuriating them. If we end up at war with Iran, the story is out that we are against Islam. In the Middle East, this would not be not about nuclear weapons; it would be about our perceived distrust of Islam. Recognition of the Islamic Republic of Iran and working with them, as tough as they are, on Iraq,
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Politics & Diplomacy
Baluchis, Beijing, and Pakistan’s Gwadar Port
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Ziad Haider
Ziad Haider is Research Assistant for the South Asia Program at the Henry L. Stimson Center.
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On 3 May 2004, three Chinese engineers were killed and eleven others, including nine Chinese and two Pakistanis, were injured when a remote-controlled car bomb hit their van. The engineers had been traveling to the Gwadar port in the southwest Pakistani province of Baluchistan. In response, President Pervez Musharraf and then Prime Minister Zafarallah Jamali immediately sent messages of condolences to their Chinese counterparts, assuring them that a few terrorists could never undermine the Sino-Pakistani friendship. Within the week, the Frontier Corps was deployed to the port and armed escorts were assigned to the Chinese workers. Following the detention of eighteen people, Pakistani officials declared on 9 May that they had arrested the “key suspect” behind the attack. Since then, obscure reports periodically appear in the Pakistani press regarding other culprits who have been apprehended with scant information provided on their background. The alacrity of Islamabad’s response shows the immense premium it places on the Sino-Pakistani relationship and the Gwadar deep seaport project. The port lies at the heart of President Musharraf’s vision of prosperity for Pakistan. It is meant to transform Pakistan into a vibrant hub of commercial activity among the energy rich Gulf and Central Asian states, Afghanistan, and China, and to provide the Pakistan
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While Pakistan and China believe that the port will deliver significant economic and military gains, India, Iran, and the local Baluchis view it as a potential “It is not possible to tell who the perpetrators of this crime threat to their economic are. The president has ordered an inquiry and said that the cul- interests and security, prits would be given [the] severest punishment. What we can and al-Qaeda presumsay with certainty is that it was a terrorist act. The Gwadar port ably rejects it as steppingis a symbol of Pak-China cooperation and is part of our joint Pakistan’s efforts to build modern infrastructure projects in Pakistan. stone to becoming a Once built, the port will act as a strategic hub for commercial stronger, more prosperactivity for the entire region. So some vicious mind has tried to ous state. Realizing the target Pakistan-China friendship, the port project, and increas- Gwadar dream in such an inimical environment ingly Pakistan’s positive economic profile.” -Masood Khan, will not be easy; however, Pakistan Foreign Ministry Spokesman1 Islamabad can bolster its position by adopting a two-pronged strategy. First, it must recognize that the port’s import routes and extend its presence in the Indian Ocean. Thus, China’s con- greatest opponent is its own people, the tribution of technical assistance, 450 local Baluchis, and it must assure them of workers and 80 percent of the funds for their stake in a project of critical importhe construction of the port, is one of tance to national security. Failure to the latest chapters in the storied “all- build a consensus on the port could result in its violent derailment and possiweather” friendship. Certain regional state and non-state bly preclude future Chinese manpower actors, however, do not share China and and technical assistance on development Pakistan’s enthusiasm for the port. The projects due to security concerns.2 port has raised eyebrows in neighboring Second, Pakistani officials should leverIndia and Iran over Sino-Pakistan mar- age the port to attract Chinese investitime activities and has sparked a tacit ment and to forge a vibrant economic competition over whether Pakistan’s relationship with China that reflects their Gwadar port or Iran’s Chabahar port, strong politico-military relationship. For built with Indian assistance, will serve as Pakistan to reap the dividends of the Central Asia’s conduit to warm waters. Gwadar port, the Baluchis and Beijing The port fuels bitter discontent among need to be firmly anchored to it. local Baluchi nationalists who believe that the benefits of the project will bypass them Gwadar Dividends. China and Pakistan and who maintain longstanding griev- have a history of collaboration in the ances against the federal government. The military realm and international political port also presents a potentially irresistible fora stemming from a shared view of an target to al-Qaeda as payback for adversarial India. The joint construction Pakistan’s cooperation in the U.S.-led of large-scale development projects has war on terror. further cemented ties. Both sides have
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Navy with strategic depth along its coastline as a naval base. The port will also enable China to diversify its crude oil
[ 9 6 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
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world’s oil supplies flow, the port is strategically located to serve as a key shipping point in the region. Second, the port will provide the landlocked Central Asian republics, Afghanistan, and the Chinese Xinjiang region with access to the Arabian Sea’s warm waters. A road from Gwadar to Saindak, which is currently under construction and runs parallel to the Iran-Pakistan border, will be the shortest route between Central Asia and the Arabian Sea. The port will also enable the transfer of Central Asia’s vast energy resources to world markets, earning Pakistan significant profits in transit fees. By making Gwadar the pivot of regional trade, Pakistan will also attract considerable investment into its most underdeveloped province, Baluchistan. These funds will allow for the construction of roads and rails linking the coastal region to the rest of Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan; will cultivate the region’s vast and unexplored natural resources; and theoretically will allow for the socioeconomic uplift of the local Baluchis through various development projects. Certain Pakistani press reports have suggested that foreign investors have expressed an interest in investing some $8 billion in Baluchistan.4 While this number seems somewhat inflated, the
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hailed the Karakoram Highway, connecting Kashgar in China’s Xinjiang province with Islamabad, as the symbol of their “all-weather” friendship. Despite improving Sino-Indian relations, SinoPakistani development projects have continued with the Gwadar port and the Chashma II nuclear power plant, as per an agreement concluded in May 2004. Symbolically, Premier Zhu Rongji announced China’s decision to underwrite the port project in May 2001 during his visit to Pakistan on the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of SinoPakistani relations. The Chinese have acted upon this pledge. Construction of the Gwadar port began in March 2002 after the Chinese agreed to provide $198 million of the $248 million required for Phase I of the project. Phase I involves the construction of three multipurpose ship berths and is slated to be completed early next year. In a sign of the near completion of Phase I in mid-November, a Chinese cargo vessel carrying port-related equipment successfully berthed at Gwadar, an occasion marked with much fanfare and fireworks. Phase II, estimated at $600 million, will include the building of nine additional berths, one bulk cargo terminal, one grain terminal, and two oil terminals.3
Politics & Diplomacy
Local Baluchi nationalists believe the benefits of the port will pass them by. The economic significance of the port is two-fold. First, in light of the chronic instability in the Gulf region, the Gwadar port will provide a stable and proximate point of access to the Gulf ports. Just 250 miles from the Straits of Hormuz, through which nearly 40 percent of the
potential of the port is not lost on investors who will continue to factor Pakistan’s domestic security situation into their calculations. The Gwadar port has also been described by Pakistan’s Navy Chief as the country’s third naval base after Karachi Winter/Spring 2005 [ 9 7 ]
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U.S. naval activity in the Persian Gulf, Indian activity in the Arabian Sea, and future U.S.-Indian maritime cooperation in the Indian Ocean.
Watchful and Wary Neighbors.
Two key regional players, Iran and India, have warily watched the construction of the Gwadar port in their backyard. In fact, on 2 July 2004, the Pakistani police claimed that it had arrested an Indian agent in Karachi who “provided strategic and sensitive information to India’s spy agency, including maps of the Gwadar port.”8 Some Indian analysts compare the construction of the port to China’s establishment of facilities at Coco Island in Myanmar to monitor Indian maritime activity and missile testing in Orissa. In an interview with Jane’s Defence Weekly, Indian Navy Chief Admiral Madhavendra Singh stated that India was closely observing Chinese activity on the
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and Ormara and as an improvement in Pakistan’s deep-sea water defense.5 The port is 450 kilometers farther from the Indian border than Karachi, which handled 90 percent of Pakistan’s sea-borne trade in 2001; Pakistan expects it to alleviate the congestion that Pakistani maritime assets face in Karachi. Pakistan has critically felt this constriction in the past, including when India blockaded Karachi during the 1971 war and threatened to do so again during the 1999 Kargil crisis.6 Consequently, the Gwadar port will provide Pakistan with crucial strategic depth along its coastline. China’s primary interests in the Gwadar port are to continue consolidating its relationship with Pakistan through large-scale collaborative development projects, to diversify and secure its crude oil import oil routes, and to extend its presence in the Indian Ocean. In 2003 China imported 51 percent of its total
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consolidate its relationship with Pakistan, diversify and secure its crude oil import routes, and extend its presence in the Indian Ocean.
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crude imports from the Middle East; however, increasing piracy in the Straits of Malacca has compelled China to look for alternate routes.7 Chinese officials have publicly stated their interest in turning the port into a transit terminal for crude oil imports from Iran and Africa to China’s Xinjiang region. Furthermore, a Chinese presence at Gwadar allows China to ensure the security of its energy-related shipments along existing routes. It could also monitor [ 9 8 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Makran coast, along which Gwadar is located, and expressed concern about the Chinese Navy’s close interaction with “a few neighboring countries” that could “seriously endanger vital Indian shipping routes in the Gulf.”9 India’s new naval doctrine specifically seeks to address India’s need to secure energy routes and counter the Chinese presence in the Arabian Sea. Released in May 2004, the doctrine calls for building a nuclear ballistic missile submarine as
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oil tankers, aptly reflects the Iran-Afghan entente.11 Meanwhile, the Chabahar port has not escaped the notice of Pakistani officials who have stated, “Pakistan is pinning huge hopes on the Gwadar project as the transit point for goods from Russia and the CARs (Central Asian Republics) bound for the Gulf and the East, but the Chabahar port would inflict a huge financial setback for Pakistan.”12 The strategic competition surrounding the Gwadar port and the transit routes need not be viewed solely through a confrontational lens. Recent thaws in Sino-Indian, Indo-Pakistani, and Iranian-Pakistani bilateral relations augur well for regional economic prospects across the board. Talks of links between the Gwadar port and Iran occur against the backdrop of improving IranPakistan relations since the fall of the Taliban and China’s interest in acquiring Iranian natural gas and developing its oil fields. The inter-port rivalry may in fact prove to be beneficial by stimulating even greater trade in the region. The resumption of the Indo-Pakistan composite dialogue parallels the warming Sino-Indian relations. China and India’s overtures to Central Asia can be viewed as a westward extension of their “relaxed” jostling for influence in Southeast Asia. Looking ahead, China and India’s burgeoning energy appetites imbue their advances in Central Asia with a more ominous overtone. Other critical factors in the emergence of vibrant regional commerce include significant transportation and infrastructure advances and stability in Afghanistan, the latter giving common cause for all parties to support President Karzai and refrain from king making in Kabul. The competition and cooperation over the Gwadar port thus demon-
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part of India’s envisioned triad of nuclear forces—the ability to launch land-, air-, and sea-based nuclear weapons—and developing a blue-water fleet that can project power into the Arabian Sea and beyond. Indian Navy long-range planning officers have stated that as the depletion of the world oil reserves will bring more regional powers to the Indian Ocean, India needs to bolster its striking power and command-and-control, surveillance, and intelligence capabilities. The doctrine particularly highlights China’s nuclear missile submarines and its ties with Indian Ocean rim nations, including Pakistan.10 Iran’s response to the Gwadar port has been to construct its own Chabahar port and tacitly compete with Pakistan in capturing access routes and energy-related trade from Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Stemming from President Mohammed Khatami’s January 2003 visit to India and the signing of the “Road Map to Strategic Cooperation,” India has agreed to assist Iran in constructing the Chabahar port and road links between Iran, Afghanistan, and northward to Tajikistan. According to Iranian officials, a transit route will be established that will run from Iran through Herat in western Afghanistan and Mazar-e Sharif and Sherkhan Bandar in northern Afghanistan to Tajikistan, and from there up to China. In its efforts, Iran has a partial upper hand over Pakistan due to its warmer relations with the Central Asian states, particularly with Afghanistan under President Hamid Karzai, which remains cool toward Pakistan for supporting the Taliban. That Iran is permitting Afghanistan to use the Chabahar port with a substantial discount on port fees, with the exception of
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strates the increasingly important and fluid linkages between countries in the Middle East and Central, South, and East Asia as economic ties are created, cultural and historical relationships are revisited, and new security relationships are formulated.
