Deviant Conduct in World Politics

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Deviant Conduct in World Politics Deon Geldenhuys

Deviant Conduct in World Politics

Also by Deon Geldenhuys FOREIGN POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT: REMAKING STATES IN THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD ISOLATED STATES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS THE DIPLOMACY OF ISOLATION: SOUTH AFRICAN FOREIGN POLICY MAKING (WRITING AS TOM BARNARD): SOUTH AFRICA 1994–2004: A POPULAR HISTORY

Deviant Conduct in World Politics Deon Geldenhuys Professor of Politics, Rand Afrikaans University, Johannesburg, South Africa

© Deon Geldenhuys 2004 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–3247–6 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Geldenhuys, Deon. Deviant conduct in world politics/ Deon Geldenhuys. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–3247–6 1. World politics–1989– 2. Terrorism. 3. Belligerency. 4. Terrorism. 5. Intervention (International law) I. Title. D860.G485 2004 909.83–dc22

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Contents Acknowledgements

viii

Introduction

ix

1 Pariahs, Outcasts and Rogues: the Limitations of Popular Labels Pariahs and outcasts Meanings of the term ‘rogue’ The rise of rogue states Implications of America’s rogue state policy Bush II: confronting the axis of evil Conclusion

1 3 4 6 9 11

2 Deviant Actors in World Politics: an Analytical Framework Theories of deviance The meaning of international norms Deviant states and international order Sins of contemporary deviant states Non-state deviance External actors: defending international norms Ends and means in anti-deviant actions A typology of deviants Deviant responses to external pressure In lieu of a conclusion

13 13 17 22 23 37 40 41 46 47 50

3 From Turkey to Rhodesia: an Assortment of Outcasts Ottoman Empire Bolshevik Russia Weimar Germany Fascist Italy Francoist Spain Salazarist Portugal People’s Republic of China German Democratic Republic Rhodesia Conclusion

51 52 53 55 56 57 59 61 63 64 66

4 Principal Pariahs of the Cold War Era Republic of China Israel Chile

68 68 70 76

v

1

vi Contents

South Africa Conclusion

79 83

5 Iraq From empire to imperial ambitions Labelling the deviant Iraq’s transgressions International demands and objectives Foreign action against Iraq Iraq’s reactions to external pressure Conclusion

85 85 90 91 98 101 109 110

6 Iran From king of kings to mullah of all Muslims Naming the deviants Iran’s transgressions Foreign demands External responses to Iran’s deviant conduct Iran’s reactions to foreign pressure Conclusion

112 112 118 119 129 132 138 140

7 Libya Libya’s road from obscurity to notoriety On deviants and dogs Libya’s transgressions Foreign demands and objectives International responses to Libya’s deviance Libya’s responses to outside pressure Conclusion

142 142 147 148 158 159 164 166

8 North Korea Leaders great and dear Naming the deviants The DPRK’s contraventions Foreign demands and objectives International responses to North Korean deviance North Korea’s reactions to outside pressure Conclusion

168 168 174 175 189 190 194 197

9 Cuba From clientelism to defiance Naming the deviants Cuba’s transgressions Foreign demands and objectives Foreign reactions to Cuba’s deviance Cuban responses to foreign pressure Conclusion

199 199 205 206 213 216 222 224

Contents vii

10 Myanmar The road to internal turmoil and international diversity Deviants and darlings Myanmar’s transgressions External demands and objectives International responses to Myanmar’s errant behaviour Rangoon’s responses to international pressure Conclusion

226 226 233 234 239 241 250 253

11 Yugoslavia A doomed state Yugoslavia III: leaner and meaner Naming and shaming the deviants Yugoslavia’s contraventions External demands and objectives International measures against Yugoslavia Yugoslavia’s response’s to foreign pressure Conclusion

254 254 257 260 261 265 268 275 278

12 Additional African states Nigeria Rwanda Sudan Conclusion

279 279 284 292 302

13 Some Other Deviant States Afghanistan China Syria Conclusion

303 303 311 319 327

14 Non-State Deviants Terrorist organizations Rebel movements ‘Blood’ diamonds Mercenaries Transnational criminal organizations Conclusion

328 328 334 338 341 348 350

Conclusion

351

Notes

361

Index

434

Acknowledgements Many debts were incurred in researching and writing this book It is a pleasure to acknowledge them. Thanks to a travel fellowship from the Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust I was able to undertake research visits abroad. At my alma mater, Cambridge University, I could again enjoy the benefits of life membership of Clare Hall. In Havana I had the privilege of using the Centre for the Study of Africa and the Middle East as research base. At Cornell University the Peace Studies Programme again hosted me. It was at Cornell that Professor Peter Katzenstein steered me towards a critical course correction in the early stages of the research. The generosity of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enabled me to pay three visits to the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute in Freiburg, where Dr Heribert Weiland ensured an environment highly congenial to the lone ranger task of writing up. On a visit to Taiwan I could use the splendid research facilities of the Institute of International Relations. Professor James Barber of Cambridge University and two anonymous readers offered insightful comments on the manuscript. My research pursuits would not have been possible without the Rand Afrikaans University providing the opportunity. The management of the University not only preaches academic research, but actively supports the practitioners. At the RAU Ester Ferreira of the university library handled my numerous queries with her usual combination of skill and speed; our departmental secretary Margriet Snyman tidied up the manuscript, unfazed by the tyranny of footnotes; and student assistants Willie Venter and Siobhan Neveling smartly surfed the internet to ply me with material. My final debt, to my family, is as always the largest: Zelda, Niel and Carl had to bear the brunt of my lengthy bouts of socially deviant behaviour as I tried to make sense of deviant conduct in world politics. In her capacity as a university librarian Zelda carried the additional burden of helping me collect information for this study. Deon Geldenhuys

viii

Introduction This is not another ‘9-11’ book, nor a post-mortem on Saddam Hussein’s rule. The study began before the terrorist spectacular of 11 September 2001 – widely blamed on Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organization – and would have continued regardless of the attacks on the US. Likewise, Iraq would have featured as a case study irrespective of the war that toppled Saddam in April 2003. These two dramatic events have nonetheless focused international attention on the ongoing problem of delinquent conduct in world politics. The present inquiry is informed by the fact that such behaviour extends far beyond the actions of any single organization or state, however abhorrent. The kamikaze attacks on New York and Washington have taken terrorism to an unprecedented level of death and devastation. The destructive power at the disposal of a non-state organization has been highlighted as never before: the target whose vulnerability was so starkly exposed, was none other than today’s sole superpower. The world now knows for sure that seriously offensive behaviour in the realm of high politics – directly threatening the peace and security of countries – can no longer be associated with fellow-states only; it can also emanate from non-state actors, especially terrorist organizations. It is then only logical that al-Qaeda gained overnight notoriety in large parts of the world and bin Laden became America’s – and indeed the wider Western world’s – most wanted person in the wake of 11 September. Although US security agencies had earlier identified him as a dangerous terrorist suspect and put a $5 million reward on his head, the attacks on the US catapulted bin Laden to the status of a true international outlaw. The terrorist chieftain became even more of an international villain than the leaders of, say, Iraq or North Korea. The events of 11 September 2001 occurred at a time when the US was heavily preoccupied with what American policymakers labelled rogue countries. These were regarded as a new class of states bent on challenging what the US considered some fundamental, universal norms of behaviour: they were accused of pursuing weapons of mass destruction, supporting international terrorism, and committing aggression in their neighbourhoods. Such actions, Washington feared, posed a threat to international security. Iraq, among the principal rogues identified by the Americans, eventually paid heavily for its alleged misdeeds when US forces invaded and occupied the country to impose wholesale regime change. Although the term rogue state is of recent origin, there have all along been countries breaking widely accepted standards of behaviour applicable at the time. The present study takes a broad look at what will be called ix

x Introduction

deviant behaviour in world politics. The phenomenon will be traced back several decades, but the focus will be on rule-violating conduct by states in the post-Cold War era. Countries characterized as rogues will form a central part of the investigation, but we will not be constrained by this paradigm. Attention will also be paid to transgressions committed by countries not on the Americans’ roster of rogues. The rogue state paradigm, it will be argued, is also sorely deficient in that it emphasized particular aspects of the external conduct of errant states, while ignoring several other forms of rulebreaking behaviour that also merit critical attention. And as the rogue state designation furthermore implies, it is confined to the offensive behaviour of states only. We have already suggested that non-state actors need to feature in a study of deviant conduct in world politics; they too influence the process of ‘who gets what, when, how’. In practice, state and non-state deviants are not travelling in separate orbits, so to speak, but may be closely connected. Symbiotic relations do, for instance, exist between some states and terrorist organizations or crime syndicates. It must already be apparent that a critical part of the inquiry is the charges of misconduct levelled against delinquent actors – both states and non-state organizations – in terms of the rules of conduct they were said to have challenged or defied. The analytical framework guiding the investigation draws on the sociology of deviance, which focuses on the violation of generally accepted behavioural standards. For our purposes these are codes of conduct enjoying wide acceptance within the world community. Other key components of the proposed framework are the responses of international actors to instances of deviant behaviour, and the ways in which deviants reacted to foreign pressures related to their errant ways. It is an analytical framework that reaches both wider and deeper than the American rogue state paradigm. Since deviance occurs over a broad front in international affairs, a study of this nature cannot investigate every state or non-state actor displaying rule-breaking behaviour. Among the countries excluded are Saudi-Arabia under its absolute monarchy, Sierra Leone and Côte D’Ivoire under military rule at the end of the previous century; Indonesia in the dictatorial Suharto era, especially during the final stages of its brutal occupation of East Timor; Pakistan under the military rule of General Pervez Musharaff since October 1999; several former Soviet republics – including Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan – where human rights were being systematically abused, and Zimbabwe in the grip of authoritarianism since the late 1990s. The chosen case studies nonetheless represent a wide range of contemporary states, including both designated rogue countries and others not on the US blacklist. Due to space constraints not all cases are examined in equal detail; some are ‘mini’ case studies. The cut-off date of the inquiry is the first half of 2003.

1 Pariahs, Outcasts and Rogues: the Limitations of Popular Labels

Like all human societies, the community of states has always had its nonconformists. By challenging commonly accepted standards of behaviour, these countries placed themselves at odds with others (supposedly) playing by the rules. Being ostracized from the society of respectable or rule-abiding states was often the penalty for dissident behaviour. Because outcast status has been the exception rather than the rule in international politics, scholars in this discipline have on the whole not thought that aberrant state conduct merited systematic, comparative inquiry. The major exceptions to this neglect were cases where a challenge to the prevailing international order caused a full-scale interstate war. Napoleonic France, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany all broke the rules that underpinned the international status quo – and earned themselves the wrath of others. The lack of academic interest in delinquent state conduct changed somewhat in the Cold War era, when a number of scholars took up the theme of ‘pariah’ or ‘outcast’ states, as they were commonly depicted. The fact of East–West rivalry had much to do with this new interest, since nearly all the designated countries were to some degree being shunned by Western powers, which they regarded as their natural allies. The intellectual curiosity about errant states has grown since the end of the Cold War, as Americans in particular produced a considerable body of literature on socalled rogue states. Again, it was an interest stimulated by profound international changes, in this instance the rise of non-Western challengers of the so-called New World Order overseen by the sole superpower, the US. In this introductory chapter we briefly examine the origins, meanings and applications of the concepts of pariah, outcast and rogue states, and assess their analytical qualities.

Pariahs and outcasts The term ‘pariah’ is a British corruption of ‘paraiyar’, one of the lower castes in southern India from which the British colonialists, during their 1

2 Deviant Conduct in World Politics

long occupation of India, drew most of their household servants. Since then the British and other Westerners have used ‘pariah’ to refer to ‘the lowest of the low, an utter social outcast among his own kind’ or, more generally, ‘(a)ny person (or animal) of a degraded or despised class’.1 In scholarly work the designation ‘pariah’ has been applied to, among others, cities,2 a social underclass3 and, perhaps most famously, to Jews in the diaspora.4 Several international politics scholars employed the term pariah state during the Cold War years.5 Although ‘pariah’ has since lost much of its earlier popularity as a label for errant countries, it is still occasionally used in this fashion to refer to, for instance, Israel,6 Iraq,7 Libya, Sudan,8 Serbia9 and North Korea.10 As a substitute for pariah, some scholars have used the term ‘outcast’ state.11 The neutral term ‘isolated’ states for those being punished for unacceptable behaviour by having their international relations cut or curtailed by others, has rarely been employed in academic literature.12 The concept has, however, been used widely to refer to the voluntary withdrawal of states from areas of international relations. This applied particularly to the United Kingdom’s so-called splendid isolation of the 19th century13 and the US’s recurring bouts of self-isolation in the 19th and 20th centuries.14 The practice of voluntary isolation does not form part of the present inquiry, though. Whether called ‘pariahs’ or ‘outcasts’, the states typically included under these rubrics during the Cold War years were few in number, modest in power and firm in ideological conviction. What most of them shared, was a small (or at best medium)-country status in terms of relative power, an authoritarian right-wing government, the systematic abuse of human rights, a fierce anti-communist orientation, a profound sense of threat occasioned by the alleged machinations of communist powers, a self-perception as a valuable (if not indispensable) strategic asset to the Western world in its contest with the Soviet bloc, a keen desire to be recognized as a member of the Western community of states, and a deep-seated grievance about being shunned by its ‘natural allies’ in the West. In some cases the pariahs were widely suspected of possessing the capability to develop nuclear weapons (if they had not actually obtained such devices). The principal members of the Cold War league of pariahs were Israel, South Africa, Chile and Taiwan, with South Korea, Argentina and Paraguay less prominent. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, it is worth noting, was seldom if ever considered part of this collection of outlaws, although it was an utterly isolated ‘state’. Declared ‘independent’ in 1983, its statehood was rejected by the entire world community except for its creator and patron, Turkey. Even so, the existence of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus provoked not nearly the same amount of international controversy as that of Taiwan. The break-away ‘state’ in the north of Cyprus survived the end of the Cold War, but that did not bring any international recognition.

Pariahs, Outcasts and Rogues 3

States still dubbed ‘pariahs’ in the post-Cold War era belonged to a class very different from the ‘original’ pariahs; the latest generation of so-called pariah countries may simply pass as rogues.

Meanings of the term ‘rogue’ Although its exact origins are unknown, the word ‘rogue’ was introduced to the English language about the middle of the 16th century. A person thus designated displayed such mostly unpleasant characteristics as dishonesty, lack of principles, mischievousness, straying, irresponsibility, lack of discipline, and adventurism. Applied to the world of beasts, rogue means a wild animal – an elephant is mentioned mostly – ‘driven away, or living apart, from the herd, and of a savage or destructive disposition’.15 Although the latter use seems particularly applicable as a metaphor for ostracized countries, a rogue as an adventurous person provides an equally relevant image. When a rogue refers to a ‘bohemian adventurer’, the (Spanish) word ‘picaro’ has also been used. This is especially interesting for our purposes because the picaro is associated with a genre of prose fiction known as the picaresque novel. Originating in Spain in 1554 with the publication of an anonymous short novel Lazarillo de Tormes, the genre spread to other parts of Western Europe where it remained popular for some two hundred years.16 Portraying ‘the adventurous story of a rogue’s life’,17 the picaresque novel explored ‘the paradigmatic confrontation between an isolated individual and a hostile society’.18 Being an outcast, the principal character experienced solitude in the world and had to fend for himself.19 The parallels with rogue states are only too obvious. In more scholarly writing ‘rogue’ has predictably been applied most often to assorted criminals, with Britain, Ireland, America and Australia each contributing its cast of characters.20 This criminal connotation may be relevant to states too: some of the sins committed by rogue countries can be regarded as criminal in nature. The ‘rogue’ label has, however, also been used in a complimentary fashion to depict a soldier known for his unusual, often heroic, exploits.21 Examples of the application of ‘rogue’ to a domestic political scene are rare.22 The contemporary political use of the term rogue is reserved largely for states accused of unbecoming conduct. True, several other uncomplimentary labels, some very familiar, were also in circulation in the 1990s, such as ‘outlaws’,23 ‘weapon states’,24 ‘backlash states’,25 ‘mavericks’,26 ‘renegades’,27 ‘recalcitrant states’,28 ‘villains’, ‘scoundrels’ or ‘thugs’,29 ‘defiant dictatorships’,30 ‘desperadoes’31 and, as we have already noted, ‘pariahs’.32 None of these alternative designations achieved the same popularity as ‘rogues’. Even though the Clinton administration – the principal exponent of what has been termed a rogue strategy – decided in mid-2000 to abandon the


pejorative term ‘rogue’ in favour of the more clinical ‘states of concern’, the former has since still been used widely by American policymakers and commentators.33 But even if the label changed, the state transgressions involved have remained the same.

The rise of rogue states The origins of the rogue state concept are shrouded in controversy. Klare is the foremost proponent of the view that ‘a new class of regional Third World powers’ – states with large military forces and the inclination to dominate weaker countries nearby – which emerged in the 1980s, ‘was chosen to replace the fading Soviet empire in Pentagon analyses of the global threat environment’. Although none of the new enemy type – which included Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Libya – could on its own pose a Soviet-style global threat, US military planners were said to believe that a group of ‘rogue states’ may well do so, especially when their growing arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were taken into account. The discovery (or even invention) of a new enemy, it was suggested, provided the American military establishment with the justification for maintaining a large defence budget.34 Scores of American and other Western analysts and commentators depicted rogue states as a new generation of mostly dangerous delinquent countries.35 Litwak took a less cynical view than Klare, tracing the immediate origins of America’s rogue state policy to the inauguration of the State Department’s ‘terrorist list’. It contained the names of countries officially designated as supporters of terrorism by the Secretary of State under the Export Administration Act of 1979. This heightened concern with terrorism as an instrument of state policy continued throughout the 1980s. In 1985, for instance, President Ronald Reagan branded Iran, Libya, North Korea, Cuba and Nicaragua as ‘outlaw governments who are sponsoring international terrorism against our nation’.36 In the same decade the pursuit of WMD became a second distinguishing feature of this supposedly new type of menacing countries.37 Although the 1980s were a ‘crucial formative period’ for the rogue state concept, its development into what has variously been termed a policy, doctrine and strategy gained impetus after the Cold War. An early event that seemed to confirm the emergence of a group of dangerous states, was Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and the subsequent Gulf War. Not only had Iraq committed an act of flagrant aggression against a neighbouring state – thus displaying expansionist ambitions – but it was also a regional power possessing various types of WMD. The rogue state policy was further shaped by America’s dual containment strategy against Iraq and Iran after the Gulf War. The strategy derived from the US assessment that the two governments were


hostile to American interests in the Gulf region and hence had to be contained.38 In acquiring the status of a doctrine or strategy, the notion of rogue states differed fundamentally from those of pariah or outcast countries. The latter, as used in the 1970s and 1980s, were mainly popular labels of disapproval applied to authoritarian anti-communist regimes. But like the other two concepts, rogue state had no standing in international law and lacked a clear and commonly accepted definition. The rogue state doctrine had consequently from the outset proved controversial and confusing at the conceptual level and conflictual in the political arena. The difficulties that international organizations and individual states had in the past in identifying and dealing with outcast and pariah states in a consistent and coherent fashion, were later repeated with regard to so-called rogue countries.39 A detailed exposition of the Clinton administration’s rogue state policy was provided by Anthony Lake, the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, in 1994. In an oft-quoted article in Foreign Affairs,40 Lake considered why and how the US should deal with what he termed ‘backlash states’ (but other policymakers commonly referred to as rogue countries). As the sole superpower, Lake maintained, the US carried a special responsibility ‘for developing a strategy to neutralize, contain and, through selective pressure, perhaps eventually transform these backlash states into constructive members of the international community’. Lake accused such countries of a ‘recalcitrant commitment to remain on the wrong side of history’ by maintaining authoritarian regimes, aspiring to (or even acquiring) WMD, behaving aggressively and defiantly, and displaying a ‘chronic inability to engage constructively with the outside world’. Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Cuba were identified by Lake as backlash states requiring the attention of the US. These countries constituted what could be regarded as the Clinton administration’s ‘declaratory list of rogue states’.41 Other observers attributed a longer register of rogues to US policymakers, including also Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Burma and Yugoslavia.42 Of course not all designated rogue states of the late 20th century were products of the post-Cold War world. Cuba and North Korea, among others, had a history of errant behaviour dating back to the Cold War era. We should record that the US has not escaped the rogue label itself. Those that the Americans tarred with the rogue brush and also other critics of the rogue state policy questioned whether the US was ‘morally fit’ to determine which states should be condemned to rogue status.43 The common answer was that Washington failed to qualify on account of its roguish conduct abroad (and, according to some critics, at home too). Among the many charges levelled against the US were that it gave unrelenting support to Israel, including backing for the Jewish state during its bloody invasion and occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s and in its more


recent suppression of the Palestinian uprising; subverted Nicaragua in the 1980s and refused to heed a ruling of the World Court over its actions against that country; indirectly aided right-wing paramilitaries in Colombia through generous funding for the Pastrana government in the 1990s; supported Turkey despite the latter’s genocidal campaign against its Kurdish minority; backed Indonesia when the Suharto government engaged in brutal domestic repression, especially of the people of the illegally occupied East Timor; bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan in 1998, mistaking it for a terrorist target but failed to apologize for the error; remained unwilling to support the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention; refused to become a party to the Rome Statute of the new International Criminal Court, and renounced the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change.44 When in later chapters we consider the US’s vanguard role in prosecuting and punishing perceived wrongdoers among states and other delinquents, it is worth remembering that the Americans cannot claim an unblemished record in complying with some of the very codes of conduct they accuse others of infringing. It is, however, not unknown that warriors defending higher causes abroad have chequered records themselves. The universal moral crusade against apartheid is a classic example: it included not only impeccable upholders of human rights like the Scandinavian states, but also African dictatorships and communist tyrannies. A demand for moral absolutism would disqualify the vast majority of states from acting in support of widely acknowledged rules of behaviour. Also, the wrongs of the US (and others defending international standards) cannot excuse or justify the manifest transgressions of rogue states and other errant countries.

