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DEBATING THE MORAL HAZARDS OF INTERVENTION

Open links to an obscure ( at least to me) and usually subscriber-only British journal called Ethnopolitics were emailed to me today which the more academically and theoretically inclined Zenpundit readers may find interesting. The issue touches upon ethnic conflict, international law, great power intervention and morality. The journal is routed through the Taylor & Francis database system which means that to pursue the thread, from article to article, you will have to open umpteen links to get to the full text preview of each article.

Nevertheless, to save you time, here is the introduction to the issue. Here is the table of contents.

I have not read anything much beyond beyond the intro yet though the guy with the article invoking the designated hitter rule in baseball to explain why humanitarian intervention is bad certainly gets brownie points for creativity.

AL QAIDA AS THE ” ISLAMINTERN “

A couple of important posts on the GWOT yesterday and today gave me some food for thought along with the new from Europe. Dave at the Glittering Eye raisedthe point that many people assert that Islamist terrorism is a leftover problem from the the Cold War and at The Daily Demarche, Dr. Demarche went at length about the national security problem posed by al Qaida recruitment of second and third generation European muslims coupled with the bureaucratic idiocy and political correctness of our own VISA policies.

Al Qaida’s days of a tightly knit, hierarchically organized, paramilitary army appear to be over unless they can gain the unqualified support of a strong state sponsor that can provide the facilities and security to allow bin Laden and Zawahiri to rebuild those capabilities. Instead al Qaida has shifted into being a network of networks in its campaign against the West and the United States. There is a certain parallel here in terms of tactics with the days of Lenin’s rule over the Bolshevik regime in Russia.

Lenin, once the Reds had gained the upper hand in the Russian civil war made an attempt to spread revolution by direct military action by invading the newly created state of Poland in 1920, which under Marshal Pilsudski had taken advantage of Russia’s weakness to intervene and annex land in Ukraine. This plan had been supported by Stalin and other radicals but opposed by Red military professionals like Tukhachevskii; Stalin carried the day with Lenin and the Sovnarkom and the offensive was launched. The Bolshevk invasion of Poland ( the USSR had yet to be created), while it succeeded in driving Polish forces out of Ukrainian territory, proved to be a near total military disaster for the Bolsheviks. Stalin was humiliated and Lenin abandoned military conquest as a policy and reverted to the tactics to which the Bolsheviks were most familiar to spread world revolution, secrecy, subversion and conspiracy.

As detailed by the late Soviet/Russian military historian General Dimitrii Volkogonov, Lenin was to squander enormous sums through the Comintern to set up open and underground Communist party cells and spy networks in Europe, North America and Asia. Some of these early Comintern-GRU-CHEKA-NKVD projects produced future revolutionary Communist leaders ( Ho Chi Minh) or penetrated the highest reaches of Western governments.

Al Qaida is becoming more of an ” Islamintern“, an inciter and far-off high command of Islamist revolutionary activities. While other Islamist groups continue to beat the drum to attract general movement sympathizers, al Qaida is looking for agents who have outwardly assimilated in to western society – the children of immigrants or Western converts. Right now in light of terrorism, Western intelligence agents are focused on the likeliest suspects in their midst the way European police and A. Mitchell Palmer’s Justice department once concentrated on labor movement radicals and Eastern European emigre communities.

But in order to get ahead of the curve, what Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism specialists really ought to be scanning for today is the Islamist equivalent to Alger Hiss.

PIRACY AND THE POST-WESTPHALIAN DOCTRINE OF SOVEREIGN IRRESPONSIBILITY

Pirates, the terrorists of the ancient world, are in the news a lot these days it seems. Curzon at Coming Anarchy, among other blogs today, covered this issue in ” Avast” and “More on Piracy“. It is the information in the last post provided by Curzon that I find important ( as well as highly irritating).

“Malaysia ‘will never allow’ foreign military forces to help patrol the Malacca strait, which is vulnerable to pirate attacks, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said. ‘Malaysia firmly believes in the principle of a country’s independence, however small,’ Abdullah said in a speech to the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) general assembly. ‘Based on that principle, Malaysia stands firm in the belief that the responsibility of ensuring the security of the waters of the Malacca strait is ours,’ he told some 2,500 party leaders at the annual talks. ‘We will never allow foreign military to conduct patrols in those waters,’ he said. ‘Their presence, without our approval, would be a breach that we would regard as disrespectful of our country’s independence.’ “

The reaction of the Malaysian Prime Minister, to put it in international law theory terms, amounts to an enunciation of a Doctrine of Sovereign Irresponsibility. As artfully nationalistic developing-world bluster, the statement fits in neatly with the spirit of the post-Westphalian Age but it has all the legal standing of a bin Laden fatwa.

Sovereign powers are respected as sovereigns under International Law precisely because they exercise authority over and accept juridical responsibility for a defined and internationally recognized territory. With the perks of sovereignty come responsibilities – namely maintaining law and order. A sovereign who fails to do so on a continual basis calls their international legitimacy into legal question. By claiming sovereignty but failing to maintain free passage in the Malacca straits ( an international sea lane) the P.M. is trying to have his cake and eat it too.

Secondly, Maylasia’s sovereignty over the straits is, in any event, limited here by their adhering to the Law of the Sea Treaty which recognizes the rights of foreign ships – including armed ones – to pass through. Furthermore, these ships may defend themselves against piracy both under customary international law and under the Law of the Sea Convention’s “ Force Majeure” clause in Article 39. . Legally, the Malaysians do not have a leg to stand on and if we were to dig deeply into the piracy issue – a part of the big business of Transnational Organized Crime – we might be surprised to discover to whom these pirate gangs have financial connections. Internationally as well as locally.

The Malaysian Prime Minister may be doing little more than playing to the injured pride of his countrymen but the time is long overdue to stop excusing developing nations from their duties as sovereigns while granting them all of the diplomatic benefits.

TIP OF THE ZENPUNDIT HAT

I have to say to the bloggers who are my regular reads ( you know who you are), friends and a few here and there who are not as friendly, that if I wished I could post nothing original of my own and simply react to what all of you are writing about. Your blogs are that interesting sometimes.

In fact, this may be one of those days….

RECOMMENDED READING

Several good pieces out there:

Dave at the Glittering Eye had an excellent post up the other day “In for the long haul: what needs to happen in the War on Terror“. Analytical and thorough, Dave’s post nicely complements the ideas presented by…

Jeff at Caerdroia, who has a post entitled ” The Enemy’s Strategic Problem“, gently reminding us that it’s not a bed of roses plotting out of a Wazirstan fuhrerbunker either.

Younghusband at Coming Anarchy was kind enough to give my 5GW discussion with Dan a plug and one of his readers, Curtis Gale Weeks of Phatic Communion brought a fascinating link to my attention. A transliteration of the geopolitical section of” Unrestricted Warfare” by PLA Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. The other sections can be found here – Part I., PartII. and Part III. I can see myself posting an analysis on these in the future. As for the other gentlemen at Coming Anarchy, Chirol is talking SysAdmin and Curzon marvels at transnational progressive legal hubris and asininity.

And I agree with the ubiquitous praktike.

Collounsbury is now stateside.