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Internal Fissures. India and Iran’s
tonments. As the cost of land in Gwadar has skyrocketed, with the price of a 500square yard plot reportedly having risen from $130 to $7000, a major source of bitterness has been the acquisition of local land by real estate agencies at low prices and the subsequent sale to non-Baluchis with huge profit margins.14 Prominent Baluchi nationalist leaders have vociferously condemned the project for some time and have threatened to resort to violence in order to drive away investors and derail the project. Groups within Baluchistan are now violently venting their frustrations. Attacks on gas pipelines are virtually a daily occurrence, resulting in the disruption of energy and the loss of thousands of rupees. Army bases and personnel have been increasingly targeted. On 16 August 2004, five paramilitary troops were killed and twelve others were wounded near Sui, home to Pakistan’s main gas facilities. Major General Shaukat Sultan, the Pakistani military spokesperson, accused India’s foreign intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), of abetting these attacks and being “involved in terrorist activities in Baluchistan.”15 Nevertheless, the primarily indigenous element of this ongoing quasi-insurgency is incontrovertible. Baluchi nationalists harbor sufficient antipathy toward the port and the federal government that some of their fringe elements may find common cause with al-Qaeda in severing the Gwadar knot that uniquely ties together Pakistan’s national security interests and its foremost ally. To reduce the internal threat facing the port, Islamabad must secure the confidence of the local Baluchis and provide them with a sense of ownership over its development. It should clamp down on the real estate sharks, provide technical
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wariness toward the port pales in comparison to the deep-seeded mistrust with which local Baluchis view the Gwadar project. As Pakistan’s backward hinterland, the province is plagued by rampant poverty, illiteracy, and unemployment. Many Baluchis have long harbored nationalist sentiments with tensions having reached their zenith in the 1970s. Between 1973 and 1977, the federal government ordered the armed forces to quell a popular uprising, resulting in thousands of casualties. In addition, gas fields in Baluchistan account for 70 percent of the country’s natural gas capacity; nevertheless, Baluchistan only receives a marginal amount in royalties.13 Today, Baluchis continue to chafe under what they regard as domination by the Punjabis, Pakistan’s largest ethnic group, manifested in the Punjabi-dominated military’s prevalence in the province, the inequitable allocation of federal resources, and the exploitation of the province’s vast natural resources with little benefits seen locally. Having been largely excluded from the decision making process surrounding the port, Baluchis worry that the economic gains of the project will be siphoned off to the other provinces; the influx of nonBaluchis in the region seeking employment will displace Baluchis and dilute their culture; and the Pakistan Army will continue to consolidate its military presence in the region by opening more can[ 1 0 0 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
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training and commit jobs to local Baluchis, provide compensation to all those displaced by the port construction, implement the project plan by building a consensus with local and provincial authorities, and pay attention to local
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by successive rounds of talks on their border dispute and burgeoning economic ties, should make Pakistan consider how it can insulate its relationship from this warming trend. Pakistani policymakers can continue to expect
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Baluchi nationalists may find common
cause with al-Qaeda in severing the Gwadar knot that uniquely ties together Pakistan’s national security interests and foremost ally.
Chinese military assistance to maintain a strategic balance vis-à-vis India; nevertheless, they would be prudent to broaden the contours of their relationship and make inroads into the Chinese economy. The Gwadar port provides an important avenue to do just this. In spite of the depth of Sino-Pakistani politico-military collaboration since the early 1960s, economic cooperation has been surprisingly deficient in the past. In recent years, however, bilateral trade has steadily increased, with a 35 percent rise to $2.4 billion last year, half the trade volume registered between China and India. Still, the balance of trade remains overwhelmingly in China’s favor, whose exports amounted to $1.8 billion compared to Pakistan’s $575 million.16 Pakistan’s support for Islamic militancy in the nineties can partially explain the lack of land-based trade. During this period, The Ties That Bind. President China was reluctant to allow the free flow Musharraf has repeatedly stated that of goods along the Karakoram Highway Pakistan’s economic growth and security because of its fear of the simultaneous are his primary priorities. China is trafficking in arms and radical Islamic idecapable of critically assisting Pakistan on ology into its restive western province. both these fronts; however, China and Today, China has revived the land route India’s warming relations, spearheaded through a series of bilateral agreements
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sensitivities regarding the military presence in the region. The establishment of a parliamentary standing committee on Baluchistan and the initiation of a political dialogue between President Musharraf’s de facto National Security Adviser, Tariq Aziz, and the nationalists is a step in the right direction. Failure to address Baluchi grievances will only breed greater frustration, more frequent and lethal acts of sabotage, and greater military heavy-handedness, thus locking all parties in a vicious cycle of violence. Moreover, in such a fluid and explosive environment, al-Qaeda and other external actors will have greater room in which to maneuver by plugging into the existing alienation, and perhaps will be able to derail plans for the port and thereby undermine President Musharraf’s strategic vision for Pakistan.
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stakeholders within China. A survey of regional views of the Gwadar port suggests that the port’s importance lies in its ability to connect vital Central Asian and Middle Eastern energy sources to world markets, to facilitate trade, and to project naval power in the Indian Ocean. The substantial economic and military potential of the port has propelled regional players to maneuver around each other by establishing trade links and engaging in development projects with other states, upgrading their own internal infrastructure, and expanding their naval capabilities. While this competition is currently in its incipient stages, it foreshadows the growing linkages amongst countries of South, Central, and East Asia and the Middle East, who are breaking out of their regional bloc molds and looking to the Indian Ocean as a critical venue of interaction. Pakistan clearly stands to benefit immensely from the successful operationalization of the port; however, the 3 May attack is a reminder that endeavors of great reward are usually fraught with risk. For Islamabad to minimize its risks and maximize its returns on the port, it needs to gain Baluchi support and to reinforce Beijing’s long-term investment. By addressing Baluchi concerns, Islamabad can begin to integrate a long-alienated segment of its population into a larger Pakistani consciousness by providing them with a stake in the country’s prosperity. The Gwadar port also offers Pakistan an invaluable opportunity to cash in on the Sino-Pakistan friendship and root it in even firmer ground. Ultimately, the construction of the Gwadar port acts as a litmus test for Pakistan's ability to operate on a consensual basis with the Baluchis and to convert the port from a vulnerable link to an impregnable cornerstone of the SinoPakistan friendship.
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signed in November 2003 that call for an expansion of border trade and the implementation of a preferential trade agreement. Meanwhile, China has also pledged to develop its western regions including Xinjiang as part of its “Go West” policy. Xinjiang has already demonstrated its economic potential by having registered $4.8 billion in foreign trade and $22.7 billion in GDP in 2003, up 10.8 percent from the previous year.17 Seeking to capitalize on Xinjiang’s rising fortunes and strengthen Sino-Pakistani economic ties, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz vocally called for expanding trade links with Xinjiang and offered the Gwadar port’s services for facilitating trade during the Governor of Xinjiang’s October 2004 visit to Pakistan. Pakistan should continue to leverage Chinese engagement in the port so that it can act as an indispensable trade conduit for western China and to attract Chinese investment for development and joint venture projects in and around the Gwadar port. Pakistani officials should open a consulate in Xinjiang and encourage private companies to establish representative offices there to facilitate crossborder trade. While no reliable figures exist for the Gwadar port’s impact on Sino-Pakistani trade, Pakistani officials and the business community continue to maintain high expectations to not only expand the volume of trade, but also to address the gross trade imbalance. Discussions are already underway to designate the Gwadar port a free trade zone, while some members of the Pakistani business community advocate the eventual designation of the Gwadar port as an export-processing zone with special incentives extended to Chinese companies. Pakistani leaders should consider granting such concessions to the Chinese business community to diversify the port’s [ 1 0 2 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
HAIDER
Politics & Diplomacy
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Crude Imports,” Dow Jones, 10 May 2004. 8 The frequency with which Indian and Pakistani officials accuse each other's intelligence agencies of backing domestic individuals and groups and stirring violence diminishes the credibility of the report; however, the specific mention of the Gwadar port demonstrates that Pakistani officials view it as a project of vital importance to Pakistan's national security that needs to be shielded from Indian scrutiny. “Indian Spy Held, Claims Pakistan,” Times of India, 2 July 2004. 9 “Indian Navy Concerned Over China's Expanding Reach,” Times of India, 21 May 2003. 10 "India's New Naval Ambition," DefenseNews, 7 June 2004. 11 Ibid. 12 “New Iranian Port to Hurt Gwadar Port's Prospects,” Daily Times, 15 September 2003. 13 “Calls for Baluchi Independence Grow,” United Press International, 2 November 2003. 14 “Chinese, Pakistanis Back at Work in Gwadar,” DAWN (Pakistan), 7 May 2004. 15 Sarfaraz Ahmed, “Interview with Major General Shaukat Sultan,” Daily Times, 15 September 2004. 16 “Pakistan, China Trade Volume Reaches $2.4 b,” Daily Times, 17 November 2004. 17 “Xinjiang Seeks Balanced Investment,” China Internet Information Center, 9 March 2004, Internet, http://www.china.com.cn/market/hwc/401925. htm (date accessed: 13 July 2004).
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1 “Beijing Lauds Best Medical Care to Injured Chinese,” The News (Pakistan), 6 May 2004. 2 Chinese workers in Pakistan have since fallen victim to instability in other parts of Pakistan. On 9 October 2004, two Chinese engineers were kidnapped while working at the Gomal Zam Dam project in the South Waziristan Agency where a large-scale Pakistani military operation is underway against alleged al-Qaeda fighters. The kidnapping climaxed in a rescue operation that left one of the engineers dead while the mastermind, former Guantanamo Bay inmate Abdullah Meshud, remains at large. While Beijing has vowed that such incidents will not deter it from engaging in development projects, work on the dam project has been suspended and further such attacks may induce more caution and perhaps even the withdrawal of Chinese workers, all to the detriment of the relationship. 3 “Gawader,” Government of Pakistan Board of Investment Report, Internet, http://www.pakboi.gov. pk/html/Gawadar.html (date accessed: 12 July 2004). 4 Sarfaraz Ahmed, “The Latest Hotspot: Gwadar,”Daily Times, 5 May 2004. 5 “Navy to Build Base in Gwadar,” Daily Times, 19 April 2004. 6 See Aysha Siddiqa-Agha, “South Asia: Nuclear Navies?” The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 56, no. 5 (September/October 2002). 7 “Gwadar Port Could Be Transit for China's
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Science&Technology The New Age of Biodiplomacy Calestous Juma
Calestous Juma is Professor of the Practice of International Development at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He served as Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Geneva and Montreal.
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One of the most significant public policy developments of the new millennium is the growing recognition of the role of technological innovation in international relations. Critical global objectives such as improvements in human welfare, participation in the global economy, and the transition towards sustainability are no longer possible without the significant use of science, technology, and innovation. In fact, advances in science and technology are shaping the character and content of international relations. Agricultural biotechnology offers an example of how technological innovation and the associated institutional adjustments have the potential to lead to changes in the way nations relate to each other. Advances in agricultural biotechnology and ensuing public debates will induce changes in relations among countries. These changes are likely to lead to new forms of technologybased international partnerships that will alter the traditional patterns of international cooperation between developing countries. They will also reshape the structure and function of international relations by bringing about greater awareness of the role of science and technology in the practice of diplomacy. This paper first lays out the links between technological and international relations, using the Green Revolution as an example. The second section examines divergences in the use
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solving local problems. The capacity to modify living organisms offers additional tools for raising agricultural productivity, adapting crops to new conditions, reducing the use of chemicals, and designing new production systems that are consistent with ecological principles. These potential benefits have generated considerable interest among developing countries.4 Such technology makes it possible to address food challenges in regions such as Africa that did not benefit from the Green Revolution. Although advances in breeding maize helped to extend the scope of food production in many African countries, efforts in other fields showed dismal results. The Cold War concerns that inspired the Green Revolution in Latin America and Asia took on different forms in Africa. Raising food productivity was not a strategic way to respond to superpower competition in African countries. The Cold War coincided with the era of decolonization and the upheavals associated with this process of disengagement did not provide sufficient incentives for long-term investment in agricultural research. Moreover, ecological factors limit the Green Revolution’s effects on agricultural production in Africa. Africa’s diverse food base and small urban markets did not lend themselves to large-scale crops of maize, wheat, and rice—crops that thrive in most parts of Latin America and Asia. Africa also lacked the institutional foundation for research in these crops. Much of the continent is arid or semiarid and marked by a high degree of agro-ecological diversity that demands broader farmer participation in research programs.5 The sheer diversity of crops used in the region and the absence of
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of emerging biotechnologies. The third part describes the implications of discontinuities in agricultural biotechnology for international cooperation. Finally, I will outline policy and practical directions for development based on new initiatives as well as expected trends in international relations.
Biotechnology in International Relations. In the early phases of the
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Cold War, industrialized countries sought to use their scientific and technical knowledge to solve the problems of developing countries, as well as extend their strategic influence. In part to stem the spread of communism, high-yield varieties of wheat and rice were developed and adopted in Mexico, India, and other developing countries.1 The United States, in cooperation with other industrialized countries, set up and supported the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which remains the most successful effort to mobilize the world’s scientific knowledge for solving development problems.2 These public efforts helped to raise food productivity in Latin America and Asia, but they also stimulated local economic activities.3 In addition to meeting local food needs and raising farm incomes, the Green Revolution helped integrate these countries into the global agricultural trade system. The Green Revolution focused on raising agricultural productivity in key staples such as wheat and rice. It simultaneously created a foundation for food safety and demonstrated how countries could use scientific and technical knowledge to solve development challenges. The Green Revolution showed that it was possible to create long-term international technology partnerships aimed at [ 1 0 6 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
JUMA
nology and research institutions. Developing countries that need biotechnology most are often the ones that are least involved in its development.9 The use of transgenic crops has been expanding rapidly, but disproportionately in temperate regions. In 2002, transgenic crops covered over 67.7 million estimated hectares in eighteen countries. The bulk of this was in the United States with 63 percent, Argentina accounting for 21 percent, Canada 6 percent, China 4 percent, Brazil 4 percent, and South Africa 1 percent.10 Most of these crops are on large farms where genetic modification has been used to
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large markets undermines the feasibility of plant breeding programs. Agricultural research to meet the needs of isolated rural populations was beyond the reach of plant breeding institutions, which focused on a limited number of commercial crops. Today’s technological capabilities in fields such as genomics make it possible to adapt crops to these diverse ecosystems in ways that are consistent with the principles of sustainable agriculture.6 Herbicide resistance, disease, stress tolerance, and other traits can be applied to promote sustainable agriculture in regions that do not support agriculture
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Little investment has gone into
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developing crops for low-income families. today. It is this technological flexibility and the creation of niche markets that developing countries hope to use to improve their farming methods and reduce pressure on the environment.7 In addition, return on investment in pioneer, Green Revolution countries such as India are starting to decline, making it more profitable to invest in African countries such as Uganda.8 A combination of changes in relative rates of return on investment and advances in agricultural technology make it possible for African countries to make significant advances in food production and related industrial activities.