Implications of America’s rogue state policy The way in which the US in the Clinton era treated so-called rogue states held far-reaching implications for America’s foreign relations and for the way in which the wider international community dealt with delinquent behaviour by individual states. A first point worth emphasizing is that rogue states were condemned to this status because of their offensive external behaviour, especially their pursuit of WMD, support for international terrorism and threats to US or allied interests in vital regions. Cuba was a conspicuous exception in this regard. (The Clinton administration ‘only episodically’ included Cuba on its roster of rogue states.)45 The pariah states of old had, by contrast, found themselves at odds with the international community, or at least a sizeable segment thereof, on the basis of their unacceptable internal conduct (gross human rights violations by authoritarian governments) in the first instance. Second, the preoccupation with external conduct to the virtual exclusion of states’ domestic behaviour has meant that countries violating human


rights norms have escaped much of the stigmatizing and punishment visited upon states cited for offensive international conduct. (A rogue state roster based on countries’ treatment of their own citizens would of course have been far longer than Washington’s ‘operative’ list, including also a good many US allies among the developing countries.)46 Was it fair, many critics asked, to brand Libya (to name one example) a rogue state but not China or Burma? Or were some rules of behaviour more important and more worthy of enforcement than others? These questions point to a third important feature, namely ‘political selectivity and glaring inconsistencies’ in the US’s rogue state policy. Why, for instance, condemn Cuba to the class of demonized states while omitting Syria despite its repeated inclusion in the State Department’s own terrorist list and its suspected pursuit of WMD? The answer, of course, was that Washington needed Syria’s cooperation in trying to resolve the Middle East conflict, something that could hardly be expected of a Syria relegated to rogue status. Reasons of pragmatism rather than principle also explained China’s exclusion from the American rogue’s gallery. Such practices confirmed the political rather than legal foundation of the rogue designation and raised serious questions about the utility of the whole rogue state approach.47 Fourth, the broad consensus that successive US administrations had enjoyed at home and abroad about the containment of Soviet power, did not exist with regard to rogue countries. One reason was that the rogue state designation ‘reflects, specifically, the policy preferences of the United States as the post-Cold War era’s preeminent power’. Another was that this unflattering label was ‘analytically soft and quintessentially political’.48 There were no objective criteria, based on international law, for identifying and punishing rogue behaviour. Outside the American political culture, ‘rogue state’ was moreover an alien concept. As French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine noted, there is no translation for rogue state in French. ‘It’s not a geopolitical category we use’, he explained.49 It then became easy to see this US political term as ‘simply shorthand for a small group of states threatening American interests in key regions’.50 It is, however, fair to say that policy differences between proponents and opponents of the rogue state doctrine did not in the first instance flow from disagreements over the extent to which rogues represented a threat to their neighbours and to Western interests. The issue that really divided them, concerned the most appropriate ways in which to change rogue countries’ offensive behaviour. Whereas Americans showed a marked preference for coercive measures, the Europeans were inclined to favour persuasion and inducement. Such differences were pronounced with regard to Iran, Libya and Cuba. (See the later case studies.) Its determination to have rogue states punished, also placed the US at odds with its allies in such international forums as the G8, the Organization of American States and


the UN.51 Domestically, a major point of criticism levelled against the rogue state policy was indeed that it ‘incurs high political costs with U.S. allies that outweigh its utility’.52 Matters were unlikely to improve with President George W Bush’s denunciation of North Korea, Iraq, Iran and their ‘terrorist allies’ as members of an ‘axis of evil’.53 The Europeans lost no time in making it plain to the Americans that they were as uneasy with this new designation – and the policies likely to flow from it – as with the rogue state concept. Fifth, America’s rogue state policy under Clinton took a disparate group of states ‘and essentially demonizes them for purposes of political mobilization.’ Demonization was merely an expression of the traditional American propensity to depict international relations as ‘a moral struggle between forces of good and evil’.54 A foreign leader, usually the target of demonization, then became ‘the chief enemy of the [American] state’. This produced a veritable American ‘rogue’s gallery’, ranging from George III and Kaiser Wilhelm through Adolf Hitler to Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein.55 Mobilization, in turn, was aimed at drumming up support within the US and abroad for tough action against rogue states.56 Yet, as we have noted, the mobilization strategy had precious little success in getting America’s allies in Europe, Japan and Canada on side. As for disparities among the rogues, this feature was often overlooked amid the passion with which the US tried to persecute them as a group. Such has been the obsession with rogue states and their leaders that the US was depicted as suffering from ‘rogue rage’57 or ‘rogue mania’.58 Rogues like North Korea have been perceived by American policy-makers as either ‘bad’ or ‘mad’ or both. The ‘bad’ perspective assumed that a rogue country ‘pursues alien objectives which are normatively anathema to the rest of the “civilized” international system’. Motivated by belligerence and malevolence, such a state’s domestic and foreign policies were attributed to ‘evil intent’, hence its resort to aggression abroad and repression at home. Not only were such delinquent countries ‘outside the pale of the global community’, but some were seen as unredeemable. Whereas the ‘bad’ thesis presumed a rational, instrumental actor displaying strategic intentionality, the ‘mad’ perspective presumed ‘an irrational actor, unknowable, unpredictable and dangerous because of the underlying ill intent of its leadership’.59 Sixth, the countries that featured on the Clinton administration’s rogue state roster were notable for their ‘weak and marginalized status’ in world affairs, displaying a vast asymmetry of power vis-à-vis the US. There was no great power among the core group of rogues, even though China’s domestic conduct qualified it for such status. The nature of the threats posed by rogue states was therefore of an entirely different order to that of the old Soviet Union.60 Seventh, the lumping together of a disparate group of countries as if they constituted ‘a distinct class of states in the post-Cold War international


system’ and their accompanying demonization created strategic inflexibility for the US (and any others subscribing to the rogue state doctrine). Having condemned countries to rogue status – which for Simons meant they were ‘shunned, feared and hated’, with no rights or protection in law nor deserving common decency61 – it may prove very difficult to pursue differentiated policies towards them when circumstances warranted. How, for instance, could the US justify (not least to its own people) having relations with a demonized state? Instead, the Clinton administration had for most of the time been pushed towards a ‘one-size-fits-all strategy of containment and isolation’. Another problem was removing a state, once branded a rogue, from the blacklist after it had undergone successful resocialization and was ready to rejoin the international fold. These very difficulties, specifically with regard to US dealings with North Korea under Kim Jong Il, contributed to the eventual abandonment of the rogue concept in favour of the seemingly less restrictive (and also less pejorative and emotive) notion of ‘states of concern’. The latter concept was, incidentally, not new: in negotiating with its former partners on setting up a successor organization to the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM), which was formally ended in March 1994, the Clinton administration tried unsuccessfully to have Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Libya designated as ‘states of concern’ with regard to weapons proliferation.62

Bush II: confronting the axis of evil ‘States of concern’ was not a designation that caught on in Washington, least of all in the Bush administration that took office in January 2001. The concerns identified by Clinton were, however, shared by his successor, only far more intensely so. And instead of opting for milder labels for delinquent states, the Bush administration has continued using the ‘rogue’ designation and added another highly emotive and pejorative categorization, namely ‘axis of evil’. Bush has furthermore proposed a drastic and highly contentious plan of action to counter the perceived dangers facing the US and its allies. The National Security Strategy for the United States of America, unveiled in September 2002, asserted that ‘new deadly challenges have emerged from rogue states and terrorists’. Although lacking the sheer destructive power of America’s erstwhile Soviet adversary, ‘the nature and motivations of these new adversaries, their determination to obtain destructive powers hitherto available only to the world’s strongest states, and the greater likelihood that they will use weapons of mass destruction against us, make today’s security environment more complex and dangerous’, according to the Strategy.63 Earlier Bush had branded North Korea, Iran and Iraq and their ‘terrorist allies’ as an ‘axis of evil’ threatening world peace. States like


these, Bush insisted, sought WMD and could provide such arms to terrorists.64 Accordingly, ‘our greatest fear is that terrorists will find a shortcut to their mad ambitions when an outlaw regime supplies them with the technologies to kill on a massive scale’, in Bush’s words.65 The targets, he said, could be the US or it allies.66 Vowing that the US would not allow terrorists and their dangerous state sponsors ‘to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons’,67 Bush proposed what amounted to a doctrine of pre-emptive attack. In June 2002 the President declared that ‘the war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge’.68 This option was elaborated in the above-mentioned National Security Strategy. ‘Given the goals of rogue states and terrorists, the United States can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past’, the military planners maintained. ‘The inability to deter a potential attacker, the immediacy of today’s threats, and the magnitude of potential harm that could be caused by our adversaries’ choice of weapons, do not permit that option. We cannot let our enemies strike first.’ To forestall or prevent such hostile acts – even if the time and place of enemy attacks remained uncertain – ‘the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively’.69 While the Bush administration pledged to seek the support of the international community in defending the US and its interests at home and abroad, ‘we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of selfdefense by acting preemptively’ against terrorists and their sponsors.70 This statement, contained in the National Security Strategy of 2002, was mild compared with Bush’s bellicose rhetoric. Barely a week after 11 September 2001, he issued a blunt warning: ‘Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime’.71 The President later reiterated that ‘(a)ll nations that decide for aggression and terror will pay a price.’72 What, then, are the implications of these views for dealing with errant behaviour in contemporary world politics? It is, first, again states’ objectionable behaviour in the domain of high politics – endangering international security – through WMD and terrorism that qualifies them for Bush’s roster of rogues or his axis of evil. It follows, in the second place, that their domestic political orders (notably the state of human rights) are of lesser concern to Washington than their policies regarding terrorism and doomsday weapons. Thirdly selectivity and inconsistency mark Washington’s responses to the designated members of the axis of evil. Why should Iraq be treated far more harshly than North Korea? And does Iran merit inclusion on the same roll of dishonour as Iraq and North Korea? A fourth familiar problem is the glaring lack of international consensus on both the


designation of an axis of evil and on the ways of responding to perceived threats. Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive attack has thus far found precious little international support. Fifthly, if Bush’s notion of an axis of evil was designed to drum up domestic and external support for an American military attack on Iraq, it has certainly not produced any early successes abroad and exposed deep divisions within American society on war against Iraq. Sixth, the US may again create strategic inflexibility for itself by grouping states together under the rubric of rogues or members of an axis of evil. Washington’s difficulties in explaining both domestically and internationally its differentiated responses to North Korea and Iraq, not to mention Iran, illustrate the point. Finally, it must be added that Bush’s emphasis on the threats posed by terrorist groups represents some advance on Clinton’s restrictive focus on roguish behaviour by states. Nonetheless, scholars trying to understand errant state behaviour in world politics will find Bush’s twin designations of rogue states and an axis of evil of little analytical utility.

Conclusion The terms ‘pariah’, ‘outcast’ and ‘rogue’ were colourful metaphors for depicting states that behaved badly and deserved to be shunned by other respectable members of international society. But because none had a fixed meaning nor any standing in international law, the three concepts were used with abandon and acquired slogan-like qualities in politics and journalism. As analytical tools they were weak, especially ‘pariah’ and ‘outcast’. America’s rogue state concept had far more substance, acquiring the status of a policy or strategy, but it too had its defects. Nonetheless, the popularity of the rogue state notion in the 1990s had the benefit of highlighting the fact that the end of the Cold War was not quite the end of history and the dawn of a new era of global communality based on universally upheld codes of state conduct. As in the heyday of pariah states, there are still countries determined to challenge major international codes of behaviour. By focusing on selected aspects of external conduct, Clinton’s rogue state policy as well as Bush’s notion of an axis of evil have taken a very narrow view of what constituted internationally unacceptable state behaviour. Proponents and practitioners of these policies ignored or at best underplayed several other features of state conduct – both domestically and internationally – that violated widely accepted standards of conduct. Also, the restriction of rogue status to states meant that delinquent behaviour among non-state actors was ignored. The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, among the most roguish of actions imaginable, underscored the need to include non-state actors among the delinquents. Neither the earlier notion of pariahhood nor Clinton’s more elaborate rogue state doctrine nor Bush’s axis of evil offers an appropriate analytical


structure for studying the full spectrum of offensive behaviour by states and non-state actors (other than terrorist groups). There is consequently a need for a framework not encumbered by the political preferences of its creators, the fuzziness of concepts, and an old-style statecentredness. It is to this task that we now turn.

2 Deviant Actors in World Politics: an Analytical Framework

In devising an alternative framework for the analysis of errant behaviour in world politics, our point of departure is the self-evident truth that organized societies, from a local hiking club to the community of states, conduct their affairs according to rules. Whether written or unwritten, rules bring order, regularity and predictability to the activities of the groups. These norms or standards of behaviour prescribe ways in which things should be done, or proscribe what may not be done. Rules typically also provide for punishment in the case of violations. Rule-breakers may suffer consequences ranging from mild censure to expulsion from the group. So too with states, several of which have over the years been banished from the international fold over their delinquent behaviour, while others have suffered nothing more than a polite rebuke from their peers. It must be noted at the outset that norm conformity – as opposed to norm violation – is as much the standard in states’ international behaviour as it is in the domestic conduct of individual citizens. There are compelling reasons for states and individuals alike to respect codes of conduct. Among other things, such observance ‘is psychologically fulfilling, efficient, and carries the rewards of compliance and avoids the punishments of deviance’.1 Even so, there have always been states – like individual human beings – finding justifications for infringing standards of behaviour that others expected them to uphold.

Theories of deviance To help us understand the phenomenon of rule-breaking behaviour in organized societies, we turn to sociological theories of deviance. Although focused on the individual person as rule-breaker, these theories also speak to the behaviour of states and non-state groups. True to social science tradition, sociologists remain deeply divided over the definition of deviant behaviour. Since there is no need for us to join what Downes and Rock called the sometimes ‘factious, partisan, and combative’ scholarly debate,2 13


we will simply select some appropriate modern sociological perspectives on deviance. (These emerged during the 1960s and can be distinguished from traditional perspectives.3) Becker, a path-breaker among modern sociologists, observed that all social groups make rules and attempt to enforce them. Social rules ‘define situations and the kinds of behavior appropriate to them, specifying some actions as “right” and forbidding others as “wrong”’. Persons violating group rules are judged by others ‘to be deviant and thus to stand outside the circle of “normal” members of the group’. Some rules may be formally enacted into law, in which case police power may be used to enforce them. Others may be no more than informal agreements, whether newly created or ‘encrusted with the sanction of age and tradition’.4 Just how far ‘outside’ a person is, varies from case to case. Someone who commits a traffic offence or gets drunk at a party is typically regarded as ‘not very different from the rest of us’ and the infraction is treated leniently. A thief, regarded as ‘less like us’, may be punished severely. When it comes to crimes such as murder, rape or treason, the violator is viewed as a ‘true outsider’. Some rule-breakers, in turn, will not think that they have been judged unjustly. A traffic violator, for instance, usually subscribes to the rules he or she has broken. An uncompromising response by deviants such as drug addicts, is to ‘develop full-blown ideologies explaining why they are right and why those who disapprove of and punish them are wrong’. Others labelled as ‘outsiders’ go to the extreme of rejecting the rule by which they are judged and denying that those who judge them are either competent or legitimately entitled to do so.5 A central fact about deviance in general is that it is created by society: ‘social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders’ (original emphasis). From this perspective ‘deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an “offender”’ (original emphasis). Put differently, ‘deviant behavior is behavior that people so label’; whether an act is deviant depends on how others respond to it. 6 Like beauty, deviance is in the eye of the beholder: ‘it exists because some groups decide that other groups ought not to be doing what they are’. 7 More than that, rule-breaking behaviour constitutes deviance when it ‘excites some disapproval, anger, or indignation’8 which may of course result in a form of punishment.9 Against this background political deviance can be defined as direct and explicit acts that ‘challenge the social order’. A political deviant is likely to be characterized as someone who is irresponsible, unwilling to ‘play the game’ by the established rules, stigmatized, and dishonoured, and may be labelled a ‘pariah’. 10 Clearly these observations have a bearing on domestic and international politics too.

Deviant Actors in World Politics 15

There may be considerable variation in responses to acts of nonconformity to social norms. First, there can be differences over time, which means that a ‘deviant’ act may be treated much more leniently at one time than at another. This could apply to such acts as gambling, drug addiction, abortion and homosexuality. The reverse process may conceivably also occur, leading to less rather than more tolerance of ‘deviant’ behaviour over time. A second variable is the identity of those committing an act of deviance. ‘Rules tend to be applied more to some persons than others’, e.g. poor rather than rich or blacks instead of whites.11 In the context of world politics, behaviour would acquire a deviant character when it prompts the disapproval, anger or indignation of the international community at large (typically expressed through multilateral organizations), groups of states, a dominant power, or non-governmental organizations and individuals prominent on the global political stage. Deviant conduct may invite more than verbal censure, extending to tangible punitive measures such as diplomatic and economic sanctions. As an amendment to the foregoing theoretical perspectives, we will distinguish between two types of deviants. Substantive international disapproval sets ‘true’ deviants – be they states or non-state actors – apart from ‘nominal’ deviants. The latter manifestly violate common standards of behaviour, yet largely escape international censure and punishment. Following Becker, we can indeed say that rules tend to be applied more to some states than others. We also see in world politics that some forms of deviance, especially human rights violations, are treated more severely (albeit still selectively) than ever before. The sociology of deviance furthermore reminds us that social rules are the creation of specific social groups. ‘Modern societies are not simple organizations in which everyone agrees on what the rules are and how they are to be applied in specific situations.’ Instead, societies are ‘highly differentiated’ along class, ethnic, occupational and cultural lines. The problems they face in dealing with their environment and the history and traditions they carry with them result in groups often not sharing the same rules. This causes disagreement about the kinds of behaviour considered proper in any given situation.12 One should therefore be careful to define deviance only in terms of normative standards elevated to the status of ‘the common culture’, as Parsons did,13 or to limit the term – as sociologists commonly do – to what ‘the public’ regards as objectionable behaviour.14 Since there are in practice many cultures and publics, nonconformity may amount to the transgression of standards set by a subgroup or subculture, not those of society as a whole.15 This holds true for international politics too. The world’s 6.2 billion people, living in nearly 200 states, belong to some 6,000 cultures (measured by spoken languages) and practice more than a dozen major religions.16 Given the variety of value systems underpinning much of this diversity,


achieving global consensus on acceptable standards of state behaviour can be a tall order. Not surprisingly, some scholars have asserted that ‘it is more than probable that no single code of conduct will ever be accepted by, or successfully imposed upon, all the communities of the Great Society’.17 A more nuanced view allows for different levels of consensus. Thio distinguishes between higher- and lower-consensus deviance. The former behaviour ‘is generally serious enough to earn a comparatively great amount of public consensus that it is really deviant’ (e.g. armed robbery), whereas the latter ‘is generally less serious and thus receives a lesser degree of public consensus on its deviant reality’ (e.g. tax evasion).18 A similar hierarchy could apply to world politics. Transnational terrorism, for instance, is widely regarded as a far more serious offence than the illegal hunting of whales. We could add a third category, namely non-consensual deviance, to refer to acts deemed deviant by a single state whose narrow or parochial interests are at stake. Such deviance would only be of interest if the offended country was a reasonably respectable international citizen carrying some weight in world affairs. (A minor squabble between neigbouring authoritarian states in Africa, for example, would be excluded from consideration, but the US conflict with Cuba would be relevant for us.) Persons feeling that they are being judged by rules that they had no hand in shaping, may reject rules imposed by outsiders. This applies commonly to young people rebelling against rules imposed by their elders, or women objecting to rules made for them by men.19 In international politics, Western powers have often been accused by developing countries (and previously by the communist bloc too) of prescribing their standards to alien societies. Differences in the ability to make rules and apply them to other people, Becker wrote, ‘are essentially power differentials’. Groups whose social position gives them ‘weapons and power’ are best able to enforce their rules. Distinctions of age, sex, ethnicity, and class, Becker recorded, are all related to differences in power, ‘which accounts for differences in the degree to which groups so distinguished can make rules for others’.20 One implication is that ‘social power’ can determine who defines who as ‘deviant’.21 Another is that powerful actors may enjoy greater ‘deviant opportunity’ than the powerless and also encounter less social control than their weaker counterparts.22 The contentious relationship between rules and power in world politics is discussed in the next section. It should be stressed that deviance – whether involving individuals, groups or states – ‘is not an unchanging or immutable condition with intrinsic or inherent qualities’.23 Deviance after all flows from dynamic interaction between many different actors – and both the actors and their relationships are subject to change. To some observers the designations ‘deviance’ and ‘deviant’ may appear hardly less uncomplimentary than ‘pariah’, ‘outcast’ and ‘rogue’. But whereas


the latter are popular, emotive labels, ‘deviance’ is an established sociological concept well grounded in theory. Our excursion into this theory has directed us to three basic elements that should feature in a study of what we will call deviant behaviour in world politics: social codes, rule-breakers, and rule-defenders.

The meaning of international norms To develop the first of these components for use in our study, we turn to the scholarly literature on the role of norms in international politics. The traditional positivist bias in the discipline has led scholars to believe that their task was to ‘explain events in world politics through the use of covering laws which are grounded, in the final instance, in observable factual data’ (original emphasis).24 We, however, join the growing number of students of world politics who acknowledge that explanations of political behaviour will be deficient if they fail to consider the ‘internal’ norms of actors being studied as well as the ‘external’ norms that affect their policy choices. Norms, we therefore accept, are important variables that should not be overlooked when trying to explain international affairs.25 A growing range of activities between but also within states is indeed being regulated by contemporary norms, some of which (as in the field of human rights) have developed into veritable international regimes.26 Even so, the present study remains largely in the ‘mainstream tradition’ of international relations rather than falling in the domain of normative theory. Such questions as whether a particular norm is worthy of support, what action in support of the norm would be justified, and how the norm ought to be understood in relation to other norms,27 fall outside the scope of this inquiry. Although some scholars draw a distinction between the two,28 we will regard rules and norms as synonymous. The word ‘norm’ is after all derived from the Latin ‘norma’, which means ‘rule’. As for a precise definition, the term ‘norm’ has the reputation of being ‘vague and fuzzy’29 – not least because this particular field of academic inquiry holds a powerful attraction for scholars worshipping the familiar ‘cult of obscurity’ that manifests in unintelligible prose.30 It is nonetheless possible to distinguish two classic meanings of norms. Applied to international norms, the first refers to ‘the normal, usual or customary practices of states’.31 The alternative approach, which we will follow, defines norms in terms of expectations, values and behaviour.32 Katzenstein and Legro, for instance, presented norms as collective expectations or understandings of the ‘proper behavior’ of actors.33 To be true, the latter conceptualization is not new; some years before scholarly interest in international norms became fashionable, Cohen defined rules (his preferred term) as ‘expectations of right conduct in defined circumstances’.34 From these definitions it emerges that the ‘essence of the


distinctiveness of a norm’ is to be found in ‘the sense of “ought”, of how an actor should behave’ (original emphasis).35 When one takes the view that ‘norm means normative’ (original emphasis), issues of justice and rights of a moral or ethical character invariably arise.36 It should be acknowledged, though, that not all norms are ‘moral’ since the standards they lay down may have ‘functional and nonethical origins and purposes’. In judging such norms, considerations of practicality, utility and feasibility come into play.37 How do norms emerge? Two mechanisms that can start a norm are dominance and reputation. Dominance is where a handful of very powerful actors promote a particular standard of behaviour; their ability to punish defections helps to ensure norm conformity. The powerful few may also resort to establishing a ‘metanorm’, which decrees that ‘one must punish those who do not punish a defection’ (for instance, the US’s extra-territorial legislation affecting Cuba, Iran and Libya – a topic considered in the later case studies). The second is a reputational mechanism, for example keeping one’s promises.38 Either way, ‘a norm cascading effect’ could set in once a ‘critical mass’ of states have accepted a norm.39 International norms are usually promoted not only by states but also by transnational ‘moral entrepreneurs’ (or ‘norm entrepreneurs’). These nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) mobilize popular opinion and political support within their own or host countries and abroad. In the area of human rights, to take one example, the ‘advocacy networks’, as they have also been called, serve three purposes: they place norm-violating states on the international agenda by raising moral consciousness; they legitimate the claims of domestic opponents against norm-violating governments, and they challenge these errant governments by exerting pressure on them.40 Esteemed individuals like Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama, Jimmy Carter and Nelson Mandela can also serve as norm entrepreneurs, especially in the field of human rights. South Africa had to contend with a loose, informal coalition of governments, NGOs and individuals that comprised the transnational anti-apartheid movement and ‘globalized’ concern over the country’s racial policies. This international campaign against apartheid in South Africa points to an important phenomenon identified by Klotz: ‘even within the modern state system, weak states and non-state actors have power, a power that is ignored by analyses that focus on military coercion and market incentives alone’.41 International norms are expressed in various forms, including tacit rules, rules contained in the spirit of formal agreements, non-binding agreements, and international treaties. Our focus will be on ‘constitutive treaties’ or conventions, i.e. those establishing a special regime or an international institution. Such instruments ‘create rights and obligations under international law which non-parties cannot ignore’. By laying down ‘rules of general application’, these are known as ‘law-making’ treaties and conven-


