Swords Into Plowshares

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

2012-01-27T22:58:00.000-08:00

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Its observance falls on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet army in the waning days of World War II.

Sixty-seven years--two-thirds of a century--have now passed since the Red Army, advancing across Poland, came upon the most infamous of the Nazi concentration camps, a place where between 1.1 million and 1.6 million people were killed. The few who survived are rapidly disappearing. In fact, Kazimierz Smolen, an Auschwitz survivor who was director of the museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau from 1955 to 1990, died today at the age of 91.

Henry Appel, another survivor, said, "There is only one thing worse than Auschwitz itself and that is if the world forgets there was such a place."

An Abysmal Anniversary

2012-01-11T22:44:00.000-08:00

It was ten years ago today that the first prisoners in the so-called "War on Terror" arrived at Guantanamo Bay. Today, there are 171 detainees there, at least 12 of whom arrived with the first group.

Guantanamo remains a legal black hole in most respects, even though some legal challenges have wound up in the U.S. Supreme Court. This brief film by Amnesty International makes the very important point that the U.S. Government has consistently avoided all discussion of the applicability of international human rights where Guantanamo is concerned. This, of course, contributes to Guantanamo's status as a place the law can't reach.

Lakhdar Boumediene, who was imprisoned at Guantanamo from January 20, 2002 to May 15, 2009 without being charged with the crime, told his story in the New York Times on Sunday. It is well worth reading.

Abolition

2012-01-05T17:44:00.000-08:00

This may well be the year that another 12 percent of the United States--California, to be specific--moves to abolish the death penalty. An organization called SAFE (Savings, Accountability, Full Enforcement) California is working to put repeal of the state's capital punishment law on the November ballot. Should the initiative succeed, California would join sixteen other states that have already abolished the death penalty.

The principal argument that SAFE California makes in favor of abolition is that the death penalty is costly and ineffective. There is data to support the claim. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, California had 721 inmates on death row on January 1, 2011. But, since 1976, only thirteen people have been executed in the state. (There have been no executions in California since 2006 when a federal court struck down the existing method of lethal injection.) Some may argue that this simply means the state needs to streamline its use of the death penalty rather than abolishing it, but such an argument is, fundamentally, an argument that California ought to be more like Saudi Arabia or the People's Republic of China in circumventing such legal niceties as the rights of the accused and prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishments. Furthermore, it is an argument that runs contrary to the fact that, since 1973, 139 people on death rows across the United States have been exonerated.

As Adam Cohen notes in a Time magazine essay, what is happening in California and elsewhere in the United States is abolition prompted by grassroots pressure in the states. It is not what many death penalty opponents have been hoping for since the U.S. Supreme Court's reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976, that is, outlawry (or at least suspension) in one fell swoop by Supreme Court fiat. That is what had happened, temporarily, in Furman v. Georgia in 1972. There are, Cohen notes, certain advantages to death penalty abolition state by state. "What we are seeing," Cohen writes, "is not a small group of judges setting policy. It is a large number of Americans gradually losing their enthusiasm for putting people to death."

Viewed from the standpoint of international relations, abolition of the death penalty is one of a number of issues on which the Untied States lags behind international human rights standards. The Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is premised on the belief "that abolition of the death penalty contributes to enhancement of human dignity and progressive development of human rights" and thus mandates that "no one within the jurisdiction of a State Party to the present Protocol shall be executed." The Protocol is, of course, optional, but it has been accepted by 73 states, including most of the democracies of Western Europe, Canada, and Mexico. Those the United States would include among its closest allies have abolished the death penalty. Those often condemned by the United States for their lack of respect for human rights--the People's Republic of China, North Korea, Iran, and Syria, for example--have not.

It's time to end the death penalty all over the United States, but if abolition has to be accomplished one state at a time, so be it. California should be next.

Going Latin American

2011-12-11T15:35:00.000-08:00

Latin America has long had a reputation for inequality. It has been a place where, in the popular imagination (and all too often in reality), large landowners have lorded it over the far more numerous peasants or government ministers, grown rich from corruption, have ruled with disdain over the masses. Inequality has fueled revolutions from time to time--in Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, and El Salvador (among others)--but has more often resulted in authoritarian regimes committed to defending the status quo against "communism," a catchall term that was commonly applied to any movement that was critical of the prevailing inequality.

Today, Jorge G. Castañeda, former foreign minister of Mexico and current professor at NYU, suggests in an essay in the New York Times that the United States might have something to learn from Latin America's experience with inequality. He writes:

The United States--that epitome of the middle-class society, of the egalitarian dream that pulled millions of immigrants away from Latin America--has begun to go Latin American. It is in a process of structural middle-class shrinkage and inequality expansion that has perhaps never occurred anywhere else.

The frightening thing is that Latin America's historical experience indicates that it is very difficult to rebuild a middle class once inequality has reached a certain point. Worse yet, the level of inequality toward which the United States is rapidly moving is simply incompatible with the kind of democratic governance that many Americans believe to be safe from all challenges here in the United States (as if money were not already compromising democracy).

For almost two centuries, the United States sought to strengthen democracy by promoting equality. Slavery was abolished, educational opportunities were expanded, women were enfranchised, Jim Crow laws were dismantled, and a modest safety net was created. Now, however, only those in the Occupy movement seem to understand why inequality might constitute a political problem. The rest of the country needs to get a clue, unless Latin America circa 1980 is what we hope to become.

Presidents in Prison

2011-12-11T12:12:00.000-08:00

Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega is being flown from Paris to Panama today, leaving a French prison for a twenty-year prison sentence back home. For the last twenty-two years, since his capture by the U.S. military forces that invaded Panama in what was called Operation Just Cause, Noriega has been imprisoned--first in the United States where he was convicted on charges of drug trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering, then in France where he was convicted for money laundering. In Panama, Noriega has been convicted on various human rights charges stemming from murders of political opponents committed during the six years he ruled Panama.

Noriega is not the only former leader in prison. Former Liberian president Charles Taylor has been incarcerated at The Hague since 2006 when he was surrendered to the Special Court for Sierra Leone by the Liberian government headed by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first democratically elected female leader in Africa. (Sirleaf was one of three women awarded the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday in Stockholm.) Taylor is awaiting the Court's verdict in his trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by forces under his control in Sierra Leone's civil war.

Former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo was turned over to the International Criminal Court by the new government of Ivory Coast two weeks ago. He is now awaiting trial in The Hague.

Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president ousted by protesters earlier this year, is on trial on a variety of charges including corruption and ordering the killing of protesters. Due to health problems, including stomach cancer, the 83-year-old Mubarak has been detained in a military hospital in Cairo. His trial, currently on hold, is scheduled to resume on December 28.

Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the former president of Tunisia who was ousted in the first wave of the Arab Spring protests, has thus far avoided prison. However, he has been convicted in absentia of corruption and drug possession. He and his wife escaped during Tunisia's revolution to Saudi Arabia where they remain in spite of a Tunisian extradition request.

On Wednesday of last week, former Israeli president Moshe Katsav entered prison to begin serving a seven-year sentence for rape. (The presidency in Israel, it should be noted, is a largely ceremonial office.) Although Katsav maintains his innocence, his conviction was affirmed by a three-judge panel of Israel's Supreme Court.

Current president of Sudan Omar al-Bashir is currently under indictment by the International Criminal Court. for crimes related to the Darfur genocide. He, however, remains in office.

Of course, the imprisonment of former leaders is not always a good thing. In October, former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko was sentenced to seven years in prison on a charge of abuse of office. Ms. Tymoshenko denounced the verdict, which observers outside Ukraine have widely criticized as having been politically motivated.

Human Rights Day

2011-12-10T16:22:00.000-08:00

Sixty-three years ago today, the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since then, the concept of human rights has come to permeate every aspect of international relations, including the internal behavior of most states and the business practices of many multinational corporations. International human rights law has grown slowly but steadily and is now being enforced not only in the courts of many states but in international or mixed courts from The Hague to Arusha, Tanzania and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Corrupt and brutal dictators have been overthrown--and in some cases put on trial--in the name of human rights.

While many wrongs in the world remain to be righted, the concept of human rights gives us more hope for improving the human condition than we have ever had reason to feel before. There are many rights-abusing regimes still to be eliminated, but they can no longer count on the support of international law or, by and large, other governments. And when the United States departs from the standards established in international human rights law--when it departs, that is, from its own highest ideals--there are others beyond our borders who can, and will, offer correction. That, too, is a good thing

New Lows for Africa's Longest-Ruling Dictator

2011-12-09T11:44:00.000-08:00

President Obiang of Equatorial Guinea continues to act as if the fact that his country's people are among the poorest in Africa is of absolutely no concern to him. Colum Lynch reports that Obiang has approved a contract with a South Korean firm to build a $77 million "presidential guesthouse."

While the regime touts the benefits to Equatoguineans of its "zinc roofs campaign," which is replacing roofs made of palm fronds with corrugated tin roofs, President Obiang is building a guesthouse that will be an architectural showpiece. Its construction cost alone makes it more expensive than all but three homes listed in the United States, according to a story on Forbes.com last August.

Gbagbo at the ICC

2011-12-05T14:26:00.000-08:00

Laurent Gbagbo, former president of Cote d'Ivoire, appeared before the International Criminal Court today. Although former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was tried by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and former Liberian president Charles Taylor was tried by the Special Court for Sierra Leone (both in The Hague), Gbagbo is the first former president to face trial at the ICC.

Gbagbo became president of the former French colony in 2000. He was defeated by Alassane Outtara in the 2010 presidential election, but challenged the results and refused to cede power. Violence ensued and supporters of both Gbagbo and Ouattara are alleged to have committed serious human rights violations in the struggle for power that followed the election. Ultimately, Ouattara's supporters, with help from French and UN military forces, succeeded in ousting Gbagbo from power. Gbagbo was placed under house arrest until his rendition to the ICC by the Ouattara government.

The ICC investigation into post-election violence in Cote d'Ivoire was initiated by President Ouattara in December 2010. Gbagbo has been indicted on four counts of crimes against humanity, most related to incitement of his supporters to violence.

(The website of the Boston Globe, boston.com, has a great photo essay here on the election and part of its aftermath.)

WWII UXO

2011-12-03T21:53:00.000-08:00

Not every bomb dropped or shell fired in a war explodes. Those that don't are called UXO, or unexploded ordnance. UXO can kill long after the war comes to an end.

Nearly half the population of Koblenz, Germany has been evacuated following the discovery of a 3,000-pound bomb dropped by the Royal Air Force into the Rhine during World War II. The evacuees include the residents of seven nursing homes, two hospitals, and a prison. German authorities will attempt to defuse the bomb tomorrow after draining the water from an area of the river surrounding the bomb.

In June 2010, three German explosives technicians were killed in Gottingen when the World War II bomb they were trying to defuse exploded.

UPDATE: The bomb in Koblenz has been successfully defused, along with a smaller one found in the same place. German authorities have also defused a small bomb in Nuremberg after evacuating 200 people there.

Moreno-Ocampo's Successor

2011-12-03T16:17:00.000-08:00

Deputy prosecutor Fatou Bensouda will soon succeed Luis Moreno-Ocampo as chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Ms. Bensouda, 50, is from Gambia and has served the ICC since 2004. Prior to that, she served as a prosecutor on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Ms. Bensouda must be elected by the Assembly of States Parties to the ICC at its meeting on December 12, but diplomats have indicated that she will be the only candidate for election to the post of chief prosecutor.

At present, all of the cases before the ICC involve conflicts in Africa.