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introduce incremental changes in existing crops. These incremental crop adjustments explain why transgenic crop distribution is limited to geographical areas with similar ecological conditions. Transgenic applications are currently limited to soybean, corn, canola, and cotton. Biotechnology’s promise to meet the needs of low-income families in the developing world still remains a distant dream, although some new agricultural trials are underway in a number of developing countries.11 There are several key reasons why the promise is yet to be realized. First, crop development for low-income families has traditionally been carried out by the Technological Divergence. The use public sector. Advances in biotechnology of biotechnology has evolved with a focus have arisen from within the private secon markets in industrialized countries tor, and the private sector lacks the and temperate regions. This is partly due incentives to invest in crops for lowto the accumulation of knowledge in income families.12 Second, official develareas with previous investments in tech- opment assistance for agricultural Winter/Spring 2005 [ 1 0 7 ]
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firms in the industrialized world are willing to share their technology on the condition that it is used to address local food needs rather than export crops, and that they are not held liable for damages arising from the use of their inventions. This is one of the challenges faced by new institutions such as the African Agricultural Research Foundation, which was created with the help of the Rockefeller Foundation to pool patents relevant to tropical agriculture.
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research has been declining in real and nominal terms since the 1990s. As a result, little investment has gone into developing crops for low-income families.13 It is unlikely that this situation will change without a redirection of existing research priorities in private enterprises through the provision of appropriate incentives; a significant increase in public sector funding for agricultural research; and the creation of new forms of partnerships.14 In addition, institutional arrangements will need to be created to facilitate closer cooperation between private and public sector institutions. Technological divergence is likely to be reinforced by three factors. First, the continuing uncertainty over market access for genetically modified products
Biotechnology Debates. Debates over divergence in technological priorities parallel international controversies over the role of genetically modified (GM) foods in the global economy. Much of this debate has focused on the environmental and health impacts of the
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research has been declining in real and nominal terms since the 1990s.
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in Europe could reduce the pace of technological innovations in products intended for international markets. Considerable uncertainty over the impact of public opinion on investment decisions could influence investment firms to err on the side of caution.15 Second, developing countries are likely to redirect their biotechnology efforts towards meeting local needs. Indeed, many of the products being created in developing countries are destined for local consumption, partly because of urgency to meet such needs and partly because of uncertainty in international markets. Third, a number of biotechnology [ 1 0 8 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
products. Governments have used the United Nations as a forum for resolving their differences. In fact, initial attempts to resolve the growing concerns through the 1992 UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) dealt largely with environmental aspects of living modified organisms (LMOs).16 International negotiations over biotechnology in the late 1990s focused largely on potential applications to meet the needs of developing countries. Governments negotiated and signed the CBD based on detailed consideration of the potential role of biotechnology in development. Indeed, developing countries argued that they could use biological
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specifically focusing on trans-boundary movements.” Biotechnology has increasingly been defined in terms of its risks, and little consideration has been devoted thus far to finding mechanisms that offer a balanced assessment of its potential in developing countries. Enterprises in developed countries have in turn been slow to engage in technological partnerships in developing countries because of concern over the lack of a policy environment that supports the use of emerging technologies.
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resources to create new industries via this emerging technology. It was agreed that biotechnology “promises to make a significant contribution in enabling the development of, for example, better health care, enhanced food security through sustainable agricultural practices, improved supplies of potable water, more efficient industrial development processes for transforming raw materials, support for sustainable methods of afforestation and reforestation, and detoxification of hazardous wastes. Biotechnology also offers new opportunities for global partnerships, especially between the countries rich in biological resources (which include genetic resources) but lacking expertise and investment.”17 Subsequent negotiations led to the adoption of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity on 20 January 2000. The protocol came into force in November 2001, making it the first major treaty to codify the “precautionary principle” in international law. The United States argued that the application of the precautionary principle would endanger international trade, while the European Union and its developing country partners stressed the need for countries to have the option to ban imports, even if there was no conclusive evidence that the products were harmful.18 Nevertheless, the protocol states: “In accordance with the precautionary approach…the objective of this Protocol is to contribute to ensuring an adequate level of protection in the field of the safe transfer, handling and use of living modified organisms resulting from modern biotechnology that may have adverse effects on the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, taking also into account risks to human health, and
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Trade in Transgenic Foods. Consumers in industrialized countries continue to express skepticism toward transgenic foods. They question the need to use new technologies to make incremental changes in their foods without offering tangible benefits, especially those that help to improve human well-being. Indeed, industrialized countries already face challenges associated with excessive production of food. Corresponding institutional reforms that combine agricultural, environmental, and consumer protection ministries illustrate a change in policy focus and public outlook. The situation in many developing countries is different, especially in Africa. Low-income families in these countries face a wide range of challenges that include malnutrition, hunger, and related illnesses. Addressing these challenges requires the deployment of all available technological options. The poor often rely on a limited range of food sources, and as ecological degradation continues, the capacity to meet the needs of the poor diminishes. Therefore, promoting sustainable land use is crucial. Responding to these challenges Winter/Spring 2005 [ 1 0 9 ]
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Food Aid. The introduction of GM foods to the global economy has coincided with intensified concerns over the impact of food aid on developing countries.22 As a result, constituencies that were previously opposed to food aid per se now express their disenchantment through opposition to GM foods. In other words, the advent of GM foods provides a new basis for questioning the effects of food aid while focusing on ecological and health concerns. Civil society organizations have long questioned the impact of food aid on recipient countries and have even sought to promote ethical standards for food distribution. Southern Africa dramatically exemplifies the diplomatic ramifications of GM food aid. A number of Southern African countries, notably Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Angola, have at some point rejected GM food aid, citing a variety of arguments related to trade, the environment, and human health. The more widely publicized case of Zambia illustrates the possible diplomatic ruptures that can arise from conflicts over biotechnology. In 2001, the Zambian government publicly declined food aid, claiming that they could not guarantee its safety. They also feared that genetic contamination could undermine the export of their agricultural products to their traditional markets in the European Union. Zambia, like many other African countries, aspired to develop its agriculture sector and was already doing so with little assistance from the international agricultural aid community. While the Zambian government maintained a strong public position against GM foods, its senior officials privately pointed out that they were interested in being part of the biotechnology revolution. Indeed, the country has since adopted a biotechnolo-
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requires investment in technologies that are appropriate to the needs of lowincome communities in diverse ecological zones, often located in areas that major markets do not serve. Agricultural production in these areas will need to be equally diverse and reflect local needs and preferences. Genetic modification and emerging genomics techniques offer the possibility of designing farming systems that are decentralized, responsive to local needs, and that reflect sustainability requirements through greater productivity. The regulatory divergence between the United States and the EU led to a decision by the European Commission in 1999 to impose a moratorium on the importation of GM foods that have not been approved in the EU. A series of bilateral consultative efforts to resolve the differences failed to yield any significant results. As a result, potential trade wars regarding GM products have emerged as a new source of trans-Atlantic friction.19 In response, the United States, Canada, and Argentina have decided to challenge the moratorium in the World Trade Organization (WTO), arguing that it constitutes a trade barrier. Until the matter is resolved, developing countries will be reluctant to accept policies that might put them in conflict with any of the warring parties. This is particularly important because their membership to the Cartagena Protocol requires that they implement its provisions at a time when there are faced with a dominant regulatory model applied in the United States.20 The trade dilemma could also affect investment in biotechnology research. The outcome could be a delay in the adoption of biotechnology, even in situations where such products are for domestic use only.21 [ 1 1 0 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
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nance of such institutions is dominated by members of the United States and the EU who do not share a common view on the role of biotechnology in internationBiotechnology Cooperation. The current al development. Such policy uncertainty debates and evolution of biotechnology affects non-governmental international affect international cooperation in agri- development agencies working on food cultural biotechnology in myriad ways. aid or agricultural issues. First, the shift from public to private sector funding has resulted in discontinu- Biodiplomacy’s Future. The future ities in international cooperation, espe- of biotechnology and diplomacy could cially through the introduction of new follow a number of possible scenarios. institutional practices such as stricter The first is that the current debates intellectual property protection mea- between the United States and the EU sures. International agricultural research will continue for some time and, as a institutes have been slow to adapt to this result of this uncertainty, many of the new culture and, as a result, they have not efforts underway in developing countries been able to make effective use of new will dissipate. This is a plausible scenario, technologies held by the private sector. but its impact on countries will depend The main response by these institutions on their stages of development; more has been to argue for an open access advanced countries are less likely to experegime that would guarantee their free- rience adverse effects and current players dom to operate. in the biotechnology field will seek new These discontinuities are also associat- markets and adapt to emerging regulatoed with the shift of funding from con- ry regimes. ventional plant breeding to modern The second possible scenario is the genomic techniques. Budgetary changes rapid resolution of differences between that have forced scientists at the the opposing camps, with agreement on International Maize and Wheat common elements in their regulatory Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in practices. Such agreements could possiMexico to curtail their breeding activities bly follow the outcomes of the WTO disillustrate this point.23 The reduction in pute on GM products. This scenario is CIMMYT’s funding is part of a broader obviously contingent on the capacity of reduction in funding to the internation- European enterprises to play an immedial agricultural research center, but it ate role in global biotechnology marunderscores the importance of techno- kets,24 This picture seems unlikely in the logical discontinuities. Such shifts in near future. research missions also affect partnerships A third scenario could involve a strategic between international and national plant push by one or both of the trading parties breeding programs. toward broad partnerships promoting the Even more fundamental is the past use of biotechnology in agriculture as well inability of leading international devel- as in other fields such human health, opment agencies, such as the World industrial production, and environmental Bank, to establish clear agricultural poli- management. Such a scenario could cies. This is mainly because the gover- unfold as major, developing country
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gy development policy despite its popular image as a strong opponent of genetic engineering.
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In many cases, this vision necessitates political consensus. Where there is no political consensus, science and technology policy strategies may not last long enough to show viable results. The longterm perspective also requires continuous adjustments of the policies and institutions in light of global changes and new opportunities. Long-term policies are likely to succeed when they focus on specific issues or Science and Technology Policy. Poor alignment categories of products that confer a cerbetween development goals and govern- tain degree of competitive advantage to a ment structures hampers technological country or region. Investment in techniinnovation in developing countries. cal education, for example, offers the Alleviating this will require a strategic flexibility that a country needs to adapt to vision for the country or regional inte- emerging global conditions.25 gration organization that focuses on the The role of science and technology role of technological innovation in eco- advice in offices of presidents and prime nomic transformation. For most coun- ministers becomes particularly importries, the most obvious starting point for tant in these regards. Science and techformulating a strategic vision is to focus nology advice must help guide interna-
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biotechnology players such as China, India, and Brazil start to expand their partnerships with other developing countries. Regardless of future diplomatic decisions, the innovations of allied countries will depend on the degree to which they define and manage access to biotechnology as a strategic input to the development process and the extent to which they seek to build technology alliances.
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tional relations, and policymakers will need to equip themselves with the capacity to use scientific and technical knowledge in decision making. Overall, nations should base the design of policies and institutions upon identified technological goals and not upon generic terms. A focus on agricultural biotechnology and biomedical research, for example, would offer the necessary focus for rethinking existing policies and institutions. In addition, these entities should consider such policies and institutions in the context of the configuration of resources needed to deliver products.
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In the case of agricultural biotechnology and biomedical research, such policies and institutions will need to consider the importance of strategic alliances and global partnerships.
fied science and technology as one of the key areas for trilateral cooperation. The emergence of such alliances could become the basis for forging new biotechnology partnerships among developing countries. It is conceivable, for example, that India, Brazil, and China will use their growing technological strength as a foundation for forging partnerships with other developing countries. Such a move would not only take advantage of the traditional affinity among developing countries, but could create new mechanisms for promoting technological cooperation. Divergences in the use of biotechnology are influencing international relations. While biotechnology is only one of many innovations at the center of diplomatic controversies, its pervasive and transformative nature makes it a special case. In this regard, we are likely to see the emergence of new international partnerships designed to specifically use advances in the life sciences in general, and agricultural biotechnology in particular, to improve human welfare. These changes will be part of a growing movement to reinvent foreign policies and diplomatic practices that reflect the growing importance of science and technology in human welfare and international relations.
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New Technology Alliances. One of the most widely accepted approaches to technology cooperation is to promote South-South cooperation, promoting technological development among developing countries. Several countries have made such efforts, especially through the United Nations, and there are considerable opportunities for promoting regional technology cooperation among developing countries. Additional opportunities now exist in countries such as China, Brazil, Mexico, India, and Malaysia that could play important roles as technology mentors for their less developed counterparts. However, these countries should base such alliances upon technological needs and capabilities rather than upon ideological grounds similar to those characterized by the Cold War era. Indeed, science ministers from India, Brazil, and South Africa have been working together to identify areas for trilateral cooperation that include nanotechnology and efforts to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS. Their first meeting was held in October 2004 as part of the IndiaBrazil-South Africa (IBSA) trilateral commission. The meeting followed a 2003 event of the three nations’ foreign ministers in Brasilia, Brazil that identi-
Science &Technology
Author’s note: This article is based on a chapter from the author’s forthcoming book, Taming the Gene: Biotechnology in the Global Economy.