tions.42 In the case of such instruments, which create obligations erga omnes, no country can claim that it has no legal responsibilities under conventions not signed. (Recall that white-ruled South Africa’s non-signature of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent international human rights instruments did not absolve it of responsibility for upholding human rights.) International law, it follows, is another critical repository of norms, consisting as it does of rules that have achieved a measure of solemnity and permanence. We should likewise acknowledge international organizations as a primary vehicle for proclaiming, institutionalizing and legitimizing global norms.43 It is a feature of norms that they are frequently contested, i.e. in competition with other often incompatible norms. When it is argued that a norm constitutes a ‘legitimate behavioral claim’ (original emphasis),44 it must be remembered that the legitimacy may not be universal; even widely acknowledged norms may be challenged by a number of states subscribing to rival norms. We should at the same time recognize the apparent ‘convergence of beliefs and norms in the international community’ since the end of the Cold War.45 This has given rise to the notion of a ‘universal morality’46 or a ‘global moral community’. In upholding these global standards, a critical role is being played by transnational civil society, of which the environmental movement and a host of human rights NGOs are familiar components.47 While there has indeed been remarkable progress in moves to universalize certain norms, our later case studies will reveal that contravening or at least challenging norms remains a serious problem. Because norms are not cast in stone, their standing may change. This can occur in a surprisingly short time, as with the intolerance of colonial dependency that took hold in just two decades after World War II, following many centuries of colonialism.48 Alternatively, norms may ‘wax and wane over time’.49 Changes in the structure of power in the world, as when the Cold War ended, can be expected to affect the standing of particular international norms. Those regulating human rights and weapons of mass destruction have no doubt been strengthened. The strength of norms may vary. Some proscriptive norms are strong enough to be treated as a taboo, i.e. ‘an unwritten and uncodified prohibitionary norm’. Best known is that which proclaims, since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that nuclear weapons should not be used, especially not against non-nuclear states.50 Non-intervention and the general prohibition on the use of force are examples of international rules whose sustained and widespread acceptance makes them ‘robust’ norms.51 Then there are norms that prohibit, both in international law and in the criminal laws of states, the participation of state and non-state actors in specific activities. Both the substance of these norms and the processes by which they are enforced are institutionalized in ‘global prohibition regimes’. Examples of acts prohibited by such global norms are piracy, slavery, counterfeiting of national


currencies, international drug trafficking, prostitution, and the development and proliferation of nuclear, biological, chemical and other weapons of mass destruction. The killing of whales, elephants and other endangered species, tax evasion, money laundering, poor labour standards, the use of anti-personnel land mines, the recruitment of child soldiers, and trade in ‘blood’ diamonds are among the unacceptable practices becoming the subject of increasingly powerful international norms.52 Most of the norms under investigation in this study belong to what Frost termed the settled body of norms in international relations. A norm can be regarded as ‘settled’, Frost argued, ‘where it is generally recognized that any argument denying the norm (or which appears to override the norm) requires special justification’. Such norms are based on a set of substantive commitments, not merely ‘a “thin” raft of consensus’. This does not mean, Frost added, that most states in practice obey settled norms. The fact that many countries infringe the rule of non-interference in states’ domestic affairs, for instance, does not detract from its status as a settled norm. Other settled norms identified by Frost include the proscription of the extension of a state’s sovereignty by subjugating others by force; the preferment of democratic institutions to non-democratic arrangements, and the protection of human rights.53 Some of the norms we will be dealing with are, however, ‘non-settled’ (to coin a term), because they simply represent a single major power’s expectations of proper behaviour by others. An example of such an informal, often implicit, parochial norm is Washington’s expectation that especially small countries should avoid overt anti-Americanism, instead paying due deference to the world’s sole superpower. The foregoing discussion leads us to the observance of international norms. The question is not whether norms matter in international politics – they clearly do – but how much and when?54 We have already noted that the global recognition of a norm does not necessarily mean that it is universally observed. As in the past, there is presently a handful of ‘nonconforming’ states that defy international expectations of proper conduct – even if they had formally approved the norms in contention. Iraq, Iran and North Korea, three of our case studies, are included in this category. Also among countries that are generally ‘norm-supportive’,55 we find what Herrmann and Shannon called ‘variation in normative enactment’.56 At a theoretical level we can begin to explain this fact of international life in the context of national interest. Traditional realists adopt a rationalist view in terms of which states will abide by international norms when it serves their national interests, and conversely transgress norms when compliance militates against their interests. In the neoliberal perspective norms are ‘utility maximizers’ that allow states, as rational actors, to achieve their interests more effectively. Norms therefore have an independent impact on state behaviour. In constructivist thinking, norm compliance becomes a


matter of perceived national interest as a state’s leaders internalize norms. Constructivism offers the further helpful insight that there is nothing immutable about national interests. Accordingly, ‘states can change in terms of the acceptance of new norms, values, and perceptions of their national interests’ and be socialized into upholding rules of proper behaviour. This learning process, according to the constructivist approach, could take place if a country imitated other respectable states; received rewards for conforming to international norms; experienced ridicule for noncompliance; or was subjected to diplomatic and economic pressures.57 On this view, then, national interest may well be compatible with the common good as expressed in universal standards of acceptable state behaviour. The notion that state action can only be described as ethical ‘if motives are absolutely pure and untainted by self-interest’, Brown observed, ‘is bizarre, and unsupported by any plausible moral philosophy’.58 National interest, especially from a realist perspective, cannot be divorced from power. This variable, the theory of deviance has already reminded us, is a major factor in explaining the observance or nonobservance of norms. It is reasonable to expect – all things being equal – that small powers would be more compliant than large ones owing to the latters’ ‘sheer ability to violate or withstand punishment’. Contrast, for example, the US’s ability to intervene in Panama in 1989 without serious international repercussions, with Iraq’s costly invasion of Kuwait a decade later.59 In this regard Papp’s observation is apt: ‘In both moral and legal senses might may not make right, but it does influence outcomes’.60 But having said that, leaders of even the greatest powers have mostly perceived themselves as being ‘constrained by principles, norms, and rules that prescribe and proscribe varieties of behavior’.61 If they opportunistically broke international rules, these heavyweights too risked long-term costs in terms of diminished prestige and influence, loss of others’ trust, and retaliation by the victims of their transgressions.62 This point is widely acknowledged, also by Hans Morgenthau, the doyen of contemporary political realists. In furthering the power objectives of their states, he wrote, leaders refuse to consider particular ends and means only because ‘certain moral rules interpose an absolute barrier’.63 Preponderant power, it should be reiterated, is not necessarily unkind to norm observance. A state could use its power advantage to promote compliance with settled norms by deterring others from breaking these rules, coercing them to comply, or punishing them for transgressions. Powerful states are furthermore in a position to determine norm hierarchies, i.e. a de facto ranking of behavioural rules to reflect the international priorities of these dominant actors. America’s rogue state strategy provides a good example: the US elevated the pursuit of WMD, support for terrorism and regional aggression to the three overriding acts of deviance in world politics. The global promotion of human rights norms, a prominent US foreign


policy goal in the wake of the Cold War, was to become subordinate to the observance of the other three rules. Washington’s so-called war on terrorism suggests a further reordering of priorities, allowing it to downplay if not ignore the violation of the nuclear non-proliferation norm by India and Pakistan. With both its rogue state policy and the offensive against terrorism the US wanted to persuade the international community in general that its norm hierarchy should become global priorities. Of course, powerful actors have no monopoly on proclaiming, promoting and prioritizing international norms. Transnational norm entrepreneurs, to which we have already referred, can play an influential role in all these respects. The emphasis on norms of behaviour should not lead to the mistaken inference that these are the sole determinant of state conduct. Political activity, as Howard pointed out, ‘takes place in a two-dimensional field – a field which can be defined by the two co-ordinates of ethics and power.’64 Niebuhr put it more forcefully: ‘Politics will, to the end of history, be an area where conscience and power meet, where the ethical and coercive factors of human life will interpenetrate and work out their tentative and uneasy compromises.’65 For Huntington ‘(d)ouble standards in practice are the unavoidable price of universalist standards of principle’.66 Writing from his practical experience in government, Brzezenski argued that ‘rigid moral consistency is not possible in a complicated world, nor is a single-minded focus on power justified in a world in which morally legitimate aspirations are the source of much political and social unrest’.67 When deciding how to deal with errant states, others have to marry judgments of desirability with assessments of feasibility. This is bound to lead to the uneasy compromises mentioned by Niebuhr and is also likely to produce selectivity and inconsistencies in action because no two situations are identical or equally susceptible to resolution through external pressure and punishment.68

Deviant states and international order It is in the nature of political deviants, we have noted, to challenge the prevailing social order. Several deviant states, our case studies will show, are deeply dissatisfied with the prevailing international order and wish to see it changed. We will apply the concept of international order to the existing distribution of power in world politics and the accompanying rules or conventions of behaviour. As Cohen pointed out, international order is not merely facilitated by rules of international interaction, but is synomous with their existence.69 It must be acknowledged at once that international orders are not neutral in their consequences for states; some may benefit more than others from existing international arrangements.70 States that view the prevailing international order as inequitable and damaging to their interests typically wish


to change the status quo. Adopting what is known as a revisionist approach, they often couch their quest for change in terms of justice – hence demands for ‘the righting of perceived distortions, inequalities and imbalances’.71 Third World states’ insistence on a New International Economic Order to replace the Western-dominated liberal order is a case in point. Several deviant states tend to attribute their international woes to the ‘unjust’ world order of the day. The notion of revisionism can be refined to make it more helpful in understanding some deviant states’ responses to international order. Orthodox revisionism, occurring within the existing framework of ideas and relations, is aimed at restoring the dissatisfied state’s previously held place or status in the international hierarchy or at least giving the challenger an improved position in the global pecking order (as with Imperial Germany and Imperial Japan before World War I and Germany again after the War). Revolutionary revisionism challenges the entire set of assumptions and organizing principles of the international system (e.g. the Soviet Union after 1917, and Libya and Iran more recently). For them, justice requires that the established order – characterized by subordination and exploitation – be overthrown or transformed. Radical revisionism, which falls between the other two forms, is geared towards both self-advantage and reform of the system (illustrated by the earlier mentioned propagation of a New International Economic Order).72 Paradoxically, many of the states taking a revisionist position on the prevailing world order are at the same time the staunchest defenders of some of its basic precepts. They cling to the ‘Westphalian normative basis’ of the sytem of states that places a higher value on the sovereign autonomy of recognized states than on the rights of individuals (vis-à-vis one another or vis-à-vis governments).73 The principle of state sovereignty and the concomitant notion of non-interference in their domestic affairs are to these countries the major preconditions for an orderly international existence.74 They object vehemently to the fashionable idea that states are not free – by virtue of their sovereignty – to (mis)treat their citizens as they please. The normative content that these supposedly revisionist states give the notion of order relates to international rather than internal justice, if by the former is meant anti-hegemonism and the like. The liberal conception of world order, with its emphasis on intra-state justice (based on democracy and human rights), is anathema to most deviant countries.75

Sins of contemporary deviant states Since the essence of deviance is the violation of norms of behaviour, we now need to establish the major international standards that contemporary deviant states are accused of infringing. As already suggested, we will go beyond the typical infractions attributed to rogue states; some of these


countries have in fact committed more derelictions than those of which the US has accused them. Many ‘non-rogue’ countries can also be charged with serious violations of international norms. Our inventory should therefore include the full spectrum of the most important contemporary acts of deviance. Although states are our principal objects of study, some of the contraventions identified here are also relevant to non-state actors. Other non-state transgressions are considered under a separate heading. Most of the sins to be recorded and the corresponding norms have been in existence long before the rogue state era of the 1990s. What has changed, is the context within which contemporary offences have occurred. The end of the Cold War, the demise of communism in Eastern Europe and the unprecedented spread of democratic rule across the globe have created greater international agreement than in the preceding four decades on rules of acceptable behaviour for actors on the world stage, and encouraged the exposure of norm-breaking behaviour to a universal audience. It is worth reiterating that the majority of the norms at issue fall into the high-consensus, settled category (as opposed to non-consensual norms). As such we are not dealing with parochial Western norms being imposed on unwilling non-Western countries. True, nearly all the transgressor states forming our principal case studies are not Western, but this does not detract from the fact that most of the norms in contention have been endorsed by states far and wide. Threats to peace The first transgression, said to have been committed by states forming the core of roguedom, is familiar: they sinned in the domain of high politics by breaking the first rule of international relations, namely posing a threat to international peace, order and security. What is new – a feature of the post-Cold War strategic environment – is that the threats emanated first and foremost from the proliferation of WMD – or doomsday weapons – to rogue states. Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and by some accounts also Syria were bent on acquiring WMD and appropriate delivery systems by either buying them or producing them locally (typically using foreign technology obtained by means fair or foul). What added to international concern, was the alleged existence of ‘loose nukes’, i.e. bombs or nuclear materials that escaped control in Russia and other successor states of the former Soviet Union. They could conceivably become available to deviant states (and terrorist organizations) on the black market.76 Whatever the source of WMD proliferation, the result would be that ‘relatively small, peripheral and backward states will be able to emerge rapidly as threats not only to regional, but to world, security’. 77 The UN Security Council echoed these views by declaring unanimously in January 1992, at the heads of states level, that WMD proliferation constituted a threat to international peace and security.


Similar concerns were expressed at the time by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and the European Union (EU).78 WMD are in popular perceptions associated with nuclear weapons, i.e. devices whose vast explosive power comes from the release of nuclear energy by means of either fission or fusion. Several other types of weapons are included under the WMD rubric. Radiological devices are composed of materials that can more easily be stolen from nuclear, industrial and research facilities than weapons-grade material needed for a nuclear bomb. Other materials required – such as cesium-137 – are widely available. These features place radiological weapons within much easier reach of WMD-aspirants, state and non-state actors alike, than nuclear weapons proper. A dirty bomb, described as ‘little more than a pipe bomb with radioactive rubbish packed into it’, is not a real ‘nuke’ but can cause a cataclysmic blast with intense radiation. 79 Another version of a dirty bomb calls for the use of conventional weapons to release radioactive material. It could be done by bombing a nuclear power reactor, whether through sabotage, rockets fired from a military aircraft or a kamikaze-style attack by a civilian aircraft. The rogue state debate has placed biological weapons – with disease as their killing mechanism (using, for instance, anthrax and botulism) – and chemical weapons – that spread poison and other toxic substances (such as VX nerve toxin, sarin and mustard gas) – under the international spotlight.80 Iraq, one of our case studies, has not only built up stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, but has actually used some of these in its recent internal and external wars. An extremist religious cult in Japan, Aum Shinrikyo, added to public awareness with its sarin (nerve agent) attack on a Tokyo subway in March 1995 in which 12 people were killed and over a thousand injured. However lethal the alternatives, the acquisition of a nuclear military capability still carries unmatched prestige.81 Finally, ballistic missiles – that could serve as delivery vehicles for nuclear, chemical and biological warheads – complete the inventory of WMD. The US is the country that has most often voiced concern over the spread of WMD. In the 1990s the Clinton administration repeatedly warned Americans and Europeans of threats to their security arising from WMD in the hands of ‘rogue states’ such as Iran and Libya.82 The bipartisan Rumsfeld Commission in 1998 similarly asserted that ‘concerted efforts by a number of overtly or potentially hostile nations to acquire ballistic missiles with biological or nuclear payloads pose a growing threat to the U.S’. North Korea and Iran were specifically mentioned as countries able to inflict ‘major destruction’ on America within five years of deciding to acquire such capabilities.83 President George W Bush gave the familiar menace a new name when, in January 2002, he first spoke of an ‘axis of evil’ consisting of North Korea, Iran and Iraq and their ‘terrorist allies’,


which threatened world peace by seeking WMD.84 All this was no mere parochial American concern; other major powers by and large shared Washington’s anxieties. At the G8 summit in France in May 2003, for instance, the assembled leaders agreed that the proliferation of WMD ‘poses a growing danger to us all’, constituting – together with international terrorism – ‘the pre-eminent threat to international security’. Particular reference was made to the proliferation implications of the nuclear programmes of North Korea and Iran.85 The international norms at issue are formal and well established. Best known is the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty of 1968 (NPT, taking effect in 1970 and extended indefinitely in 1995). By 2002 187 parties had joined the treaty, including the five nuclear-weapon states recognized under the accord. The entrenchment of the distinction between nuclear ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ has from the outset been contentious. To meet the latters’ objections about discrimination – they were expected to renounce nuclear weapons and the Big Five undertook not to proliferate such weapons to the non-possessors – the treaty obligated the nuclear powers to negotiate in good faith to achieve an early cessation of the nuclear arms race, nuclear disarmament and ‘general and complete disarmament’ (article 6). Scores of other multilateral agreements, concluded before and since the NPT, also ban the spread of nuclear weapons and the testing of such weapons. These include the Antarctic Treaty (1959), Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963), Outer Space Treaty (1967), Treaty of Tlatelolco (1967, creating a Latin American nuclear free zone), Seabed Treaty (1971), South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone (Roratonga) Treaty (1985), ASEAN Nuclear Free Zone Treaty (1996), Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (1996), Treaty of Pelindaba (1996, creating an African nuclear weapon-free zone), and the Treaty of Bangkok (1995, proclaiming a nuclear weapon-free area in Southeast Asia).86 The possession of other types of WMD is also regulated by international conventions. Building on the Geneva Convention of 1925, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and their Destruction (1972) banned, as the name suggests, the manufacture and storage of biological toxins and called for the destruction of biological weapons stocks. The Chemical Weapons Convention (1993) required that all stockpiles of chemical weapons be destroyed within ten years. Moves to end the proliferation of ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear, chemical and biological warheads led to the establishment in 1987 of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). An informal arrangement among the most advanced producers of missile-related equipment, the MTCR set a limited norm against the acquisition and diffusion of missiles, but no rules against their testing or use. 87 A comprehensive anti-proliferation strategy – encompassing all types of WMD – is


found in the G8 Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, adopted by the eight powers at their 2002 Kananaskis summit.88 Terrorism The proliferation of WMD has added ominous new dimensions to the second transgression, namely terrorism.89 US policymakers had by the mid1980s become preoccupied with what President Ronald Reagan called ‘a confederation of terrorist states’, with Cuba, Iran, Libya, Nicaragua and North Korea as the ringleaders.90 The current concern in Western capitals is not so much state terrorism but rather (non-state) terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, and their possible acquisition of WMD. Bin Laden had after all in the late 1990s spoke publicly about acquiring such a capability, portraying it as a religious duty.91 So great was the likelihood that a terrorist group would threaten or launch a chemical or biological attack against a civilian target in the next few years that it kept him ‘awake at night’, Clinton revealed in 1999.92 Such concerns informed the G8’s adoption – under their Global Partnership – of a set of principles ‘to prevent terrorists or those that harbour them’ from obtaining any WMD, related materials, equipment and technology.93 A factor that heightened the perceived terrorist threat was, paradoxically, US power. According to Presidential Decision Directive 62 of May 1998 (on combating terrorism), America’s unrivalled military superiority meant that potential enemies – whether states or terrorist groups – that chose to attack the US were more likely to resort to terror than to conventional military assault. The easier access to sophisticated technology and the trade in nuclear contraband originating in Russia, meant that the destructive power available to terrorists was moreover greater than ever. 94 It is then not surprising that President Clinton, addressing the UN General Assembly in September 1998, told world leaders that the fight against terrorism ‘is at the top of the American agenda and should be at the top of the world agenda’. 95 This statement was made a full three years before the devastating terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The latter strikes drastically increased the number of casualties caused by terrorist attacks in recents years. The US survey, Patterns of Global Terrorism,96 provided the following figures: Year

No. of attacks

People killed

People wounded

1999 2000 2001 2002

392 426 355 199

233 409 3,295 725

706 796 2,283 2,013


The information age has spawned novel forms of terrorism. A new breed is the so-called cyber-terrorist, ‘who uses lawlessness to achieve aims through the exploitation of computerised systems deployed by the target’. Cyber-terrorists’ ability to disrupt the normal economic functions of a modern state – by committing ‘cybotage’ – is reinforced by their ability to destroy popular confidence in infrastructures.97 In January 1999 Clinton identified ‘cyberattacks on our critical computer systems’ as one of two ‘new tools of destruction’ sought by terrorists targeting the US; the other was attacks with WMD.98 Information technology has also given rise to ‘network forms of organization’ that engage in ‘netwar’. Non-state actors such as transnational terrorist groups, black-market proliferators of WMD and transnational crime syndicates operate through extensive multi-organizational networks, using as their tools information and communications technologies (cellular phones, telephones, fax machines, e-mail, the worldwide web and computer conferencing). Terrorism is fast moving into violent netwar as terrorist groups use information technology to coordinate the activities of dispersed members (as distinct from formal and vertical command and control). Well before the terrorist attacks in September 2001, Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda was cited as an outstanding practitioner of terrorist netwar. Then based in Afghanistan, the movement formed a ‘complex network of relatively autonomous groups’ financed from private sources and operating transnationally. Hamas and Hezbollah are two other examples of the new generation of terrorist groups using information technology to coordinate activities and spread propaganda.99 We should not forget that terrorism can also be conducted in a more conventional fashion, including hostage-taking, the assassination of political figures and the bombing of strategic or symbolic targets (such as embassies, military installations and business corporations).100 Since 1963 the UN has developed 12 conventions against terrorism, among them the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft (1970), Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (1980), Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation (1988), International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings (1997) and the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (1999). Several regional groupings have adopted their own anti-terrorism conventions, including the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism (1977), Organization of American States Convention to Prevent and Punish Acts of Terrorism Taking the Form of Criminal Acts against Persons and Related Extortion that are of International Significance (1971), Arab Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism (1998), Organization of African Unity Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism (1999) and Convention of the Organization of the Islamic Conference on Combating International