Obiang Fights Back

2011-12-03T16:05:00.000-08:00

Reuters reports that lawyers for Teodorin Obiang are fighting the Justice Department's recent complaint for forfeiture in rem. This will likely result in prolonged legal proceedings (and an attendant delay in the seizure of Obiang's $30 million Malibu home) as well as some interesting disclosures. If the Justice Department is pressed to defend its allegations that Obiang's mansion, Learjet, Ferrari, and Michael Jackson memorabilia collection were purchased with the proceeds of corruption, it will likely bring to light information about how the Nguema clan operates that has not previously been made public.

Bring it on!

War School

2011-12-01T21:29:00.000-08:00

This short film has been out a while, but I just learned about it recently. Warning: It's pretty intense. (It's also pretty effective.)

Canine PTSD

2011-12-01T21:23:00.000-08:00

Today's New York Times has an interesting story about canine post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Five percent of the roughly 650 dogs deployed to combat areas by the U.S. military are thought to be affected by canine PTSD.

A year ago, a story about Gina, a four-year-old German shepherd with canine PTSD, was posted on a U.S. Air Force website. According to the story, Gina's behavior changed dramatically after she came close to an IED explosion while deployed in Southwest Asia. Back at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, Gina was being retrained with no plans for redeployment to a combat zone for at least two years.

In the aftermath of the raid that killed Osama bin Ladin, there was widespread speculation regarding the dog that accompanied Seal Team 6 into Abbottabad. While the dog's breed and precise function is still not known, experts speculate that the dog was present in order to sniff out explosives or persons hiding in the compound. The New York Times reported that dogs used by Special Forces may be decked out in high-tech gear:

Last year, the Seals bought four waterproof tactical vests for their dogs that featured infrared and night-vision cameras so that handlers--holding a three-inch monitor from as far as 1,000 yards away--could immediately see what the dogs were seeing. The vests, which come in coyote tan and camouflage, let handlers communicate with the dogs with a speaker, and the four together cost more than $86,000. Navy Seal teams have trained to parachute from great heights and deploy out of helicopters with dogs.

Military working dogs (MWDs), however, are not fitted with titanium teeth.

In July 2010, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would "recruit" 600 dogs a year for five years for use in sniffing out bombs, drugs, cash, and people, primarily at border crossings. The bid solicitation stated that DHS was looking for dogs that are "alert, active, outgoing, confident" and "extremely tolerant of people."

Equatorial Guinea on the Big Screen?

2011-11-18T09:03:00.000-08:00

Various sources are reporting that Ridley Scott is planning a film based on Simon Mann's 2004 effort to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea, a plot that Adam Roberts described in a book called The Wonga Coup. Gerard Butler will play Mann in the film.

Much remains unclear about the coup attempt that ended with Mann's arrest--without a fight that Scott would be able to embellish with spectacular pyrotechnics--in Zimbabwe. The drama for those who know about the episode (all four of us?) will lie in seeing (1) how far Scott takes dramatic license to turn a failed coup attempt into something worthy of his directing talents and (2) who Scott (and his screenwriter, Robert Edwards) decide to blame for it. Was it simply a big money-making proposition--with Margaret Thatcher's son, Mark Thatcher, as the primary investor? Were American and British intelligence services involved? The word is that Simon Mann's forthcoming book, Cry Havoc, will not provide the answers to these questions.

Is America Over?

2011-11-14T11:20:00.000-08:00

This is the question that dominates the cover of the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs.

Foreign Affairs is an Establishment publication. It is, in fact, the flagship publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, an Establishment establishment. It doesn't engage in demagoguery. And, in the November/December issue, it doesn't offer much reassurance in response to the big question on the cover.

The key article related to the big question is George Packer's essay entitled "The Broken Contract: Inequality and American Decline." It is not, strictly speaking, about foreign policy, although the implications of its thesis for foreign policy are very clear. That it appears in Foreign Affairs should be reason enough to take notice of the argument.

Packer argues that the the unwritten social contract that for decades ensured Americans would work together in common cause to solve the great collective problems of society has been broken by the rise of "organized money" in the nation's political system. This, in part, was an unintended consequence of reforms implemented in the 1970s that were designed to bring greater transparency and equality into the system. But the rise of political action committees, independent expenditures in political campaigns, a form of lobbying that is tantamount to legalized bribery, and more is only part of the story. Ultimately, Packer states, "inequality is the ill that underlies all the others."

For those who doubt that inequality is a problem in the United States, Packer cites these indicators:

Between 1979 and 2006, middle-class Americans saw their annual incomes after taxes increase by 21 percent (adjusted for inflation). The poorest Americans saw their incomes rise by only 11 percent. The top one percent, meanwhile, saw their incomes increase by 256 percent. This almost tripled their share of the national income, up to 23 percent,the highest level since 1928.

The entire article deserves to be read and discussed widely. Here, however, we skip to Packer's conclusion and another big question: What difference does inequality make? Packer answers eloquently:

Inequality divides us from one another in schools, in neighborhoods, at work, on airplanes, in hospitals, in what we eat, in the condition of our bodies, in what we think, in our children’s futures, in how we die. Inequality makes it harder to imagine the lives of others—which is one reason why the fate of over 14 million more or less permanently unemployed Americans leaves so little impression in the country’s political and media capitals. Inequality corrodes trust among fellow citizens, making it seem as if the game is rigged. Inequality provokes a generalized anger that finds targets where it can—immigrants, foreign countries, American elites, government in all forms—and it rewards demagogues while discrediting reformers. Inequality saps the will to conceive of ambitious solutions to large collective problems, because those problems no longer seem very collective. Inequality undermines democracy.

Equatorial Guinea's Constitutional Referendum

2011-11-14T08:50:00.000-08:00

The government of Equatorial Guinea is claiming that 99 percent of the electorate approved a package of constitutional reforms in a national referendum yesterday. Opposition groups claim the vote was a sham.

The referendum will establish a two-term presidential limit, create the office of vice president, and remove the constitutional limit barring a president from serving beyond 75 years of age. The current president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, has been in office since overthrowing Francisco Macias in a coup in 1979. He is 69 and in the second year of a presidential term set to expire in 2016. It is unclear whether the new term limit would prevent him from serving one or more terms beyond the current seven-year term.

Those who observe political developments in Equatorial Guinea generally believe the constitutional changes effected by this referendum are designed to make it easier for Obiang to ensure that his oldest son, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, will be able to succeed him as president. The younger Obiang is expected to be named vice president soon. This expectation has been bolstered by the fact that he has, in recent months, been named vice president of the ruling party, chair of the constitutional reform campaign, and ambassador to UNESCO. He has also been hit with legal proceedings in France and the United States aimed at seizing assets that are the products of bribery and extortion, but such embarrassments seem to have little effect on politics inside Equatorial Guinea.

Oil and Water

2011-11-13T16:40:00.000-08:00

A piece by Mark Landler in today's New York Times titled "A New Era of Gunboat Diplomacy" is well worth reading for those interested in the connection between oil and national security. One-third of global oil production now occurs offshore and some of the hotspots for oil and natural gas exploration are in maritime regions where overlapping claims to jurisdiction have the potential to create problems: the South China Sea, the Arctic Ocean, and the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Offshore production presents a number of serious environmental risks--one only has to recall the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico--but there can be security benefits from confining production to offshore platforms. Oil production in the Gulf of Guinea, for example, avoids the serious political and military threats that plague production onshore in Nigeria and Angola. If, however, the regime governing maritime jurisdiction established by the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention is contested or there are serious sovereignty disputes involving islands (as in the South China Sea), then offshore oil exploration and production may generate new security concerns. If there are resource wars in our future, they may begin at sea.

Viktor Bout: Friend or Foe?

2011-11-13T14:40:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday, November 2, the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout was convicted in a federal court in Manhattan on four counts of conspiracy in connection with the sale of weapons to Colombian rebels. Bout, who once advised the Soviet military in Africa, bought weapons and a fleet of cargo planes from the former Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War and began trafficking arms to both governments and rebel forces in various conflicts around the world. A British government report published in 2000 referred to him as "the Merchant of Death." The movie Lord of War, which starred Nicholas Cage, was based on his exploits.

Here is the description of Bout in the second edition of Seeking Security in an Insecure World:

Bout is alleged to have sold over seven hundred surface-to-air missiles, military helicopters and airplanes, and thousands of guns to FARC, the Colombian paramilitary organization. He has also sold weapons in Afghanistan and in various war zones in Africa. At a Bangkok hotel in March 2008, Bout offered undercover agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency posing as FARC representatives a wide range of weapons, including land mines, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and C-4 explosives. He was arrested at the conclusion of the meeting, which was taped, and, in August 2010, a Thai court ordered his extradition to stand trial in the United States.

In an op-ed published in the New York Times on Friday, Andrew Feinstein, author of The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade (reviewed here by John Tirman), writes that in 2003 and 2004, Irbis Air--a company owned by Bout--flew supplies into Baghdad under contract to the U.S. Defense Department and KBR, a private contractor that was itself working for the U.S. Government. Feinstein points out that "governments protect corrupt and dangerous arms dealers as long as they need them and then throw them behind bars when they are no longer useful."

Putting Kleptocrats on Notice

2011-11-11T11:52:00.000-08:00

[The following was written for Opinio Juris and posted there yesterday. I am cross-posting here with a few updated references and links.]

The other shoe has dropped in the U.S. Government’s corruption case against Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue. On October 25, a civil forfeiture complaint was unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California as a second complaint was filed in the District of Columbia. The complaints, tantalizingly foreshadowed by the lis pendens filing on October 13 that Roger noted in a previous post, seek the forfeiture of over $70 million in assets owned by the profligate son and heir-apparent of Equatorial Guinea’s dictator, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

These actions are part of the Justice Department’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative that was announced by Attorney General Holder at the African Union Summit on July 25, 2010. (In a move that angered human rights groups, the African Union selected President Obiang Nguema to chair the organization six months later.) Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer directs the group within the Criminal Division that is implementing the Initiative. The first complaint filed by Breuer’s group sought the seizure of over $1 million in assets (including a $600,000 home in Maryland) owned by Diepreye Solomon Peter Alamieyeseigha, former governor of the oil-rich Bayelsa State in Nigeria. DSP, as he was known to investigators, was impeached in 2005, but by that time he had laundered millions of dollars gained through oil-related corruption in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.

The assets to be seized in the Equatoguinean case are also the products of oil-related corruption. Like Nigeria, its neighbor to the north, Equatorial Guinea sits over the large oil reserves of the Gulf of Guinea. Unlike Nigeria and the other oil giant of sub-Saharan Africa, Angola, Equatorial Guinea is an oasis of political stability, although its stability is a product of severe repression. Since 2004, Equatoguinean oil production has averaged over 300,000 barrels per day, the vast majority of it produced by ExxonMobil, Hess, and Marathon, three U.S. corporations. As a result of extortion, misappropriation of public funds, and other forms of corruption, President Obiang Nguema, his family, and others in the inner circle have become fabulously wealthy while the nation at large remains among the most impoverished in Africa.

Teodorín, as the president’s oldest son is known, has been especially reckless in flaunting his portion of Equatorial Guinea’s oil wealth. Roger listed some of the property against which the U.S. Government has filed complaints for forfeiture in rem, but there are other countries around the world that could put together similar lists of homes, cars, and collectables. In fact, last month France seized eleven luxury cars belonging to Teodorín from the family’s residence on Avenue Foch near the Arc de Triomphe, while Spain is reportedly preparing to move against properties in Madrid and Las Palmas.

The beauty of what now appears to be a coordinated action by prosecutors in the U.S., France, and Spain against one of the most corrupt governments in the world is that it severely limits the possibilities for retaliation using the oil weapon. Because Equatorial Guinea’s oil is produced offshore in deepwater wells, few companies, whether state-owned or private, can provide the necessary production technology. In fact, China’s principal oil production company, CNOOC, completed its first deepwater production rig—destined for use in the South China Sea—in May of this year. Although China is the destination of 12 percent of Equatorial Guinea’s oil exports, it will not be in a position to displace Western oil companies for years to come.