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NOTES
13 B. Trotter and A. Gordon, “Charting Change in Official Assistance to Agriculture,” Food Policy 25 (2000): 115–124. 14 G. Rausser, S. Simon, and H. Ameden, “Public–private Alliances in Biotechnology: Can They Narrow the Knowledge Gaps Between Rich and Poor?” Food Policy 25 (2000): 499–513. 15 M. Cantley, “How Should Public Policy Respond to the Challenges of Modern Biotechnology?” Current Opinion in Biotechnology 15 (2004): 258–263. 16 C. Juma, “Biotechnology and International Relations: Forging New Strategic Partnerships,” International Journal of Biotechnology 4, no. 2/3 (2002): 115-128. 17 Chapter 16 of Agenda 21 of UN Convention on Biological Diversity. 18 A. Konig, “Negotiating the Precautionary Principle: Regulatory and Institutional Roots of Divergent US and EU Positions,” International Journal of Biotechnology 4, no. 1 (2002): 61-80; National Research Council, Genetically Modified Pest-Protected Plants: Science and Regulation 1 (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2000): 19-39; National Research Council, Environmental Effects of Transgenic Crops: The Scope and Adequacy of Regulation (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2002), 1-16. 19 G. E. Isaac, Agricultural Biotechnology and Transatlantic Trade: Regulatory Barriers to GM Crops (Wallingford, UK: CABI Publishing, 2002). 20 T. Bernauer, Genes, Trade, and Regulation: The Seeds of Conflict in Food Biotechnology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). 21 R. Paarlberg, The Politics of Precaution: Genetically Modified Crops in Developing Countries (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). 22 N. Zerbe, “Feeding the Famine? American Food Aid and the GMO Debate in Southern Africa,” Food Policy, forthcoming. 23 J. Knight, “Crop Improvement: A Dying Breed,” Nature 421 (6 February 2003): 568-570. 24 N. Purvis, “Building a Transatlantic Biotech Partnership,” Issues in Science and Technology (Fall 2004): 67-74. 25 InterAcademy Council, Inventing a Better Future: A Strategy for Building Worldwide Capacities in Science and Technology.
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1 J. H. Perkins, Geopolitics and the Green Revolution: Wheat, Genes, and the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 1997). 2 United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Foreign Aid in the National Interest: Promoting Freedom, Security and Opportunity (Washington, DC: U.S. Government, 2003). 3 D. G. Dalrymple, International Agricultural Research as a Global Public Good: A Review of Concepts, Experience, and Policy Issues (Washington, DC: U.S. Government, 2004). 4 H. C. Sharma, et al, “Applications of Biotechnology for Crop Improvement: Prospects and Constraints,” Plant Science 163 (2002): 381-395. 5 J. Sumberg, et al, “Agricultural Research in Face of Diversity, Local Knowledge and Participation Imperatives: Theoretical Considerations,” Agricultural Systems 76, no. 2 (2004): 739-753. 6 J. McNeely and S. Scherr, Ecoagriculture: Strategies to Feed the World and Save Wild Biodiversity (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2002). 7 G. Toenniessen and J. DeVries, Securing the Harvest: Biotechnology, Breeding and Seed Systems for African Crops (New York: CABI Publishing, 2001). 8 S. Shenggen Fan and C. Chan-Kang, “Returns to Investment in Less-favored Areas in Developing Countries: A Synthesis of Evidence and Implications for Africa,” Food Policy 29 (2004): 431–444; D. W. Larson, et al, “Instability in Indian Agriculture: A Challenge to the Green Revolution Technology,” Food Policy 29 (2004): 257–273. 9 P. Pinstrup-Andersen and E. Schiøler, Seeds of Contention: World Hunger and the Global Controversy over GM Crops (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). 10 C. James, Global Review of Commercialized Transgenic Crops: 2003 (Ithaca, New York: International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, 2004). 11 G. Toenniessen, J. O’Toole, and J. DeVries, “Advances in Plant Biotechnology and its Adoption in Developing Countries,” Current Opinion in Plant Biology 6 (2003): 1-8. 12 D. Byerlee and K. Fischer, “Accessing Modern Science: Policy and Institutional Options for Agricultural Biotechnology in Developing Countries,” World Development 30, no. 6 (2002): 931–948.
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The Myth of Water Wars James R. Davis and Rafik Hirji
James R. Davis is a consultant for the World Bank. Rafik Hirji is Senior Water Resources Management Specialist in the Environment Department of the World Bank.
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The economies of many poor states depend heavily upon water, in particular for livestock, agriculture, energy, industry, mining, fishing, navigation, and tourism. Yet access to water is increasingly problematic, particularly for poorer countries that have under-invested in both water resource infrastructure and in water management systems and institutions. Numerous circumstances lead to water scarcity: the changing nature of supply; rising demand due to population growth and development; degradation of catchments and recharge areas; aquatic ecosystem preservation; and the effects of increasing pollution and climate change, among others. Under-investment in water resources development exacerbates these problems and increases countries’ vulnerability to social and economic shocks from climate variability such as droughts and floods. Many of the world’s major bodies of water—rivers, lakes, wetlands, and aquifers—are trans-boundary; that is, they straddle national borders. While few international wars have been fought specifically over control of these water resources, water has been the cause of numerous local-level conflicts. Such conflicts are characterized by an absence of established and enforced rules concerning access to and/or protection of water resources, as well as a lack of representation for some parties in water-related decisions. As water becomes increasingly scarce, there is a very real
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countries such as India and China, per capita household water use can be expected to rise significantly. Similarly, the demand for industrial, hydropower, and irrigation water also rises with increasing affluence. Worldwide, water used for irrigation accounts for about 70 percent of all water demand. The UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) predicts that demand for irrigation water will grow by 14 percent to 2,420 km3 by 2030.2 Industrial water demand is expected to rise at a rate faster than population growth if industrial development proceeds at Rising Water Demand. Freshwater current rates in countries such as Brazil, resources are vital for development. Water China, and India. As a result, the per supports economic activities, including capita availability of water will drop even irrigated agriculture, transportation, more rapidly than projections indicate. As demand for water increases, relihydroelectric power, and numerous industries. Water is crucial for the sanita- able access to water supplies also grows tion and health of populations. Wetlands, more uncertain. The easily exploited and rivers, and lakes serve important hydro- cheapest sources of water have already logical and socioeconomic functions by been tapped to the point where humans mitigating floods, supplying irrigation use more than half of the world’s readily systems, providing fisheries, and supply- accessible freshwater.3 If present rates of ing water for livestock and wildlife. In use continue, humans will use 90 permany parts of the world, natural bodies of cent of these freshwater supplies by 2025 water also have a special spiritual or reli- and the already high average cost of gious significance in society. retrieving sufficient water resources will Demand for water is growing rapidly. undoubtedly increase. Per capita available water (runoff and groundwater recharge combined) was an Increasing Water Stress. The UN estimated 30,000 m3 in 1900.1 By 2000 categorizes water-short countries into two the figure shrank to 7,000 m3 due to classes. A country qualifies as “waterpopulation growth, and is projected to stressed” when it has between 1,000 m3 and 1,700 m3 per capita of annual drop to 5,100 m3 by 2025. Household water consumption tends renewable freshwater supplies; it is to increase with rising standards of living. “water-scarce” when it has less than 1,000 In the United States, for example, indi- m3 per capita. In 1990, the UN classified viduals typically use between 400 and 8 countries, with a total population of 700 liters each day for domestic uses, 205 million, as water-stressed and an compared to an average of 30 to 50 liters additional 20 countries, with a 130 milper head used in Senegal. As standards of lion people, as water-scarce. Based on living rise, especially in high-population population, the Middle East and North
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prospect of tensions over trans-boundary waters leading to a conflict on a wider scale, plunging states into water wars. However, cooperative, environmentally and socially responsible developments also provide a means of defusing these tensions. While the potential for conflict over water resources should not be underestimated, regional cooperative mechanisms have become increasingly popular as a way of acheiving sustainable resource management across borders and point toward economic and social growth.
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water availability in the countries that are already water scarce. The variability of the climate will likely increase and intensify both droughts and floods all over the world. As water supplies become scarcer, this variability will become more debilitating. A 10 percent reduction in runoff may be manageable when water is abundant, but it can turn catastrophic as per capita amounts
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Africa are the most water-scarce regions in the world; in 1990, only 6 of the 19 states in the region had per capita supplies exceeding 1,000 m3/yr. By 2025, close to 50 countries—about a billion people—will be classified as water-scarce, and about 3 billion people will live in states that qualify as water stressed. In the Middle East, the average per capita supply in 2025 is projected to
Science &Technology
Per capita availability of water will drop even more rapidly than projections indicate.
decrease. Climate variability, which already causes severe hardship in many countries, will result in more severe water shortages than the warming-induced reduction in average precipitation would imply. Climate change will also affect the quality of water resources. Water quality is likely to be reduced in storage facilities because warming increases stratification in deeper water bodies and promotes greater biological activity. The functioning of aquatic ecosystems will also be affected, and rising sea levels will limit freshwater supplies in coastal areas. Secondary effects on land and water use will follow population movements resulting from sea-level rise.6 Most importantly, global warming will affect the demand for water resources. Irrigation is the most climate-sensitive water-using sector, and climate change will cause a modification in the global pattern of irrigated crops.7 This adjustment will have a major effect on the spatial and temporal pattern of water demand, as well as the need for increased water storage capacity. Climate change
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be approximately 667 m3/yr, which is equivalent to only 15 percent of the average per capita supply globally.4 These projections are based on current consumption patterns; they account for neither additional shortages caused by climate change and water pollution nor improvements in water availability because of demand management, water re-use, or other conservation efforts. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that significant regional changes in precipitation, temperature, evaporation, and runoff will result from global warming.5 Although the specific regional effects differ depending on the particular global circulation model used, they all show common trends: available water will decline in Central Asia, the Australia region, the Mediterranean, and sub-Saharan Africa in winter; it will increase in areas such as South Asia and Southeast Asia during summer; and it will also increase in high-latitude countries of the northern hemisphere in both summer and winter. Overall, global warming will lead to reduced
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will also affect industrial and municipal demand. Estimates show that a 1 percent rise in temperature will increase residential water use by as much as 3.8 percent, and a 1 percent decrease in precipitation will increase residential water use by as much as 0.31 percent.8
flows are responsible for the large fish catch and the dry-season rice crop in the Delta; in addition, they prevent saltwater intrusion. Millions of people depend directly on these flows.
Improving Water Management. Apart from developing new sources of
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Water Degradation. The degrada- water, water-short countries can make
more water available by exploiting existing resources more efficiently. Surface and ground utilization can be improved by: better allocating of water between uses and instituting water conservation;controlling pollution from point sources (municipal, industrial, and mining operations) and non-point sources (runoff from agriculture, urban, livestock, and poutlry operations); protecting water catchements and groundwater recharge areas; and managing invasive species such as water hyacinth, zebra mussels, and Asiatic clams. Many irrigation schemes in the developing world operate with efficiencies of only 10 to 20 percent. While efficiencies depend on a range of physical and social factors, most countries can economically achieve efficiencies of 40 percent. Cities in the developing world, however, suffer losses of up to 50 percent in the delivery of urban water.10 Again, the decision on the acceptable loss rate depends on physical factors as well as the value of water. As water becomes increasingly scarce, it will be economically efficient in many circumstances to introduce efficiencies in existing delivery systems, such as recycling and water conservation. Introducing and maintaining improved water-use efficiency, pollution control, and source protection requires a proper framework for water resources planning and management. This framework also keeps biological
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tion of surface and groundwater quality also effectively reduces the useable quantity of water. Industrial and agricultural chemical contamination, high turbidity and sedimentation from upstream erosion and eutrophication from excess nutrients increase the expense of some surface and groundwater resources for high-quality uses such as drinking water. In some cases, water resource degradation is so severe that it undermines existing investments in water resource infrastructure. In Kenya’s Rift Valley, for example, upstream forest clearance and poor land management practices have resulted in an increased intensity of flooding and high silt loads in the Perkerra River. As a result, one of the country’s major irrigation districts is now disconnected from the river, and the irrigation infrastructure stands unused.9 In may areas, river flows have been allocated inefficiently to the detriment of the acquatic environment. In the developing world, this problem can have direct social and economic impacts on people whose livelihood, from farming, herding, and fishing, for example, depends on river flows. Cambodia’s Tonle Sap (or Great Lake) remains under threat because of proposed upstream dams and diversions. The lake provides approximately 60 percent of Cambodia’s fish production and is the source of dry-season flows to the lower Mekong River and Mekong Delta. These [ 1 1 8 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
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demand for new water sources. In Australia, pricing reforms, demand management programs, and education in the urban water sector resulted in a 19 percent drop in urban water consumption between 1990 and 1996. In Sydney and Melbourne, where the greatest urban water consumption occurs, wateruse declined both on a per capita and on a total basis, in spite of continuing population growth. Australian irrigated agriculture has also greatly improved the efficiency with which it uses water. Before the reforms, irrigation water use was increasing rapidly, to the point where the demand for water was predicted to rise 66 percent by 2021. The reforms introduced privatization of
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systems sustainable in the long term. In addition, an improved water resoucesmanagement framework can contribute to greater economy-wide benefits when carried out in conjunction with energy, irrigation, industry, and mining sector reforms, along with improved environment, land use, and forestry policies. Such water sector reforms are taking place in an increasing number of developed and developing countries. Typical components of these reforms include institutional changes, such as the devolution of responsibility to regional and local levels, separation of regulators from operators, and mechanisms for crosssectoral decision making, as well as promotion of private enterprise, especially
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Cities in the developing world suffer
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losses of up to 50 percent in the delivery of urban water.