Terrorism (1999).101 Recall also the G8’s strategy to deny terrorists access to any WMD. These instruments are supplemented by several UN declarations and resolutions. Already in 1970 the General Assembly, in the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations (resolution 2625), laid down the principle that every state ‘has a duty to refrain from organizing, instigating, assisting or participating in acts of civil strife or terrorist acts in another State or acquiescing in organized activities within its territory directed towards the commission of such acts’. This rule of behaviour was reaffirmed repeatedly, as in the Declaration on Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism adopted by the General Assembly in 1994, and in Security Council resolution 1189 of 1998. The following year the Security Council (resolution 1269) reiterated that the suppression of acts of international terrorism was an ‘essential contribution’ to maintaining international peace and security. All acts of terrorism were condemned as ‘criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, in all their forms and manifestations, wherever and by whomever committed’. In resolution 1373, adopted in of September 2001 in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the US, the Security Council (acting under Chapter 7 of the Charter) imposed a set of 11 obligations on states in a bid to fight international terrorism. These included the prevention of funding for terrorist acts, a freeze on financial assets of terrorists, and the exchange of information on terrorism. (By mid-2002 over 100 states had reported to the UN on actions they had taken to comply with resolution 1373.) The obligations listed in resolution 1373 were reaffirmed in Security Council resolutions 1438 and 1440 of October 2002 in which two further terrorist incidents – the bomb attacks in Bali, Indonesia and the taking of hostages by Chechen militants in Moscow – were immediately condemned. The Council established a Counter-Terrorism Committee and the G8 formed a Counter-Terrorism Action Group to give practical effect to anti-terrorism plans.102 Despite all the conventions and declarations, there is still not a single, universally accepted definition of terrorism. The existing UN conventions adopted what could be described as ‘operational’ definitions of terrorism within the confines of their respective ‘sectors’ of interest (e.g. bombings or aircraft hijackings), and furthermore criminalized specific manifestations of terrorism. UN members have lately worked assiduously to draft a comprehensive convention on the elimination of terrorism, one that would collect these limited treaties under one umbrella and present an all-encompassing definition of terrorism. By late 2002 27 articles of the proposed convention had been approved by the drafting committee, but the process became unstuck on the central definition of terrorism. Meanwhile a related convention on the suppression of acts of nuclear terrorism was being drafted, but here too the process was delayed by deep differences of opinion.103 The


international trend is nonetheless unmistakable: terrorism, whatever its motives, is widely regarded as a seriously deviant act that should be outlawed through multilateral agreements supplemented by national legislation. As UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the General Assembly in the wake of 11 September 2001, this was ‘an attack on humanity and humanity must respond to it as one’. Every state and every people had a part to play in what Annan depicted as ‘a moral struggle to fight an evil that is anathema to all faiths’.104 Conventional armaments The third sin, also committed by the core group of rogue states, was the possession of vast arsenals of conventional weapons, allegedly out of proportion to what was required for defensive purposes. What aggravated matters, was that the rogues were located in areas of regional tension, disorder and conflict, as in the Middle East and East–Central Europe.105 This was not in the first place a violation of any of the major multilateral treaties controlling conventional armaments. Instead, it broke a longstanding informal rule stipulating that states’ levels of armaments should be in proportion to their actual defence needs, lest they create international suspicions and tensions about their true intentions. In the latter regard one should bear article 2(4) of the UN Charter in mind: ‘All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state’. This third transgression is of course not peculiar to the small group of rogue states; it has over decades been committed by numerous countries. Regional aggression The fourth offence, and yet another threat posed by rogue states, was the desire of this ‘new class of regional Third World powers’, well armed and adventurist, to threaten, dominate or destabilize other, weaker states in their immediate vicinity.106 In February 1995 President Clinton spoke of ‘rogue states [that] pose a serious danger to regional stability in many corners of the globe’.107 Aggressive actions by ‘regional bullies’ could in turn threaten Western interests in the regions concerned, especially if the target states were allies or clients of Western powers.108 The wider threat posed by regional powers with hegemonic ambitions would become even more pronounced if they were to possess WMD, including long-range missiles. Such capabilities, American analysts warned, could be used to dissuade the US from intervening against whatever aggressive designs rogue states may have in their regions. The assumption was that American leaders would not risk military intervention against a regional power capable of threatening US cities.109 (This seems a questionable assumption, considering that America’s nuclear arsenal was so advanced and its retaliatory options so great that it could imperil the very national survival of any


potential aggressor.110) Another aspect of the fourth transgression is that rogue states were, typically, vehemently opposed to any US military presence in their regions.111 They often reserved the brunt of their fury for neighbouring states seen as American clients. Again, this particular sin need not be confined to rogue states; aggressive behaviour by regional powers is an old phenomenon and will continue. The formal rules in contention here are, at a minimum, those of respect for state sovereignty and non-interference in others’ domestic affairs. These are truly robust norms, enjoying sustained and widespread acceptance. They are enshrined in, among many other documents, the charters of the UN, OAS, OAU, the Pact of the League of Arab States and the Helsinki Accord of 1975.112 The actions of Iraq in the early 1990s moreover violated the obligation of all states to settle their international disputes by peaceful means and to refrain from the threat or use of force against others (UN Charter, article 2). The illegality of aggression, Ratner observed, ‘is perhaps the most fundamental norm of modern international law’. The most authoritative definition of aggression is that formulated by the UN General Assembly in 1974. The first use of armed force by a state in contravention of the UN Charter is taken as prima facie evidence of aggression. Among the acts of aggression identified by the Assembly were attack, bombardment, blockade, invasion, occupation and allowing territory to be used for aggression.113 Lack of democracy and human rights The fact that the Americans assigned rogue status on the basis of states’ foreign conduct, meant that their domestic misdeeds drew much less international attention than their international activities. Yet the fact remains that all rogue states maintained undemocratic forms of authority and violated basic human rights. The absence of democracy therefore constituted a fifth sin. All the rogue states’ authoritarian systems moreover predated their current deviant status; consider the personal dictatorships of Fidel Castro, Muammar Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Kim Il Sung and Ayatollah Khomeini. In all cases power was exercised through coercion, basic human rights were systematically suppressed and the leaders were hostile to popular participation that could undermine their regimes. The state apparatus was typically well developed and dominated civil society. Needless to say, deviant countries vigorously opposed the spread of Western-style democracy to foreign societies.114 These features of authoritarian government were by no means confined to a handful of states designated as rogues by the Americans. With the qualified exception of Israel, the pariah states of old displayed them too, as well as numerous countries that escaped the pariah and rogue labels. Scores of countries today qualify for deviant status on the basis of their undemocratic political orders and the accompanying abuse of human rights,


even though they are not treated as such by the world community. We return this matter later in the present chapter. There is an impressive set of international instruments constituting what has become generally known as a human rights regime. At the global level the list includes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965), the dual international conventions on Civil and Political Rights, and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984), Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), and Vienna Declaration on Human Rights (1993). By the mid-1990s states had adopted 25 major international human rights conventions, protocols and other instruments. At the sub-global level the inventory includes the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950), Inter-American Convention on Human Rights (1969), African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (1981) and European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1987). Human rights have been aptly called ‘the world’s first universal ideology’.115 The bottom line of this ideology (enshrined in the international human rights regime) was stated forcefully in the Vienna Declaration adopted at the UN World Conference on Human Rights in 1993: ‘Human rights and fundamental freedoms are the birthright of all human beings; their protection and promotion is the first responsibility of Governments’. Approved by virtually each and every state, the Declaration moreover contradicted the contention of cultural relativists that so-called universal human rights are simply Western norms imposed against their will on alien societies. The Declaration made it plain that human rights – political, civil, economic, social and cultural – are interrelated, interdependent and indivisible.116 In a resolution adopted by the UN Human Rights Commission in 1999 (no negative votes; China and Cuba abstaining), member states for the first time claimed a ‘right’ to democracy for all peoples. (Democracy was defined in typical Western-liberal terms.)117 Prominent Western legal scholars had for some time championed the notion that the enjoyment of human rights in the context of a democratic political order was a global legal entitlement to be guaranteed by the world community.118 Such a claim was strengthened by the spread of democracy: by the end of 1999, according to one assessment, fully 120 countries (out of some 190) could be rated as democracies.119 States’ observance of their human rights obligations is kept under close international scrutiny by the UN’s network of institutions operating in this field, including the Human Rights Commission and the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The EU and other regional organizations likewise have mechanisms to monitor member states’ compliance with


their human rights obligations. Reference should also be made to the work of a host of private human rights bodies. Through their regular reports Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House and other NGOs in this field help to raise international awareness of human rights abuses in particular states and may intentionally or not shame them before the world community. Individual states have also taken it upon themselves to monitor other countries’ observance of human rights, none more so than the US. The State Department’s annual Country Reports on Human Rights are Washington’s primary checking device. In step with the time, we could regard democracy and human rights as components of the so-called good governance agenda. Other elements of the agenda include open and accountable government, competent public administration, and market-driven economic policies. The latter ingredients are not (yet) codified to the same extent as human rights and hence lack the same international standing, but they are widely prescribed. Consider the political conditionality attached to the loans and other forms of financial aid that international financial institutions (World Bank, IMF), inter-governmental organizations (especially the EU) and individual Western donor countries offer developing states. Mention could also be made of the growing number of anti-corruption conventions, notably the Declaration against Corruption and Bribery in International Commercial Transactions, and the International Code of Conduct for Public Officials, both approved by the UN in 1996; the Inter-American Convention against Corruption, 1996, and the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions, adopted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 1997.120 Violations of some tenets of good governance, other than human rights, are indeed acquiring the status of punishable deviance. Crimes against humanity Few state practices in the 1990s aroused more intense international passions than that of ethnic cleansing. It has become indelibly associated with the state-sanctioned forced removal and extermination of members of supposedly alien or antagonistic ethnic groups in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia. Ethnic cleansing is part of the broader phenomenon of genocide and other crimes against humanity, listed here as the sixth major sin committed by some contemporary deviant states. A UN Commission of Experts in January 1993 defined ethnic cleansing as ‘rendering an area ethnically homogenous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area’. The Commission found that ethnic cleansing was carried out in the former Yugoslavia by such means as mass murder, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, confinement of the civilian population, military attacks on civilian targets, and the destruction of cultural property. During four years of war in Bosnia, over


1.5 million people were uprooted in the name of ethnic ideologies; between April and August 1992 alone, Serbs drove more than 700,000 Muslims from an area covering 70 per cent of Bosnia.121 Although there is no specific crime called ethnic cleansing in international humanitarian law, the practice falls within the ambit of a range of criminal offences defined in major international agreements. As the Commission of Experts reported, perpetrators of the above actions were ‘susceptible to charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, in addition to grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and other violations of international humanitarian law’.122 The proceedings of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia have confirmed that political and military leaders responsible for making and implementing policies of ethnic cleansing and lesser functionaries involved in committing these deeds, may be subjected to individual criminal responsibility.123 The same applies to acts of ethnic cleansing practised in Rwanda, which have likewise resulted in prosecutions by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. What, then, is meant by genocide and other crimes against humanity? In the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (which entered into force in January 1951) genocide was defined as ‘acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such’. Among the acts listed are the killing of members of the group; deliberately inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another. This remains the only universally accepted legal definition of genocide. The Convention declared genocide a crime under international law and stipulated that the perpetrators (whether political leaders, public officials or private individuals) shall be punished by law, as had indeed happened at the Nuremberg trials. More recently the international tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda were empowered to hear cases of genocide. The same applies to the permanent International Criminal Court established in terms of a statute approved by 120 states in Rome in July 1998.124 Of all human rights violations, genocide is in a class of its own. The 20th century witnessed at least four major instances thereof: the Turkish slaughter of approximately one million Armenians in 1915–16; the Nazi extermination of over 6 million Jews and Gypsies; the unique case of ‘auto-genocide’ in Cambodia in the 1970s that left 1.7 million people dead, and the murder of between 500,000 and one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994.125 Crimes against humanity were for the first time established in positive international law under the Nuremberg Charter and are today deemed to be part of jus cogens, thus enjoying the highest standing in international legal norms. From the eleven international texts defining crimes against humanity, two distinguishing features emerge: the crimes involve specific


acts of violence against persons regardless of whether they were nationals or non-nationals and irrespective of whether the acts were committed in time of war or peace; and the acts must be the product of persecution against an identifiable group of people regardless of the group’s composition or the purpose of the persecution. Among specific acts designated as crimes against humanity are persecutions of people on political, racial or religious grounds, apartheid, rape, torture, the systematic disappearance of persons, and forced civilian displacement. Although there is some overlap, crimes against humanity can be distinguished from genocide in that they do not require an intent to ‘destroy in whole or in part’, as formulated in the Genocide Convention of 1948, but merely subject a particular group to ‘widespread and systematic’ abuse. Crimes against humanity have been included in the statutes of the ad hoc criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and also in the statute of the new International Criminal Court. Practice has shown that no person, not even a head of government, is immune from prosecution for this category of crimes.126 War crimes Although not common among rogue states, war crimes are a serious enough transgression to be treated as a separate, seventh, sin. Iraq’s actions in occupied Kuwait and those of Yugoslavia in Bosnia-Herzegovina involved what may reasonably be construed as war crimes. These are violations of the laws of war, i.e. international humanitarian law, which incur individual criminal responsibility. The laws had already been codified in the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. The four Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol I of 1977 contain lists of serious breaches of these laws. Among them are torture or inhuman treatment, wilful killing, extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out wantonly and illegally, taking of hostages, and making civilians the object or inevitable victims of attack.127 Iraq has variously been accused of using civilians as human shields to protect military targets in Kuwait, torturing and killing Kuwaiti civilian prisoners, failing to register prisoners from coalition forces with the International Committee of the Red Cross, and pillage by destroying state buildings in Kuwait.128 Also part of international humanitarian law relating to war, is a ban on environmental warfare. The prohibition is contained in the abovementioned Additional Protocol I and the UN Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques of 1976. The latter document bans military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques ‘having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects’. 129 Iraq committed an act of environmental warfare during the Gulf conflict by dumping millions of tons of crude oil into the Persian Gulf to disrupt seawater desalination plants used by coalition forces. Another transgression occurred towards


the end of its occupation of Kuwait in 1991, when Iraq set fire to between 600 and 950 oil wells, releasing tons of toxic gasses into the atmosphere.130 It should be added that ‘environmentalism’ is becoming another of the basic behavioural standards in world politics, as witness the development of a global environmental regime.131 Exporting revolution A eighth offensive action was the pursuit of revolutionary foreign policies, involving deviant states in attempts to export their own domestic revolutions and radical ideologies to other societies. Cuba and Iran are examples of countries that believed they had a sacred duty to promote their own revolutionary values and formulas elsewhere as the supreme form of political organization.132 Such actions could indeed challenge major international norms, notably those protecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states and proscribing foreign interference in their domestic affairs. Like a revisionist foreign policy the instigation of revolutions abroad could undermine the prevailing distribution of power in the world, upset regional balances of power and threaten the national security of states. But whatever their ambitions, none of the rogue states possessed the capabilities to threaten the basic stability of the international system on the scale of Hitler or Stalin. The credibility of their threats of revisionism was largely confined to their immediate regions.133 Anti-Westernism Most deviant states in the ninth place tended to adopt a strongly antiWestern orientation flowing from deep grievances against the West and the world order created and upheld by Western powers. They viewed themselves as the innocent victims of an unjust international order that kept them subordinated and exploited. The US typically had to bear the brunt of this animosity by virtue of its leadership in the West and the wider world. Deviant countries were therefore revisionist, whether of a revolutionary or radical bent, dedicated to overturning what they regarded as an unjust and harmful structure of power in the world.134 What also drove Islamic antagonism to the US in particular, was that the dissemination of American culture was seen as destroying Islamic identity. Such views were especially pronounced in Khomeini’s Iran.135 There are no settled international norms at stake when dealing with anti-Westernism. For the upholders and beneficiaries of the status quo, a challenge to the prevailing world order could nonetheless represent a form of deviance with potentially destabilizing consequences – and hence a threat they dare not ignore. Assertiveness The tenth contravention, related to the previous two, was one defined primarily by the US and constitutes an informal and largely unilateral


(i.e. non-consensual) rule of conduct. Some states stood condemned for pursuing foreign policies regarded by America in particular as too independent, assertive or ambitious. Such transgressors failed to show due deference to Washington and punched above their weight in international relations.136 Cuba and Iran are two obvious examples. What added insult to injury – especially from an American perspective – was that some of these errant states had previously been close associates, even allies or client states, of the US. (Conflict between independent-minded small states and hegemonic great powers is of course an established feature of world politics.) Drug trafficking A final action that is widely regarded as a serious offence but has yet to result in collective, substantive and sustained punishment against guilty states, is involvement in drug trafficking (as in the cases of Myanmar, Afghanistan and Colombia).137 This amounts to a clear breach of international norms, as enshrined in a whole set of international agreements aimed at suppressing the production, trafficking and dissemination of narcotics dating back to 1912. One of the more recent additions to a veritable international regime against drug dealing is the UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988.138

Non-state deviance Although there is some overlap in the transgressions committed by states and non-state deviants – specifically with regard to terrorism and WMD – most of the sins in each of the categories are quite distinct. We now consider the major allegations of norm-violating conduct made against non-state actors. Brief case studies of such deviants are provided in Chapter 14. In the eyes of a great many states, today’s principal form of non-state deviance is international terrorism. All groups relying heavily on terrorism involving more than one national territory, are guilty of this offence. The PLO was not too long ago widely regarded in the West as the world’s most notorious terrorist group. Its leader Yasser Arafat was demonized in the West as a cold-blooded terrorist chieftain. The West’s most loathed individual terrorist of the 1970s was Venezuelan-born Ilich Ramı´rez Sańchez, better known as ‘Carlos the Jackal’. More recently that status has been reserved almost exclusively for Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda band of terrorists. Terrorist groups are not necessarily independent but may act as proxies of deviant states. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, led by Ahmad Jibril, for instance, reportedly worked variously for Libyan, Syrian and Iranian authorities.139 Where terrorists do the bidding for governments, one is dealing with state-sponsored terrorism.


Another link between the two is that a terrorist organization engaging in international action requires sanctuary of sorts in at least one state. The government concerned could provide that through acts of commission or omission. In al-Qaeda’s case there was a rather unique symbiotic relationship with Afghanistan’s Taliban government and its ‘guest’; in return for the Taliban’s hospitality, al-Qaeda gave the rulers critical military and financial support. Another link we should take note of, is that between terrorist groups and transnational criminal organizations. Crime offers terrorists acess to money to finance their activities, while criminals could use terror or the threat thereof for ‘business’ purposes. Despite the absence of an authoritative UN-approved definition of terrorism in all its manifestations, existing UN resolutions and international conventions make it plain that conventional terrorism, with its emphasis on indiscriminate violence, contravenes a formal, universally accepted international norm. The second kind of non-state deviance could be called armed rebellion, in which a faction wages a violent struggle against a legally constituted and internationally recognized government or an interim authority established under a legitimate peace accord. The best recent illustration is that of Angola’s Unita movement (Uniao Nacional para a Independencia total de Angola) led by Jonas Savimbi, which sinned on both accounts. Determining that the ongoing civil war in Angola was caused primarily by Unita’s failure to comply with its obligations under a peace accord of 1991 and the Lusaka Protocol of 1994, the UN Security Council repeatedly declared the situation in that country a threat to international peace and security. This allowed the Council to impose mandatory sanctions against Unita, affecting arms and related materiel, petroleum, financial assets and diamonds. Unita was required to abandon its armed struggle, convert itself into an unarmed political party and fulfil all its obligations under the agreements mentioned. The Security Council threatened to impose punitive measures against Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge rebel movement in 1992 over its failure to abide by a ceasefire established under the Paris peace accords of that year. A third example comes from Sierra Leone. The Security Council in June 1998 (resolution 1171) deplored ‘the continuing resistance to the authority of the legitimate Government of Sierra Leone’ and stressed ‘the urgency for all rebels to put an end to the atrocities, cease their resistance and lay down their arms’. Acting under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, the Council imposed an arms embargo against all non-governmental forces in the West African country. The principal target was the Revolutionary United Front, which had acquired international nototiety over its gross brutality against the civilian population of Sierra Leone. The world body has thus treated instances of internal rebellion, in defiance of a peace settlement, as a punishable offence. This means that international law’s established rule of rebus sic stantibus is applied to non-


state political actors. To extend the norm against rebellion to armed uprising against any legally constituted and internationally recognized government, would be going too far. For one thing, such a government may not necessarily enjoy domestic legitimacy. In fact, scores of governments accorded international recognition and legitimacy are highly repressive and may court armed resistance from within their countries. A blanket UN ‘ban’ on internal rebellion would, then, amount to an endorsement of the political status quo in states, however undemocratic their governments. The third deviant activity is in a class of its own, namely international trade in so-called blood or conflict diamonds. These are local diamonds mined or otherwise obtained by armed movements locked in civil wars against their countries’ internationally recognized central governments. The gems were sold to foreign buyers to help fund the rebels’ war efforts, hence the reference to blood diamonds. Such practices have occurred in recent years in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone. (It is a moot point whether local diamonds sold by unpopular, repressive governments to help fund wars of survival against rebels should also qualify for the designation ‘blood’ diamonds.) To stop the illicit diamond trade and help bring bloodshed in the affected countries to an end, the UN Security Council has banned the sale of conflict diamonds. Other international initiatives have also been taken to outlaw the trade in blemished gems.140 The world’s second-oldest profession, that of the mercenary, can be regarded as a fourth type of errant behaviour involving non-state deviants. It was especially during Africa’s decolonization in the 1960s that mercenaries gained notoriety as ‘bloodthirsty dogs of war wreaking havoc with the sovereignty of weak, newly independent African States’.141 Individual mercenaries, such as the legendary French soldier of fortune Bob Denard, have been high on many African states’ most wanted lists. More recently private security companies, which also offered hired guns, have been widely viewed with equal disdain. The now (formally) defunct South African-based Executive Outcomes is a case in point.142 International bans on mercenaries go back to 1968 when the UN General Assembly and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) resolved that the use of mercenaries against national liberation and independence movements was a punishable criminal act. In 1977 the OAU approved the Convention for the Elimination of Mercenarism in Africa. In the same year Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Convention denied mercenaries the right to claim combatant or prisoner of war status.143 The UN in 1989 adopted the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries, which defined such actions as offences and stipulated that any person committing any of them should be either prosecuted or extradited. States parties to the Convention also undertook to prohibit mercenary activities. In another provision the signatories


expressed their concern ‘at new unlawful international activities linking drug traffickers and mercenaries which undermine the constitutional order of states’.144 The Non-Aligned Movement, at its 1998 summit in Durban (South Africa), expressed the belief that ‘mercenarism, in all its forms, constituted an obstacle to peace and the exercise of sovereignty by Non-Aligned Countries’, endangered the national security of states as well as the safety and stability of multi-ethnic countries.145 Finally, transnational criminal organizations such as the Sicilian Mafia, Russian Mafia, Chinese triads and Japanese yakuza have become non-state actors with a global reach and formidable economic clout.146 What has made their activities all the more ominous, is evidence of links with rogue states and terrorist groups for the purposes of trafficking in technology, nuclear material and other WMD components, and in drugs.147 The official US narcotics trafficking list indeed included states said to be actively involved in the drug trade, much of it deliberately targeted at the US. Iran and Syria were cases in point.148 Ongoing attempts at the global level to curb transnational crime has been spearheded by the UN Centre for International Crime Prevention, which runs a Global Programme against Transnational Organized Crime. One of the notable achievements of the initiatives has been the adoption, by the UN General Assembly in November 2000, of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, together with three related Protocols. The principal purpose of the Convention was to promote international cooperation in preventing and combating transnational organized crime. The Convention identified four specific crimes – participation in organized criminal groups, money-laundering, corruption, and obstruction of justice – that were commonly used in transnational organized criminal activities. The Protocols added three further crimes, viz. trafficking in persons, smuggling of migrants, and smuggling or illicit manufacturing of firearms. Among other obligations, states ratifying the Convention were to adopt basic minimum measures against organized crime to eliminate ‘safe havens’ for such pursuits.149

External actors: defending international norms The foreign actors who try to uphold international norms by acting against others’ deviant behaviour, fall into four categories. At the global level the UN is the main institution for condemning a state or non-state actor (such as a rebel movement) to deviant status and for ordering punitive measures against it. This happened to Libya and Iraq and also Angola’s Unita movement, among others. Turning to the sub-global level, a variety of inter-governmental organizations can take action against norm violators. The European Union, for example, imposed sanctions against several deviant states discussed in our case


studies. The Commonwealth excluded Nigeria – during the Abacha era – from its summit meetings. Individual states may also play critical roles in punishing offending countries and others whose domestic or international conduct is found unbecoming. Traditionally, great powers have assumed primary responsibility for maintaining the orderly working of the international system that they had created. The US – which has long regarded itself as ‘a Crusader State called to save the world’150 – remains the principal state upholder of international norms and order. In discharging this self-assigned duty, America has repeatedly resorted to sanctions against supposedly deviant states in the 20th century. Between 1993 and 1998, for instance, the US imposed new unilateral economic sanctions or threatened legislation that would allow it to do so 60 times against 35 countries representing over 40% of the world’s population. (The figure of 60 constitutes nearly half of the 125 unilateral sanctions the US had invoked between 1918 and 1998.)151 Cases where the US enforced sanctions without the support of its allies, include Cuba, Iran and Libya. In these instances the US tried to coerce foreign countries and companies into joining its sanctions offensive by resorting to so-called ‘secondary sanctions’ or sanctions legislation with an extra-territorial reach (the Helms-Burton (Cuba) and D’Amato (Iran and Libya) Acts).152 The US thus tended to assume the combined roles of chief pursuer, prosecutor, judge and ‘jailer’ of deviant states. Washington did not offer any apologies for such unilateralism. The US will act ‘multilaterally when possible, but unilaterally when necessary’, Clinton curtly informed the UN in 1993.153 A senior official in the Clinton administration was more expansive, explaining that as ‘the preeminent, predominant world power’ the US had an ‘obligation to lead on these new issues’– drug trafficking, human rights violations, terrorism and nuclear proliferation –’which often get one directly into sanctions’.154 A variety of NGOs may, finally, mobilize international opinion against state and non-state deviants or even resort to punitive measures against them. While human rights organizations and churches could, for example, influence world opinion, national and transnational business corporations could of their own accord refuse to do business with rule-breakers.