The seizure of Teodorín’s assets in the United States is unlikely to speed the departure of the man who, since Gaddafi’s demise, is the longest-surviving dictator in Africa, nor is it likely to spur dramatic progress toward democracy and respect for human rights in Equatorial Guinea. It will be, however, a small victory for anti-corruption advocates and, perhaps more importantly, a strong signal to the world’s remaining kleptocrats.

A "Kill Team" Conviction

2011-11-10T22:03:00.000-08:00

Staff sergeant Calvin Gibbs was convicted on three counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison for a series of sport killings in Afghanistan between January and May 2010. Gibbs was one of five members of the Fifth Stryker Brigade, Second Infantry Division, charged with murder for deliberately killing civilians. Three have entered guilty pleas. In all, twelve members of the brigade have been charged with crimes related to activities of the so-called "kill team." Ten of those have pleaded guilty or been convicted to date.

According to an Army investigation into the killings that was leaked to the Washington Post last year, a member of Gibbs' unit claimed that he hoped to make a necklace from fingers that he cut from the hands of those he killed. Gibbs also had a tattoo on his calf that he used to keep track of his kills. Red skulls represented kills in Iraq while blue skulls indicated kills in Afghanistan.

There are many atrocities in war that go unpunished. Indeed, war itself may be the greatest atrocity. But what happened today in a U.S. court martial is a reminder that not everything is permissible in war. And sometimes activities that cross the line--even in war--are actually punished.

Steps Toward Statehood

2011-10-31T09:09:00.000-07:00

The General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has voted to admit Palestine as a member. The vote was 107 in favor and 14 against, with 52 abstentions. Because Palestine is not a member of the United Nations, the vote to admit it to UNESCO required a two-thirds majority of those voting. (Abstentions are not counted as votes.)

The push for membership by Palestine is part of move to gain international recognition of Palestinian statehood, a move opposed by Israel and the United States. Because only states may be members of UNESCO (as with other UN bodies), admission indicates the support of a majority of the world's states for Palestinian statehood. Palestine is expected to press for membership to the UN itself in the coming weeks, but because both the UN Security Council and the General Assembly must approve such an application and the U.S. Government has indicated that it will veto the Palestinian application in the Security Council, there is no possibility for clearing this particular hurdle.

U.S. law currently mandates the elimination of funding for any UN body that admits Palestine as a member. In the case of UNESCO, this will mean the loss of one-fifth of the operating budget.

Autonomous Warbots

2011-09-20T14:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the Washington Post published a story on the next generation of warbots: robots (including drones) capable of autonomous decision-making and action. The story begins by recounting a recent test at Fort Benning, Georgia in which two drones were able to locate a multicolored tarp on the ground after the pattern had been loaded into their onboard computers. Acquisition of the target occurred with no human direction after takeoff. Of course, target acquisition based on pattern recognition can easily be linked to the use of weapons. But, for the time being, the U.S. military is determined not to take humans out of the loop where lethal operations are concerned.

South Korea deployed two sentry robots last year along its heavily militarized border with North Korea. (For a video demonstration of the sentry robots' capabilities, go here.) Thus far, an order from a human operator is required before the SGR-A1 robots can fire on suspected intruders. It is clear, however, that the robots (built by Samsung Techwin) could be configured to respond autonomously to an intrusion.

Langner Explains Stuxnet

2011-04-01T15:36:00.000-07:00

Ralph Langner, the German security consultant who deciphered the Stuxnet worm that was designed to cripple the Iranian nuclear program, explains in this video both how the mystery was unraveled and how Stuxnet was designed to work.

Aung San Suu Kyi Released

2010-11-13T11:09:00.000-08:00

Burmese political dissident and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has been released from house arrest. Daw Suu, as she is called by her supporters in Burma, has been confined since May 30, 2003.

Rousseau on Theory and Reality

2010-09-02T19:21:00.000-07:00

"I open the books on Right and on ethics; I listen to the professors and jurists; and, my mind full of their seductive doctrines, I admire the peace and justice established by the civil order; I bless the wisdom of our political institutions and, knowing myself a citizen, cease to lament I am a man. Thoroughly instructed as to my duties and my happiness, I close the book, step out of the lecture room, and look around me. I see wretched nations groaning beneath a yoke of iron. I see mankind ground down by a handful of oppressors. I see a famished mob, worn down by sufferings and famine, while the rich drink the blood and tears of their victims at their ease. I see on every side the strong armed with the terrible powers of the Law against the weak. . . . And that is the fruit of your peaceful institutions! Indignation and pity rise from the very bottom of my heart. Yes, heartless philosopher! come and read us your book on a field of battle!"

-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from "Fragments of an Essay on the State of War"

Resuscitating the Blog

2010-08-30T12:55:00.000-07:00

It's hard for me to believe that the first posts here on Swords Into Plowshares appeared over six years ago. It's easier to believe (but more difficult to accept) that my blogging has been very sporadic over the last half of those six years. The start of a new year—a new academic year, that is—seems to be a good time to revive the blog. To that end, I want to reintroduce Swords Into Plowshares with a few comments about what I do here and why.

First, I have written here, and will again write, about international politics. More specifically, I have written mostly about issues in international politics that get me excited—and sometimes agitated. As the blog's subtitle suggests, these issues generally fall under the heading of "the quest for peace and justice." That doesn't narrow the field a lot, but it does tell you that I tend to post most often on issues related to human rights, international law, the sources of conflict (especially those that are, in some sense, new), and arms control. Posts often relate to specific courses I teach (especially International Organization and Law and Ethics and International Politics) or to research I'm working on (new conceptions of security, justice after war, arms control, and the strange case of Equatorial Guinea have been the most recent topics). On occasion I'll write about interesting books or articles I've come across or current events that seem to indicate something significant about the current state of international politics.

There are a number of reasons why I blog. First, writing in this format provides an opportunity to test out ideas or explore different ways of thinking about what goes on in the world and in the discipline that tries to make sense of it. If an idea, an analogy, or a comparison seems to work, it can end up in a lecture, an article, or a book. If it doesn't, it can prompt another post that explores why it didn't work.

Second, the blog sometimes serves as a journal. By linking to and commenting on what the UN secretary general says about human rights in North Korea or what an American general has said about the security situation in Afghanistan, there's a record that I can easily return to in the future.

Third, the blog allows me to expand on conversations that have begun elsewhere (most often in classes). Just as the "Extension of Remarks" section of The Congressional Record allows members of Congress to put in the record what they wish they had said on the floor of the House or the Senate, the blog allows me to say what time or space constraints (or my state of preparedness) may have prevented me from saying in another forum.

Fourth, writing is a discipline and a blog offers an opportunity—along with a few incentives—to practice it. There's a reasonable expectation—one I dashed many months ago but will try to rebuild now—among those who read a blog that there will be something new to ponder almost every day. This gives the blogger both a reason to write and an incentive to write well about interesting things. And that's what I'll try to do, as I first started trying to do six years ago.

Detainee Dirty Tricks

2009-12-04T15:39:00.000-08:00

Via the Dunn County (Wisconsin) News (November 25, 2009):

When detainees at Camp Cropper [in Baghdad] want to get under the skin of guard force soldiers from the 829th Engineer Company, they employ a tactic that would be more at home along the St. Croix River than inside a theater internment facility in Iraq: They needle the Wisconsin Guard troops about Brett Favre's success as a Minnesota Viking.

Detainees apparently realized they had a way to get under their guards' skin when guards began decorating the camp with Packers logos and team colors.

As Lt. Col. Tim Donovan, the public relations officer for the 32nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, put it, "It's a small world."

"Election" Day

2009-11-29T18:15:00.000-08:00

This is election day in Equatorial Guinea. If past elections are any indication,Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo will win another seven-year term as the country's president with close to 100 percent of the vote.

Welcoming Kleptocrats

2009-11-18T18:05:00.000-08:00

In spite of the fact that blogging here has been sporadic, I can't let this story in the New York Times go without notice.

Notwithstanding a federal law and a presidential proclamation designed to bar corrupt foreign officials from entering the United States, Teodoro Nguema Obiang has no trouble visiting his Malibu estate whenever he wants to. His father, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, also manages to visit the United States regularly, most recently in September when he was featured at an event at the Baker Institute at Rice University in Houston. This is the gist of a story that once again reminds us just how bad some of America's leading oil suppliers are.

One of the most important aspects of this story is the inclusion of links to a Justice Department memorandum and an ICE presentation to the French government requesting assistance in investigating President Obiang and his family.

(Roger Alford has blogged the story here at Opinio Juris.)

Blackwater Bribes

2009-11-10T16:42:00.000-08:00

On September 16, 2007, employees of the private military corporation Blackwater (now called Xe Services) shot and killed seventeen Iraqis in Baghdad. In a tragic episode, Blackwater employees began firing at Iraqis in response to gunfire that American officials say came from other members of their own unit. An FBI investigation determined that at least fourteen of the deaths involved unjustified killings. Last December, five Blackwater employees were charged with manslaughter in connection with the case; all pleaded not guilty. A sixth employee, also charged with manslaughter, pleaded guilty.

Today the New York Times reports that four former executives at Xe Services allege that the company approved $1 million for secret payments to Iraqi government officials in an effort to calm the furor over the 2007 killings. If payments of this nature were in fact made, they would constitute a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars the payment of bribes by American companies to foreign officials.

Xe Services was denied a license to operate in Iraq in January 2009, forcing the State Department to terminate its $1 billion security contract with the company.

The Italian Case

2009-11-04T16:57:00.000-08:00

In Milan today, an Italian court found 23 Americans guilty of kidnapping a Muslim cleric and sending him to Egypty for interrogation in 2003. All of the defendants were working for the CIA. All were tried in absentia. It is the first conviction gained anywhere in the world against Americans on charges related to extraordinary rendition, the policy of sending terrorism suspects abroad to be interrogated, often with torture, beyond the reach of U.S. or international legal protections.

If prosecutors obtain international arrest warrants, the Americans convicted today, most of whom have retired from the CIA, could be subject to arrest in virtually any country to which they might travel outside the United States.

Simon Mann's Pardon

2009-11-04T16:27:00.000-08:00

Simon Mann, the leader of the "Wonga Coup" that sought to oust Teodoro Obiang from power in Equatorial Guinea in March 2004, has been pardoned and is returning to the United Kingdom. He was in the second year of a 34-year prison term.

A statement released by the Equatoguinean government through Qorvis Communications and Cassidy and Associates, the Washington lobbying firms being paid to burnish the country's image in the United States, suggested that Mann's release is part of an ongoing campaign to reform human rights conditions in Equatorial Guinea:

Our government is committed to continuing to address the protection of human rights and today's release is an important step in this process. While Simon Mann has admitted to participating in a coup attempt, he has also genuinely repented. We have taken this extraordinary measure to prioritize his health and well being and recognize that Mann's medical care would be bestoffered in his home country. The Government of Equatorial Guinea is in the midst of an ambitious effort to reform our judicial process and humanitarian conditions. Today's release is just one of the proactive steps that we havebeen taking as part of this process and demonstrates the sincerity of our efforts.

Others have suggested that Mann's release was part of a deal he made with the regime to gain his freedom by fingering the financiers of the coup attempt, including Mark Thatcher, the son of former British PM Margaret Thatcher. Upon his release, Mann said that he would be willing to testify against Thatcher in a British court.

Mann can be seen expressing gratitude for his pardon and for the good treatment he received while in prison in Malabo in the BBC clip available here.