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when efficiency is the prime consideration. Pricing water resources to better reflect cost, introducing fees for water use and pollution permits, and promoting environmental and land use considerations can make reforms more successful. Participation of all affected parties in water management is crucial, as is legal reforms to back these changes and to ensure equity in allocation. These reforms usually diminish the power of established elites and, therefore, face opposition. Accordingly, a strong and clear political commitment needs to back these reforms. In spite of the difficulties, water resource reforms are leading to improved water use efficiencies, improved productivity, and reduced
irrigation districts, water trading, fullcost recovery, irrigator involvement in decisions and a withdrawal of the government to a coordinating and supervisory role. As a result, irrigation wateruse efficiency has increased dramatically, water use has stabilized, higher value crops such as grapes are being grown, and saline discharges have declined.
Competition into Conflict. While
increasing water scarcity would suggest increasing trans-boundary competition for water, a study conducted by the Pacific Institute found only a small number of instances where military action has occurred primarily over control of water resources.11 Yet water resources have still figured in a large number of interna-
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tional conflicts. For example, developments using water extracted from transboundary rivers have created perceptions of inequitable resource usage that heighten tensions between countries.
irrigation, water for pastoralists, the water needs of Ruaha National Park, and hydropower production. To address these and other challenges, the government issued a new water policy,
Countries have attempted to use trans-
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boundary waters as vehicles for enhancing cooperation, regional integration, and development rather than as a source of conflict.
strengthened river basin management, and supported improvements in irrigation use and productivity. Competition between formal sectors seldom breaks into conflict because of government-instituted rules and institutions for managing the competition. However, competition can turn into conflict when governments weakly enforce these rules and when formal institutions do not represent water users. In 2002, for example, over 100 people died in the Tana River area in Kenya when conflict broke out after rivers from which pastoral communities had traditionally drawn water ran dry. The Kenyan government only weakly enforced the rules for water allocation, and hardly checked the actions of more powerful upstream irrigators. The downstream pastoralists had no formal mechanism for redress. Whether these localized conflicts increase or not and whether transboundary conflicts over water become more common in the twenty-first century will largely depend on the success of efforts to manage trans-boundary competition through cooperative agreements, treaties, and negotiations to
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During times of international conflict, countries have identified dams, canals, and water treatment plants as military targets. Competition for access to water has intensified within countries largely because of low levels of investment in infrastructure and poor management of existing water sources. Irrigation and urban water supply are the two largest water-using sectors in most countries. Many examples exist in which these two sectors compete for access to water. In Hyderabad, India, a common water source serves as the urban domestic water supply and a surrounding district’s irrigation water. The growing demand of the city water supply has caused significant uncertainty for the irrigators, particularly during dry seasons and dry years. This competition likely will worsen, as forecasts predict that the city population will double by the year 2015. Similarly, intense competition is emerging between urban users and irrigation users in other major Asian cities such as Manila, Bangkok, Beijing, Jakarta, and Karachi. Other sectors also compete for water. In Tanzania’s Usangu Plains, intense competition exists between [ 1 2 0 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
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improve national water allocation. Improved water allocation, in turn, relies on increased investment in water resources and improved management of existing resources.
Trans-boundary Water Management. Notable examples of trans-
efficient outcomes than can be achieved from independent national decisions. However, allocating water resources to their highest value uses, irrespective of national borders, will only occur if states foster a spirit of trust and cooperation backed by written agreements and formal trans-boundary institutions in which all parties benefit from the exploitation of the shared water bodies.12 Recently, countries have increasingly attempted to use trans-boundary waters as vehicles for enhancing cooperation, regional integration, and development rather than using these bodies of water as sources of conflict.13 Trans-boundary lakes also provide good opportunities for such agreements because many of the resources, such as fish and water, function as common pool resources. Actions or exploitation by one state will impact or diminish the resource amount available to itself as well as to other riparian states. Still, national sovereignty means that all states have the right to exploit the resource. In such circumstances, a clear mutual benefit exists in sustaining the resource. The annual catch of commercially valuable Nile perch in Lake Victoria has fallen significantly since the mid-1990s largely because of over fishing and increasing degradation of the lake. The three riparian states—Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania—recognize that this common pool resource needs to be managed jointly; for this purpose, they have established the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization. The Global Environment Facility (GEF), through its international waters program, has played an important catalytic role in supporting this institution in Lake Victoria and in promoting similar cooperative management efforts in other trans-boundary lakes, rivers, and aquifers. When resources are not common
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boundary waters include major rivers such as the Amazon, Colorado, Danube, Euphrates, Ganges, Jordan, Mekong, Nile, Tigris, and Zambezi; lakes such as the North American Great Lakes, Lake Titicaca, Lakes Victoria, Tanganyika, Malawi/Nyasa and Chad in Africa; and groundwater systems such as the Guarani aquifer in South America, the Kaloo/Kalahari aquifer in Southern Africa, the Merti aquifer in Eastern Africa, and the Nubian sandstone aquifer in North Africa. Even when the body of water lies within a single country, part of its watershed or recharge area can lie in other countries, as is the case with Lake Baikal in Russia. Shared sovereignty makes managing these trans-boundary bodies of water and their watersheds especially difficult. On the one hand, each country retains the right to undertake development activities within its borders; on the other hand, its investment decisions can have severe implications for other riparian countries. Tensions commonly arise becuase of perceived excessive exploitation of water resources by upstream countries to the detriment of those downstream causes tension in many locations. Conversely, developments by downstream states can also limit or foreclose opportunities for water utilization in upstream states. A cooperative approach to the use of trans-boundary waters can avoid these tensions and reduce the potential for conflict and lead to more economically
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THE MYTH OF WATER WARS
shed agreed to work together “to achieve sustainable socioeconomic development through the equitable utilization of, and benefit from, the common Nile Basin water resources.� The countries have initiated a series of confidence-building activities to build trust between the countries, and trans-boundary bilateral and trilateral development projects to instigate development activities within the Basin. Other initiatives to share transboundary rivers include those on the Niger, Senegal, and Zambesi Rivers in Africa, the Mekong River in Southeast Asia, and the Syr Darya and Amu Darya Rivers of Central Asia. The number of such trans-boundary water resource Regional Initiatives. The Southern development programs exceeds the numAfrican Development Community ber of trans-boundary water bodies (SADC) Protocol on Shared Watercourse identified by the Pacific Institute as havSystems is an example of an important ing engaged in conflict. This provides existing regional initiative with a goal of hope that these shared waterways cause fostering cooperation and mutual bene- development and regional integration fit from the natural resources of the rather than conflict. region. Formed by fourteen African states, the SADC region includes sixteen Global Initiatives. These regional shared rivers. The key elements of the initiatives are supported by global initiaprotocol include: (a) adoption and tives. The Dialogue on Water, Food, and recognition of general principles, Environment, for example, calls for an including respect for customary interna- enabling environment that can assist tional law principles of equitable utiliza- third parties in establishing and contion, promotion of information ducting multi-stakeholder discussions exchange, maintaining balance between around contentious issues arising from resource development and environmen- competing water demands for agricultal conservation, and requirements for tural production and environmental national waste discharge permits; (b) protection.15 establishment of river basin organizaThe International Union for tions, and delineations of objectives and Conservation of Nature and Natural functions; and (c) dispute settlement, Resouces’ (IUCN) Water and Nature which an SADC tribunal manages by Initiative facilitates multi-stakeholder providing final and binding adjudica- discussions in seven demonstration tion. basins to support innovative planning The Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) is, per- and management of water resources. The haps, the best-known emerging initia- GEF has initiated a global review of laketive.14 The ten states within the Nile water- basin management practices and is
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pool, such as those from trans-boundary rivers, action becomes more difficult to initiate. In these cases, an asymmetry persists in the relationships of riparian states; exploitation of the water resources by an upstream country imposes costs on downstream states, but not vice versa. The few cases of trans-boundary water resource conflicts identified in the Pacific Institute study involved this type of situation. In many of these instances, a mutually beneficial solution resolved the conflict, and there are a number of major initiatives under way around the world to develop more such cooperative approaches.
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water management into the global development discourse. Although competition for water is likely to increase sharply with demand expanding, and supply becoming increasingly expensive and unrealiable, conflict is not inevitable. To date, relatively few wars have been fought over water, although many local conflicts have occurred because of this issue. An absence of, or disregard for, allocation rules and pollution control, and effective representation for aggrieved parties characterize the latter conflicts. The issue of whether trans-boundary competition for water will follow the same path as these local conflicts, or whether water will act as a commodity that supports cooperative development, depends on cooperation at the trans-boundary level and renewed investment that allow existing water sources to be better managed and new sources tapped. The evidence to date is that many governments are choosing to follow the path of cooperation and and development with assistance from international agencies, boding well for the future.
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preparing to launch a Global Groundwater Forum, both of which have strong trans-boundary water management themes. The preparation for the fourth World Water Forum in Mexico in 2006 builds on the synergies of the previous global water forums held in Marrakesh, the Hague, and Kyoto. The UN, through its various activities, including the preparation of the second UN World Water Development Report, continues to promote cooperative and environmentally and socially responsible water resources management. The World Bank has influenced major international forums on water management and, in turn, the consensuses reached at these meetings influence the Bank. Through its 2001 Environment Strategy, the Bank has also promoted environmentally sound water resources management because of the close relationship between ecologically functional water bodies and sustainable water use by humans.16 The Bank’s 2003 Water Resources Strategy calls for increasing lending for infrastructure in national and transboundary waters in an environmentally and socially responsible manner, while continuing its traditional assistance in water quality, water conservation, groundwater management, watershed management, environmental management, and institutional reform.17 The goal of all these initiatives continues to be to elevate cooperative, environmentally sound, and socially responsible
Science &Technology
Authors’ Note:: The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the World Bank.The authors are grateful to Claudia Sadoff, Inger Andersen, and Salman M.A. Salman of the World Bank, and Robert Livernash, a World Bank consultant, for reviewing and commenting on the early draft of this paper.
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NOTES
10 Asian Development Bank, “Second Water Utilities Data Book, Asian and Pacific Region” (Manila, Philippines: Asian Development Bank, 1997); other data from “Indicators—Water and Wastewater Utilities” (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1996). 11 The Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security, Internet, http://www.pacinst.org/. P. H. Gleick, “Water and Conflict” The World’s Water, (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1998–99). 12 C. Sadoff, D. Whittington, and D. Grey, Africa’s International Rivers: An Economic Perspective (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2002). 13 For an extended discussion on the subject, see S. Salman and L. Chazournes, eds., International Watercourses: Enhancing Cooperation and Managing Conflict. World Bank Technical Paper No. 414 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1998) 14 Nile Basin Initiative, launched in February 1999, is a regional partnership within which countries of the Nile basin have united in common pursuit of the long-term development and management of Nile waters. http://www.worldbank.org/afr/nilebasin/. 15 Dialogue on Food, Water and Environment, International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka. 16 World Bank, “Making Sustainable Commitments: An Environment Strategy for the World Bank” (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2001). 17 World Bank, “Water Resources Sector Strategy: Strategic Decisions for World Bank Engagement.” (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003).
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1 Based on an estimated 46,000 km3 of global annual runoff and groundwater recharge. P.H. Gleick, ed. The World’s Water 2000-2001 (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1998–99). 2 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) “Securing Food for a Growing World Population” UN World Water Development Report – Water for People, Water for Life (Paris: UNESCO, 2003). 3 See Business for Social Responsibility issue brief on water issues at http://www.bsr.org/CSRResources/ IssueBriefDetail.cfm?DocumentID=49620. 4 World Bank, A Strategy for Managing Water in the Middle East and North Africa (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1994). 5 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 6 K.D. Frederick, et al. Climate Change and Water Resources Planning Criteria (Dordecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997). 7 R. Mendelsohn and A. Dinar, “Climate Change, Agriculture, and Developing Countries: Does Adaptation Matter?” The World Bank Research Observer 14, no. 2 (August 1999): 277–93. 8 J. Schefter, “Selected Estimates of Effects of Climate Variables on Residential/Municipal Water Demand,” unpublished table provided by the author, (Reston, VA: U. S. Geological Survey). 9 H. Mogaka, S. Gichere, J. R. Davis, and R. Hirji, “Impacts and Costs of Climate Variability and Water Resources Degradation in Kenya” (Washington, DC: The World Bank, forthcoming).