Ends and means in anti-deviant actions Those acting against deviant states want to see the targets end their rulebreaking conduct. Once it has been ‘resocialized’155 by complying with international norms, a formerly deviant state can expect to rejoin the world community as a full-fledged member. But resocialization may exact a high price of an errant country. Given the serious nature of the majority of the sins listed earlier, a fundamental change of behaviour would in most


instances require regime change. This involves far-reaching changes to what David Easton described as the norms, values and authority structures of the states concerned. It is a political transformation that goes well beyond a mere change of government, not to mention a change of policy. It is precisely what the US has long sought in Cuba and what most Western powers (and scores of other countries) desired in Iraq and Yugoslavia. In only a few cases could a deviant state’s complete international rehabilitation be effected through a change of government or policy only. Such relatively minor changes could be depicted as ‘behavior modification’.156 For some non-state deviants the price for meeting external demands may be extremely high. Crime syndicates, for example, are expected to contract themselves out of existence because they cannot be reformed and rehabilitated. Others may mend their ways, as the PLO did by renouncing terrorism some years ago, or reinvent themselves, as some mercenary enterprises have done recently. (See Chapter 14.) Ideally, their critics wish to see previously deviant actors internalizing global norms. Where a state had violated human rights, for instance, it should then make those standards part of its laws, political institutions, practices and beliefs. State and non-state actors responding to deviants’ challenges to international norms, can choose from a whole series of possible measures. In practice, a combination of options (not always complementary) would often be pursued simultaneously. The available measures go well beyond the simplistic dichotomies that have become popular: embrace or embargo, appeasement versus confrontation, and engagement or containment.157 The range of sins already suggests that punitive measures do not come in a ‘one-size-fits-all’ format; they need to be tailored to particular circumstances. The vulnerability of the target to specific punitive measures, the degree of international support for such measures, the costs to the actors involved, the latters’ conceptions of their national interests, and the chances of success in terms of achieving stated objectives, are among the variables that should be weighed. Because of these considerations, we should not expect that a misdeamour causes automatic punishment or that the rule of punishment fitting the crime will always apply. It is in this light that one should judge repeated accusations that the US has been selective, inconsistent and often immoral in responding to (or overlooking) deviant behaviour abroad. Secretary of State Albright had a point when she explained that the US had ‘consistent principles and flexible tactics’ in dealing with human rights abuses elsewhere. The easiest way to describe this flexibility, she said, was ‘different strokes for different folks’.158 Some of the chosen ‘strokes’, it should be noted, may be at odds with established norms of state conduct. Pre-emptive military strikes, for instance, are not permitted under international law except to prevent an imminent attack. Paradoxically, then, some foreign responses to deviant behaviour may themselves deviate from international codes of conduct.


The array of possible responses can be arranged on a continuum from the most to the least drastic action. Inaction is by definition excluded, although we must acknowledge that scores of states may choose not to take direct issue with another’s deviant conduct. Those that remain neutral or indifferent can hardly be said to contribute positively to the defence of international norms. At the one extreme we could place military action against a deviant state to pre-empt or stop its objectionable behaviour, or to punish it. The Gulf War of 1990-1 was a collective military response to Iraq’s aggression against Kuwait. In retaliation against terrorist bombings of American embassies in Nairobi and Dar-Es-Salaam in August 1998, the US launched missile attacks on targets in Afghanistan and Sudan allegedly associated with terrorist warlord Osama bin Laden. (See Chapter 13.) In June 2002 President George W Bush proclaimed what has been portrayed as a doctrine of pre-emptive attack. With Iraq’s alleged acquisition of WMD in mind, Bush warned that ‘if we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. … We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge’.159 He identified the enemy as both ‘rogue states and their terrorist clients’, against which the US ‘and our allies and friends’ had to be protected.160 Deterrence is a second possibility, of which the development of a US national missile defence (NMD) shield is an example.161 A scaled-down version of the Reagan era’s ‘star wars’ initiative, NMD involved the deployment of missile interceptors to destroy incoming warheads targeted at the US. Defence Secretary William Cohen in 1998 affirmed the likely origins of such missiles, referring to them as ‘rogue nation threats’.162 The National Missile Defense Act of 1999 committed the US to the deployment of NMD ‘as soon as technologically possible’.163 Due to technical difficulties with the system and objections from European allies and Russia to its deployment, Clinton decided in September 2000 to leave matters to the next president.164 George W Bush’s decision was quick and unambiguous: NMD will be deployed.165 In coping with the challenges of WMD proliferation, foreign actors may in the third place rely on a mix of non-proliferation (e.g. the NPT and the G8’s Programme for Combating Illicit Trafficking in Nuclear Material), counter-proliferation (developing the capabilities to fight, survive and win wars in which aggressors employ nuclear, chemical or biological weapons), and arms control.166 A fourth action is to contain the threat that a deviant state poses to its neighbours or to wider international security. Containment could be achieved by, among other things, bolstering the military capabilities of countries surrounding the target state and restricting the latter’s access to weapons. America pursued a policy of dual containment directed at Iran and Iraq and the UN authorized multilateral efforts to contain Iraq after the Gulf War.167


Isolation, in the fifth place, can be combined with containment or used on its own. The deviant state (or non-state actor) could be ostracized by cutting or curtailing its international links in the diplomatic, economic, military and socio-cultural realms. This is far more than mere disengagement, in which foreign states and also IGOs withdraw – diplomatically, economically and militarily – from the target country and leave the deviant to its own devices. Instead of being a ‘walk-away’ option, isolation is designed to coerce a target country into mending its ways. The assumption is that the damaging material deprivations of ostracism, caused by trade and financial sanctions in particular, would make the target country (or non-state actor, such as a rebel movement) more amenable than it would otherwise be to the demands of foreign actors. In these instances sanctions – whether differentiated (targeted at a ruling elite) or undifferentiated (directed at a population at large) – are used for more than merely symbolic purposes like adopting a moral posture or demonstrating resolve. Iraq has been subjected to severe UN-mandated sanctions, while somewhat milder UN measures were imposed against Libya and Yugoslavia. Angola’s Unita movement was likewise ostracized by the UN. Subversion is an alternative route to weakening a deviant state domestically in the hope of changing its behaviour. This sixth response could include overt and covert military, financial, humanitarian or political support for anti-government factions in a target country and attempts to foment internal rebellion. The US, for instance, used subversion as part of its package of measures against the Milosevic government in Yugoslavia. A seventh radically different response would be to place the offending state under international supervision, either with regard to all government functions or in critical areas such as armaments. Iraq, where the UN supervised the destruction of WMD, is an outstanding example. Prosecution, in the eighth instance, means bringing political leaders and officials responsible for deviant actions – notably human rights abuses, crimes against humanity and war crimes – before a court of law. Punishment is thus taken out of the political realm and transferred to the judicial domain, which could involve an international tribunal or a national court. The Nuremberg trials paved the way for meting out justice at the international level and the tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Court (inaugurated in March 2003) have followed suit. Verbal censure, a ninth possibility, is a mild external reaction to deviant behaviour. The source of censure could be inter-governmental organizations (notably the UN and major regional organizations like the EU), individual states and a host of national and international NGOs. Where censure is more than a polite rebuke, it could involve ‘shaming’ the norm violator, i.e. embarrassing or disgracing it before the world community over its offensive behaviour.168 South Africa under apartheid is a case in point.


The Serbians experienced international shaming over atrocities committed by their forces in Bosnia, and Unita was shamed for its protracted rebellion against the universally recognized government of Angola. It may be a small step from shaming to the demonization that has characterized America’s rogue state policy. The tenth response, which emphasizes persuasion and cooperation instead of coercion and confrontation, is that of engagement. It is a familiar but contentious option in dealing with errant countries, as witness the Reagan administration’s pursuit of so-called constructive engagement vis-à-vis white-ruled South Africa. In essence engagement means the integration of a deviant state into the international economic and political systems.169 The assumption is that the ‘restrictive web of … institutions and benefits’ would cause the offending state to moderate its behaviour lest it forfeit the gains – both tangible (e.g. trade, investment and aid) and intangible – (e.g. an improved international standing) of such integration.170 Washington’s preference for the engagement of China has prompted an ongoing political and scholarly debate in the US, producing several variations of engagement.171 Some of these are ‘hybrid’ responses, overlapping those already mentioned. One form of involvement has been termed conditional or coercive engagement or constrainment. It calls, on the one hand, for economic and cultural engagement with a deviant state and, on the other, ‘keeping the powder dry’ to counter unacceptable behaviour by the deviant (read: China). The latter amounts to actions to contain the deviant country’s potential for mischief-making abroad.172 We can also include the notion of conditional reciprocity under the rubric of engagement. It requires ‘meaningful changes in policy and behavior’ by the deviant state ‘in return for each concession or benefit’ offered by other actors.173 This form of engagement amounts to an incentive scheme, encouraging norm-compliance by the errant state. Unconditional engagement, next, means that a (‘respectable’) foreign state or a group of states would offer to modify policy towards a deviant country without the explicit expectation of a reciprocal act. An easing of US restrictions on travel to Cuba and the relaxation of bans on American trade with private Cuban entities – without any political concessions by Havana – would be examples.174 There may be only a short distance between unconditional engagement and appeasement. A final external response to deviance, which could also be regarded as a form of engagement, stands at the opposite end of our imaginary continuum. It addresses the socio-economic ills assumed to underlie especially internal repression and external aggression. Foreign involvement in the social and economic upliftment of a deviant state would presumably encourage internationally acceptable behaviour at home and abroad.


A typology of deviants The different levels of external action against deviants allow us to distinguish three classes of rule-breakers. First-order or global deviants are countries or non-state actors given this status by the UN. Their conduct is judged offensive by the world community at large and the quest to effect change is a truly universal one. During the 1990s Iraq fell into this category, as did Unita during the Angolan civil war. As these two examples will reveal (see Chapters 5 and 14), a global deviant will in practice seldom be confronted with a solid and durable global front. Defections from the ranks are inevitable in a world of 190 states with varying strategic interests and political leanings. Second-order or regional rule-breakers are seriously at odds with others in their respective regions, rather than with the international community in general. Failing to mobilize global support for its campaign against Cuba, the US has long – and with diminishing success – tried to get Cuba condemned to the status of a second-order deviant in Latin America. Cuba can in some ways also be regarded as a third-order deviant, i.e. a country finding itself in serious conflict with only a handful of other states – with a great power among them – over the former’s conduct at home or abroad. The fact that all three types of deviants are subjected to external punishment for unacceptable conduct, means that we are dealing with ‘true’ deviant states. The mere ranking of rule-breaking states also suggests that some deviants are more deviant than others. The hierarchy does not cater for the reality that some states breaking international norms are not the targets of serious international punishment. These could be described as nominal deviants. Consider the case of China, whose ‘pervasive and unremitting’ violation of human rights norms175 has led critical commentators to brand it a rogue or pariah state.176 Various aspects of China’s external conduct have also caused concern, in at least the US.177 (See the short case study of China in Chapter 13.) Yet China has not been subjected to the kinds of punishment meted out to other errant states. The obvious explanation for this inconsistency or double standard is that China is too large, powerful and influential in the world arena to be subjected to the indignities and risks of punishment for unbecoming conduct.178 None of the ‘real’ deviant states of our case studies carried the same global clout as China and they thus lacked the same immunity from punishment. There are many other nominal deviant states that have clearly violated commonly accepted standards of behaviour but have escaped international punishment or even mild censure. Saudi Arabia is a case in point. Its internal political order is no more liberal than, say, Cuba’s, but its close ties with the US – the chief persecutor of deviant countries – shields Saudi Arabia against real deviant status. The same applies to Turkey, whose repression of its Kurdish minority flies in the face of universal norms of


human rights (applicable to individuals as well as groups defined in terms of language, culture and religion). Two other examples are India and Pakistan, which have experienced little international opprobrium or punishment for infringing the rule against nuclear proliferation. In the spring of 1998 India (not for the first time) tested a nuclear device, leading its arch-enemy Pakistan to respond in kind. True, there were widespread expressions of dismay and concern over the nuclear race between the two Asian neighbours and the US hastily and unilaterally imposed comprehensive sanctions (only to relax most of them soon afterwards).179 Washington’s punitive measures failed to generate much international support. Perhaps their very nuclear rank helped to protect India and Pakistan against true deviant status. A year later Pakistan flouted another norm of conduct when the elected civilian government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was toppled in a military coup led by army chief General Pervez Musharraf. Sharif was detained, his Cabinet sacked, Parliament and the constitution suspended and virtual martial law imposed. The US expressed its ‘profound regret about the military takeover’ 180 and the Commonwealth suspended Pakistan, but for the rest the international community seemed to accept Pakistan’s latest encounter with military rule with indifference or equanimity. Shortly after 11 September 2001 the US waived remaining sanctions against India and Pakistan as Washington enlisted their support for its war on terrorism.181

Deviant responses to external pressure Deviant states could respond in a variety of ways to international pressure aimed at changing their behaviour or structures of political authority. At the one extreme a deviant could simply capitulate to outsiders’ demands, i.e. comply fully with international norms by making the necessary changes in policies, personnel or authority structures. (One would normally expect a deviant state to submit more readily to a minimalist demand – a change of policy – than to a maximalist demand involving a change of government or regime.) At the other end of the spectrum a deviant country could, at least in theory, defy external pressures for change through actual or threatened military action against its perceived foreign enemies. The deterrent effect of military power was the basis of South Africa’s nuclear strategy. Its nuclear weapons, Pretoria calculated, could have served as a deterrent against black African states planning any major conventional military offensive to bring down white-rule in South Africa. In the case of non-state deviants, such as al-Qaeda, external pressure may well have the effect of radicalizing the movement; instead of abandoning its terrorism, it may choose to intensify its violent actions against Western targets. Between the extreme responses of capitulation on the one hand


and armed resistance and deterrence on the other, several lesser forms of both compliance and defiance are conceivable. By compliance is meant a process by which a deviant (whether a state or non-state actor) adapts to or adopts forms of behaviour expected by relevant foreign actors. Attempts by deviants to bargain with their foreign antagonists or to procrastinate under pressure – ‘playing for time’ in the knowledge that concessions to external demands were inevitable – can be regarded as early instances of compliance. Next, deviants could introduce cosmetic changes in policies, actions or structures of authority in a bid to pacify external critics. An important implication of this response, is that the rule-breaker then no longer flatly denies the validity of the international norm in question; through concessions, the target is beginning to adapt to the norm.182 A closely related response is called ‘prescriptive status’, meaning that the targets involved regularly cite international norms when referring to their own and others’ behaviour – even if their actual conduct still violates these very rules (e.g. enshrining human rights norms in the constitution and domestic law, but failing to uphold these standards in practice). Denial is a set of responses tending towards defiance. The norm-violating state would neither acknowledge that its conduct was offensive to others nor accept responsibility for it. Alternatively, it may accept responsibility for an act but deny that it possessed the pejorative qualities attributed to it.183 More drastically, the alleged delinquent may reject the validity of a particular international norm (e.g. on human rights) and also challenge any notion that its behaviour is subject to international scrutiny and judgment. Hence the typical counter-charge that foreign criticism of domestic conduct violated the rule of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries. Even if the deviant state does not openly reject the international norm in question, it may invoke a supposedly more valid standard (such as the right to self-defence in response to charges of external aggression).184 Deviants may alternatively try to develop counter-norms so as to weaken or neutralize the norms under which they are condemned; being authoritarian states, they could proclaim the virtues of indigenous ‘democracy’ over Western notions thereof. Other familiar forms of denial are projection (‘we are not to blame, they are’), accusations of double standards against foreign critics (‘why punish us but not others committing the same alleged offence?’), and counter-demonization (competing with foreign detractors in attributing evil intent). An entirely different defiant reaction for a target state would be to join other deviants in a ‘gang of outcasts’. Although the rogue states of the 1990s did not display the same solidarity that several of the pariah states of the 1970s and 1980s had developed, there is evidence of some interrogue ties. North Korea has exported missiles to other rogue countries, Iraq helped Yugoslavia to weather the Allied bombing campaign (caused


by the Kosovo crisis), and Iraq and Iran engaged in limited cooperation after years of enmity. 185 Non-state actors could likewise ‘gang up’ to strengthen their positions, as terrorist and criminal organizations are known to have done. Deviant states could, individually and collectively, attempt a strategy of ‘divide-and-survive’ by creating or exploiting divisions among their external adversaries. In a related response, targets could counteract external pressure by seeking sympathy or support from some respectable members of the international community, i.e. soliciting a ‘testimonial’. Deviants could also hold out against external pressure in the hope of wearing down their foreign opponents. If the latter realize that the target will not bend under pressure, the assumption is, they will ‘blink’ first and start normalizing relations with the deviant and free it of that status – without the target country having met foreign demands for political change. Brinkmanship is a particular form of holding out, involving the risky practice of pushing a crisis situation to the brink of armed conflict in the hope of forcing the adversary to submit or at least make substantive concessions. If the latter refuses, the deviant may suffer badly. Slobodan Milosevic, who overplayed his hand in brinkmanship vis-à-vis the Western powers over Kosovo, lost heavily and in the end had to surrender under the direst of circumstances. (See the case study on Yugoslavia, Chapter 11.) Saddam Hussein, another veteran practitioner of brinkmanship, has likewise had his failures but can also claim success in having forced the UN to temporarily abandon weapons inspection in Iraq in 1998. (This is discussed more fully in Chapter 5.) External defiance, it is worth adding, may have a beneficial domestic spin-off. Defying a foreign adversary has contributed in no small measure to the ‘defiant stability’ experienced by the likes of North Korea, Cuba, Libya and Iran. For most of them the US was the opponent that legitimized the dictatorship’s hold on power and the stability that flowed from the suppression of dissent. Conversely, the need for domestic stability and regime survival may feed external defiance.186 In deciding how to react to international pressure, deviant states need to weigh the costs and benefits of the various defiant and compliant responses. The same applies to non-state deviants, which may also have a range of options to choose from. This is not to suggest, though, that deviants have to contend with only foreign pressure for political change. A host of domestic pressures – political, social, economic and even military – may have an even greater impact on deviants’ calculations regarding reform or resistance. Non-state deviants may also need to weigh a range of internal and international factors when deciding how to respond to foreign pressure. Since most of them are expected to cease existing – and not merely reform themselves – their predictable responses are usually defiant rather than compliant.


In lieu of a conclusion Two key notions inform our framework for the analysis of nonconformist behaviour in world politics, namely deviance and norms. Deviant conduct is defined in terms of a departure from accepted norms of behaviour. This has led us to four components that make up the analytical framework, an expansion thus on the aspects highlighted by our survey of the sociology of deviance. The first component is the dual one of recording the major transgressions that state and non-state actors are accused of violating and identifying the nature and standing of the international norms in question. Eleven norms have been listed with regard to states and five in the case of non-state actors (acknowledging that some of the norms in the two categories overlap). Secondly, we considered the identity and motivations of the rule defenders, i.e. those acting to uphold international norms in the face of challenges from deviant actors. The third element is the range of actions that the norm upholders can choose from in dealing with deviant behaviour. The nature of these responses allows us to compile a typology of deviants. The final component of the framework focuses on the possible responses of deviants under external pressure. Using the framework for analysis, the remaining chapters offer case studies of deviant behaviour. Chapters 3 and 4 deal with deviant states from the pre-rogue era. As they are merely background chapters to those dealing with post-Cold War cases, Chapters 3 and 4 do not call for a comprehensive application of our framework. That is left for Chapters 5 to 11.

3 From Turkey to Rhodesia: an Assortment of Outcasts

The diversity of outcast countries that feature briefly in this background chapter reminds us that deviant status and the accompanying efforts at punishment through isolation were not confined to the Cold War era. From much earlier states of differing ideological persuasions and power had been condemned to this status. Their transgressions likewise extended over a wide spectrum. Considerable variation is also evident in the extent of ostracism they had endured. Truly universal deviants – shunned by the entire world community – were few and far between. Deviant behaviour in international affairs can be traced back to at least the time of the Roman Empire.1 Leapfrogging to the 16th century, reference can be made to the gravely offensive conduct of the so-called Barbary states. The four north African entities of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli were from the early 16th century havens for pirates preying upon Mediterranean (and occasionally Atlantic) shipping and ports. The commerce of European nations and later also America were prime targets. These foreign powers initially concluded treaties with the Barbary states under which they paid money to ensure immunity for their vessels from pirate attack. Tripoli and Algiers failed to abide by the agreements and pirates continued their raids, holding foreign shipping hostage for ransom. By the 19th century international disapproval of the conduct of the Barbary states had hardened considerably, encouraging the United States to launch naval action against Tripoli (1801–1805) and Algiers (1815). The American offensive, followed by the imposition of European colonial rule over the entire Barbary coast, brought to a final end what Westerners considered the degrading practice of paying tribute to pirates and their patrons. In modern parlance, it was an early Western confrontation with rogue states and their rogue protégés.2 The somewhat more elaborate case studies in this chapter also begin in the 16th century as we trace the early international fortunes of the Ottoman Empire (later Turkey) and end with Rhodesia in the late 1970s. More than half the case studies fall in the Cold War period and thus 51


overlap in time with the case studies in Chapter 4. The latter collection can be regarded as the principal pariah states of that era, whereas the five Cold War examples in the present chapter constitute a secondary cast of deviants.

Ottoman Empire Early internationalist thinkers in Europe regarded the Ottoman Empire as such a grave threat that they wanted to banish it from the continental community. By the end of the 16th century, various plans for a European league against the Turks had already been put forward. Some 150 years later, such ideas were still prevalent, as witness Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s proposal of a 19-member European league that would exclude the Turkish Emperor (but include his Russian counterpart.) Exclusion was to be supplemented by a crusade against the Ottoman Empire. In 1715, Leibniz suggested that perpetual peace might best be achieved by helping the Holy Roman Emperor ‘to chase the Turk out of Europe’.3 The Turks’ Islamic religion and their Asian extraction contrasted sharply with the white Christian features of the nations of Europe.4 What particularly offended European sensibilities, was the brutal way in which the far-flung Ottoman Empire oppressed its Christian subjects. For Metternich, the Turkish Empire was simply beyond the pale of civilization.5 As a mark of their disapproval, Western powers disallowed arms sales to the ‘infidel Turk’.6 Nonetheless, at the Congress of Paris in 1856, the Ottoman Empire was admitted to the Concert of Europe and was invited to every general international conference until 1914.7 The ambivalence continued, however, as many Westerners shared British statesman William Gladstone’s preference, expressed in the 1880s, for having the Ottoman Empire expelled ‘bag and baggage’ from Europe.8 The worst Western prejudices about Turkey were confirmed when World War I broke out. Not only did Turkey in November 1914 join the Central powers against the Allies, but it engaged in a wanton act of genocide. Between April 1915 and July 1916, Turkish authorities killed at least one million Armenians, nearly two-thirds of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire. In a joint declaration issued in May 1915, the Allies condemned the massacres and added a stern warning: ‘In view of these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization, the Allied governments announce publicly … that they will hold personally responsible … all members of the Ottoman government and those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres.’9 The Turks set up a Supreme Military Tribunal that tried and convicted some of the perpetrators of the Armenian massacres. Only one accused was executed, while most of the chief culprits fled the country. The latter escaped international justice as both the victorious Allies and the newly established League of Nations failed to establish

From Turkey to Rhodesia 53

the necessary tribunals to hear the case.10 Despite these events the modern Turkish Republic, founded by Kemal Atatürk in 1923, was absorbed into the international community. Remnants of the old alienation from Europe continued to influence Turkey’s fortunes, though, as witness the tortuous path towards its possible accession to the European Union (which many Turks view suspiciously as a ‘Christian club’).

