The international community and its organizations were unable to prevent the atrocities or stop them at an early stage. Instead, it was agreed that the perpetrators would be prosecuted. New international institutions were established for this purpose, a host of international criminal tribunals and, finally, the International Criminal Court with a broad, almost global jurisdiction.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was the first among the international criminal tribunals established in the post-cold war era. The experience is mixed. The tribunal must be hailed for its pioneering work and for its achievement in bringing many of the main war criminals to justice. On the other hand, it must be also recognized that many crimes remained unpunished and, above all, that there is still a long way to reconciliation.
Today, almost thirty years later, something fundamental is equally clear as it was at the beginning. It would have been much better to prevent the atrocities in the Balkans, in Africa and elsewhere than to allow situations in which prosecution of crimes against humanity and war crimes became necessary. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. But how to achieve that in the complex world of international politics, in which norms have a limited effect and where the strong do as they can and the weak suffer as they must? Very few wars can be deemed as clearly preventable and even when they are, prevention is seldom pursued with the necessary sense of urgency or with the needed unity of purpose. The prevention of armed conflicts remains one of the most elusive areas of international cooperation.
How to deal with armed conflicts at the early stages to minimize destruction and human suffering? Conflict formation and dynamics, as well as conflict ←15 | 16→resolution take time, a lot of precious time, as the international community has been tragically re-learning in Libya, Syria and Yemen. Armed conflicts in our era exact a heavy toll on human life, particularly in civilian populations. The international community has every reason to strengthen its institutions and make them capable of acting as early as possible – by diplomatic means as a matter of course, and by military force when necessary and possible.
This moral imperative is expressed in several recent international pronouncements, especially in the much-discussed concept of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), and it enjoys significant political support. Through the General Assembly resolution adopted in 2005, it has gained a measure of normative underpinning as well as a degree of institutional backing. The concept of the R2P represented the most significant single expression of the will of the international community to engage values, norms and institutions to prevent horrible crimes against humanity and immense human suffering resulting from massive human rights violations.
However, political pronouncements by the UN General Assembly are not enough. In addition to the moral imperative, and the normative and institutional backing, it is necessary to engage an adequate amount of power and, most importantly, it is vital to employ sound political judgment and responsible political guidance.
The latter requirement cannot be overemphasized. In matters of conflict prevention and conflict resolution, there is no substitute for sound political judgment and responsible political guidance directing all other factors, including military force especially.
While this may sound axiomatic as an abstract principle, it is not easily realized in practice. The facts of any situation before and during an armed conflict are usually unclear, covered by the inevitable “fog of war”. The political and military assessments of facts are most often divergent. This is so because of the complexity of the situation itself, or because of differences in perceptions generated by the political interests of the players involved. Furthermore, in the media-driven world of today, there is never a shortage of rhetoric and imagery supporting a line of analysis or a specific course of action, no matter how inaccurate or inadequate it is. This adds to the complexity with which decision-makers are dealing.
Moreover, decision-makers have to be careful in the conduct of their debates. They must not confuse rhetoric on the one hand, and real thought on the other. They must also not allow prejudices to diminish their ability to listen to convincing, albeit unwelcome arguments.
A set of criteria must be considered in decision-making about the use of military force. Here, rhetoric must not be allowed as a substitute for serious thought. It should be clear throughout that there is no such a thing as “light military ←16 | 17→intervention”. Thus, the rhetoric of the “military lite” option must be set aside. Peacekeepers must not be sent to situations of war where there is no peace to keep. Humanitarian interventions should not be attempted, except in the cases where there is a threat of genocide and mass murder. In such cases, a sufficiently robust military force is needed.
Furthermore, any contemplation on the use of military force must include a vision of its end or exit strategy. This is very difficult given the usual unpredictability in war situations. There is no strategy without an exit. But then again, there is also no exit without a strategy. Military experts, political decision-makers and diplomats must be aware of that. The task is to devise a functioning formula early enough to enable success and to put in place a credible program of post-conflict normalization.
And then, the use of military force must be legitimized. A mandate from the Security Council would provide this, but there are gray areas and complicating factors which make this requirement difficult. Mandates agreed to by the Security Council are often ambiguous or unclear. Sometimes regional organizations work at a higher pace and create additional difficulties in the Security Council process. And sometimes the Security Council finds itself in a situation of an “ex post facto legitimizer” of the use of force by regional organizations. All this makes the role of the Security Council less authoritative and less predictable. Is this likely to diminish the authority of the Security Council and the UN? Only time will tell.
The experience of the last decades has – time and again – confirmed a simple and fundamental truth. There are no “military lite” or “diplomacy lite” options available to the responsible decision-makers. Military options, when deemed necessary and legitimate, must be designed to ensure their declared objectives. Diplomatic options should include the will to engage diplomacy to the full, including doing the necessary diplomatic “heavy lifting”.
It goes without saying that political and diplomatic approaches to security achieve little if they are not supported by real power, including military power. But the opposite is also true: force and military power can achieve little if not used in the framework of values, norms and institutions. This is the only way to move beyond the type of international politics in which the strong do as they can and the weak suffer as they must.
(Keynote Address at the Closing Ceremony of the 27th Training Course of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, Geneva, 7 June 2013)
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Notes
1. 1 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book Five, 89.
2. 2 Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter XVIII, opening paragraph.
3. 3 Quoted from: Douglas Hurd, Choose Your Weapons: The British Foreign Secretary, 200 Years of Argument, Success and Failure, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2010, p. 24.
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An Organized International Community: The United Nations
It is said that if we wish to imagine the future, we first need to look at the past.
Therefore, it is useful to mention again that more than two centuries ago, in 1805, the then British Prime Minister