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Books
American Public Diplomacy in the Cold War
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both left and right have revived public diplomacy as a tool to win the U.S. government’s battle for the “hearts and minds” of the Muslim world. There are Review By John H. Brown calls, in Congress and elsewhere, for Wilson P. Dizard, Jr. Inventing Public increased funding for public diplomacy Diplomacy: The Story of the U.S. Information programs, as well as numerous proposals Agency, Boulder: Lynne Rienner to make it a more effective tool of U.S. foreign policy in the post-9/11 world. Publishers, 2004, 255 pp., $49.95. The two books under review shed light Yale Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the on the role of U.S. public diplomacy Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain, University during the Cold War, a global conflict Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, during which military strength was only one of many ways to overcome forces 2003, 249 pp., $37.95. hostile to the United States. These works do not pretend to be the definitive studPublic diplomacy—the art of engaging, ies on the topic, but they are nonetheless informing, and influencing key interna- timely and significant contributions to tional audiences—is back on Washington’s an understanding of the past and the radar screen. Gone is public diplomacy’s lessons it can give for the future. Wilson post-Cold War obscurity, when many Dizard’s Inventing Public Diplomacy: The Story of considered it irrelevant after the dissolu- the U.S. Information Agency and Yale tion of the USSR. Today, with a so-called Richmond’s Cultural Exchange and the Cold war on terror, government officials, War: Raising the Iron Curtain are must-reads media pundits, and commentators from for policymakers, scholars, and general Winter/Spring 2005 [ 1 2 5 ]
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Conversely, Richmond focuses solely on cultural and educational exchanges with the Soviet Union. He discusses various governmental and non-governmental programs—many of them not handled by USIA—that had an impact on the USSR. He does not use the term “public
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readers concerned with the United States’s international role today. Apart from their choice of subject matter, the books have much in common. Both were written by distinguished Foreign Service officers who have spent a total of nearly sixty years carrying out
Government officials, media pundits,
and commentators from both left and right have revived public diplomacy as a tool to win the U.S. government’s battle for the “hearts and minds” of the Muslim world.
diplomacy” to describe these programs, preferring “cultural exchange.” His treatment of information programs is limited to a two-page chapter on foreign broadcasts to the Soviet Union. Dizard’s book has many strengths, such as his choice of anecdotes that are illuminating and often humorous. To anyone who has served in the Foreign Service, this story rings true:
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U.S. educational, cultural, and informational programs aimed at overseas audiences. They are based on the authors’ personal experiences, observations by public diplomacy practitioners and program participants, secondary sources, and some primary sources. The authors avoid theory and write in clear, jargonfree prose. The differences between the books stem from the authors’ divergent viewpoints. Dizard is most concerned with the information side of public diplomacy, although he does not overlook its educational and cultural aspects. He deals with his subject chronologically, globally, and institutionally and focuses on how the United States Information Agency (USIA), created in 1953 as an anti-Soviet propaganda agency, evolved by gradually increasing its activities in the Third World and adapting its programs to changing global circumstances. He ends USIA’s story in 1999, when it was consolidated into the State Department, but considers “The Future of Public Diplomacy” in the final chapter. [ 1 2 6 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Inevitably, there were glitches during the Eisenhower trip [in Europe in 1959]. In Athens, where a million Greeks lined up the streets on a later December afternoon to see the president, American flags flew on every building along the route from the airport. The exception was the U.S. embassy. A panicked embassy officer told the U.S. Marine guard on duty in the lobby to display the flag. No, the guard replied, his orders were to take the flag down at five o’clock every afternoon. After a series of increasingly frenzied phone calls, the order
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came down to make an exception in this one case.
USIA. His treatment of USIA’s expanded activities during the Reagan years, when the president’s close collaborator, Charles Z. Wick, was director, is not as strong as his examination of previous years. In addition, I believe that he overstates the commitment of the current administration to public diplomacy. Finally, I wish Dizard had explored in greater depth the thorny issue of the relationship between public diplomacy and propaganda. He leaves no doubt that, in his view, USIA was in the business of propaganda, but he also states that “the agency’s congressional mandate [was] to present ‘a full and fair picture of the United States.’” Can a propaganda agency present such an unbiased view of the United States? Regardless of the answer to this question, a more thorough examination of this matter would have been instructive. Richmond’s book is as intellectually satisfying as Dizard’s, and he dives into the complex dynamics of U.S.-Soviet exchanges during the Cold War. Richmond describes the genesis of U.S.Soviet university exchanges with an agreement between Moscow State University and the State University of New York in 1976. He does not neglect the role of individuals, offering a snap-
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Dizard’s study is rich in historical information culled from press items that are difficult to locate today. He gives a good sense of the differing periods in the Agency’s history. Most importantly, he places USIA in the proper historical and institutional context; he succinctly identifies important Cold War global trends and describes how other U.S. governmental organizations—such as the Defense Department and the CIA—contributed to public diplomacy. In some cases, these agencies were involved in public diplomacy to a greater extent than USIA itself, and this inevitably caused tensions. Dizard emphasizes the importance of White House support for USIA during its budget and bureaucratic turf battles, and he examines USIA’s uneasy relationship with Congress. He also reminds us that the private sector— including U.S. news organizations and Hollywood—played a crucial role in how the United States was understood and perceived abroad. “USIA,” he notes, “was only one member of a noisy chorus of American voices” abroad. I have several quibbles with Dizard’s study. George Kennan was named
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“USIA was only one member of a noisy chorus of American voices” abroad. ambassador to Moscow in 1952, not in the 1940s as Dizard suggests. Perhaps because of space concerns Dizard gives insufficient attention to the Committee on Public Information, the first U.S. propaganda agency and a predecessor of the Office of War Information and
shot of Georgi Arbatov, a Soviet official who played a key role in the development of exchanges. His examination of the Helsinki accords impressively encapsulates the process that played a key role in the East-West conflict. Richmond also showcases fascinating quotes from those Winter/Spring 2005 [ 1 2 7 ]
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that a fair number of apparatchik opportunists wormed their way into the exchanges. This was the price the United States had to pay for Soviet approval of programs that made it possible for some true reformers and scholars to escape the intellectual prison that was the USSR. Finally, it would have been interesting to know why Richmond avoids the term public diplomacy throughout his book; is it because he considers its non-cultural programs propagandistic? Dizard’s and Richmond’s admirable studies teach us a great deal about public diplomacy and the role it can play in today’s challenging international environment. Among their many useful insights, let me suggest four lessons they provide. First, public diplomacy has its limits, and, for it to be effective, these limits must be recognized from the outset. Although public diplomacy can influence people in numerous ways, there is only so much it can do to shape their behavior. Richmond reminds us, for example, that the cultural exchanges he considers so important were only “grains” in the process that led to the downfall of communism—and some of these exchanges, being non-governmental, were not,
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involved in the exchanges. My favorite is by Lilia Shevtsova of the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace who recalled of Boris Yeltsin’s visit, “he became a reformer after he visited a grocery store.” Richmond’s ear for the subtleties of language is evident when he notes: “What a difference an ‘a’ makes! Obmen is the Russian word for ‘exchange,’ obman the Russian word for ‘deception,’ and some Americans saw exchanges with the Soviet Union as deception.” Richmond convinces the reader that the exchanges had a positive impact on Russia’s development toward democracy by exposing the Soviet elite to the West. However, he overstates his case by suggesting that exchanges were a greater, or at least equal, cause of the dissolution of the USSR than other societal factors, such as Soviet domestic developments, which Russian experts versed in military, political, and economic affairs would consider more significant. And his ardent defense of the exchanges, which were criticized during the Cold War as pandering to the Soviets, seems too partisan. For example, he refutes concerns about the participation of Soviet secret service agents in these programs by noting that “many KGB officers were also
Cultural exchanges were only “grains” in the process that led to the downfall of communism.
reformers” and that “with the benefit of hindsight, it can be argued that having communist loyalists participate in the exchanges was exactly the right policy to bring change in the Soviet Union.” I think it might be more accurate to suggest [ 1 2 8 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
strictly speaking, public diplomacy as defined by the State Department. Throughout his book Dizard leaves no doubt that U.S. information programs do not automatically persuade the world to become pro-American. In a more
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general sense, the story Dizard and Richmond tell suggests that public diplomacy must be governed by a cautious attitude that warns against overly ambitious and reductionist views of its goals. Among these is the idea that, if only the
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cal expression remains moot.” Third, public diplomacy must find the proper niche for its programs to be most effective. As Dizard and Richmond point out, the non-governmental U.S. impact overseas—both informational and cultur-
personal relationships.
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Public diplomacy at its best is about
al—is immense. “Then as now,” Dizard notes, “USIS (as USIA was known overseas) media operations were statistically a small part of the U.S. information impact on the rest of the world.” Many of the exchange programs described by Richmond were carried out by NGOs and commercial enterprises. Given the magnitude of the U.S. presence abroad and the extent of international cultural exchanges, public diplomacy must focus on original activities that avoid duplicating others and that best promote U.S. national interests. The American Corners program, established in recent years in Russian regional cities by the State Department, is a positive example. Containing both printed and electronic information about the United States in open access areas such as libraries, the Corners provide a unique service in areas of the Russian Federation that still lack basic information about the United States. Fourth, when trying to understand the effectiveness of public diplomacy—which at its best is about personal relationships— it is best to focus on what individual participants in its programs say about public diplomacy’s impact on them and their entourage. Group surveys and polls can provide information, but evaluating how public diplomacy has made permanent friends of the United States—more
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United States could be marketed to the world as a commercial product like Coca Cola, all our problems with international opinion would come to an end. Another is the notion that foreign audiences are “targets” whose minds can be permanently changed by unilateral propaganda. We live in a complicated world with no complete solutions. If public diplomacy is practiced with this caveat in mind, it can make a difference in promoting U.S. interests. But if it is reduced to simplistic, one-dimensional strategies that do not take cultural differences into account, it will not help solve the United States’s problems abroad, especially when U.S. policies themselves are misguided. Second, public diplomacy is most effective when its goals are long-term. By the late 1960s, as Dizard points out, USIA realized that “quick-fix solutions designed to influence overseas public opinion almost never worked. In effect, the organization had settled down to the realization that any significant progress would be the result of steady long-term efforts.” As for cultural exchanges, their central point, as Alexander Dallin wrote, was “to field a slow, perhaps imperceptible accumulation of new attitudes, perspectives, learning, borrowing…It is bound to make for healthier, more open human relations, whose ultimate politi-
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Every night the Voice of America would beam a two-hour jazz program at the Soviet Union from Tangiers. The snatches of music and bits of information made for a kind of golden glow over the horizon when the sun went down, that is, in the West, the inaccessible but oh so desirable West. How many dreamy Russian boys came to puberty to the strains of Ellington’s “Take the A Train” and the dulcet voice of Willis Conover, the VOA’s Mr. Jazz.
Dizard’s and Richmond’s books leave us with a final thought, all too seldom expressed by those who seek support for public diplomacy from Congress and the public: What would have happened to the United States during the Cold War had it not had informational, educational, and cultural programs abroad? If the world had not learned about U.S. policies though USIA, for example, would these policies have had any success in the global struggle against communism? In the absence of the Fulbright exchange program, which has brought thousands of the best and brightest to the United States, would the United States have been sufficiently understood abroad to prevail over the Soviet Union? And without public diplomacy’s cultural programs, would the artistic achievements of the United States have been sufficiently appreciated overseas to help bring the ideological conflict with the USSR to an end? Without the relatively inexpensive investment in public diplomacy, in other words, could the Cold War have taken a different turn, one not necessarily in U.S. national interests? This is an important thought to consider as Americans explore how public diplomacy can meet new global challenges today.
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important, in my view, than how it “changed their minds”—requires personal testimonials of participants. Some might dismiss this evidence as anecdotal, but it is closer to reality than efforts to show how public diplomacy “moved the needle” of a broad public opinion through statistical research. Indeed, what can be more convincing about the positive impact of public diplomacy than what the Russian author Vasily Aksyonov, as quoted in Richmond’s book, said about the jazz program broadcast on the Voice of America by the legendary Willis Conover:
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View from the Ground
Participating in the Process
The Importance of Civil Society in the Former Soviet Union
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Timothy Fairbank
Timothy Fairbank is Senior Program Officer at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. He will finish his Master of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University in spring 2005.
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Democratic revolutions are a rare sight. Seeing images of a massive sea of people protesting rigged elections and demanding democracy and government accountability in Ukraine and Georgia, one cannot help but marvel at the political change taking place in these countries. Democracy, developed from the grassroots level, triumphed. How did this occur and what can other countries learn from it? Many analysts of the region immediately look at Moldova, Ukraine’s small neighbor and the next country in the region to have national elections, as possibly the next locale for political change. While one should not dismiss the importance and influence the spread of democracy has on neighboring countries in the region, to suggest that similar events are likely in other postSoviet countries would show a misunderstanding of the factors and elements which brought such change. Having worked with civic and political groups from Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan as a field representative for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and seen the relatively advanced stages of civil society reached in the first two cases, though not in the others, it is clear that the development of an active civil society has been vital in forcing political reform and change. Without a strong civil society, both Georgia and Ukraine would not have their current lead-
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place and the calls for democracy. The developments are encouraging not because of the increasing calls for new leadership, but because of the growing politically active citizenry. Moldova will conduct elections in March or April 2005, and some analysts suggest that the democratic forces there desire the Georgia, or Ukraine, scenario; however, it is not this simple. Nor should such an outcome be artificially encouraged. The outcome rests solely on the citizens of Moldova themselves, and, as I explain below, Moldova is lacking the key factors which triggered the democratic revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine.