Bolshevik Russia The Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic (RSFSR), a creation of the 1917 revolution, was born into international adversity. Its revolutionary origins were one of the principal reasons for the new communist government’s deviant status. Another was its decision to abandon the Allied war effort against Germany. The Allied powers found the Bolshevik party’s radical political programme singularly repugnant, not least for its attack on private property. Lenin’s government, imposed by force, had no legitimacy in the Allies’ estimation. ‘Being contrary to the nature of things, it could have no permanency’, the Allied nations believed. They would simply ‘wait for the freak to go away’. There was hence no question of recognizing or formally establishing relations with a government condemned to early oblivion. What rankled equally in Allied councils, was the Bolsheviks’ unbridled attacks on the war and their subsequent decision to conclude a separate armistice with Germany. Under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of 1918, Russia withdrew from the war against the Central powers. The disgusted Allied states recalled their ambassadors from Petrograd in early 1918 and even the neutral Scandinavian nations followed suit. Soviet foreign trade, including gold sales, was effectively terminated by the Allies, who blockaded the port of Petrograd until the beginning of 1920.11 The departure of the Allied diplomats paved the way for an invasion of Russia. Concurrently with the intervention of American, British, French and Japanese troops, various anti-Bolshevik forces were locked in a civil war with the Soviet government. The Bolsheviks’ defeat of their domestic rivals by early 1920 spelled the end of the Allied intervention.12 The dual Allied offensives of isolation and intervention left Russia cut off from the international community to an extraordinary degree, with enemies encircling it on all sides. Carr recorded that 1919 ‘was the year of Soviet Russia’s most complete isolation from the outside world’, finding itself denied all ‘normal contacts’ with foreign nations.13 It was the price Russia was made to pay for its two transgressions: revolution at home and disloyalty abroad. The first act of deviance did not violate any formal international norm, but was an affront to Western political consciousness and seemed to endanger Western economic interests in Russia. The second challenged a generally accepted rule of international behaviour, namely, honouring international accords. By unilaterally abandoning the Allied war


effort against the Central powers, Russia had broken an agreement it had reached with Britain and France in September 1914 that none of them would make separate peace with Germany. Russia’s action also violated the spirit if not the letter of a further agreement concluded with France and Britain in March 1915, designed in part to ensure Russian allegiance to the common cause. In the view of the Allies, Russia defected from the joint struggle in a particularly obnoxious fashion by not pleading weakness in the first instance but emphasizing ideological considerations and denouncing its erstwhile allies.14 Nonetheless, the lone communist state’s star began to rise in the wake of the abortive Allied invasion. Coming to the unpalatable realization that the Bolshevik rulers were not likely to collapse and be replaced by others more compatible with their interests, Western nations began abandoning their earlier intentions of displacing the Soviet government. The Allied blockade was lifted in January 1920, but the so-called gold blockade against Russia was retained. The next month saw an Anglo-Soviet agreement on the exchange of prisoners of war. Similar agreements and peace treaties with other countries followed. Sweden, Norway and Denmark were the first industrial countries to open trade with the communist state. The US, while removing all restrictions on trade with Russia in 1920, drew a firm line between permitting trade and officially facilitating it. Britain, hoping that commercial interaction would civilize the Bolsheviks, as Lloyd George expressed it, joined Germany in concluding the first formal trade agreements with Russia in 1921.15 Russia’s most dramatic diplomatic breakthrough followed the next year when it concluded the Treaty of Rapallo with Germany. For the two outcast nations the treaty was ‘a way of escape from isolation and contempt’.16 The Treaty of Rapallo was signed in the midst of the Genoa Conference, where Soviet diplomats made their debut on the world stage. Washington still subscribed to the view, expressed by Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby in 1920, that the ‘present rulers’ of Soviet Russia were not ‘a government with which the relations common to friendly governments can be maintained’.17 Repeating a familiar theme, he charged that the Bolshevik regime had seized power by force and was not representative of the Russian people, could not be relied upon to fulfil its international obligations, and, most seriously of all, was endangering governments everywhere with its commitment to spread its brand of revolution across the world. It was a regime, Colby insisted, that negated ‘every principle upon which it is possible to base harmonious and trustful relations’.18 But despite the Soviet Union’s violation of what the US considered rules of respectable state conduct, America was not averse to starting significant trade with the communist power in 1923. President Calvin Coolidge was even prepared to ‘make very large concessions for the purpose of rescuing the people of Russia’ from economic distress, yet he still ruled out official ties.19


The Americans were conspicuous by their absence when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (as the Soviet state was renamed in 1922) enjoyed a wave of de jure recognitions in 1924, accompanied by the establishment of formal diplomatic ties with several European states, Britain and China. It was no coincidence that the Soviet Union was ‘readmitted to the circle of European Powers as a full member at the very time when it seemed to have attained a new peak of political, economic and financial stability at home’.20 It was from a position of strength that the Soviet Union concluded a half dozen neutrality and non-aggression pacts with, among others, Turkey, Germany and France between 1925 and 1932. Even more important was the United States’ decision to recognize the Soviet Union de jure in 1933. The following year the USSR accepted an invitation to join the League of Nations. By admitting the Soviet Union to permanent membership of the League Council, the world body confirmed the communist nation’s great power status. Western members (with exceptions) had their own reasons for wanting to draw the Soviet Union into the League. They had been trying since 1925 to persuade the Soviets to join, ‘for the supposed civilizing effects of membership’.21 It was another Western admission that isolation had failed to modify the Soviet Union’s deviant behaviour. The ostracism, it should be reiterated, had little if anything to do with Lenin’s and Stalin’s blatant disregard for elementary human rights. The scale of their offences was truly staggering: An estimated 20 million Soviet citizens died as a result of the decisions of the two communist dictators.22 Western powers at the time evidently regarded these horrors as being of less consequence to international politics than Moscow’s other misdemeanours. Shortly after the Second World War the Soviet Union of course achieved superpower status, rendering it even more immune to Western pressures for political change. It was thus a nominal deviant only, one guilty of ongoing repression at home and aggression abroad but by and large escaping serious international punishment over its behaviour.

Weimar Germany The Weimar Republic, proclaimed in November 1918, was a hastily contrived constitutional arrangement designed to find favour with the victorious Allies and so assure Germany a reasonably amenable peace settlement. Among Germans there was little popular support for new order, which Snyder called ‘the illegitimate child of defeat’. These features sealed the fate of the new democracy.23 To aggravate matters, the Weimar construct could not save Germany from severely humiliating peace terms. Germany lost one eighth of its land area, over 6 million people, all its colonies and nearly all its foreign investments. For the Germans, the ultimate insult was the war-guilt clause.


Under article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, the Germans and their brothers-in-arms accepted responsibility ‘for causing all the loss and damage’ to which the Allied nations had been subjected ‘as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies’.24 In world politics Germany had thus been reduced to a virtual non-entity and was only permitted to appear at international meetings in the role of a ‘repentant sinner’.25 It was the price Germany had to pay for violating the global norm against conducting a war of aggression. Although born under a cloud of international opprobrium and humiliation, Weimar Germany soon started shaking off its deviant status and cracking the wall of ostracism. In its first independent act of foreign policy after the war, Germany in 1919 refused to participate in the Allied blockade of Russia. In 1920, the two nations reached agreement on the mutual repatriation of prisoners.26 A commercial agreement followed in 1921 and the Reichswehr entered into secret collaboration with the Red Army. With the groundwork thus prepared, political entente followed with the signing of the Rapallo Treaty.27 In 1924 all the principal statesmen of Europe – including Dr Gustav Stresemann, the German Chancellor – gathered in London to consider the Dawes Report on German reparations. The reception accorded the German delegation was ‘almost exaggerated an expression of the fact that the time of dictation had passed’ in the Allied powers’ relations with Germany. The subsequent accord granted Germany considerable advantages.28 The Locarno treaties of 1925, to which the Weimar Republic was a party, marked the symbolic end of the wartime coalition against Germany and opened the door to its admission to the League of Nations in 1926 as a permanent member of the Council.29 Two years later, Germany joined 14 other powers in signing the Kellogg–Briand Pact. With the adoption of the Young Plan in 1929, the great powers reached a final settlement of the German reparations question. Germany’s international reintegration and hence its rehabilitation was complete. All this occurred, not surprisingly, when Germany had become Europe’s leading industrial power.30 Four years later, though, the Weimar Republic ‘committed suicide’ with the installation of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor.31 Nazi Germany was to set new standards of deviant conduct domestically and internationally.

Fascist Italy Fascist Italy was the first country against which the League of Nations applied sanctions as an instrument of collective security. The measures were adopted in response to Italian forces’ invasion of Ethiopia in October 1935. The League Council declared that Italy had resorted to war in violation of its commitments under the Covenant – a grave instance of rule-breaking behaviour. Of the 55 members of the League Assembly 50 supported the


Council’s position and a committee was formed to decide on measures in terms of Article 16 of the Covenant. An arms embargo followed by financial sanctions (involving loans and credits) and the selective prohibition of imports from and exports to Italy, were approved. By mid-December, nearly all 50 governments that had earlier accepted the sanctions proposals, claimed to be implementing them.32 Italy was condemned to true deviant status. Undaunted, the Italians proceeded with their military offensive. In May 1936 Italian troops entered Addis Ababa and Ethiopia was annexed. Thereafter the sanctions campaign quickly fell apart. Neville Chamberlain, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, delivered the coup de grâce on 10 June, when he declared in public that sanctions against Italy had ‘failed to prevent war, failed to stop war, failed to save the victims of aggression’. To continue sanctions in the hope of preserving the independence of Ethiopia was for Chamberlain ‘the very midsummer of madness’.33 When the League Assembly considered the sanctions issue on 30 June, only New Zealand and South Africa voted for a continuation of punitive measures against Italy.34 Although sanctions subjected Italy to economic isolation, this was limited in both scope and duration. In the diplomatic sphere there were no concerted moves to sever formal relations with Rome. (The only real diplomatic isolation was self-imposed, with Italy’s withdrawal from the League Council in September 1935 in protest over the Council’s consideration of the Wal-Wal incident.) The diplomatic opprobrium generated by Italy’s aggression in Africa was counterbalanced by European powers’ determination to keep Italy ‘on side’ against Nazi Germany. Italy’s deviant behaviour was thus subordinated to immediate strategic considerations.

Francoist Spain Spain is our first post-1945 case study, but the origins of its deviance go back to the Spanish Civil War of 1936–39 when General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces received considerable military support from Germany and Italy.35 The victorious Franco demonstrated his gratitude to Hitler and Mussolini by joining the Anti-Comintern Pact in March 1939, an agreement with Germany and Italy to combat communism. This was followed by a secret Hispano-German friendship treaty. When the European war broke out, Spain promptly declared its neutrality, but soon changed to a policy of non-belligerency as the seemingly invincible German forces swept across Western Europe. By adopting this ambiguous status – which in effect made Spain ‘a pro-Axis neutral’ – Franco hoped to court Hitler’s favour and to ensure Spain a voice in a post-war international settlement.36 Franco was prepared to go even beyond this qualified neutrality: in October 1940 he met Hitler and Spain’s entry into the war on Germany’s side was agreed in


principle, subject to details being finalized. However, Franco would not heed Hitler’s demands for outright participation in the war. In 1941, Franco instead sent the volunteer División Azul (Blue Division) – 18,000 men at most – to join the German Army on the Russian front.37 When the tide of war began turning in the Allies’ favour towards the end of 1942, Spain started to abandon its pro-Axis orientation. In October 1943 it officially reverted from non-belligerency to neutrality. A year later, Spanish policy could be depicted as one of ‘benevolent neutrality’ towards the Allies. By the end of the war, Franco’s policy was decidedly pro-Allied.38 These manoeuvres were to little avail. In March 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had given an intimation of things to come when he declared that ‘there was no place in the community of the United Nations for a government founded on Fascist principles’. He moreover vowed, ‘We shall never forget … the present Spanish regime has in the past identified itself with our enemies’.39 The Soviet Union went much further, asserting that the Franco government threatened world peace and that all necessary steps – including the use of force – should be taken to eliminate the alleged menace. At both the Potsdam and San Francisco conferences, held in 1945, it was resolved to preclude Spain from membership of the envisaged world body. The reason was the Franco government’s origins, nature and ‘close association with the aggressor states’.40 At its second meeting in December 1946, the UN General Assembly confirmed that Spain would, for as long as Franco remained in power, be excluded from the UN, its agencies and UN-sponsored conferences. Echoing the intemperate language of the San Francisco Conference, the General Assembly declared that ‘the Franco regime is a Fascist regime patterned on, and established largely as a result of aid from Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Fascist Italy’. Franco was branded ‘a guilty party with Hitler and Mussolini in the conspiracy to wage war’. All UN member states were requested to withdraw the heads of their diplomatic missions from Madrid. (Most of the 19 countries that had embassies accredited in Madrid, obliged.) To cap it all, the resolution concluded with the threat that ‘adequate measures’ would be considered by the Security Council if a democratic government did not replace Franco’s ‘within a reasonable time’.41 All the ‘international blackballing’ never placed Franco’s rule in jeopardy. One reason is that diplomatic isolation was not reinforced with economic sanctions.42 Official Western attitudes to Spain moreover began to mellow quite soon. In January 1948 the French government declared is readiness to reopen the Pyrenean frontier with Spain, which Paris had closed unilaterally in 1946. A few months later, both Britain and France concluded commercial treaties with Spain.43 America embarked on a rapprochement with Madrid with the suspension in May 1948 of a seven-year freeze on Spanish-owned assets in the US. Contributing to the change in American


policy was a growing concern in Washington about the Soviet threat and an accompanying appreciation of the Iberian Peninsula’s strategic value, together with a realization that ostracism had failed to reform (not to mention replace) the Franco government.44 President Harry Truman next approved a US$62.5 million aid package for Spain, followed by American support for a UN resolution of December 1950 that lifted the diplomatic boycott against Spain. The General Assembly’s authorization of diplomatic relations with Madrid was soon followed up by the United States, Britain and France and opened the door to Spain’s membership of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and UNESCO, and in due course also the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for European Economic Cooperation.45 The year 1953 saw the greatest achievement in Franco’s post-war diplomacy, when Spain concluded two international agreements that subsequently became the main pillars of Spanish foreign policy. The Concordat of August 1953 normalized relations between the Holy See and the Spanish government. The Pact of Madrid, signed with the United States in September, established American military bases in Spain and provided for American military and economic assistance to the country. In 1955 Spain reached another milestone in its process of international rehabilitation when it became a full-fledged member of the UN.46 Again, Franco managed to breach Spain’s ostracism without meeting the demands initially set, namely, the removal of his government. While Spain thus managed to reduce its ‘outcastness’ quite significantly, two major goals always eluded Franco’s diplomacy: membership of NATO and the European Community. The non-democratic nature of the Spanish government was the major obstacle in both areas. It took a democraticallyelected civilian government to lead Spain into NATO in 1982, followed by admission to full membership of the European Community in 1986.47

Salazarist Portugal Portugal’s post-war deviant status, like that of Spain, was related to the Nazi-Fascist connection. Portugal’s guilt by association was smaller than Spain’s, though, and it consequently faced less ostracism in the wake of the war. In due course another factor – Portugal’s colonial policies and practices – became the primary cause of its low international fortunes. The main reason for critics’ identification of Portugal with pre-war Germany and Italy was its brand of authoritarianism. Dr Antonio de Oliveira Salazar ruled Portugal as a virtual dictator from 1932 to 1968. It was particularly after 1936 that his so-called Estado Novo shared many features with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy: authoritarian political ideas and practices, hatred of communism, a belief in hierarchy, and racism. After the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II, the Estado Novo retained its


repressive features. Salazarist Portugal, like Francoist Spain, was a political anachronism in post-war Western Europe48 – a state falling foul of the new human rights norms championed by Western countries in particular. Unlike Spain’s initial pro-Axis orientation, Portugal’s wartime conduct had not antagonized the Allied powers. True, there was much disquiet in Britain in particular over the growth of German influence in Portugal in the late 1930s, but Portugal did not follow Spain into the Anti-Comintern Pact. Instead, Salazar’s policy was one of ‘vigilant neutrality’. From 1943, Salazar openly made concessions to the Allies in return for guarantees for his regime and for the territorial integrity of Portugal and its overseas possessions.49 Against this background, it is understandable that the victorious Allies treated Portugal much more benevolently than Spain. Salazar’s government faced little international pressure over its authoritarian make-up. In contrast to Spain, Portugal secured financial assistance under the Marshall Plan and was admitted to NATO in 1949.50 Portugal’s norm-breaking behaviour at home did not provoke the kind of international opprobrium directed at the Spanish dictatorship. At the UN, however, Portugal was buffeted by the wind of change unleashed by the General Assembly’s adoption of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples in 1960. In a subsequent resolution, the Assembly declared that Portugal’s nine overseas territories were non-self-governing in terms of Chapter II of the UN Charter. Lisbon disputed the ruling, insisting that its ‘overseas provinces’ (thus renamed in 1951) were integral parts of Portugal and not colonies.51 Portugal had to defend its position on this issue virtually single-handedly in the UN. The US from 1961 (under the Kennedy administration) became one of the most vociferous critics of Portuguese colonialism,52 an issue that became a hardy annual at the world body. In response to Portuguese intransigence, Assembly resolutions underwent a steady radicalization: mild censures gave way to demands for independence to Portugal’s colonies, calls for punitive measures – notably sanctions – against Portugal, and endorsement of the independence movements’ armed struggle against Portuguese rule in Africa. What further alienated international opinion, were repeated allegations, over many years, of gross human rights violations by Portuguese forces in the conduct of their African wars against black liberation forces.53 For the UN, Portugal’s breach of the anti-colonial norm was clearly a far more serious matter than its undemocratic political order. Portugal also faced ostracist pressures in other UN organs. In 1963 it was expelled from the Economic Commission for Africa and two years later Lisbon was excluded from conferences sponsored by UNESCO.54 More importantly, membership of the EEC was out of bounds for Portugal because of its oppressive political system under Salazar and his successor, Dr Marcelo das Neves Caetano (who assumed office in September 1968).


Three years after the April 1974 revolution, democratic, post-colonial Portugal applied to join the EEC and formally acceded to full membership in January 1986.55 It was a mark of the country’s complete international rehabilitation.

People’s Republic of China The international fate of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), proclaimed in October 1949, shows some striking parallels with that of Soviet Russia after the communist revolution three decades earlier. The Chinese communist state, led by Mao Tse-tung, was immediately recognized by the Soviet Union, followed by several East European and Asian countries. By June 1950 seven West European states had done likewise. The Korean War brought this process to a halt, but it was resumed in 1954 when Britain, Norway and The Netherlands decided to forge diplomatic links with the PRC.56 As it had done vis-à-vis Soviet Russia, the United States again adopted an entirely different approach. Having supported the defeated Kuomintang (Nationalist) forces in the Chinese civil war, Washington greeted Mao’s ascendance with outright hostility. Secretary of State Dean Acheson described the communists’ triumph as an attempt at foreign domination ‘masked behind the facade of a vast crusading movement’. The US could only uphold its friendship with China if the Chinese people came ‘to recognize that the Communist regime serves not their interests but those of Soviet Russia’, he insisted.57 The US continued to recognize the Kuomintang government, which had fled to Taiwan after the communist victory on the mainland, as the sole legitimate government of all China. Washington moreover imposed a trade embargo against China and severely restricted US travel to the PRC. 58 As late as 1957 then Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was still advocating the overthrow of China’s communist government. ‘We owe it to ourselves, our allies, and the Chinese people to do all that we can to contribute to that passing’, he said.59 In American eyes, the PRC’s cardinal sin was its communist regime, which had violently displaced a staunchly pro-Western Chinese government. The US extended its campaign of ostracism against the PRC to the United Nations. China’s involvement in the Korean War offered Washington a persuasive pretext to mobilise international opinion and indeed action against Beijing. In February 1951 the US initiated a General Assembly resolution that condemned China for its aggression in Korea. This was followed in May by an Assembly resolution calling for an embargo on the export of a wide range of ‘strategic materials’, including arms and petroleum, to the PRC.60 The US also took the lead in moves to keep the PRC out of the UN. Western backing for the American position began to crumble in due course,


though. In 1961, Britain, Denmark, Sweden and Norway supported an Assembly motion calling for China’s admission to the world body.61 Still the US was unmoved. The Vietnam War caused renewed tensions between Beijing and Washington, which were again ranged on opposite sides. The PRC had by then become firmly established in official American perceptions as an ‘international outlaw’. Among the frequent expressions of this view was Under-Secretary of State George Ball’s questioning in 1964 of China’s right to be ‘recognized as a member of the society of nations’.62 This echoed the views of Secretary of State Colby about Soviet Russia more than forty years earlier. Most other states did not share the Americans’ qualms, allowing the PRC to continue expanding its diplomatic network and international economic ties.63 Just as China was making major strides in its international relations, the nation was overtaken by a brief but severe spell of self-isolation, which completely eclipsed the PRC’s enforced isolation. The ‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’, which began in earnest in the summer of 1966, plunged China into a period of isolationism aimed at safeguarding a revolutionary society against corrosive external influences.64 When the Cultural Revolution came to end in early 1969, the ‘dire consequences of the three-year convulsive foreign behavior’ included, according to Wang, ‘the serious decline of foreign trade, the precipitous drop in international prestige, and the self-tormenting alienation from the world community’.65 Beijing thereafter set about restoring its foreign relations. A ‘floodgate’ of international recognitions and formal diplomatic ties was opened in October 1970, with Canada leading the way. But the most dramatic achievement in China’s quest for international participation was the rapprochement with the US in the early 1970s. The process actually began in the latter half of 1969, when the Nixon administration relaxed trade and travel restrictions. In 1971 Washington went a step further by lifting its embargo on all non-strategic trade with the PRC. A major result of the thaw in relations between the two powers was that it opened the door for the PRC’s admission to the UN in 1971.66 The following year President Richard Nixon visited China and put his name to the celebrated Shanghai Communiqué, which defined the foundations of the new Sino-American relationship. The process of normalization thus initiated was only concluded with the two powers’ recognition of each other and the establishment of full diplomatic relations in January 1979. The last remnant of China’s era of imposed isolation had been removed. As with Russia in an earlier era, the US was compelled to accept that ostracism had failed to depose the Chinese communist rulers and that China was moreover a far too important international player to be treated as an outcast. The Americans again had little choice but to ‘go with the flow’ and engage rather than isolate the giant Asian communist power. Like the Russians before them, the Chinese managed to break out of deviant status


without abandoning their offensive behaviour. In dealing with the PRC, the Americans (and other Westerners) subordinated their fidelity to international human rights norms to the exigencies of power politics. Mao’s callous disregard for human rights was, after all, legendary. One authoritative estimate put the number of deaths caused in pursuit of his ideological goals at over 35 million.67 The international ostracism to which China was subjected in its first two decades had little to do with this gross norm-violating conduct; instead, it was an anticommunist crusade driven by America.

