This Issue
Growing Threat of Long-Range Missiles
Soon after the end of July, Iran was expected to test a Shahab-4 missile, range 2,000km, and was believed to be developing one with a 4,000km range, although UN sanctions have banned Tehran from possessing missiles with a range over 150km. At the same time, North Korea, which had test launched a missile over Japan in 1998, was preparing to test another long-range ballistic missile. Japan, South Korea and the US warned North Korea of serious consequences if it continued with the test. Around the Mediterranean, the Gulf and the Pacific, membership of a US-led radar network and anti-missile shield was being contemplated. In particular, Japan and the US were considering developing joint anti-missile shield, while Taiwan was also keen. However, both China (particularly in reaction to Taiwan) and Russia have protested that such defences would threaten existing non-proliferation and arms-control agreements.
The West has limited knowledge of which countries have capacity for weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). North Korea has threatened to reverse its 1994 pledge to halt development of nuclear weapons in response to US overreaction to its missile test. Iran was believed to be two years away from being able to accurately deliver chemical warheads. UN inspectors warned that Saddam Hussein already had such capability.
Contrasting opinions in Washington saw many Democrats believing missile defence systems to be counterproductive, while Republicans thought they provided essential domestic protection. President Clinton, during the week beginning 19 July, agreed to start building an anti-missile shield over America as soon as it was technically possible. Options under development were: point defence, covering specific targets; comprehensive coverage of the whole country; and theatre defence, protecting an overseas garrison by intercepting medium-range missiles in space. However, China and Russia suspected the latter of being a cover for the development of a comprehensive shield, contravening Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty. The two major theatre systems being considered were: the Navy Theatre Wide and the Theatre High-Altitude Area Defence (THAAD), which achieved a successful intercept in June 1999.
The Pentagon was worried that medium-range missile threats were likely to develop sooner than the proposed earliest date for the establishment of a theatre system of 2007. The Israeli Arrow Weapon System was believed to be at a higher state of readiness and, although it was less sophisticated than the US equivalent, Tel Aviv insisted it would at least cover the country. However, neither Jordan nor Turkey responded to Israel's offer to include them within the system.
But, Russia asserted its Topol-M missile could outwit any anti-missile shield and sceptics believed the destructive potential of a single successful missile favoured diplomatic and deterrent methods. Nevertheless, advocates asserted that the shield formed an essential component within a range of strategies, including deterrence and diplomacy.
Anti-missile defence presented a problem for NATO which has to cover a large area, while Europeans have been less enthusiastic about it. Germany, Greece and the Netherlands have ordered PAC-3 interceptors, while the UK, France and Italy maintained ambitions to develop a combined sea-based air-defence system with some anti-missile capacity. Disproportionate external threats to different NATO members, such as Italy being threatened by Libyan missiles, could induce a "renationalisation" of NATO defence decisions.
The Value of Intervention
A Foreign Affairs article suggested that artificially imposed peace agreements merely froze wars by protecting the weaker party, counteracting conflict's only useful function of ultimately bringing peace. For instance, despite externally assisted peace agreements, fighting continued in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was likely to resume between Ethiopia and Eritrea and in Sierra Leone and the long running dispute over Kashmir continued. Furthermore, the tenuous stability in Kosovo relied upon a long term international security presence.
However, a 31 July report in The Economist questioned whether the death-toll from wars in the former Yugoslavia would have been kept under 120,000 if they had been left to their own devices? The Biafran war of 1967-70, where combatants were allowed to "fight it out", eventually saw a million casualties. Also, some 700,000 Tutsis were killed in Rwanda in 1994 as the world stood and watched. Furthermore, "peace" brought about by military victory was seldom just, while a legitimate intervention could possibly create a lasting settlement.
Continuing conflicting interests were likely to create ample need for intervention, while analysts suggested that Kosovo had encouraged the West to intervene more often. The Kosovo intervention was neither fought over national interest nor was purely humanitarian. It developed through miscalculation resulting from failed diplomacy, thereby becoming central to the maintenance of NATO's credibility. Overstretch of the Alliance as a result of Kosovo could be detrimental since, in cases where preventive measures have failed, there was always likely to be a need for intervention.