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ership. Contrary to the conspiracy theories promulgated by Russia’s government and press—and even appearing in the West’s own yellow journalism—suggesting that the political change we are witnessing is all a Western plot, it is actually the product of grassroots, indigenous organizations advocating for democracy and European integration. The roots of the democratic revolution in these countries came not from individual leaders, quests for power, or outside forces, but from an emerging civil society demanding government accountability. With the exception of the EU-m member Baltic countries, authoritarianism rules over much of the post-Soviet space. There are, however, a few countries in the region working to join the community of Western democracies. Georgia, while suffering deeply from the effects of two separatist regions, experienced its own democratic political change—the so-called Rose Revolution— barely one year ago, ushering in a new government filled with reform-minded, pro-Western leaders. Similarly, the events we witnessed in Ukraine in late November and early December 2004 were demonstrations of civic activism at a level this region has never seen. Despite rigged voting that showed the contrary, the majority of Ukraine’s citizens voted against the figure who embodied an extension of the previous corrupt, nondemocratic regime. As in Georgia, the people in Ukraine, encouraged by a welldeveloped civil society, took their protests and dissent to the streets of the capital and regional cities. While discussions of who should be these countries’ leaders must be left to the citizens of these countries to decide, outside observers can appreciate the dramatic increase in civic participation taking
Factors of Change in Georgia and Ukraine. Whether or not one
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agrees with the politics or methods of political change and activism in Georgia and Ukraine, the degree of civic involvement should be appreciated and celebrated. Though very different cases, both found their roots in an active youth generation and national civil society. In both Georgia and Ukraine three main factors united the public and energized civil society. First, a leader existed who was despised by the majority of the population. In Georgia, while President Eduard Shevardnadze was well respected by Europe and the United States for his efforts to reunite Germany as Soviet foreign minister and for his role in the breakup of the Soviet Union, the people of Georgia resented his leadership. In the years leading up to the Rose Revolution, President Shevardnadze’s approval level was terribly low. In Ukraine, while President Leonid Kuchma may have enjoyed more support than President Shevardnadze did in his last days, President Kuchma and, by
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symbolizes the new Ukraine as it heads towards a more democratic path. The third and often the most overlooked factor in the Georgia and Ukraine scenarios is that these were in fact blatantly rigged and stolen elections. As part of international delegations, I have been an observer to eight rounds of elections in countries throughout the former Soviet Union. During each of the elections serious violations occurred, but the government, albeit benefiting from an almost total control of the media and government resources, enjoyed the support of the majority of the people and arguably would have won without rigging
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extension, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, the chosen successor to the previous regime, represented a ten-year period of corruption, increasing state control over the media, and little government accountability. In the end, the majority of the people in Ukraine turned against President Kuchma’s chosen successor and demanded a path towards democracy and European integration. Second, in both Georgia and Ukraine there was an extremely popular opposition leader. Young and telegenic, current Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili has enjoyed wide support since his brief tenure as minister of jus-
View from the Ground
The developments are encouraging not
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because of the increasing calls for new leadership, but because of the growing politically active citizenry.
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tice when he worked to battle corruption, only to run into obstacles set by government officials reluctant to have someone looking into their finances. His efforts during the weeks leading up to the peaceful takeover, coupled with his ability to unite with other opposition leaders, particularly Zurab Zhvania and Nino Burjanadze, the current prime minister and speaker of parliament, respectively, were central in building a united force against the Shevardnadze government. In Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko was similarly able to build a united opposition, garnering the support of both the opposition Yulia Timoshenko bloc, led by and named after the dynamic former deputy prime minister, and later the support of the Socialist Party. Yushchenko now
the results. In the cases of Georgia and Ukraine, the public was largely against a continuation of the status quo and the opposition had the votes to win. In the end, as has been documented by international and domestic organizations, both governments attempted to blatantly steal the elections. These three factors—a hated leader of the government, an extremely popular leader of a united opposition, and rigged elections—set the stage for the preexisting strong civil society to mobilize and demonstrate for democracy and government accountability. Indigenous civic organizations developed the credible evidence to prove the voter fraud. Had there not been a dynamic civic society, it would have been terribly difficult Winter/Spring 2005 [ 1 3 3 ]
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to mobilize the population.
A Strong Civil Society. In both
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Georgia and Ukraine, the strong sense of national identity assisted the development of civil society, as well as the belief that their nation’s future should be one free of Moscow’s influence and should instead move towards integration with the democracies in the West. In comparison to its neighbors, Georgia has a civil society that is quite strong. In my experience, the Georgian people are proud of their rich history in the arts, education, cuisine, and religious tolerance, and have always felt that they are a European country. From the early days of the Shevardnadze period, civil groups blossomed throughout the country. In the post-independence period, much of the country’s intelligentsia and activists were represented in Georgian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the Liberty Institute, the
government accountability. The more radical opposition youth movement Kmara (Enough), which played a key role during the Rose Revolution, existed largely because of the civic environment created after years of NGO development. Ukraine, a country roughly divided between the predominately Catholic, Ukrainian-language speakers in the west and the Orthodox, Russian-language speakers in the east, saw a civic movement emerge in a slightly different way than in Georgia. After centuries of Russian domination, many Ukrainians not surprisingly developed a strong sense of national identity and a moderate to strong sense of nationalism. I found this development to be partly the result of the citizens looking inward and realizing for themselves where Ukraine ought to be. For example, NGOs such as the independent, non-partisan Committee of Voters of Ukraine (CVU) have been working for the last decade to educate cit-
Observers of Moldova often speak about
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the events in Georgia and Ukraine and wonder if the same sort of political change is possible there.
International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy, and the Georgian Young Lawyers Association. These NGOs worked for years on programs to develop and increase civic education, engage in advocacy projects, monitor elections, and protect human rights and the rule of law. Through the work of these NGOs, a generation of Georgians was created that actively sought to play a role in the political process and to seek [ 1 3 4 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
izens on their rights and responsibilities, monitor elections, and develop and increase citizen engagement. With more than twenty-five regional offices, CVU has trained tens of thousands of observers to monitor elections. Undoubtedly, CVU and similar organizations have contributed greatly to the country’s civic development. While large portions of the ethnic Russian population in the east remained rather sympa-
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View from the Ground
civic-minded citizenry that wants to take part in the political process. If the citizens of a country are united in their quest for democracy, change can occur. Only a few months remain until Moldova stages its elections. This parliamentary republic, in which the parliament elects the president, is due to have national elections in March or April 2005. In Moldova, the only country in the former Soviet Union where the Communists have regained power, the Communist party has been in control since 2001, when they gained more than two-thirds of the seats in parliament and the ability to appoint the president and pass all legislation. The party’s quick rise, due largely to the ineffective and corrupt governments of the “democrats” during the 1990s that helped establish Moldova as the poorest country in Europe, left a large portion of the population feeling nostalgic for Soviet times when life and the economy were more predictable. The Communist party’s rise was accelerated further due to the fragmentation of the already weak centrist parties and the astonishingly high numbers of youth Implications for Moldova. What emigrating from the country. And at the do the events in Georgia and Ukraine very same time, the civil society in the mean—if anything—for Moldova? country, save for a handful in the capital, Observers of Moldova often speak about was practically nonexistent. the events in these two countries and wonder if the same sort of political The Roots of Moldova’s (Lack of) change is possible there. While working Civic Culture. The majority of prein Moldova, I was asked this question sent-day Moldova was a region of dozens of times. People often get carried Romania until 1940, when the area was away in talking about the “Georgia sce- annexed to the Soviet Union as a result of nario” and seem to lack an understand- the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. After the ing of the fundamental causes and foun- inflow of ethnic Ukrainians and Russians dation of the Rose Revolution and in the following decades, Moldova Orange Revolution. But the people were became increasingly a heterogeneous missing the point. One should not seek society and one which lacked a true such scenarios as a goal, rather one national identity. Since independence, should hope first to develop an educated the country has suffered from the effects
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thetic towards Moscow and a continuation of the government’s current path, the majority of the country—particularly in the west and in Kiev where civic development is greatest—seized the moment to create their own future for Ukraine. Thousands of other Ukrainians, having suffered through ten years of the Kuchma regime, united in joining proopposition groups in the months leading up to the presidential election. Youth organizations such as Pora (It’s Time), affiliated with Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine, mobilized citizens throughout the country in the support of a new and democratic direction for Ukraine. The protest movement in Ukraine was not about supporting an individual, but rather it was a protest against the continuation of a corrupt regime void of rule of law and democracy. It was about bringing political accountability and standing up for a legitimate electoral process. As was the case in Georgia, having been awakened by the growth and emergence of a strong civil society, the people were ready to demand that their voice be heard.
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sectors are improving. That said, both sectors are experiencing major growing pains. Having opened up NDI’s office in Moldova in 2003 and served as the office’s first director, I can see the progress that has been made in the past year. During my time in the country, my colleagues and I designed and conducted trainings for parties from across the political spectrum and initiated a civic program to work with groupings of NGOs to carry out civic education and a domestic election monitoring program in advance of the March/April 2005 elections. We have also enjoyed a good relationship with the ruling Communist party, the opposition centrist Democratic Moldova Bloc (BMD) and the smaller right-wing Popular Christian Democratic Party (PPCD). While the Communists have made encouraging statements by expressing their desire to model themselves as a social democratic party, seek European integration, and have even contributed troops to the U.S. efforts in Iraq, its pro-Western foreign policy rhetoric is not matched by democratic policies within the country. The Communist government uses the publicly funded media in a deeply biased manner and has taken budget control from mayors, many of whom are opposition figures. And in policies that remind one of the days when the Soviet Communist party reigned, the government has been considering returning to large collectivized farms, prohibiting foreign ownership of land, and renationalizing some privatized companies. Additionally, the government has The State and Future of very recently launched what appears to be Democracy in Moldova. Final judg- a politically motivated investigation ment on the level of democratic develop- against one of the leaders of the opposiment in Moldova should not be passed, tion, the mayor of the capital city. Criticisms of political parties certainly as both the political party and civil society
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of a separatist region, Transnistria, a criminal fiefdom which operates as a defacto independent state. Presently, very few people label themselves as Moldovan. The ethnic Romanians call themselves Romanian, while the Slavic population announce themselves as either Russians or Ukrainians. This lack of national identity, quite understandable considering the country’s legacy, has certainly not helped in energizing an otherwise indifferent population with little desire to participate in the political process. Having worked in the majority of the countries of the former Soviet Union, I have never been in a country that struggles as Moldova does with developing a sense of national identity. The tragic result, although there certainly exists a handful of impressive liberal academics and democracy and human rights advocates, is a country void of an active civil society and few calls for political change. During my time in Moldova, I was asked by people countless times how or why their country would benefit from democracy. Certainly I have heard the same question while in other neighboring countries, but not to the same extent. Indeed, people complained that the government was corrupt and lacked democratic tendencies, but they seemed willing to accept this as a fact of life. With the obvious exceptions, many of the energetic and motivated people in Moldova seem to all to want the same thing: to leave the country, a choice at least 600,000—or roughly one in seven—people have made.
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should not stop with the ruling party. The largest opposition bloc and a serious contender to win the next elections, BMD, an impressive coalition of centerleft and center-right political forces, is
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prospects for democracy must rest on its civil society. A recently formed civic coalition of NGOs working to engage in election-related projects has gotten off to a good start and will certainly improve
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Moldova’s civil society is facing an uphill
battle. The nation continues to search for its political identity, and the civil society is still in its infant stages, years behind Ukraine and Georgia.
the civic and political awareness of the country but likely not to a level required to force government accountability. Moldova’s civil society is facing an uphill battle. The nation continues to search for its political identity, and the civil society is still in its infant stages, years behind Ukraine and Georgia.
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having difficulties creating a cohesive message and policy. Internal dissension is further exacerbated by elements within the bloc that have sought Russian expertise from the same political advisers the Kremlin sent to help Kuchma’s appointee, Viktor Yanukovich. And, while the Communist party officially stated that it did not accept the official results of Ukraine’s rigged second round runoff election, BMD initially failed to state its disapproval of the official results and instead suggested simply that it would adopt a “good neighbor policy” with whomever was declared the winner in the end, hardly the voice of a true democratic opposition movement. PPCD, the third faction represented in parliament, is not likely to gain much more than 8 to 10 percent of the electoral vote, as its implicit intent to re-unify with Romania and its hard-line anti-Russia stance scares away most moderate voters. A cynic may claim that Moldova’s political forces are simply jockeying for power and that they care only about putting themselves in positions where they can profit. Unfortunately, this may not be too far from the truth. The future of Moldova and its
Conclusion. In the end, it is up to the
people of these countries to decide how they want to live and what system should govern them. Outside guidance and expertise can never replace true grassroots movements. What the West can celebrate are the increasing chances and opportunities for people to participate in the political process. Strong civil society in Georgia and Ukraine mobilized and energized their citizens to demand accountability. These were true revolutions for democracy and accountability, not revolutions for power. One final factor standing in the way of all democrats in the former Soviet Union is their neighbor, Russia. Russia continues to destabilize Georgia and Moldova by its illegal deployment of military troops and the continuing support of separatist forces. And in Ukraine and Winter/Spring 2005 [ 1 3 7 ]
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movement must start at the grassroots level. It must be indigenous. And it must find its roots in a developed or emerging political culture only possible through civic activism and participation. In the case of Moldova, its citizens must develop their national identity, educate the public, increase citizen participation, and hold government accountable to its obligations.
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Belarus, Russia continues to support authoritarian regimes. One must hope that the homegrown civil society and democratic progress in these newly independent states are strong enough to offset Russia’s influence. So far, they have encountered mixed success. Democrats in Moldova should not seek to artificially copy the democratic revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine by simply protesting unfair elections and gathering its supporters in protest. Such a movement is doomed to fail and will not be credible. A true democratic
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Author’s Note: The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not reflect the views of National Democractic Institute.