German Democratic Republic Conceived in the Cold War, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was born into international isolation. Its Soviet parentage guaranteed the new communist state deviant status in the Western world and indeed far beyond. The rival Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), sponsored by the three Western Allies and as much a product of the Cold War, by contrast found immediate and widespread international acceptance. Upon its proclamation as a state in October 1949, the GDR was recognized by the Soviet Union and most of its allies. The Western nations’ refusal to recognize the GDR was based on the contention that ‘the socalled government of the German Democratic Republic is the artificial erection of a “popular assembly” which had no mandate for this purpose’, to quote a 1949 declaration by the United States, Britain and France. Except for communist states, the rest of the world followed the Western powers’ lead in refusing to recognize the GDR.68 Not merely the legitimacy of the government was in dispute, but that of the state itself. Withholding recognition of a state, as distinct from a government, is the severest form of diplomatic isolation. Put differently, an entity whose claims to statehood are rejected by a majority of existing states is an international outcast par excellence. The FRG actively promoted the GDR’s ostracism, claiming from the outset to be the sole representative of the German nation. The principal device was the so-called Hallstein Doctrine, proclaimed in 1955. Any state establishing diplomatic links with the GDR, Bonn announced, will forfeit its relations with the FRG. An exception had of necessity to be made for the Soviet Union, which recognized the Federal Republic the same year. But all other countries were compelled to choose between the two Germanies. Some states defied the FRG and took up relations with East Germany at the expense of their diplomatic ties with Bonn; Yugoslavia (1957) and Cuba (1963) were two examples. The newly independent states in Asia and Africa, for whose favour the two German states vied most vigorously, opted en masse for West Germany – not least because of the powerful economic incentives offered by Bonn.69


Towards the end of the 1960s the international tide began turning in the GDR’s favour. A wave of diplomatic recognitions of the GDR was initiated by Cambodia in 1969, soon followed by Iraq, Sudan, Syria, South Yemen and Egypt. Scores of Latin American countries did likewise in the early 1970s. The conclusion of the Basic Treaty between the German states in December 1972 – which recognized their separate and equal existence – made it possible for the two Germanies to join the UN (in September 1973) and removed the final obstacle to outstanding Western recognition of the GDR.70 In December 1972 Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, Australia and Belgium in quick succession formally recognized the GDR. Ten other Western nations, including Britain and France, did the same in early 1973. The United States held back until September 1974 and Canada followed a year later.71 Although this diplomatic transformation occurred in the short space of five years, it should be remembered that the GDR had by then been in existence for 25 years. And it was still a communist dictatorship flagrantly violating international human rights norms, not least imprisoning its citizens behind the infamous Berlin Wall. Like Soviet Russia and the PRC, the GDR thus succeeded in overcoming its deviant status without sacrificing its manifestly rule-breaking behaviour. In the end the GDR succumbed to a fate far worse than enforced isolation: it lost its statehood when it became ‘reunited’ with – in effect absorbed by – West Germany in October 1990 to form a reconstituted Federal Republic of Germany. A product of the Cold War, the GDR was a victim of the end of the East-West divide.

Rhodesia In the 15 years of its unilaterally declared independence, Rhodesia was an outcast of a special kind. In meting out severe collective punishment to Rhodesia, the international community acted with a unity of purpose and action not demonstrated with regard to any of the other countries discussed in this chapter. Rhodesia had not been a full member of the international community when it became an international deviant. Both de jure and de facto, Rhodesia’s status before ‘independence’ resembled that of the British dominions (South Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) before the 1931 Statute of Westminster gave them formal independence. Rhodesia found itself in a ‘twilight zone between dependence and independence – being neither colony nor dominion’, with Britain still its legal albeit not actual sovereign.72 Its constitutional status thus circumscribed the extent of Rhodesia’s external relations, while subsequent ostracism meant not only the severance of existing foreign links, but also the prevention of new ‘state-like’ international ties.


Prime Minister Ian Smith’s unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) on 11 November 1965 at once placed the territory on a collision course with Britain and the world community at large. Britain considered UDI an illegal seizure of power by a rebellious white minority bent on suppressing the black majority.73 This was given formal expression in a British Order in Council that voided Rhodesia’s self-promulgated ‘independence’ constitution and technically returned the territory to the status of a Crown Colony to be governed directly from London. Britain immediately introduced its first batch of economic sanctions against Rhodesia, which included a ban on British capital flows to the rebel colony and a boycott of Rhodesian tobacco and sugar. In another far-reaching response to UDI, Britain referred the Rhodesian issue to the United Nations, which would henceforth become the focal point of attempts at punishing and pressurising Rhodesia through ostracism.74 The Security Council’s opening salvo was a resolution, passed on 12 November 1965, condemning UDI and requesting all states not to recognize Smith’s ‘illegal régime’. A week later the Council resolved that the indefinite existence of UDI would threaten international peace and security. Britain was accordingly called upon to quell the Rhodesian rebellion. All states were requested to deny Rhodesia arms and oil, and ‘to do their utmost in order to break off economic relations’. The following month Britain sent naval units into the Mozambique Channel to interdict any vessels suspected of carrying oil for Rhodesia via Beira. In April 1966 Britain received Security Council authorization to apply force in stopping oil shipments to Rhodesia through the Mozambican port.75 The next step in the process of escalation followed in December 1966, when the Security Council for the first time declared that the existing situation in Rhodesia actually ‘constitutes a threat to international peace and security’. Limited mandatory sanctions were accordingly introduced, banning the importation of such Rhodesian products as iron ore, chrome, tobacco and meat, as well as the exportation to Rhodesia of arms, motor vehicles and oil, among other things. The noose was further tightened in May 1968 when the Security Council imposed comprehensive mandatory sanctions that banned all investment in and trade with Rhodesia (except for the export of certain items for humanitarian use), restricted air transportation to and from the territory and prohibited the recognition of Rhodesian passports. The relevant resolution, obligating member states of a global organization to penalize a deviant country through comprehensive sanctions, was the first of its kind since the ill-fated sanctions resolution against Italy in 1935.76 The ‘most conspicuous success of the sanctions program’77 or, conversely, the ‘singular failure of UDI’,78 was the Rhodesian government’s utter lack of international legitimacy and recognition. The world community shared Britain’s position that it was the legal sovereign of Rhodesia and that all laws and orders made by the Smith government were without legal effect.


UDI was considered an illegal act and Rhodesia was not recognized as a state in international law.79 Rhodesia’s UDI, issued by a white (‘settler’) minority government in a predominantly black African dependency, broke two critical international norms, viz. those against colonialism and racial discrimination. The former, we have already recorded, found expression in the 1960 UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples; the latter was formalized in, among other documents, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1969). Rhodesia’s illegal independence and hence its international isolation came to an end with the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979, which led to the birth of an internationally recognized Zimbabwe under a legitimate black government the following year.

Conclusion The first and rather obvious formal norm of universal relevance that emerges from some of the case studies, is that a country should not commit external aggression as Germany and later Italy had done. To aggravate matters for Germany, cynics would add, it lost the ensuing war. Weimar Germany paid the price for these transgressions. A second, informal, rule flows from the first: beware of backing the losing side in a major war. Otherwise, expect punishment afterwards, as witness Spain and Portugal in the aftermath of World War II. Third, the perpetuation of colonialism into the 1960s and beyond was a clear breach of the anti-colonial norm. Both Portugal (clinging to its African empire until the mid-1970s) and Rhodesia (a rebel colony resisting proper decolonization) fell foul of this powerful, formal norm. The fact that Rhodesia’s UDI was issued by a white minority government in Africa also broke a fourth norm, namely that against racial discrimination. The fifth norm highlighted by our inquiry was neither formal nor universal, but still one dear to the US and some of its allies: revolutionary seizures of power by communists who then imposed radical dictatorships as in Russia, China and also East Germany, were singularly unacceptable. Finally, Western powers were even more appalled by Soviet Russia’s commitment to export its communist revolution to foreign countries – a violation of one of the oldest rules of inter-state relations, namely non-interference in others’ domestic affairs. Our case studies reveal that foreigners’ moral or ideological qualms over a state’s norm-breaking conduct often moderated or disappeared over time. Once the isolators became convinced that the target government could and would withstand attempts to coerce it through isolation, their commitment to ostracist policies began to wane. Additional considerations, such as the need for allies or a deviant state being a major player in world politics, also


came into play. Western acceptance of Spain on the one hand and the Soviet Union, China and East Germany on the other, illustrates the relevance of such factors. These countries did not first modify or renounce their deviant behaviour to suit their isolators, but gained international acceptance very much on their own terms. The end to Rhodesia’s extreme deviant status was, by contrast, preceded by radical domestic change. The US’s anti-deviant strategies featured prominently in the case studies. Washington was quick in trying to isolate countries whose governments or policies it found politically unacceptable, be they communist or Westernoriented. The US also displayed remarkable staying power, holding out to the last against lifting the isolation of the Soviet Union, GDR and China. In the cases of non-communist states under ostracism, the United States’ behaviour was rather ambiguous. Within a few years, it switched from ostracizing to embracing Spain and also played the dual role of patron and punisher of Portugal.

4 Principal Pariahs of the Cold War Era

In the years of the Cold War, especially during its last three decades, the Republic of China (ROC, or simply Taiwan), Israel, Chile and South Africa were widely regarded as the four principal pariah countries. They found themselves seriously at odds with major segments of the international community and were subjected to varying degrees of ostracism. All four were relatively small countries; they were staunchly pro-Western and anticommunist in external orientation but feeling aggrieved that their ‘natural allies’ in the West were either shunning them or not giving them due recognition as valued partners; and, with the (qualified) exception of Israel, they had authoritarian governments that systematically violated human rights. Since the international isolation of Israel, Chile, Taiwan and South Africa in the Cold War era has been analyzed rather extensively elsewhere and these countries are not the focal point of the present inquiry, it will suffice to summarize the relevant findings of an earlier work.1 Whereas that study emphasized the quantifiable features of states’ enforced isolation, we will now focus on the behavioural norms that the four countries were said to have transgressed.

Republic of China A number of watershed events marked the ROC’s decline to pariah status and diplomatic isolation. The first was the communist take-over of mainland China in 1949, forcing the Kuomintang (Nationalist) government to relocate itself on the tiny island province of Taiwan. The official position for decades thereafter was that the ROC – established in 1912 with its seat in Nanking – had only temporarily moved its government to Taiwan following the communists’ illegal seizure of power; the Kuomintang considered themselves the only legitimate government of all China and their stated policy was to recover the mainland from the control of the communist ‘rebels’. A majority of states initially supported the ROC’s claim to 68

Principal Pariahs of the Cold War Era 69

international legitimacy and they accordingly refused to recognize the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The 1950s and 1960s nonetheless saw a steady erosion of the ROC’s international status as a growing number of states switched their recognition to the PRC. The ROC’s international decline was a mirror image of the PRC’s diplomatic ascent. This trend culminated in the UN’s decision of 1971 to admit the PRC to membership at the expense of the ROC. For the ROC, this was a major act of delegitimation, a diplomatic defeat of the first order. From then on the Kuomintang’s assertion that they were still the sole legitimate rulers of all China, became virtually impossible to sustain. For the international community, reality dictated otherwise: the PRC was the world’s most populous state (1971: 730 million, against Taiwan’s 13.4 million inhabitants); in size, the PRC ranked third (over 9.5 million km2 while Taiwan was a mere 35,961 km2); the PRC had joined the ranks of the nuclear powers in 1964; as an international trading partner, the ROC still eclipsed the PRC in the 1970s and 1980s, but the latter offered enormous potential to Western economies in particular; and finally, the PRC had already made a considerable impact on the international diplomatic scene well before 1971. In short, the PRC was a major power that could no longer be ignored in the councils of the world. The communist government had proven its durability and its long-term prospects for survival seemed brighter than those of its Nationalist opponents on Taiwan. The ROC of 1971 was only in name the ROC of 1912, for it had (in 1949) ceded over 99 per cent of its territory – including its capital – to a rival government; the ROC leadership was but a short step from a government in exile. The international community came to judge it an absurdity that such a government could still represent all of China’s people. The ROC’s exclusion from the UN accelerated the country’s international derecognition. The United States was the principal exception to the rule – until 1979. In that year Washington also changed sides, withdrawing the diplomatic and to some extent also the military shield it had for so long provided Taiwan. The basic cause of the ROC’s diplomatic decline was a singularly exceptional one: it had lost the bulk of its territory to a revolutionary government that then transformed society to create a new state with an entirely different ideological complexion. By expelling the ROC in 1971 in favour of the PRC, the UN rejected the ROC’s claim to inclusive (all China) statehood and by implication also any future claim to exclusive (Taiwan only) statehood. The General Assembly’s intention was thus not to excommunicate a deviant ROC until it had mended its ways and then to reconsider its admission to the fold; instead it condemned the ROC, as a political entity, to extinction. Having dispensed this most extreme form of censure, the UN evidently hoped to clear its agenda of the Taiwan issue. The future of the island was to become a domestic Chinese (read: PRC) matter and Beijing


has ever since been determined to keep its ‘internal’ affairs off the world body’s agenda. The ROC’s pariahhood was thus based on its relegation to non-state status by the international community, notwithstanding Taipei’s vehement objections. This left the ROC, in the eyes of most of the world, a political anachronism swimming against the tide of history. The popular international image of Taiwan as a pariah country had little if anything to do with its poor human rights record before the commencement of political liberalization in 1987. Nor has Taiwan’s transformation into a full-fledged democracy in the early 1990s improved its diplomatic fortunes or freed it of its outcast status. The ROC’s official renunciation in 1991 of the fiction that it was the sole legitimate representative of all China has likewise failed to stem the tide of international adversity. The island does, however, have a major saving grace: it is deeply integrated into the global economy. By the end of the 1980s, for instance, Taiwan was the thirteenth largest trading country in the world, doing business freely with over 140 states. The Taiwanese have also been ingenious in establishing a vast network of so-called representative offices abroad to replace the formal diplomatic missions it had to close. More than a decade after the end of the Cold War and with the old group of pariah states having dissolved, the ROC was still being shunned by the world community at large. The country remained sorely deficient in terms of juridical statehood but its empirical statehood was sound and indisputable. In 2003 Taiwan maintained diplomatic relations with (and was thus recognized by) only 28 states2, most of them small countries of little consequence in world politics. Yet Taiwan’s 23 million people lived in a stable, thriving democracy and enjoyed a standard of living that placed it among the developing countries. Taiwan also remained an economic powerhouse in global terms and boasted a formidable military capability.3 The PRC, which insists on Taiwan’s reunification with the mainland on Beijing’s terms, ensures that the world community does not translate the ROC’s de facto statehood into de jure statehood. This leaves the PRC as the self-appointed guardian of Taiwan’s unique deviant status.

Israel The modern state of Israel was born in May 1948 to fierce opposition from the entire Arab world, which regarded a Jewish national homeland in its midst as an interloper with no legitimate claims to statehood. This hostility ensured that Israel was at least in its own region condemned to outcast status from the very outset. The enmity also led Arab military forces, drawn from seven surrounding countries, to invade Israel at its inception with the purpose of destroying the new state. The attempt failed, but the Arabs’ commitment to the destruction of Israel resulted in three more major


Arab–Israeli wars: in October 1956, June 1967 and October 1973, as well as the so-called War of Attrition, 1969–70. Israel also had to contend with numerous armed attacks staged by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO, founded in 1964). This sparked yet another large conflagration, officially styled Operation Peace for Galilee, in 1982–83 when Israeli forces intervened in Lebanon to destroy PLO bases. Its Arab enemies did not rely on force alone to destroy Israel. Another instrument used from the start was a well-orchestrated campaign of ostracism, which left Israel diplomatically, economically and culturally isolated in the region especially. Isolation was closely linked to Arab efforts at delegitimizing the state of Israel. Egypt eventually acknowledged that Israel could not be liquidated through such actions, and signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state in 1979 following the Camp David Accord of September 1978. The normalization of relations between Israel and Egypt – including the establishment of diplomatic and trade relations – was not repeated with other Arab states, which still stubbornly refused to acknowledge Israel’s very right of existence. For them, a settlement of the Palestinian issue required the obliteration of the Jewish state. It was only a decade later, towards the end of 1988, that the PLO recognized Israel’s statehood and renounced violence against the Jewish state. The PLO too came to accept that Israel could not be wished or forced from the face of the earth and that the international tide had by then turned markedly favourable to Israel and hostile to the PLO over its frequent use of terrorism. Scores of African states that had severed official ties with Israel after the 1973 war (in solidarity with the Arabs) restored diplomatic links.4 Several communist countries had by the end of the 1980s also recognized the Jewish state and established diplomatic relations. (The Soviet Union followed suit in October 1991, having severed formal ties with Israel in 1967.)5 In 1988 Israel enjoyed diplomatic links with no less than 81 countries. The late 1980s can therefore be taken as the end of its period of intense pariahhood. To compile an inventory of Israel’s specific sins in the four decades after its founding, we turn to the UN, which directed the ‘pariahzation’ of the Jewish state at the global level. A first issue with which the world body concerned itself throughout this period, was Israel’s occupation since the 1967 war of Arab territories: East Jerusalem (captured from Jordan), the West Bank area of Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, the Gaza Strip (wrested from Egyptian control) and the Golan Heights in Syria. The behavioural norm violated by the Israelis was that against the acquisition of territory by force. Security Council resolution 242 of November 1967, the benchmark resolution for establishing a ‘just and lasting peace’ in the Middle East, required the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from the occupied territories. This precondition for peace was reaffirmed in subsequent resolutions, which often also censured Israel’s refusal to meet the requirement. In


March 1980, for instance, the Council (resolution 465) strongly deplored Israel’s ongoing settlement programmes in the territories and called on the Jewish state to stop the practice and dismantle existing settlements. When Israel annexed the Golan Heights in December 1981, placing the area under its jurisdiction, the Security Council responded (resolution 497) by condemning the move and giving Israel two weeks to rescind its decision. Meanwhile, in 1980, the Council passed a resolution that ‘bolstered Israel’s outlaw condition’ by accusing it of international criminal actions in the occupied territories by violating the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.6 In its regular condemnations of Israel’s ongoing occupation of the Arab territories and in demanding an end to Israeli settlements and indeed to Israel’s presence in the territories, the General Assembly was typically much more forthright than the Security Council. On several occasions the Assembly declared null and void all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the occupied areas. Given its salience, the future of Jerusalem can be listed as a separate, second major issue for the UN. The General Assembly repeatedly called for international status for the city; it condemned Israel’s occupation and subsequent incorporation of West Jerusalem after the 1967 war and refused to recognize Jerusalem as capital of Israel. Thus the Assembly’s fifth Emergency Special Session of 1967, devoted entirely to the Middle East, approved a resolution declaring invalid Israeli measures to change the status of Jerusalem. Twenty years later the Assembly was still demanding that Israel relinquish East Jerusalem as part of an overall withdrawal from occupied Arab territories. The third matter concerned Palestinian refugees who had fled or were expelled from their homes in territories occupied by Israel. A typical expression of the Assembly’s views is found in resolution 2672C of 8 December 1970. It asserted that the problem of the Palestinian Arab refugees had resulted from Israel’s denial of their inalienable rights under the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Assembly recognized that the Palestinian people were entitled to equal rights and self-determination and declared that full respect for their inalienable rights was an indispensable element in achieving a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. Apart from human rights norms, the international rule against the violent seizure of territory came into play here too. The fourth issue was related to the previous two and touched on the same rules of conduct. The Assembly repeatedly condemned Israel for human rights abuses in the occupied territories, the censure often based on reports of the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories (established under resolution 2443 of 19 December 1968). By December 1969, the Assembly was already (resolution 2535B)


drawing the attention of the Security Council to ‘the grave situation’ arising from Israeli actions in the occupied territories and requesting the Council to take ‘effective measures’ to ensure Israel’s compliance with Assembly resolutions on the matter. The Assembly over the years repeatedly urged Israel to adhere to the 1949 Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War in these territories. As for the Palestinians, the year 1974 saw their fate being highlighted separately when ‘The question of Palestine’ was for the first time included as an individual item on the Assembly’s agenda. The following year, the General Assembly established a Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. The Assembly on numerous occasions affirmed their right to self-determination and also to full sovereignty over the natural resources in the occupied territories. The Assembly furthermore declared its ‘support for the Palestine Liberation Organization as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people’, the body under whose leadership the Palestinians should be enabled to exercise their right to return and to ‘self-determination, national independence and the establishment of [their] independent sovereign state in Palestine’. The Palestinian uprising or intifada that broke out in December 1987, in the fifth place, concentrated international attention on Israeli conduct in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinian resistance to Israeli rule was nothing new, but the intifada was more widespread, persistent and violent than anything seen before. Predictably, there was a high Palestinian death toll resulting from Israeli security actions; over 300 Palestinians (as against 14 Jews) had died by early 1989. The General Assembly already in December 1987 weighed in with a resolution that strongly deplored Israel’s actions ‘which violate the human rights of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories’. The following December the Assembly severely censured Israel’s policies and practices and decided that it was not a peaceloving state. The international news media helped to sensitise world opinion to events in the Palestinian territories, casting the Israelis in the role of brutal oppressors while portraying the Palestinians as a valiant people struggling for their legitimate rights. The Israelis were evidently caught by surprise by the flood of adverse publicity and were no doubt deeply concerned about the damage to Israel’s international image. Only a month after the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said the violence had left Israel ‘isolated as it never has been’.7 Israel’s military strikes into neighbouring Arab states, whether against suspected PLO targets or the host country’s institutions, were a sixth major issue taken up by the UN. The Assembly repeatedly censured as ‘aggression’ what the Israelis saw as justified pre-emptive or retaliatory action against ‘terrorists’ in their foreign sanctuaries. An Israeli attack of a different kind was on Iraqi nuclear installations in June 1981, an action promptly condemned by the Assembly.


The seventh highly divisive question was the nature of Zionism. General Assembly resolution 3379 of November 1975 branded Zionism as ‘a form of racism and racial discrimination’. Israel’s founding ideology was condemned not merely as an affront to human dignity, but as a crime against humanity. It was a patent attempt to deprive Israel of its ideological legitimacy and it could have paved the way not only for Israel’s expulsion from the UN, but ultimately for the dismantling of the ‘Zionist state’. 8 Subsequent Assembly resolutions affirmed the Zionismequals-racism formulation. The anti-racism norm was, of course, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, among other documents. Israel’s nuclear capability can be listed as an eighth transgression, calling the non-proliferation norm into question. The Assembly on a number of occasions condemned Israel’s ‘refusal to renounce any possession of nuclear weapons’ and requested the IAEA and other organizations and states to cease cooperation with Israel in the nuclear field. In the Security Council Israel had enjoyed a relatively easy passage until 1968. A resolution condemning Israel in March of that year for a punitive expedition into Jordan – in evident contravention of the non-aggression norm – marked the beginning of a new phase in the Council’s dealings with the Jewish state. Two months later the Council addressed itself to the issue of Jerusalem by calling on Israel to rescind all measures designed to change the legal status of the city. In December, the Council castigated Israel over an attack on Beirut airport. With rare exceptions, Israel was over the next two decades reprimanded each year by the Security Council in anything between one and six resolutions passed. It should be noted, though, that the Council’s resolutions were far less strident in tone and harsh in substance than those commonly adopted by the General Assembly. A major reason was the US, which between 1972 and 1985 vetoed 16 resolutions critical of Israel and also prevented the Security Council adopting punitive measures against the Jewish state. The General Assembly and Security Council were not the only UN bodies involved in the diplomatic offensive against Israel. The country was repeatedly chastised in such other UN organs as the Economic and Social Council and the Commission on Human Rights. In February 1976, for instance, the latter Commission found Israel guilty of ‘war crimes’ in the occupied territories. Other inter-governmental organizations prominent in the campaign to banish Israel from the community of nations were the Non-Aligned Movement, Arab League, Islamic Conference Organization and Commonwealth. Their overlapping and predominantly Third World membership made these bodies hotbeds of anti-Israeli agitation. The European Community, which had long concerned itself with the Middle East conflict, was more restrained but still critical of Israeli conduct. In its major


statement on the region, subsequently reaffirmed, the European Council in 1977 declared the acquisition of territory by force inadmissible, adding that an end to Israeli occupation of Arab territories was the basis for a Middle East settlement. Invoking the self-determination norm, the Council demanded that Israel ‘recognize the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people’, including a homeland. The Arabs in turn had to accept Israel’s right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries. We have already recorded a number of events in the late 1980s that marked the end of Israel’s period of serious deviance. Another milestone along Israel’s road to fuller international acceptance was the UN General Assembly’s repeal in December 1991 of its anti-Zionist resolution of 1975. In a sign of the times, the move was co-sponsored by the US and the Soviet Union. (In December 1998 the General Assembly (resolution 623) went a significant step further when it for the first time acknowledged that antiSemitism was one of the ‘contemporary forms of racism and racial discrimination’.) Also in 1991 the US managed to secure the agreement of the Israeli, Syrian, Egyptian, Jordanian and Lebanese governments and of Palestinian representatives to attend a regional peace conference on the Middle East. After numerous difficulties the initiative produced a breakthrough when Israel and the PLO in September 1993 signed a Declaration of Principles on Palestinian self-rule in the occupied territories. Among other things, the accord entailed mutual recognition by Israel and the PLO and established a timetable for Israel’s withdrawal from the territories. Under the Cairo Agreement of 1994 Israel and the PLO approved detailed arrangements for Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and Jericho and Israel’s disengagement from the two areas. In the spirit of peacemaking the Palestine National Council in 1996 amended the Palestinian National Charter (the PLO’s covenant) to delete all clauses demanding the liquidation of the Jewish state. Other positive developments in the late 1990s were the conclusion of the Wye River Memorandum between Israel and the Palestinian leadership in October 1998 (determining a new timetable for Israel’s withdrawal from several West Bank towns and signalling the start of long delayed ‘final status’ talks over the occupied territories) and a follow-up agreement between the sides known as the Sharm esh-Sheikh Memorandum of September 1999. Meanwhile, in 1994, Israel and Jordan had concluded a formal peace treaty that paved the way for diplomatic and economic relations. After Jordan and Egypt, Mauritania in 1999 became the third member state of the Arab League to enter into full diplomatic relations with Israel. In another diplomatic coup for Israel, Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited the Jewish state in April 2000.9 All this is not to suggest that Israel has entirely rid itself of its deviant status. The UN General Assembly, for instance, throughout the 1990s kept up its pressure on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories and cease its repressive actions against the local population. By the end of the decade


the Assembly (resolutions 54/79 and 54/230) was still censuring Israel, ‘the occupying Power’, over its ‘continuing violation of the human rights of the Palestinian people’, its continuing actions ‘designed to change the legal status, geographical nature and demographic composition of the Occupied Palestinian Territory’, and its exploitation of the natural resources of the various occupied territories. A new Palestinian intifada that began in September 2000 plunged Israel and the Palestinian areas into a new spiral of bloody reciprocal violence marked by stepped up Palestinian suicide bombings and heavy-handed Israeli reprisals. The Israelis’ forcible responses (killings of Palestinian civilians, occupation of Palestinian towns and the destruction of suspected terrorist hide-outs) have drenched them in a torrent of international condemnation. The UN’s world conference against racism, held in South Africa in September 2001, was just one of numerous international forums at which Israel received short shrift from large segments of world opinion. Israel has, however, had a mitigating factor of sorts in that it has suffered severe loss of civilian life in the suicide bombings and other attacks by Palestinian militants. (Between September 2000 and April 2003, according to UN figures, 2,566 Palestinians and 766 Israelis had been killed in the violence.10) In the Western world, where tolerance of terrorism by Islamic extremists is near zero, the Palestinian cause was not helped by the spate of bomb attacks against Israelis. So, despite what many states and IGOs regarded as Israel’s unacceptably harsh responses to Palestinian terrorism, this behaviour has not been judged by the world community as being sufficiently deviant to reassign the Jewish state to its former pariah status. Consider, for instance, the temperate language of UN General Assembly resolution 56/62 of February 2002, which declared that member states were ‘(d)eeply concerned by the tragic events that have occurred since 28 September 2000 [when the second intifada began] and that have led to numerous deaths and injuries, mostly among Palestinians’. The main demand that the Security Council made of the Israelis and Palestinians in resolution 1435 of September 2002, was for ‘the complete cessation of all acts of violence, including all acts of terror, provocation, incitement and destruction’ – a strikingly even-handed approach. Earlier the Council (resolution 1397 of March 2002) welcomed various international diplomatic initiatives to bring about peace, and affirmed ‘a vision of a region where two States, Israel and Palestine, live side by side within secure and recognized borders’.