Trafficking in Toxic Waste

2009-09-15T14:14:00.000-07:00

Transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) make money both by trading in illegal commodities (e.g., drugs and endangered species) and by violating regulations related to legal forms of commerce (e.g., weapons sales using false end-user certificates). According to an informant, the Mafia is now making money by contracting for the disposal of toxic waste and illegally scuttling the ships that transport it.

Eighteen miles off the coast of Calabria in southwestern Italy, a robotic camera has photographed a sunken ship that appears to be loaded with toxic waste containers. The information told an Italian judge that the ship was one of three that he blew up as part of a Mafia scheme to profit from lucractive toxic waste disposal business.

If the waste aboard the ship proves to be radioactive, the Italian government has promised to search for up to 30 additional ships that may have been sunk by the Mafia in recent years. Greenpeace maintains a list of ships with suspect cargoes that says have disappeared off the coasts of Italy and Greece.

Another Torture Report

2009-08-22T07:39:00.000-07:00

A 2004 report by the CIA's inspector general detailing interrogation methods used against suspected terrorists will be released next week under a court order. Newsweek has been briefed by two sources familiar with its contents and reports that one individual, Adb al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was threatened with a gun and a power drill and was exposed to a mock execution in the room next to where he was being interrogated. (The Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 prohibits threatening any person under U.S. custody, whether in the U.S. or abroad, with death.)

CIA director Porter Goss and Gen. Michael Hayden reportedly argued against the release of the report on the grounds that doing so would damage the reputation of the United States abroad. Yes . . . well. That is precisely why Adm. Stansfield Turner, who directed the CIA during the Carter administration, argued that the question of whether a particular covert operation ought to be undertaken should include consideration of the consequences of its revelation to the public.

First and Third

2009-08-16T22:31:00.000-07:00

We tend to do a lot of aggregating in international relations. While this is largely unavoidable, it's worth reminding ourselves from time to time that ascribing particular characteristics to the entities we study may cause us to overlook significant variations within them. States, which are still the entities we study most intensively, are commonly labeled "free" or "unfree," "democratic" or "authoritarian," "developed" or "developing," and so on. But a "free" state may have pockets of oppression (think of the period of racial segregation in the United States) and a "democratic" state may have subunits that fail to respect democratic norms (think of machine politics in Chicago or in South Texas a generation ago). Likewise, a "developing" state may have elites who control enormous wealth (think Equatorial Guinea) and a "developed" state may have pockets of poverty that mirror conditions in the developing world.

This point has been brought home by the visit of the Remote Area Medical Foundation to Los Angeles. For one week--August 11-18--an organization that began in 1985 with the objective of bringing medical care to distant parts of the developing world is offering free services to people in Los Angeles who, because they are uninsured or underinsured, have no way to pay for the care they need. Thousands of people have lined up each day at the Forum, the former home of the Lakers, to wait for tooth extractions, eye exams, diagnoses of illnesses, and treatments for chronic conditions.

Los Angeles Times columnist (and author of The Soloist) Steve Lopez has been spending some time at the Forum. In a column today, he reports that a number of the doctors who are volunteering at the Forum have noted parallels between their volunteer experiences in the Third World and what they are seeing at the Forum. One of them, Dr. Greg Pearl, when asked to note the differences between what he has seen in the developing world and what he is seeing at the Forum said, "Here, the patients speak English."

The United States is among the "rich fat few" rather than the "skinny poor many" (to use expressions I recall from a lecture by Inis Claude), but it has its pockets of Third World conditions. One of these pockets is populated by close to 50 million people without access to routine health care. Lopez's column--which is well worth reading--is aptly titled: "At free clinic, scenes from the Third World."

Thirty Years of Misrule

2009-08-03T12:49:00.000-07:00

It was thirty years ago today that Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo overthrew his uncle, Francisco Macías Nguema, and took control of the government of Equatorial Guinea. Macías, Equatorial Guinea's first ruler after independence, was a brutal dictator responsible for the death or exile of roughly one-third of the country's population and the complete ruin of its economy. (Those who paid any attention at all to Equatorial Guinea at the time referred to Macías as "Africa's Caligula.") His fall from power seemed to offer a better future, particularly given his successor's promises to institute democracy, but for most Equatoguineans little has changed.

In spite of the adoption of a new constitution drafted in 1982 with the assistance of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and presidential elections held in 1989, 1996, and 2002, Obiang has never relinquished power. The elections of 1996 and 2002, which were widely criticized by opposition parties and international observers, produced 97 and 98 percent majorities for Obiang. (Another election is scheduled for December of this year. Obiang has announced his intention to seek yet another seven-year term.)

The discovery of oil in Equatoguinean territorial waters in the 1990s, together with major investments by foreign oil and gas companies, have produced dramatic economic growth (an increase in real GDP averaging 14.9 percent annually from 2003 to 2008), but little of the wealth has benefited the general population. Instead, Equatorial Guinea has become one of the world's worst kleptocracies. Transparency International's most recent Corruption Perceptions Index (for 2008) ranks Equatorial Guinea among the most corrupt countries in the world (171st of 180 states ranked). Furthermore, the most recent (2009) survey of freedom in the world by Freedom House puts Equatorial Guinea among the "worst of the worst," the eight countries deemed to have the world's worst human rights conditions. Furthermore, a special report released by Human Rights Watch last month concludes that the government of Equatorial Guinea "is setting new low standards of political and economic malfeasance."

In spite of President Obiang's poor health (he reportedly has prostate cancer), prospects for change in Equatorial Guinea appear poor. Obiang's profligate oldest son is poised to assume power (as the late Omar Bongo's son, Ali-Ben Bongo, seems certain to do in the Gabonese presidential election scheduled for August 30). The country's importance as an oil and gas producer--with a production rate of roughly 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day--deters most governments from exerting pressure on Obiang. And if the United States and the European Union were to decide to try to punish the Equatoguinean government for its crimes, the People's Republic of China would be eager to step in with no scruples.

For what might be the worst country in the world, there is no obvious path to democracy and development.

What IR Theory Can Teach Us about Parenting

2009-06-21T14:04:00.000-07:00

Just in time for Father's Day, Stephen M. Walt offers "The IR Guide to Parenting."

My favorite insight is this one that Walt draws from the theory of asymmetric conflict:

The whole field of asymmetric conflict can prepare you for another aspect of child-rearing: your superior education, physical strength, and total command of financial resources will not translate into anything remotely resembling "control." A two-year old who is barely talking can destroy a dinner party or a family outing just by being stubborn, and a smart, loving, strong and wealthy parent can be damn near helpless in the face of a sufficiently willful son or daughter.

Walt's piece reminds me of my own essay on this subject, one written several years ago but never published (perhaps because there is no journal called Parenting and International Politics). I offer it here in an effort to further the discussion of what IR theory can tell us about parenting (and vice versa).

Testing the Limits of the Domestic Analogy

Daniel, my oldest son, recently turned eighteen, which means that the time has finally come for me to write up the results of a long study involving him and his younger brother, Stephen. For those who might be wondering, I've checked: No institutional oversight of experimentation involving human subjects is necessary if those subjects are one’s own children. My parents ought to be relieved about that.

The experimental design was developed in the summer of 1987 when I returned to Charlottesville to defend my dissertation. My wife was six months pregnant at the time. Inis L. Claude, Jr., who doubled as my dissertation advisor and my special consultant on fatherhood, recommended that I read the work of Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, pediatrician to the Claude family some years earlier and author of What Every Baby Knows. I also had in mind the work of Dr. Benjamin Spock whom I had heard lecture at the University of Virginia a few months earlier (albeit on the subject of nuclear disarmament). Nonetheless, it seemed to me that there was a great opportunity at hand to test some of the major theories of international politics.

For the first couple of years after Daniel was born, not much happened, to be perfectly honest. Other parents suggested (often with a note of concern in their voices) that the situation needed to be analyzed in terms of some development model. I insisted that the experiment had to deal with IR rather than economics (no IPE in my family, thank you very much) and so we compromised in that early period on dependency theory. But, as IR theory goes, it was boring. Clearly it was time to introduce a new variable.

Stephen was born in 1990. We had, at last, a system. Within months, it became apparent that it would be a system characterized by conflict. In fact, I probably didn’t need to mix passages from Hans Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations into bedtime stories like The Cat in the Hat (Dr. Seuss’s gloss on The Prince) and Curious George (H.A. and Margaret Rey’s eerily prophetic description of U.S. foreign policy). Nonetheless, my wife and I soon had in our nursery–my laboratory–a "war of each against all," or at least brother on brother.

Taking a page from Professor Claude’s analysis of international organizations in Swords Into Plowshares, I determined that, as parents, my wife and I should play the role of the United Nations Security Council in our household. To keep things simple–-her degree was in English literature-–we decided to confine our options in maintaining fraternal peace and security to collective security and peacekeeping. The rules were simple: unprovoked aggression by either boy would be met, if the facts could be accurately determined, with the collective punishment of the parents against the aggressor. However, in those circumstances-–and they were numerous-–in which the truth of charges and counter-charges was impossible to establish, we the parents operated as peacekeepers, separating the combatants, avoiding judgments concerning culpability, and seeking, through various measures of preventive diplomacy, to prevent subsequent outbreaks of violence.

One might suppose, given the power imbalance existing between two brothers almost three years apart in age, that acts of aggression, when they occurred (like clockwork) would invariably consist of attacks by the older and stronger brother, Daniel, against Stephen. Such attacks, while not unusual, were accompanied by a surprising number of preemptive attacks by Stephen. In fact, it came to appear that the institutional constraints keeping large-scale violence in check (i.e., parents) actually made Daniel and Stephen's relationship safe for limited war.

In a remarkable vindication of realists' most fervent hopes, the level of violence in the household dropped dramatically when Stephen experienced a sustained growth spurt at age eleven that allowed him to match Daniel's hard power capabilities. With a balance of power established, war became much less common, although far more destructive when it did occur.[1] Diplomacy, in fact, became the norm. This was fortuitous as the boys' mother and I divorced (an episode I refer to as the collapse of the Evil Empire[2]), leaving me with my own "unipolar moment" and a concomitant unwillingness to play the U.N. Security Council game any longer.

Notes

1. Guys, I'm still not happy about that lamp.

2. Lighten up, Anne. It's a joke.

Bongo: The Obituary

2009-06-09T07:26:00.000-07:00

The Independent provides an excellent overview of Omar Bongo's life that opens with this trenchant observation: "Omar Bongo was so successful at the art of holding on to power that by the end of his life there was no one left in his country with enough authority to pronounce him dead."

The complete obituary is here.

The Death of Omar Bongo

2009-06-08T20:04:00.000-07:00

It was an unusual announcement. This morning, the government of Gabon stated that "the President of the Republic, the Head of State, His Excellency Omar Bongo is not dead." The official statement, like the off-the-cuff comment of Prime Minister Jean Eyeghe Ndong who had declared that Bongo was "alive and well," was wrong. Bongo, 73, died of cardiac arrest in a hospital in Barcelona, Spain.

Bongo's death ended a run of almost forty-two years at the head of the Gabonese government. In fact, he and his mentor, Leon Mba, are the only two men to have ruled Gabon since the West African state gained its independence from France in 1960.

At the time of his death, Bongo was under investigation for corruption in France where Transparency International and Association Sherpa had recently succeeded in convincing an investigating judge to examine whether he and two other West African leaders, Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea and Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the Congo, had acquired their vast wealth by embezzling public funds. Bongo's wealth, which included fifteen luxury properties in Paris and seventy bank accounts in France, appears largely to have been produced by his corrupt handling of Gabon's oil wealth.

Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that Bongo's demise will lead to greater democracy and development in Gabon. Many expect the current defense minister of Gabon, Bongo's son Ali, to seize power.