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A Look Back
Lessons in Intelligence Reform Barry M. Blechman
Barry M. Blechman is Founder and CEO of DFI International and is a member of the Defense Policy Board.
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The Department of Defense (DOD) was created in 1947 but the beginnings of an integrated military command system were not genuinely established until President Dwight Eisenhower and his national security advisor, General Andrew Goodpaster, inspired several legislative initiatives in the mid1950s. And it was not until the 1960s that an integrated planning and budgeting system was created following the reforms of Robert McNamara. Nonetheless, even after these reforms, the individual armed services that comprised the Department of Defense remained largely autonomous and dominant in their respective land, sea, and aerospace spheres. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), consisting of the heads of each service and a separate chairman, who came from one of the services himself, together with unified and specified commanders, who reported through the chairman to the president, were supposed to integrate the services’ preferences and ensure smoothly running joint operations. In fact, the JCS was a very weak organization and its chairman had virtually no independent powers. The Joint Chiefs spent most of their time brokering deals among the services on trivial matters and almost always deferred to individual service preferences. Moreover, recognizing the weakness of joint institutions, up and coming military officers shunned joint assignments as best they could and, when given such undesirable assignments, worked first
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Qaeda’s 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center—has crystallized a consensus that something must be done. But there are many contending ideas about what exactly needs to be accomplished. There is also the less obvious but no less important question of how to bring about meaningful change despite the opposition of those powerful organizations whose interests are being challenged. The Congress’ inability to pass even weak reform legislation during 2004, despite intense pressure to do so, demonstrates the power of entrenched bureaucracies and other vested interests. How, then, might comprehensive intelligence reforms be brought about? There are lessons to be learned from the success of the Goldwater-Nichols reform effort; seven are sketched out in this article.
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and foremost to protect their home service’s interests. Military specialists and some retired military officers had been pressing for serious reforms in the military command system to correct these entrenched deficiencies for years. But it was not until the 1980s that the serious shortcomings in the system became evident to the American public, when a series of military blunders showed the consequences of continued inaction. The failed 1979 hostage rescue mission in Iran, the failure and withdrawal of U.S. forces under fire in Beirut in 1982, and the missteps in the Grenada operation during the same year finally led a majority of Americans to believe that the nation’s military establishment was deeply troubled and needed a major overhaul. Even so, it took a concerted and protracted effort by key legislators, retired senior military officers, and former civilian officials, along with the support of thousands of concerned citizens, to pass the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act in 1986. This farreaching legislation strengthened joint military institutions at the expense of the individual armed services and has proven to be a huge success. The U.S. development and operation of superior integrated military capabilities, as demonstrated in the lightening operation that successfully toppled the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq with only light U.S. casualties, is widely attributed to the greater powers of the chairman, the Joint Chiefs and the Joint Staff, and other joint institutions made possible by the legislation. Today, there is broad agreement among Americans that reform of the intelligence community is necessary. Again, a series of evident missteps—culminating in the failure to prevent al[ 1 4 0 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
One: It will take time. The struggle for military reform began seriously in 1981 when the Chairman of the JCS, David Jones, legitimated existing reformers’ arguments by speaking publicly about the problems within the military command system while still in office. Even with the chairman’s support, it took five years to reach consensus on what should be done and to maneuver the legislation through the Congress. During this period, there were at least three major, foundation-funded projects to promote reforms, countless articles in newspapers and magazines by knowledgeable specialists, retired military officers, and civilian officials urging reforms, four years of congressional hearings and internal working groups, and intensive lobbying efforts on both sides of the issue. The issues were debated and parsed incessantly; the alternatives defined and redefined and then placed in a never-
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Two: The arrangement of the deck chairs is only part of the problem. Politicians and policymakers focus on organizational charts because they are tangible representations of ways of doing business that can be made and unmade through legislation and executive orders. While sound structures are essential, the real organizational problems typically lie in process—the way business is executed—and, even more, in the basic values and mindsets of the organization’s personnel, known as its “culture.” The Goldwater-Nichols legislation did much more than reorganize the military command structure. Indeed, the genius of the legislation’s authors was in setting up new rules for career advancement and other personal incentives that made good military officers want to be part of joint organizations, and to make
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ending series of comprehensive proposals. All this effort proved necessary to develop agreement on a politically feasible legislative proposal—an effort that moved the department toward greater reform, but did not go so far as to trigger opposition powerful enough to block the legislation. Clearly, reaching such a consensus takes time. After the 9/11 Commission report was issued in August 2004, many people, including the Democratic candidate for president, Senator John Kerry (D-MA), argued for immediate implementation of the Commission’s package of proposed intelligence community reforms. Fortunately, the effort for immediate legislation failed in the period prior to the election—a heated partisan atmosphere is the worst time to be seeking lasting reforms in government organization. More funda-
A Look Back
Any legislation that can be passed quickly is
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likely to be so weak as to be insignificant in bringing about reform, and the risks of irreversible steps in the wrong direction are great.
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mentally, the issues plaguing the intelligence community are complex and the contending interests powerful. Any legislation that can be passed quickly is likely to be so weak as to be insignificant in bringing about reform, and the risks of irreversible steps in a wrong direction are great. Rather, as demonstrated by the lesson of the Goldwater-Nichols experience, time is necessary to debate the underlying issues, to understand the trade-offs among contending interests, and, most importantly, to build a consensus behind a far-reaching, yet politically feasible, set of reforms.
those organizations work. Sure, today’s intelligence community needs to be reorganized. The establishment of a national intelligence director as means of ensuring a more integrated approach to priority setting and problem solving is obviously a good idea. Yet, more importantly, the intelligence community needs new processes and personal incentives so that such problems as stovepiping and group thinking, both well documented by the 9/11 Commission and many other observers, can be fundamentally and permanently corrected. Winter/Spring 2005 [ 1 4 1 ]
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Three: The best is often the that the chairman of the JCS should be enemy of the good. The interests at given greater powers by making him the
principal military advisor to the president. But creating the position of vice chairman of the JCS was highly contentious as, in essence, it would set a second officer above the service chiefs. Long discussions were necessary to determine how to define the role and powers of the vice chief so that its creation would not break the consensus that favored empowering the chairman. Funded by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, and hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the project included nearly one hundred military and civilian defense professionals with detailed knowledge of DOD operations, as well as key senators and congressmen. Organized into four working groups, the project issued a comprehensive report recommending changes on a full range of reform issues, from military command structure to the weapons acquisition system, and from the personnel system to congressional oversight of the defense budget. The report was widely publicized and endorsed by all but one of the then-living former secretaries of defense. In the
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stake in reforming the intelligence community are huge, and the actors very powerful. Ideological solutions from an academic perspective are often not feasible politically. Government reformers have often failed because of “over-reaching,” which often results in the neglect of a feasible 75 percent solution in favor of the “right” answer. This is a mistake. Radical, “all-or-nothing” alternatives are helpful; they can legitimize meaningful, but less extreme, solutions. A report by the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee played this role for the GoldwaterNichols legislation. A comprehensive intelligence reform proposal issued in August by Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, might play a similar role in intelligence reform. In the end, though, a bipartisan group needs to put together a realistic compromise. In the 1980s, a series of private initiatives, including a working group that I organized and directed and that was chaired by General Andrew Goodpaster, former defense secretary Melvin Laird, and a well-known national security exec-
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of “over-reaching,” resulting in the neglect of a feasible 75 percent solution in favor of the “right” answer. This is a mistake.
utive, Philip Odeen, helped to crystallize an understanding of how far military reforms could be sustained politically, and what such a package might include. There was wide agreement, for example, [ 1 4 2 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
end, it defined and legitimated a reform package that could realistically command the support of a bipartisan centrist coalition, thereby setting the stage for more detailed discussions, negotiations, and
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agreements within Congress. Currently, the realists who might put together such an intelligence reform compromise have not yet emerged. While there are parti-
A Look Back
were deployed to use their influence on members of Congress, while some of Lehman’s more aggressive subordinates even impugned the patriotism of the
It is worth recalling that government
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reforms do not have to be implemented in one bite; indeed, they cannot be.
members of Congress pushing for change—a tactic that backfired, as it in fact hardened the resolve of some formerly wavering members in favor of reform. As can be inferred from the past, a Four: The executive branch will serious intelligence reform effort needs be the enemy…and it will play to “red-team” the opposition and predirty. Organizational reform is not a pare for the inevitable counterattack. A subject of academic interest to the power- failure to foresee the opposition to giving ful institutions whose interests are at the national intelligence director stake. Individuals who have invested their authority over the budgets of DOD’s lives in particular agencies and institu- intelligence agencies is one reason tional cultures naturally believe they are behind the failure of reform legislation doing their jobs correctly, to say nothing during the pre-election period. of wanting to retain the power, perks, and influence on government policy that now Five: The White House will not come with such positions. Such beliefs are be an ally, not really. While politinot confined to careerists. The “out- cal imperatives will ensure rhetorical siders,” or political appointees temporar- support for “reform” from the presiily placed in charge of these agencies, also dent and his spokesmen, the strong adopt the organizations’ attitudes, even if opposition of the agencies directly only to be effective in their jobs. The affected will make it difficult for the Navy, for example, strongly opposed mil- White House to work seriously for itary reform in the 1980s, and its able meaningful change, whatever the presithen-Secretary John Lehman (ironically, dent may believe or may have said dura member of the 9/11 Commission) ing the electoral campaign. In his 1980 pulled out all the stops to try to derail the campaign, Ronald Reagan supported legislation. Similarly, a retired naval offi- the need for military reform. Yet once cer sought to derail the previously men- the administration took office, Navy tioned CSIS project by exerting pressure opposition ensured that Defense through the institution’s primary backers. Secretary Caspar Weinberger opposed And subsequently, when legislation was Goldwater-Nichols. While Weinberger’s pending in Congress, Navy contractors opposition alone was not sufficient for
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sans on both sides of the issue, bipartisanship and the pragmatic leadership willing to do as much as is politically feasible have yet to seize the day.
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partisan nature of the debate during the 2004 presidential campaign. Senator Pat Roberts, chair of the Intelligence Committee, was a logical choice, but his submission of the “radical alternative” will make it difficult for him to be effective. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) has been outspoken, but he is too closely associated with the 9/11 Commission recommendations and, in any case, is with the minority party. Nor has an effective House leader yet emerged. While Representative J. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) speaks rhetorically in favor of reform, the “extras” added to the House bill undermined support for legislation in the Senate rather than smoothing its passage. Perhaps the true champions of intelligence reform will emerge when the new congress convenes in January 2005.
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the White House to consider a veto, it effectively ensured that the president did not lend any real support to the reform effort. Indeed, President Reagan signed this landmark bill without any ceremony, a symbol of the executive branch’s disdain for congressional actions of this nature. Following the release of the 9/11 Commission’s report and John Kerry’s call for the immediate creation of a national intelligence director, President Bush announced his support for intelligence reform, including the creation of a national intelligence director. But what powers should that director be given? This is the essence of the current congressional debate, and the White House seems to have sided with those who prefer a weak director. And what about the changes necessary to ensure a cultural revolution within the intelligence community, and the procedural reforms necessary to bring it about? Again, the executive branch cannot be expected to press powerfully for meaningful intelligence reform in this area either.
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Six: Powerful and shrewd congressional leaders are essential.
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Defense reform succeeded in the 1980s due to the visible leadership of Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Bill Nichols (D-AL), chair of the Investigations Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, along with the unwavering behind-thescenes leadership of many others, including Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) and Congressmen Les Aspin (D-WI) and Ike Skelton (D-MO). The effective champions of intelligence reform in the current two chambers are not yet evident, and may be difficult to find, given the [ 1 4 4 ] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Deficiencies in the way the Congress oversees the intelligence community are partly to blame for the community’s failures. But do not expect to see any meaningful changes on Capitol Hill. Desirable reforms in congressional oversight of defense were evident in the 1980s, such as a move to biennial budgets and multiyear authorizations. Recommendations to this effect were made by various outside organizations, but had only limited impact. Twenty years later, only restricted progress has been made. The CSIS project imagined a grand compromise on defense reform in which the executive branch accepted far-reaching changes in the ways the Defense Department goes about its business and the Congress accepted far-reaching changes in the ways it executes its oversight responsibilities. However, this grand idea was never carried out. While it
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over the past four years as he sought to “transform” the U.S. military services into a true integrated force. Integrating the intelligence community will similarly require an iterative process of both legislative and executive actions. Creating a national intelligence director is a good first step; but it should not be the last.
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would be nice to believe in the possibility for such a compromise for intelligence reform or even homeland security, that is likely only a pipe dream. By way of conclusion, it is worth recalling that government reforms do not have to be implemented in one bite; indeed, they cannot be. Integrating the contributions of the individual armed services into an efficient, joint military machine—a process begun in 1947— continues as a work in progress. The Goldwater-Nichols legislation was an important landmark, but its implementation remains incomplete, as demonstrated by the difficulties faced by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
A Look Back
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Author’s Note: This article went to press prior to Congress’ lameduck session and passage of limited intelligence reform legislation in December 2004. The author states that the politics of 9/11 overcame many of the obstacles to reform described in the article, but that the weakness of the legislated reforms and their narrow scope reinforce his central points.
Winter/Spring 2005 [ 1 4 5 ]