Kofi Annan Discusses Intervention
On 18 September, Kofi Annan presented an article in The Economist entitled "Two Concepts of Sovereignty". Annan pointed out that the tragedy of East Timor had re-focused attention on the need for timely international intervention in response to humanitarian imperatives where the relevant state was unable or unwilling to respond. The international military response in Kosovo occurred without Security Council authorisation, while intervention in East Timor took place only after an invitation had been acquired from Jakarta, allowing hundreds and probably thousands of innocent people to be killed. Thus, again the international community stood accused of doing too little, too late, as had been the case in Rwanda in 1994.
Neither Kosovo nor East Timor represented a satisfactory model for the coming millennium. It had become clear both that the world could not allow systematic violations of human rights to occur as well as that intervention must be based on legitimate and universal principles if it was to maintain international support and legitimacy. The international system must be adapted to correspond to the new actors, responsibilities, and possibilities for peace and progress in the world.
Thus, state sovereignty was being redefined: states were widely understood to be the servants and not the masters of their people, while individual sovereignty - individuals' fundamental freedom - had been strengthened by renewed and broadening acknowledgement of individual rights. Although such developments did not mitigate difficult political choices, they did require people to rethink questions such as how the UN responded to humanitarian crises, and why the political will to act was stronger in some regions than others, where the humanitarian consequences were equally harsh.
Although the Rwandan catastrophe demonstrated the appalling results of international inaction in response to genocide, Kosovo raised equally important questions regarding the consequences of action without international consensus or explicit legal authority, emphasising the dilemma of so-called "humanitarian intervention". Tension existed between the legitimacy of a regional organisation using force without a UN mandate and allowing gross and systematic violations of human rights with their humanitarian consequences.
Thus, Annan suggested that the international community agree both on the principle that gross violations of human rights needed to be stopped, wherever they occurred, as well as on means to determine an effective response: what type of action; when it should happen; and who should carry it out.
Many people believed the use of force without a Security Council mandate to be the greatest threat to international order. Annan suggested they temporarily ignore Kosovo and think whether a coalition of willing states that had been prepared to act in defence of Rwandese Tutsi in 1994 should have stood idly had the Council refused to authorise action? Others believed Kosovo had legitimised military action by states and groups of states outside established international legal mechanisms. Did this not risk undermining the flawed but resilient, security system established after the second world war, and of establishing dangerous precedents for subsequent interventions with no definite model to determine which authority could invoke such precedents and under what circumstances? The UN charter did not preclude acknowledgement of rights beyond state borders: it asserted that that "armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest." However, there were questions over what was and who should define such common interest, who should defend it, under whose authority, and employing what means of intervention? Annan suggested four fundamental aspects of intervention for consideration.
1.Intervention did not refer exclusively to the use of force. Although many crises could be addressed with less dangerous forms of intervention, there was great variation regarding different regions and crises in international commitment to peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance, rehabilitation and reconstruction. For the new humanitarian commitment to retain global support, it must universal.
2.States' definitions of their national interests were an equal obstacle to effective humanitarian action as traditional ideals of sovereignty. Conceptions of national interest had not evolved in line with other post-Cold War global changes. The millennium required a redefinition of national interests, inducing states to seek greater consensus in the pursuit of common goals and values.
3.The Security Council must be prepared for forcible intervention when required, avoiding the stark choice between Council unanimity and inaction (Rwanda), and Council disagreement and regional action (Kosovo). In both of these instances, it should have been possible for the Council to find common ground in upholding the Charter's principles and acting in defence of people's common humanity. The council also had a deterrent function and, unless it asserted itself collectively and appropriately, would lose credibility. The knowledge that the Council would act in response to crimes against humanity would act as a deterrent against potential rogue states while failure to act as the defender of the common interest risked encouraging others to seek to replace it.
4.International commitments to peace needed to be equally strong after resolution of a conflict. Here, again, consistency was paramount: commitments to peace could not end along with a cease-fire
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