A Place at the Table

2009-05-21T12:06:00.000-07:00

Charity depends on the vicissitudes of whim and personal wealth; justice depends on commitment instead of circumstance. Faith-based charity provides crumbs from the table; faith-based justice offers a place at the table.

--Bill Moyers

Justice for Torturers

2009-04-19T13:25:00.000-07:00

"To read the four newly released memos on prisoner interrogation written by George W. Bush’s Justice Department is to take a journey into depravity." Thus begins the lead editorial in today's New York Times.

The Times points out that the memos "were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country’s most basic values." If the values they violate are to be vindicated, those who wrote the memos--including one attorney appointed to the federal bench by Bush--must be punished. Thus the Times calls--appropriately--for the impeachment of Jay Bybee.

On Thursday, Amnesty International executive director Larry Cox said, "The president said today that this is 'a time for reflection not retribution.' The United States has had plenty of time for reflection--there is very little information in the newly released material that hadn't leaked out long before. He also said that the United States is a nation of laws. But laws only have meaning if they are enforced."

The United States has often called for justice for torturers in other countries. An important test of our integrity as a nation is now upon us as we determine whether we are willing to pursue justice for torturers at home.

Don't Forget to Read the Reviews

2009-01-22T15:05:00.000-08:00

The toy alone is funny, but some of the reviews are hilarious. Take a look here. (Thank you, David.)

The Right Tone

2009-01-20T12:33:00.000-08:00

"Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint."

--President Barack Obama, Inaugural Address

The Press and African Dictators

2009-01-08T13:46:00.000-08:00

Ken Silverstein, who refuses to let Teodoro Obiang operate below the radar in Equatorial Guinea, today points out some of the problems with American press coverage of dictatorships. As he puts it, "If the U.S. government deems a country to be a hostile state, the American media will devote significant time and energy reporting on that country's political and economic problems. But if you're on our side, and especially in you're providing us with oil, you can get away with murder (literally)."

What, exactly, is the problem? Equatorial Guinea, which hosts significant investments by American oil companies and is the third-largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, is absent from both the news and editorial pages of America's leading newspapers in spite of its appalling human rights record. Zimbabwe, on the other hand, which is regularly condemned by the United States Government, is covered (and criticized) regularly by the American media.

Silverstein notes that a piece in today's Washington Post "decried China's support for Zimbabwe." Furthermore, Silverstein says,

It called Beijing a "Mugabe enabler," and said it was about time that China began practicing "mature diplomacy" and halted its "hands-of"” policy that has "allowed Mugabe to stay in power." Just change the relevant words so that we're talking about the United States and Equatorial Guinea, and you'd have a very sensible editorial about a situation over which the United States actually has some control, given its great influence over the regime of Major General Teodoro Obiang.

Change Begins--A Day Early

2009-01-08T13:05:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday--fittingly, the Feast of the Epiphany celebrating the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus--the USAservice.org web site was launched. The site is designed to facilitate a national day of service affiliated with President-elect Barack Obama's Renew America Together initiative.

Community groups and service organizations all over the United States have posted information about events taking place on January 19, which is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as well as the day before Obama's inauguration.

Barack and Michelle Obama and Joe and Jill Biden will be engaged in service activities in Washington, D.C. on the 19th. USAservice.org can help you find useful service projects in your own community.

How Bush Saved Saakashvili

2008-11-14T08:18:00.001-08:00

From today's Guardian:

In a reminder of tensions over Georgia yesterday, an adviser to French president Nicolas Sarkozy revealed details of a conversation between his boss and the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin. The two met in Moscow on August 12, just days after war had erupted between Russia and Georgia over breakaway South Ossetia. "I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls," Putin said of the Georgian leader, Mikheil Saakashvili. Sarkozy responded: "Hang him?" Putin responded: "Why not? The Americans hanged Saddam." Sarkozy replied: "Yes, but do you want to end up like Bush?" Putin said: "You have scored a point there."

More on the ICC and Darfur

2008-07-17T14:49:00.000-07:00

Nicholas Kristof, while noting that China's response will be crucial, sees in the decision of Luis Moreno-Ocampo to go after Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir "a hint of historical progress."

Obama on Iraq

2008-07-14T17:20:00.000-07:00

Senator Obama has a statement on Iraq in the op-ed pages of today's New York Times. It's available here.

Genocide Charges at the ICC

2008-07-14T14:56:00.000-07:00

For the first time, the International Criminal Court's prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has brought genocide charges before the Court's investigating judges. The target is Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Moreno-Ocampo's action today also marks the first time a head of state has been charged at the Court.

The situation in Darfur was referred to the ICC by the United Nations Security Council in March 2005 under Resolution 1593 [.pdf]. The ICC was directed to investigate with a view to bringing charges such as those that were filed today, charges that include crimes against humanity and war crimes in addition to the genocide.

In the Summary of the Case [.pdf], Moreno-Ocampo asserts al-Bashir's personal responsibility in the following terms:

AL BASHIR controls and directs the perpetrators. The commission of those crimes on such a scale, and for such a long period of time, the targeting of civilians and in particular the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa, the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators, and the systematic cover-up of the crimes through public official statements, are evidence of a plan based on the mobilization of the state apparatus, including the armed forces, the intelligence services, the diplomatic and public information bureaucracies, and the justice system.
. . .
AL BASHIR controls the implementation of such a plan through his formal role at the apex of all state structures and as Commander in Chief and by ensuring that the heads of relevant institutions involved report directly to him through formal or informal lines. His control is absolute.

The ICC issued arrest warrants last year for two other individuals wanted in connection with crimes in Darfur: Sudan's former interior minister Ahmad Muhammad Harun and militia leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman.

Repairing the Damage

2008-06-11T18:17:00.001-07:00

Thomas Friedman writes in today's New York Times:

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Democrats’ nomination of Obama as their candidate for president has done more to improve America’s image abroad--an image dented by the Iraq war, President Bush’s invocation of a post-9/11 "crusade," Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and the xenophobic opposition to Dubai Ports World managing U.S. harbors--than the entire Bush public diplomacy effort for seven years.

China's Military Strategy

2008-03-22T18:26:00.000-07:00

The German news magazine Der Spiegel has an interesting interview with Chen Zhou, a PRC naval officer who teaches at the Academy of Military Sciences in Beijing. In it, Chen discusses the rationale for Chinese efforts to narrow the military gap between the PRC and the United States.

Here's an excerpt:

SPIEGEL: Why does China spend so much money on its military?
Chen Zhou: We understand very well that many countries are concerned when China grows not just in economic terms but also in military terms. But these fears are unfounded. We are not seeking a position of supremacy. We are in favor of peaceful development.
SPIEGEL: Then why the pronounced military buildup?
Chen: If we grow economically, we must also strengthen our military. We must protect our sovereignty, our unity and the country's security. Historically our military consisted primarily of land-based forces that were meant to protect our homeland. Since 1980, we have also been arming ourselves for other local conflicts and wars. Please do not forget the activities of the separatists in Taiwan ...

The complete interview is available here.

Bush, McCain, and Torture

2008-03-05T00:17:00.000-08:00

Today Senator John McCain goes to the White House to pick up the endorsement of President George W. Bush. He will almost certainly go out of his way to avoid President Bush for the remainder of the campaign.

But given the timing of this brief meeting, it is worth thinking about where Senator McCain and President Bush have been in the "torture debate." James Carroll provides a helpful entry into the subject.

Carroll's column in the Boston Globe on Monday notes that President Bush is poised to veto the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2008 because it seeks to tie CIA interrogation methods to the standards articulated in the US Army Field Manual. This would prohibit "acts of violence or intimidation, including physical or mental torture, or exposure to inhumane treatment."

Senator John McCain (as noted here) voted against this provision, apparently sacrificing his principles to the demands of the Republican presidential primary process, which effectively ended last night as McCain secured enough delegates to win the Republican nomination and his one remaining challenger, Mike Huckabee, bowed out. As Carroll notes, Senator McCain explained his vote against the provision this way: "What we need is not to tie the CIA to the Army Field Manual, but rather to have a good faith interpretation of the statutes that guide what is permissible in the CIA program."

The former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General Harry Soyster is not impressed by Senator McCain's reasoning: "As Senator McCain well knows, the Bush administration has never provided a good faith interpretation of laws prohibiting torture; instead it has produced--and continues to produce--legal opinions that downgrade the definition of torture to the point where the term becomes virtually meaningless and any conduct at all is permissible."

Carroll concludes:

That torture is even a subject of debate in this country is a flabbergasting development. That dozens of America's most admired military leaders find themselves openly opposing the commander in chief on such a question is equally surprising. Another astonishment is that McCain, avatar of military honor, finds it necessary, according to his perceptions of what politics requires, to trim his opposition to torture. It may be just that unthinkable now that Bush will sign the bill before him. But who knows? On torture, the shocks abound.

What's a Lover to Do?

2008-03-03T16:48:00.000-08:00

This comes too late to provide any Valentine's Day relief, but, as a public service, I nonetheless want to recommend an article in the February 2008 issue of Human Rights Quarterly (vol. 30, no. 1): "Flowers, Diamonds, and Gold: The Destructive Public Health, Human Rights, and Environmental Consequences of Symbols of Love," by Martin Donohoe.

Donohoe writes:

On Valentine's Day, anniversaries, and throughout the year, suitors and lovers buy cut flowers and diamond and gold jewelry for the objects of their affection. Their purchases are in part a consequence of timely traditions maintained by aggressive marketing. Most buyers are unaware that in gifting their lovers with these aesthetically beautiful symbols, they are supporting industries which damage the environment, utilize forced labor, cause serious acute and chronic health problems, and contribute to violent conflicts.

Cutting to the recommendations, Donohoe touts http://www.organicbouquet.com/ and the Veriflora certification system for flowers, certified conflict-free diamonds (with that status ascertained through aggressive questioning of the jeweler selling the diamonds), and gold purchases consistent with the "No Dirty Gold" campaign. Of course, there are also alternatives to flowers, diamonds, and gold:

Substitute gifts include cards (ideally printed on recycled paper), poems, photos, collages, videos, art, home improvement projects, homemade meals, and donations to charities. Consider alternatives to the traditional diamond engagement and gold wedding rings, such as recycled or vintage gold: old gold can be melted down and made into new jewelry. Other options include eco-jewelry made from recycled or homemade glass and coconut beads. Purchasing handicrafts constructed by indigenous peoples from outlets that return the profits to the artisans and their communities provides wide-ranging social and economic benefits. Such tokens of affection will be rendered more meaningful through their lack of association with death and destruction and because they symbolize justice and hope for the future.

That's the advice, ladies and gentlemen. Good luck implementing it.

Darfur Update

2008-03-03T16:11:00.000-08:00

This article by Lydia Polgreen in yesterday's New York Times warns that recent three-pronged attacks on villages in Darfur--attacks involving the janjaweed, aerial bombardment, and the Sudanese army--represent "a return to the tactics that terrorized Darfur in the early, bloodiest stages of the conflict."

Polgreen continues:

Aid workers, diplomats and analysts say the return of such attacks is an ominous sign that the fighting in Darfur, which has grown more complex and confusing as it has stretched on for five years, is entering a new and deadly phase--one in which the government is planning a scorched-earth campaign against the rebel groups fighting here as efforts to find a negotiated peace founder.

The NYT article includes recent photos from Darfur, as does this BBC News web page.

Meanwhile, Nat Hentoff, writing in today's Washington Times, chides President Bush for planning to attend the Beijing Olympics:

Last month, during his legacy tour showing how his compassionate conservatism has indeed benefited a number of countries in Africa, President Bush did not include Sudan, let alone Darfur, in his schedule.
And, in response to Mr. Spielberg's refusal to help glorify the amoral nation that buys two-thirds of genocidal Sudan's oil and provides much of its arms that kill thousands of black Africans in Darfur, Mr. Bush said firmly: "I'm going to the Olympics. I view the Olympics as a sporting event." This was the same person who then said in Rwanda that the genocide there "is a reminder that evil in the world must be confronted." He called on all nations to stop the killing in Darfur.

Needless to say, a symbolic gesture is not what the victims of the Sudanese government's scorched-earth policy need most at this point. It may be, however, the most they can expect from President Bush--and the least he can do.

Water Tortures, Then and Now

2008-02-23T09:36:00.000-08:00

Karen J. Greenberg, the executive director of the NYU School of Law's Center on Law and Security and the editor of three books on torture and the war on terror, looks at the history of waterboarding as it is depicted in Prague's Torture Museum and finds that neither the practices nor the rationalizations have changed much from medieval Europe to modern America.

"Baseball Brings Smiles to Their Faces"

2008-02-18T17:17:00.000-08:00

Today's Los Angeles Times brings the story of a Cambodian genocide survivor who is working to ensure that baseball will take root in his homeland.

Joe Cook, who was born Joeurt Puk in Cambodia just five years before the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975, has raised over $300,000--much of it his own money--to take a sport he came to love as a young refugee in the United States back to his home. The Times' Kevin Baxter writes:

Cook . . . has spent the last five years trying to turn the former killing fields of his homeland into fields of dreams for a generation that has known little more than war, poverty and despair.
Along the way he's lost his life savings, his car and nearly his marriage. And, Cook insists, some people in Cambodia would like to see him dead.
"I want to walk away from this. I do. But these kids," he said, pointing to a photo of three shoeless children in torn clothes toting bats and gloves through a rice paddy, "baseball brings smiles to their faces."
In December, thanks to Cook, Cambodia fielded a national baseball team for the first time in the Southeast Asian Games in Thailand. It was a milestone as inauspicious as it was historic: Cambodia's first four hitters struck out without even touching the ball, and it took four games for the team to get its first hit.

But, as Cook noted, "winning is nothing. The biggest deal is we showed up."

Read the whole story here.

Backtracking on Torture

2008-02-13T23:02:00.000-08:00

John McCain squandered his reputation as a principled opponent of torture with his vote earlier today on the Intelligence Authorization bill. Kevin Drum tells us why he had to do it.

Waterboarding the Mentally Ill

2008-02-05T16:01:00.000-08:00

Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, testified before Congress today that the United States waterboarded three terrorism suspects in 2002 and 2003: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks; Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the Al Qaeda operative who allegedly planned the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, and Abu Zubaydah.

Who is Abu Zubaydah? On April 9, 2002, speaking to the Connecticut Republican Committee, President Bush had this to say about him:

The other day we hauled in a guy named Abu Zubaydah. He's one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States. He's not plotting and planning anymore. He's where he belongs. (Applause.)

Journalist Ron Suskind, however, found a different assessment of Abu Zubaydah among the experts. According to Suskind (in The One Percent Doctrine), the FBI's principal Al Qaeda expert, Dan Coleman, told one of his superiors, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality." And yet he was tortured--or waterboarded, for those who, unlike Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, don't mind a little water up their noses--and his coerced testimony was thought to be trustworthy. In fact, Director Hayden told reporters today that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah provided a quarter of the CIA's information on Al Qaeda derived from human sources.

FBI Director Robert Mueller was also present at today's hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Someone should have asked him if his agency concurred with the CIA in its assessment of the utility of waterboarding the mentally ill.

Modern Genocides and Global Responsibility

2008-02-02T18:09:00.000-08:00

Cal State University-Long Beach is hosting a conference February 11-13, on "Modern Genocides and Global Responsibility." Speakers will include Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Child Soldier; Dr. Francis Deng, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities; Immaculee Ilibagiza, a Rwandan genocide survivor; filmmaker Socheata Poeuv; and film director (Screamers) Carla Garapedian. The conference will also include panel discussions, music performances, and film screenings. All event are free and open to the public.

For a complete schedule and other details, see the conference web site here.

Mann in Malabo

2008-02-02T17:52:00.000-08:00

As expected, Simon Mann was extradited to Equatorial Guinea early Thursday morning shortly before his attorney filed a final appeal with Zimbabwe's Supreme Court. Mann is believed to be in the notorious Black Beach Prison in the capital city of Malabo.

Mann once told his attorney that if he were to be extradited to Equatorial Guinea, "I will be a dead man."

Missing Mann

2008-02-01T11:06:00.000-08:00

A day after losing an appeal in his effort to avoid extradition to Equatorial Guinea, Simon Mann has disappeared from the maximum security prison in Zimbabwe where he was being held. There is concern that authorities in Zimbabwe may have flown Mann to Equatorial Guinea overnight without notifying his family or his attorney.

Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton

2008-01-31T15:48:00.000-08:00

Nicholas Kristof writes in today's New York Times about an issue ("The Dynastic Question") that has troubled me. Here's his comparative politics angle on Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy:

We Americans snicker patronizingly as "democratic" Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Singapore, India and Argentina hand over power to a wife or child of a former leader. Yet I can’t find any example of even the most rinky-dink "democracy" confining power continuously for seven terms over 28 years to four people from two families. (And that's not counting George H.W. Bush's eight years as vice president.)

On the other hand, at least the countries Kristof mentions--except for Singapore--have had female presidents or prime ministers. The United States lags behind much of the world in this respect.

Mann in Zimbabwe

2008-01-31T12:50:00.000-08:00

Simon Mann, the leader of a failed 2004 plot to use mercenaries to overthrow the corrupt government of Equatorial Guinea, has had his latest effort to avoid extradition to Equatorial Guinea denied by the High Court of Zimbabwe where he is being held. Mann, who will now appeal to Zimbabwe's Supreme Court, has claimed that he will likely be tortured if sent to Equatorial Guinea. His fear is very reasonable given the documented human rights abuses in Equatorial Guinea, but Zimbabwe's judiciary seems unlikely to place human rights considerations above politics.

The story of Mann's coup attempt was detailed in The Wonga Coup: Guns, Thugs and a Ruthless Determination to Create Mayhem in an Oil-Rich Corner of Africa by Adam Roberts.

Responding (or Not) to Genocide

2008-01-30T11:19:00.000-08:00

Eric Reeves, the author of A Long Day's Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide, has a passionate commentary in today's Christian Science Monitor on the international community's failure to act in the face of genocide. He argues that the United Nations "desperately requires a substantial, robust standing force, prepared to deploy urgently to protect civilian populations facing genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity."

Unfortunately, even if the will to create such a force existed among the UN Security Council members needed to make it a reality, it seems unlikely that the will to authorize its use in Darfur and elsewhere could be mustered when the time comes. The inaction of states--including the United States--in the face of genocide and other serious human rights abuses is rooted in much more fundamental problems, one of which is the failure of democratic polities to hold governments accountable for moral failures in foreign policy.

If I seem overly pessimistic, it may be a result of having read Samantha Power's "A Problem from Hell:" America and the Age of Genocide, a work that details the many ways the United States has evaded its moral and legal responsibilities to prevent and punish genocide. I wish various UN reform proposals could, if implemented, solve the problems that have crippled the world's response to Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, and other modern crimes, but I fear that focusing on those reforms diverts too much of the responsibility from those of us living in democracies who ought to be doing more to ensure that our own governments do not get away with indifference to human suffering wherever it occurs.

Africa's Oil Boom

2008-01-28T17:06:00.000-08:00

Today's Financial Times reports on the growing importance of oil production in Africa. Between 2002 and 2006, publicly-traded oil companies tripled their investment in Africa. By 2012, total production on the continent is expected to reach 16 million barrels per day.

As FT points out, however, this massive investment has not helped the development picture in Africa as much as might be expected. High oil prices, a key factor in the investment boom, have seriously damaged the economies of the thirteen African states with no oil resources to develop. In some states with significant production, an absence of refining capacity has meant high fuel import bills have cut into the economic gains from oil exports. Furthermore, government corruption and mismanagement of oil revenues have resulted in many states' failure to achieve export-led economic development.

When one adds to these problems the aggressive positions being taken in Africa by state-run oil companies from China and other Asian states, "one has the recipe for a new scramble for Africa," according to FT.

Taylor on Trial

2008-01-10T15:41:00.000-08:00

The war crimes trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor began in the Hague on Monday. Taylor is accused of a variety of crimes associated with his support for the rebels in the bloody civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone, crimes that include enslavement and the use of child soldiers.

For live-blogging of the trial and links to trial documents (including a report on the role of the diamond trade in Sierra Leone's civil war [.pdf] submitted into evidence by the prosecution), see this site sponsored by the Open Society Institute. The BBC is providing some of the best coverage of the trial, including this background story posted on Monday and this summary of Charles Taylor's career here.

Iraq: Casualties in 2007

2008-01-06T13:40:00.000-08:00

Today's New York Times provides an interesting graphic representation of deaths among security forces in Iraq during 2007. The conclusion: "For those in uniform [both Iraqis and Americans], 2007 was the deadliest year since the invasion."

A Portrait of Guantánamo

2007-11-16T17:16:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, David Bowker and David Kaye published an excellent summary of what's been happening at Guantánamo over the course of the past six years. You can find their New York Times op-ed here.

The New Litmus Test

2007-11-08T21:20:00.000-08:00

Rosa Brooks makes the point today in her Los Angeles Times column that, as a political litmus test, torture is the new abortion. You can read her argument here.

Updating a Classic

2007-11-08T16:15:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Maureen Dowd provided the revised version of George W. Bush's Second Inaugural Address--one that takes into account the new view of freedom and democracy necessitated by recent developments in Pakistan.

Here's a brief sample:

Original version:

In the long run, there is no justice without freedom, and there can be no human rights without human liberty.

Revised version:

In the long run, there is justice without freedom, and there can be human rights once the human rights activists have been thrown in the pokey.

The best line in the revised version:

Police tear-gassing lawyers is really just a foreign version of tort reform, which I support.

You can read the whole thing here.

"Elected" Leaders

2007-11-07T19:26:00.000-08:00

"The List," a regular feature of Foreign Policy's excellent web site, this month includes six world leaders--five presidents and a prime minister--who have, on average, been in office over thirty years. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea is fifth on the list at twenty-eight years in power. Foreign Policy notes that Obiang is Africa's richest ruler with a net worth estimated at $600 million.

Corruption keeps Obiang in power. Oil makes him wealthy.

The Deadliest Year

2007-11-07T18:32:00.000-08:00

More American troops have died in Iraq thus far in 2007 than in any previous year of the war. Since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 3,857 Americans have died in Iraq. Of that number, 854 military fatalities have occurred this year.

For details, see the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count.

Ideological Exclusion

2007-11-06T16:28:00.000-08:00

In the early years of the Cold War, the United States adopted a policy of denying entry visas to foreign nationals on the basis of their political beliefs, a policy now known as ideological exclusion. As the nation recovered from the self-inflicted wounds associated with McCarthyism and the "Red Scare," the policy of ideological exclusion was abandoned.

Now, however, ideological exclusion is back. Indeed, to borrow a phrase, the United States seems to have transformed the war of ideas into a war against ideas. Using authority granted by the USA PATRIOT Act, the Department of Homeland Security has been denying entry to scholars whose views don't match those espoused by the Bush Administration. Tariq Ramadan, a distinguished Swiss scholar who was offered a tenured appointment at Notre Dame in 2004, has been barred from the U.S. Adam Habib, a South African scholar and critic of the war in Iraq, was denied entry when he got off the plane at JFK International Airport in October 2006 en route to meetings at Columbia University and the Social Science Research Council. Ramadan and Habib are not the only foreign nationals who have been affected by the policy of ideological exclusion, but they have become particularly prominent as a consequence of lawsuits filed by professional organizations (the American Academy of Religion on behalf of Ramadan and the American Sociological Association on behalf of Habib) against the Department of Homeland Security.

For more on ideological exclusion, see the information provided by the American Civil Liberties Union here. For information on some of those who have been kept from teaching or addressing professional audiences in the United States since 9/11, see this article in Academe, a publication of the American Association of University Professors.

Humiliations

2007-10-30T21:50:00.000-07:00

I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.
--Simone Weil

Mukasey and Waterboarding

2007-10-30T20:51:00.000-07:00

It's almost as if Alberto Gonzales had never left.

Michael Mukasey, President Bush's nominee to head the Department of Justice in the aftermath of the Gonzales disaster, has told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee considering his nomination that he's not sure if waterboarding violates laws prohibiting torture.

In a four-page letter [.pdf] to the Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee, Mukasey stated:

I was asked at the hearing and in your letter questions about the hypothetical use of certain coercive interrogation techniques. As described in your letter, these techniques seem over the line or, on a personal basis, repugnant to me, and would probably seem the same to many Americans. But hypotheticals are different from real life, and in any legal opinion the actual facts and circumstances are critical.

Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) pinpointed the problem with Mukasey's letter:

We asked Judge Mukasey a simple and straightforward question: Is waterboarding illegal? While this question has been answered clearly by many others . . . Judge Mukasey spent four pages responding and still didn't provide an answer.

Let's spell this out for Judge Mukasey: Waterboarding is a type of torture. As such, it violates both domestic and international law.

Period.

More Protests in Burma

2007-09-24T12:53:00.000-07:00

On the sixth day of anti-government marches in Burma, an estimated 100,000 protestors took to the streets of the capital, Yangon. The government's religious affairs minister today warned of a possible crackdown against the Buddhist monks leading the protests.

In 1988, as many as 3,000 students were killed in the crackdown on th anti-government protests that led to the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi. However, some observers believe that international attention combined with restraints imposed by China will make a repeat of the 1988 crackdown unlikely.

The Dictator's Checkup

2007-09-22T13:54:00.000-07:00

Equatorial Guinea's president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, visited the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota earlier this week for a checkup according to officials at the clinic. The 65-year-old dictator is reportedly suffering from prostate cancer and heart problems.

Why is one of the world's worst dictators free to enter the United States at will? In a word, it's oil. That alone seems to have been enough to prompt Secretary of State Rice to introduce Obiang as "a good friend" last year.

The March of the Monks

2007-09-22T08:10:00.000-07:00

On August 26, 1988, Aung San Suu Kyi assumed the leadership of Burma's fledgling movement for democracy at a rally at Yangon's Shwedagon pagoda. The Burmese military crushed the movement and since then has kept Burma's only Nobel laureate under house arrest with only intermittent periods of freedom.

Today in Yangon, 500 Buddhist monks marched past Suu Kyi's home while another 1,000 monks assembled at Shwedagon pagoda and an estimated 10,000 people (including 4,000 monks) marched in the city of Mandalay to protest Burma's repressive military dictatorship. It was the fifth consecutive day of protests by monks against the regime.

Earlier this week, in a move designed to shame the government, monks began refusing the alms that are distributed by the military. Monks have reportedly been marching with their begging bowls held upside down to demonstrate their rejection of the regime.

Meanwhile, the Burmese military has responded by arresting pro-democracy leaders and using hired thugs to beat up marchers. While the monks involved in the protests are clearly supported by the populace (90 percent of which is Buddhist), thus far only a few non-clergy have been willing to march with them. The government clearly is capable of bringing great force to bear against the protests, although killing monks would risk enraging their silent supporters.

The recent protests were prompted by a fuel price hike imposed by the government in August. Bus fares have doubled in the cities creating great hardship in a country with a per capita income of $175 per year.

China Attacks

2007-09-05T17:45:00.000-07:00

President Bush has told reporters in Sydney that he may confront Chinese president Hu Jintao over Chinese efforts to hack into Pentagon computers. Recent cyber-attacks on government systems in Washington, London, and Berlin have reportedly been traced to China's military. The PRC says, of course, that such claims are "groundless."

For more on the story, see this brief article in the Economist.

Off the Reservation

2007-09-05T17:21:00.000-07:00

It doesn't bother me that five Advanced Cruise Missiles armed with nuclear weapons were flown on a B-52 from Minot AFB in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Lousiana on August 30, but I am somewhat concerned that the Air Force didn't know it.

The appropriate military authorities are also concerned and have launched--check that--begun an investigation.

"Push and Push and Push"

2007-09-05T14:32:00.000-07:00

According to The Terror Presidency, a new book by former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (and current Harvard Law professor) Jack Goldsmith, attorneys within the Bush Administration pressed hard using faulty legal arguments to expand executive power at the expense of Congress and the courts. David Addington, Vice President Cheney's legal counsel at the time, said, "We're going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop."

The New York Times Magazine will publish a lengthy piece on Sunday (available here) about Goldsmith and the challenges he faced trying to resist the Bush Administration's legal maneuverings. According to Goldsmith, the president's lawyers adopted a "go-it-alone" perspective on the presidency "because they wanted to leave the presidency stronger than when they assumed office, but the approach they took achieved exactly the opposite effect. The central irony is that people whose explicit goal was to expand presidential power have diminished it."

Needless to say, similar ironies can be found in most of the Bush Administration's counter-terrorism policies.

Mistakes

2007-09-04T22:55:00.000-07:00

The Bush Administration's mistakes in Iraq--too numerous to count--have been the subjects of scores of books already. Many of the mistakes are also recounted in No End in Sight, an excellent documentary currently in theaters. Perhaps none of the many mistakes, however, was more significant than the decision to disband Iraqi security forces.

We now know, based on letters released by L. Paul Bremer, that President Bush did not object to the plan, developed in the Defense Department, to "make it clear to everyone that we mean business"--Bremer's words--by dismantling Iraq's military. In fact, based on his reply to Bremer, the President seems to have shown very little interest in the issue.

The picture that emerges from more and more documentary evidence related to the Iraq War is one that should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the events of the last six years: The United States is governed by a clueless president surrounded by arrogant and venal advisors. This is hardly an original observation, but it is one that is well worth remembering as the Bush Administration tries to make the case for staying in Iraq.

(For more on Bremer-Bush correspondence, see this post by George Packer.)

Briefly Noted

2007-08-09T23:00:00.000-07:00

Jane Mayer, who has written about torture for the New Yorker on a number of occasions, has a story in the current issue on the CIA's "black sites" and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's numerous confessions. It's available here.

Wednesday's New York Times carried an op-ed by Gen. Wesley Clark and Kal Raustiala on the distinction between terrorists and combatants ("unlawful" or otherwise). It's an important distinction that the United States has been getting wrong since the beginning of the so-called "war on terror."

The First ECCC Indictment

2007-08-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

In Phnom Penh on Tuesday, Khang Khek Ieu--"Comrade Duch"--was indicted by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. The former commandant of the infamous Tuol Sleng prison, where 14,000 people were tortured before being sent to their deaths in the killing fields near Phnom Penh between 1975 and 1979, was charged with crimes against humanity.

Duch's indictment was the first of five expected to come from the Introductory Submission presented by the Co-Prosecutors on July 18. Of the five who are believed to have been named in the Introductory Submission, Duch is the only one in custody and the only one to have confessed to crimes. His indictment, consequently, is less likely to present political problems or enforcement challenges for the tribunal than those yet to come.

For the ECCC's press release concerning the indicment, go here (.pdf). And for an excellent commentary in the Independent, see this brief essay.

UN Makeover

2007-07-28T21:47:00.000-07:00

The United Nations Headquarters in New York City is about to undergo a major renovation, its first since the complex was begun in 1949. The project will include asbestos removal, extensive structural repairs, and implementation of energy-efficient design features. In all, the project is expected to cost approximately $1 billion.

For a virtual tour of the UN Headquarters, go here. Its history is described in this fact sheet.

Pogge on Obiang

2007-07-27T16:03:00.000-07:00

Thomas Pogge, a political philosopher noted for his writings on global justice, also has a problem with the Obiang family's corruption and young Teodoro's purchase of a mansion in Malibu.

Who Blinked?

2007-07-27T15:51:00.001-07:00

Why did Russia's foreign minister pull an article accepted for publication in the September/October 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs? We have, on the one hand, an explanation from Russia's Foreign Ministry and, on the other hand, a statement from the editors of Foreign Affairs.

Curiously, the article as edited by Foreign Affairs, not as submitted by Foreign Minister Lavrov, has been posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry website.

Hе понимаю.

War Isn't Real

2007-07-26T21:55:00.000-07:00

A brief commentary, well worth reading: George Packer, making the point that "war isn’t real until it’s happening to you," describes George Orwell's reaction to an inconsequential play performed in London in 1940 and compares it to an American soldier's feelings of disgust at Disneyland after his return from Iraq. Packer writes, "There's something infuriating, though probably unavoidable, about the fact that life goes on in all its waste and indifference while Americans eight thousand miles away are being killed on our behalf."

Cambodia's Deadly Legacy

2007-07-25T15:35:00.000-07:00

Cambodia, considered by some Americans at the time to be a sideshow of the Vietnam War, experienced almost uninterrupted warfare for over three decades beginning in the late 1960s. As a consequence, Cambodia today has one of the highest concentrations of explosive remnants of war (ERW)--land mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO)--of any country in the world.

In spite of the Cambodian government's desire to hide the problem in order to avoid negatively affecting tourism, the consequences of the ERW problem are visible everywhere. At roughly 1 in 250, Cambodia is believed to have more amputees per capita than any country in the world. According to the 2006 Landmine Monitor Report published by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, in 2005 there were 875 casualties (resulting in 168 deaths and 173 amputations) from landmines and UXO in Cambodia. Among those killed were 22 people involved in demining operations.

Musicians--all victims of landmines--near Angkor Wat (June 28, 2007).

In spite of persistent efforts by a variety of NGOs, there are believed to be 4 to 6 million landmines and other explosive remnants of war still to be cleared in Cambodia, most in areas near the Thai border. Tourists are safe in Cambodia, but many impoverished Cambodians, who must farm what little land they have available to them or starve, are not.

Marking a Milestone

2007-07-23T22:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's post--Town and Country in Vietnam--appears to have been the 1,000th post on Swords Into Plowshares.

Please stop what you're doing and celebrate. (But make sure you celebrate responsibly.)

Entrance Exams

2007-07-23T22:29:00.000-07:00

On July 2, in the Thai Hoc Courtyard of the Temple of Literature (Van Mieu) in Hanoi, I witnessed an interesting ritual. A small but persistent stream of Vietnamese teenagers filed past the 82 tablets mounted on the backs of carved tortoises. Most touched each tortoise on the head; some left small offerings of money. The stone tablets (or steles) honor scholars who earned doctorates between the 15th and 18th centuries at Vietnam's oldest university, which was established by the emperor Ly Nhan Tong in 1076. Today's students were there to seek inspiration--or at least good luck--from the students of earlier generations in advance of Vietnam's highly competitive university entrance exams. Looking for an additional edge, many students (and some of their parents as well) moved from the tortoise stelae to the nearby Temple of Confucius to offer prayers for good exam results.

This year, 1.8 million Vietnamese students sat for the exams that determine who will get the 300,000 spots in the entering classes of Vietnam's 300 universities. In Hanoi, commercial traffic was restricted on roads near the examination sites in order to relieve the congestion created by students appearing for their exams.

According to a recent story in Time, Vietnam's impressive economic growth is already being imperiled by a shortage of skilled workers. There is, quite simply, not enough educational opportunity to meet the demands of the many young people who are eager to improve their ability to compete in the global economy. Nor is the system of higher education in Vietnam adequate to meet the demands of the nation's rapidly developing economy.

One foreign university--the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology--has established a presence in Vietnam. If Vietnamese authorities can be convinced that such arrangements do not unduly threaten the communist orthodoxy that prevails in their universities, there may be room for many more foreign universities to help Vietnam bridge the gap between higher education needs and opportunities. And unless something is done to increase Vietnamese teenagers' odds of getting into a university, the venerable tortoises in Hanoi's Temple of Literature will be in danger of being rubbed into dust.

Town and Country in Vietnam

2007-07-22T16:03:00.000-07:00

Most of my brief stay in Vietnam was spent in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), although one day included a trip by car about 90 kilometers beyond Ho Chi Minh City. In both cities, I was impressed by the level of development and the amount of foreign investment.

Gross domestic product continues to grow at an impressive rate (8.6 percent in 2006), fed in part by Vietnam's membership in the ASEAN Free Trade Area and, since January 2007, the World Trade Organization. While Asian trading partners including Singapore, South Korea, China, Japan, Malaysia, and Taiwan provide most of the the direct foreign investment, American businesses are moving in as well. Some of the high-rise hotels that have sprouted up in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City bear familiar names. Today the term "Hanoi Hilton" can refer either to the Hoa Lo Prison Museum or to an actual Hilton hotel located near the Opera House. And KFC, complete with the smiling figure of Colonel Sanders (who, as Adrian Cronauer--played by Robin Williams--noted in Good Morning, Vietnam, looks a lot like Ho Chi Minh), now has several locations in both Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. Even more exciting to at least one American I know who lives in Vietnam is the recent arrival of Pizza Hut.

As with most other countries that have experienced rapid economic development, costs and benefits are not being evenly distributed. The traditional mainstay of the Vietnamese economy, the agricultural sector, is rapidly declining in importance. Farmers are being squeezed economically; in fact, signs of Vietnam's modernization largely disappear once one leaves the cities behind. To make the situation even worse for those in the agricultural sector, corrupt officials in provincial governments have reportedly conspired with developers to force farmers to sell land at a fraction of its value.

Over the course of the past month, peaceful protests by farmers upset by land seizures and government corruption in the provinces have been taking place in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Last Wednesday, police in Ho Chi Minh City reportedly moved in to break up the protest involving 800 to 1,000 people there. Human Rights Watch weighed in with a statement on Friday.

Vietnamese authorities are aware that violations of international human rights are not good for business. The initial impulse is to hide human rights violations by keeping reporters at bay when protests occur, but if that fails perhaps the next impulse will be to correct the human rights violations themselves. At least we can hope so.

President Cheney

2007-07-20T19:34:00.000-07:00

All it takes is a little Twenty-fifth Amendment action.

[Via Talking Points Memo.]

Bush and Torture: "Trust Us"

2007-07-20T19:18:00.000-07:00

President Bush today signed a long-awaited Executive Order that seeks to clarify which methods of interrogation are banned by Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Here is the key section of the new guidance:

I hereby determine that a program of detention and interrogation approved by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency fully complies with the obligations of the United States under Common Article 3 [of the Geneva Conventions], provided that:
(i) the conditions of confinement and interrogation practices of the program do not include:
(A) torture, as defined in section 2340 of title 18, United States Code;
(B) any of the acts prohibited by section 2441(d) of title 18, United States Code, including murder, torture, cruel or inhuman treatment, mutilation or maiming, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, rape, sexual assault or abuse, taking of hostages, or performing of biological experiments;
(C) other acts of violence serious enough to be considered comparable to murder, torture, mutilation, and cruel or inhuman treatment, as defined in section 2441(d) of title 18, United States Code;
(D) any other acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment prohibited by the Military Commissions Act (subsection 6(c) of Public Law 109 §366) and the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (section 1003 of Public Law 109 §148 and section 1403 of Public Law 109 §163);
(E) willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual in a manner so serious that any reasonable person, considering the circumstances, would deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency, such as sexual or sexually indecent acts undertaken for the purpose of humiliation, forcing the individual to perform sexual acts or to pose sexually, threatening the individual with sexual mutilation, or using the individual as a human shield; or
(F) acts intended to denigrate the religion, religious practices, or religious objects of the individual.

While the prohibitions listed are important, especially in light of the fact that many of them have not been observed in the past, it is worth noting that the Executive Order defines the exclusions of Common Article 3 in terms of other legal guidance that also has not been observed in the past by the Bush Administration. President Bush is, in other words, continuing to kickthe can down the road.

So what is now off-limits? Practices banned by the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the statute implementing the Convention (Section 2340 of Title 18) are banned by this Executive Order. So are practices that were banned by the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. And practices that were prohibited by the Military Commissions Act. And so on. But we knew this already. And we also knew already that America's torture problem was the way the Bush Administration was interpreting--or simply ignoring--these rules.

After all the bureaucratic warfare that allegedly occurred over this Executive Order, the only significant guidance that has emerged from it is this: "The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency shall issue written policies to govern the program" of interrogation.

Those written policies will, of course, be secret.

The Devil Came on Horseback

2007-07-20T15:28:00.000-07:00

Beginning in January 2004, Brian Steidle served as a military observer monitoring the ceasefire in Darfur on behalf of the African Union. He left that post in September 2004 and returned to the United States to try to raise awareness about what was happening in the Sudan. Through public lectures and displays of his photographs, Steidle has provided eyewitness testimony to the genocide. In March, his book entitled The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur, was released by PublicAffairs Books.

Now, a documentary based on Steidle's experience in Darfur (and bearing the same title as his book) is coming out. The film will be in limited release beginning on July 25. For more information, including the trailer and a list of scheduled screenings, go here.

Developments in the ECCC

2007-07-19T16:30:00.000-07:00

The Co-Prosecutors for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) have recommended the indictment of five Khmer Rouge leaders for their role in the Cambodian genocide between April 17, 1975, and January 6, 1979. This recommendation (called the "Introductory Submission"), together with over 1,000 documents (including 350 witness statements) supporting the charges, will now be considered by the Co-Investigating Judges in the mixed United Nations-Cambodian court established by an agreement reached between the UN and Cambodia in June 2003.

While the Co-Prosecutors are prohibited from releasing the names of those against whom indictments are being sought or the details of the charges, the statement released in Phnom Penh yesterday [.pdf] indicates the nature of the crimes being alleged:

Pursuant to their preliminary investigations, the Co-Prosecutors have identified and submitted for investigation twenty-five distinct factual situations of murder, torture, forcible transfer, unlawful detention, forced labor and religious, political and ethnic persecution as evidence of the crimes committed in the execution of this common criminal plan.
The factual allegations in this Introductory Submission constitute crimes against humanity, genocide, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, homicide, torture and religious persecution. The Co-Prosecutors, therefore, have requested the Co-Investigating Judges to charge those responsible for these crimes.

The top leader of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, died in 1998 having never been indicted or imprisoned for his role in the genocide that is estimated to have resulted in the deaths of approximately two million people. The military leader of the Khmer Rouge, Ta Mok, died last year, also without ever having faced charges.

Khieu Samphan, who served as head of state for Democratic Kampuchea and was one of the leading intellectuals in the Khmer Rouge (he earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Paris in 1959), is among those expected to be indicted. Khieu is 76 years old.

Nuon Chea, known has "Brother Number Two" during the brief reign of the Khmer Rouge, has stated that he expects to be indicted, but he also has maintained his innocence. Nuon Chea is now 82 and living in northwest Cambodia, the region to which many members of the Khmer Rouge retreated after being driven out of Phnom Penh by the Vietnamese military in January 1979.

Ieng Sary, another Khmer Rouge leader facing a possible indictment, served as foreign minister in the government of Democratic Kampuchea. He was related by marriage to Pol Pot and was third in the Khmer Rouge hierarchy when the government of Democratic Kampuchea was established. Ieng Sary is in his late seventies and was reportedly hospitalized in Bangkok for heart problmems late last year.

The only person among those expected to be indicted who has admitted responsibility for his actions in the Khmer Rouge regime is the former commandant of S-21 (the infamous Tuol Sleng prison) Khang Khek Ieu (better known as Brother Duch). Duch is also the only major suspect who is currently in custody, although not as a consequence of charges brought by the ECCC.

Of approximately 14,000 prisoners who passed through Tuol Sleng between 1975 and 1979, only twelve are known to have survived. Most were tortured and later executed at the most notorious of Cambodia's "killing fields," Choeung Ek.

Like other Khmer Rouge leaders, Duch disappeared into the countryside after the Vietnamese invasion in 1975-1976. In 1998, journalist Nic Dunlop discovered Duch working in a refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border. Duch had been converted to Christianity in 1996 by a Khmer-American missionary and had begun doing humanitarian work along the border. After his identity was discovered, Duch turned himself in to authorities and has been imprisoned awaiting trial in a Cambodian national court in Phnom Penh ever since.

Unlike Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea, and Ieng Sary, who were granted pardons in the late 1990s by the government of Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen (himself a former member of the Khmer Rouge), Duch was never pardoned. (Although the ECCC may have to consider arguments related to the pardons if Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea, or Ieng Sary is indicted, it is expected that pardons granted by Cambodia's government will not be considered binding on the ECCC given its emphasis on internationally defined crimes.)

Who might the fifth person named in the Introductory Submission be? Some speculation has focused on Meas Muth, son-in-law of the late Ta Mok and himself a military commander in the Khmer Rouge. Meas Muth, however, joined the Cambodian military after his defection from the Khmer Rouge, which means his prosecution might present significant political problems.

For more on this story, see Seth Mydans' report in the New York Times or Ker Munthit's report for the Associated Press.

The Law of the Sea Convention

2007-07-14T15:06:00.000-07:00

Admiral Vern Clark, a former chief of naval operations, and Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, a former U.N. representative, weigh in today in the New York Times in favor of U.S. ratification of the Convention on the Law of the Sea. "Our nation will be in a much stronger position to advance its military and economic interests if we ratify the treaty," Clark and Pickering write. "We can guide and influence the interpretation of rules, protecting our interests and deflecting inconsistent interpretations. The agreement is being interpreted, applied and developed right now and we need to be part of it to protect our vital interests in the area of security and beyond."

It might be a good time for the United States to be a part of the International Seabed Authority, which the Convention created, now that Russia is beginning to advance an ownership claim to thousands of square miles of oil- and gas-rich seabed near the North Pole.

Tuol Sleng

2007-07-11T15:57:00.000-07:00

Vietnam and Cambodia

2007-07-10T21:05:00.000-07:00

I have been back from a trip to Vietnam and Cambodia for almost a week now. Jet lag is no longer a reasonable excuse for not blogging; now I have to face up to the fact that it has simply been difficult to know exactly where to dive into the effort to describe and interpret what I saw.

Perhaps the best place to begin would be simply to note that the trip took me and a friend--I traveled with the Vietnam country director for the English Language Institute, a non-profit that provides English teachers for schools and universities throughout Asia--to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, and Hanoi, in that order. While in Ho Chi Minh City, we spent a day with a car and driver going to the Cu Chi tunnels and the Cao Dai temple in Tay Ninh. We had an opportunity to see some of the Cambodian countryside on the five-hour drive from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap and on excursions from Siem Reap to the ancient temples of Angkor and to Lake Tonle Sap.

Before commenting on what we observed on the trip, I want to begin by showing some of what we saw. Below is a brief slide show (Flash required) depicting Choeung Ek, one of Cambodia's "killing fields."

Please check back for additional slide shows and, when the muse finally permits, some comments on Vietnam and Cambodia.

Choeung Ek

2007-07-10T20:21:00.000-07:00