Chile The military coup d’état of September 1973 was a watershed event in Chile’s domestic politics and external relations alike. It brought to an end a long period of civilian democratic rule, a distinction Chile had


enjoyed in a continent not renowned for political liberty. In its foreign relations, Chile was forced into the league of pariah states in the wake of the coup.11 Following independence from Spain in 1818, Chile was for most of the century ruled by a constitutionally supported oligarchy of landowners, until the introduction of parliamentary government in 1891. The parliamentary republic lasted until 1920, which marked the beginning of a period of political upheaval. The military seized power for a short time in 1924 and a military dictatorship held sway between 1927 and 1931. No less than 21 different cabinets took office between 1924 and 1931. The major legacy of this period of instability was the constitution of 1925, which reintroduced a presidential republic (like Chile had before 1891). In 1932, the country returned to constitutional normality and elected civilian presidents ruled Chile (under the 1925 constitution) until 1973.12 The last of these presidents, Dr Salvador Allende, was elected in September 1970. Allende, a Marxist, was leader of the Unidad Popular, a coalition of five left-wing parties that included the Communist Party. It was an unprecedented achievement: a Marxist government had come to power by constitutional means. The period ended in 1973 when Allende was deposed by the Chilean armed forces. The military coup, led by General Augusto Pinochet, aroused international passions for a variety of reasons. One was the violence that accompanied Allende’s overthrow – he died in the action – and the subsequent gross abuse of human rights by the incoming rulers.13 Another reason was that the military had dislodged an elected civilian president and violated Chile’s modern democratic record of constitutional change of government. The fact that it was a right-wing coup against a left-wing government guaranteed vehement reaction from large sectors of the international community. US complicity in the military take-over merely added fuel to left-wing fires of outrage.14 Dedicated to the eradication of Allende’s Marxist legacy, the military government employed an array of authoritarian measures to suppress opposition and consolidate its power. A state of siege was in force from 1973 to 1978, when it was replaced by a state of emergency. Opponents of the government were subjected to arbitrary detention, torture, execution and internal and external exile. In 1977, all political parties were banned. Gestures of reform and reconciliation nonetheless accompanied repression. Following a favourable plebiscite in September 1980, a new constitution – designed as a ‘transition to democracy’ – came into effect. In 1983, over 1,000 Chilean exiles were allowed to return to the country, with many more following. But opposition to the Pinochet government persisted, leading to considerable violence and loss of life in 1983 and 1984. In September 1986 an abortive attempt was made to assassinate Pinochet. The rulers responded to such challenges in characteristic fashion, thus extending the vicious cycle of repression and resistance.


For the international community, as represented by the UN in the first instance, Chile’s gravest sin was the violation of human rights. In its first resolution on the situation in Chile, adopted in November 1974, the General Assembly (resolution 3219) expressed ‘its deepest concern that constant flagrant violations of basic human rights and fundamental freedoms in Chile continue to be reported’ and urged the Chilean authorities to restore basic human rights. In due course the tone of resolutions became rather strident as the Chilean government failed to heed the Assembly’s admonitions or to cooperate with UN bodies appointed to investigate the domestic situation. Resolution 179 of December 1979, for example, reiterated the Assembly’s ‘indignation at the continued violation of human rights in Chile’ and expressed its ‘grave concern that there has been a deterioration in a number of areas’. The first of a series of steps the Chilean government was urged to take, involved lifting the state of emergency and reinstating democratic institutions. This was not merely a call for a change of government policy, but for a change of government per se. As the Assembly’s impatience with Chile seemed to grow, the inventory of actions expected of Santiago became longer. Thus resolution 161 of December 1986 listed no fewer than 12 specific measures that needed to be taken ‘so that the principle of legality, democratic institutions and the effective enjoyment and exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms may be restored’. In January 1988, the General Assembly for the fifteenth consecutive year condemned the Chilean government for human rights violations. On the whole, the language chosen in these expressions of censure had all along been more restrained than that used in castigating either Israel or South Africa. More importantly, the Assembly never proposed punitive measures against Chile, or even resorted to demands, threats and ultimatums. Nor did the Security Council concern itself with the question of human rights in Chile. Its only involvement with Chile after the military coup was in September 1973, when the Council heard a Cuban complaint over attacks on its embassy in Santiago. (The Security Council adjourned without a resolution being tabled.) Several other UN bodies also took up the Chilean issue. The Commission on Human Rights, Economic and Social Council, Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, and International Labour Conference, all condemned the military junta. In 1979 the Commission on Human Rights appointed a Special Rapporteur on the state of human rights in Chile and an Expert on the Question of the Fate of Missing and Disappeared Persons in that country. Their reports, and those of an Ad Hoc Working Group on the Situation in Chile, regularly featured in Assembly resolutions reprimanding the Pinochet government. The Organization of American States (OAS) consistently censured Chile’s military rulers. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, one of


its agencies, in November 1974 reported ‘extremely serious violations’ of ten fundamental human rights established under international agreements to which Chile was a party. Thereafter resolutions denouncing human rights violations in Chile (and some other Latin American countries) became a feature of OAS General Assembly meetings. In 1979, for instance, Chile was called upon to lift the state of emergency, hold free elections and ‘secure the full observance of human rights’.15 By October 1986, the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights was still recording serious abuses in virtually all aspects of human rights in Chile and called for a prompt return to democratic government.16 Although Pinochet’s Chile had the image of a pariah state, few countries severed diplomatic ties in the wake of the military coup and Chile’s participation in intergovernmental organizations continued uninterrupted. These features contrasted starkly with the home-boundness of President Pinochet – a highly undesirable visitor to foreign chancellaries – and the scarcity of visiting foreign counterparts. Chile’s international economic relations were largely unaffected by its pariah status, but not so its foreign military links. The US until the late 1980s maintained a blanket embargo on the export of armaments to Chile, while Britain, France, West Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Brazil also imposed some unilateral restrictions. A plebiscite in October 1988 heralded the end of Chile’s deviant status. The country’s voters rejected Pinochet’s bid for a popular mandate to serve another eight years as head of state and government. He accepted the people’s verdict and called new presidential and congressional elections in December 1989. The transfer of power to the elected civilian government of President Patricio Aylwin took place in March 1990. The restoration of democracy was accompanied by Chile’s complete international rehabilitation.17 Yet for Pinochet, the personification of Chile’s pariah past, there was no such redemption. A decade after leaving office, he was called to account both at home and abroad for norm-breaking behaviour during his tenure. Only his frail health spared Pinochet the indignity of standing trial before local and possibly also foreign courts of law.

South Africa The founding of the UN marked the beginning of South Africa’s descent from paragon to pariah, from a respected and active member of the international community to a ‘defensive and embattled figure’.18 South Africa found itself in the dock of world opinion at the very first session of the General Assembly in 1946 over two issues: its domestic racial policies and its control over South West Africa/Namibia. South Africa was in breach of two emerging norms destined to change the political face of the world, viz. those against racial discrimination and colonialism. The post-war international normative framework was turning highly unfavourable to the per-


petuation of white minority rule in South Africa and colonial control in Namibia. The parting of the ways was vividly underlined in 1948 when the National Party came to power in South Africa, determined to shape society according to the dictates of apartheid; the world community by contrast reinforced its commitment to the new set of international norms by adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And while the colonial era was gradually coming to an end, South Africa tightened its grip over Namibia. South Africa faced the wrath of the UN without interruption for more than four decades. Initially complaints over South Africa’s racial policies were confined to the treatment of people of Indian origin, but in 1952 the broader question of race conflict arising from apartheid was added to the Assembly’s agenda. Ten years later the two domestic issues were merged under the item of race conflict in South Africa; Namibia remained a separate question all along. In the 1980s the issues of apartheid and Namibia were joined by that of ‘destabilization’, which referred to South Africa’s subversive and aggressive actions against neighbouring black states. The charge of destabilization gave birth to another indictment, namely that South Africa was a terrorist state, sponsoring terrorism abroad (inter alia through its support for rebel movements in surrounding black states) and also using or at least condoning terrorism against opponents of apartheid within the country. Apartheid was at the core of all these charges; the others were widely regarded as the inevitable extensions of the white rulers’ evil racial policies. The country acquired a pariah image second to none. More than that, the eradication of apartheid and the remaking of South Africa into a non-racial democracy became a truly universal crusade. The UN was the focal point of this global campaign. As early as 1950 a resolution of the UN General Assembly equated apartheid with racial discrimination. Four years later the Assembly declared that apartheid constituted a grave threat to peaceful relations between ethnic groups in the world, and urged South Africa to reconsider the policy. In 1958 the Assembly resolved that there should be complete equality in the political, economic, social and cultural realms in a multiracial society. A state whose policies did not meet these requirements violated the UN Charter. With regard to Namibia, meanwhile, the Assembly repeatedly but in vain called on South Africa to place the territory under international trusteeship. Neither recourse to the International Court of Justice in 1950 for an advisory opinion on South Africa’s obligations nor the appointment of a good offices committee in 1957 could resolve the impasse over Namibia’s future. The South African issue entered a new phase in the UN in 1960, the year of the Sharpeville shootings. First, the Assembly at its fifteenth session determined that apartheid endangered world peace and urged all states to pressurize South Africa to abolish the policy. Although a proposal for sanc-


tions then failed to obtain the necessary two-thirds majority, General Assembly resolutions calling for sanctions against South Africa soon became routine. The second consequence of Sharpeville was that the Security Council began involving itself in South African affairs. In its first resolution on South Africa (134 of 1 April 1960), the Council deplored the disturbances and loss of life as well as the Government’s policies that had given rise thereto. It was a situation that had led to international friction and might, if continued, endanger international peace and security. The South African government was therefore called upon to abandon apartheid. The next resolution came in August 1963 and again censured South Africa for practising apartheid. Following the mood of the General Assembly, the Council requested states to immediately stop arms sales to South Africa. The Namibia question appeared on the Security Council agenda in 1968, with calls to South Africa to end the ‘illegal trial’ of Namibians opposed to its presence in the territory. The following year, the Council twice asked South Africa to withdraw from Namibia. The delegitimization of the South African government and its condemnation to pariah status were clearly expressed in Assembly resolutions that referred to it as a ‘racist and colonialist régime’ (e.g. resolution 95/41); declared that the ‘South African régime has no right to represent the people of South Africa’ and that the ‘liberation movements’ recognized by the OAU (being the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC)) were the ‘authentic representatives’ of the vast majority of South Africans (3151G/25); recognized ‘the legitimacy of the struggle of the oppressed people of South Africa’ and their inalienable right to use all available means, including armed struggle (3411G/30); rejected South African UN delegations’ credentials (3206/29); and requested all intergovernmental organizations, including UN agencies, to deny South Africa membership (3151G/28). In the quest to eject it from South West Africa/Namibia, the Assembly among other things unilaterally terminated South Africa’s mandate and claimed direct UN responsibility for the territory pending independence (2145/21); changed its name to Namibia (2372/22); recognized SWAPO as the sole authentic representative of the people of the territory (146/31); and expressed full support for SWAPO’s armed liberation struggle against South Africa (S-9/2). In the 1970s and 1980s the Assembly also censured South Africa repeatedly for norm-violating behaviour in the Southern African region. At issue were South Africa’s acts of aggression and ‘destabilization through political subversion and economic blackmail’ directed against surrounding black states (172C/36, 35/41, 50G/43). Since the ‘racist apartheid régime’ was ‘the root cause of conflict in southern Africa’, there could be no peace in the region as long as it existed; consequently, it had to be ‘eradicated’ (35A/41). Another major issue, which also called an international norm into ques-


tion, was what the Assembly in December 1977 called ‘the frantic efforts by the racist régime of South Africa to acquire nuclear-weapon capability’. South Africa was thereafter repeatedly condemned for its military build-up and development of a nuclear capability (86A/36) in violation of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. (The Assembly’s suspicions were well founded: in 1993 President FW de Klerk revealed that South Africa had indeed manufactured nuclear bombs in the apartheid era.) Security Council resolutions castigating South Africa dealt with many of the issues to which the Assembly took exception. Thus the Council inter alia condemned Pretoria’s ‘acts of aggression, terrorism and destabilization against independent African states’; its ‘illegal occupation’ of Namibia; ‘continued massacres’ of the oppressed population of South Africa; and the proclamation of independence for ‘Bantustans’. Coupled with such censure were demands that South Africa among other things had to withdraw forthwith from Namibia; cease all aggression against neighbouring states; and immediately and completely eradicate apartheid. The Council’s recognition of the legitimacy of the ‘struggle of the oppressed people’ of South Africa (for the first time in February 1972) was another patent attempt to delegitimize the South African government – and reaffirm its pariah status. Following the General Assembly, the Security Council proposed and indeed ordered an array of punitive measures against South Africa. Owing to Western opposition, the Council refrained from imposing comprehensive mandatory sanctions (demanded by the Assembly), but travelled some way down the road of enforced measures. The Council called for a voluntary arms ban in 1963; in 1970, it acted to strengthen the embargo. Then in November 1977, in the wake of a severe internal security clampdown, the Council imposed a mandatory ban. South Africa’s acquisition of arms, the Council resolved, represented a threat to the maintenance of international peace and security. Enforced isolation was used as a means of not only or even primarily changing government behaviour, but rather of changing the government itself and indeed the entire structure of (white) power in South Africa. The objective, in the words of Security Council resolution 581 (and several similar Assembly resolutions), was after all ‘the establishment of a nonracial democratic society based on self-determination and majority rule through the full and free exercise of universal adult suffrage by all the people in a united and non-fragmented South Africa’. The assumption was that such a system would automatically convert South Africa into a responsible international citizen, one that would free Namibia and respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of neighbouring states. The diplomatic hammering to which South Africa was habitually subjected in the UN, was repeated in other multilateral organizations. Its most vociferous critics among them were the Organization of African Unity and the Non-Aligned Movement, neither of which ever invited white-ruled


South Africa to join. Instead, they were ardent champions of South Africa’s complete isolation and active supporters of the liberation movements’ armed struggle against apartheid. Much the same happened in the Commonwealth, from which South Africa had withdrawn under duress in 1961. Although the European Community’s rhetoric on South Africa was less strident than that of the other organizations mentioned, it had more economic clout than most because its members included several of South Africa’s major trading partners. The EC was uncompromising in its commitment to the complete elimination of apartheid and also used its economic leverage by imposing an array of punitive measures. South Africa’s international isolation was extensive. As regards diplomatic relations, for instance, only 23 of the 159 UN member states maintained embassies in Pretoria in 1988. Of our four case studies, South Africa experienced by far the most extensive economic isolation. By the end of the 1980s, at least 100 countries officially restricted trade with the Republic and up to 90 per cent of its merchandise exports were affected by politically motivated bans abroad. Particularly damaging to South Africa were externally imposed restrictions on foreign capital. One form was the near global disinvestment campaign that reached its climax in the late 1980s with scores of states, business corporations and others joining in. Another was restrictions on loans to South Africa imposed by individual Western banks, several foreign governments, the UN, EC and international financial institutions. In the military domain the country had to contend with a mandatory arms embargo. Even socio-cultural interactions with the outside world were severely limited, as witness a nearly universal sports boycott, the exclusion of South African passport holders from scores of countries, and foreign-imposed bans on air and sea links with South Africa. By the end of the 1980s, South Africa was probably the most loathed and isolated state in the world, the pariah and rule-breaker par excellence. In 1990, when the De Klerk government issued apartheid’s death warrant by unbanning the ANC and PAC and opening constitutional negotiations with them, South Africa’s international redemption began. It was also the year in which Namibia became independent. The dual processes of democratization at home and rehabilitation abroad was completed in 1994 with the installation of President Nelson Mandela as the country’s first democratically elected black head of government.19

Conclusion Israel, Chile and South Africa had between them violated international norms relating to human rights (all three countries), external aggression (Israel and South Africa), forcible seizure and occupation of foreign territory (Israel), perpetuation of colonialism (South Africa’s control over Namibia), and the pursuit of nuclear weapons (South Africa and Israel). Chile and


South Africa have since completely shed their pariah status, becoming exemplary upholders of the international rules of conduct they had previously violated. Israel still experiences considerable international adversity, but less than in the 1970s and 1980s. The ROC remains a delinquent state of a special kind: other countries seem content to leave Taiwan in a stateless limbo, while at the same time benefiting from commercial ties with the island and in many ways treating it as a de facto state. Many of the rules infringed by Chile, Israel and South Africa, our further case studies will show, have been breached by today’s errant states.

5 Iraq

Although Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a veteran violator of generally accepted rules of state conduct both at home and abroad, its true deviant status was of recent vintage. For many years Iraq escaped this standing because leading powers – notably the US – for strategic and economic reasons preferred to turn a blind eye to Saddam’s well documented transgressions. What is more, these foreign countries aided and abetted the Iraqi leader in his errant ways. It was only after Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait in 1990–91 that it was condemned to outcast status. Saddam’s former benefactors and patrons then not only took up arms against Baghdad, but also initiated a range of other collective punitive measures – the severest ever imposed by the UN. This dramatic reversal in Iraq’s international fortunes – its descent from darling to deviant at the hands of major Western powers – provides an object lesson in the opportunism, selectivity and inconsistency that can characterize the politics of ‘devianization’. Those purporting to act in defence of international norms of good behaviour, the Iraq case reminds us, are guided by far more than moral considerations.

From empire to imperial ambitions One of the oldest centres of civilization, the territory of present-day Iraq hosted the great empires of Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria and Abbasid. In later centuries Iraq was absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, of which it remained a dependency until its capture by British forces in World War I. In 1920 the territory was placed under a League of Nations mandate administered by Britain. The following year the British proclaimed Amir Faisal ibn Hussain, a member of the Hashemite dynasty of Arabia, King of Iraq. The British mandate ended with Iraq’s independence in 1932. By then the foundations for ongoing close relations with the United Kingdom and the West in general had been laid: the monarchy was strongly pro-British; Prime Minister Nuri as-Said, who dominated Iraqi political life between 85


1930 and 1958, supported Iraq’s Western orientation in its foreign policy; a 25-year Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of Alliance was concluded in 1930, and in 1955 Iraq joined the Baghdad Pact, a British-initiated agreement on collective regional security.1 A new chapter in Iraq’s domestic politics and foreign relations began in 1958, when the monarchy was overthrown in a military coup. The left-wing nationalist government of General Abd al-Karim Kassem immediately abolished the constitution (dating from 1925) and dissolved the legislature, and withdrew from the Baghdad Pact in 1959. The second military coup, during which Kassem was killed, occurred in 1963. The two successive governments, led by two Aref brothers, both military officers, were more pan-Arab in outlook than any of its predecessors. Yet another coup d’état, this time by members of the Baath Socialist Party in July 1968, saw a Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) assume supreme authority. General Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, Chairman of the RCC, also served as President and Prime Minister of Iraq. In 1979 the Council’s Vice-Chairman and long since the de facto ruler of the country, replaced al-Bakr as Chairman of the RCC and President of Iraq. It was the formal start of the era of Saddam Hussein.2 True to the ruthless tradition of Iraqi politics, the new President dealt mercilessly with challengers. Several members of the RCC were executed for their alleged involvement in an attempted coup that greeted Saddam’s elevation to the presidency. To further consolidate his power, Hussein launched an extensive purge throughout the administration in the early 1980s. In 1983 another unsuccessful coup had reportedly taken place in Baghdad, led by a half-brother of Hussein. The pretender to the throne and senior military officers were executed. The brutal repression of dissidence, a hallmark of Saddam’s long tenure, was complemented by a personality cult (unrivalled by any contemporary leader except for fellow deviants Kim senior and Kim junior of North Korea). Yet at the same time the President could on occasion act the part of a political reformer. Thus the first elections since the 1958 revolution were held in 1979 for members of the National Assembly – without altering the fundamentals of the highly authoritarian political system.3 In return for their tolerance of this authoritarianism, Iraqis benefited from the most progressive socio-economic policies in the Arab world; under Saddam’s rule, they became ‘the best educated and healthiest Arabs in the Gulf region’.4 In another reformist move, Saddam in 1979 allowed the first elections to the Kurdish Legislative Council established in the Kurdish Autonomous Region in northern Iraq. The limited self-government offered to the Kurdish community – between 2.5 and 3 million strong, constituting approximately 20 per cent of the Iraqi population – failed to satisfy their political aspirations. The Kurds had in fact long been a restive minority, presenting the new kingdom of Iraq with its first revolts (1922–32.) In the 1980s the Kurds’ demands for greater autonomy than that allowed by

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Baghdad spilled over into protracted armed conflict between Kurdish rebel groups and Iraqi troops. It was in the course of these hostilities, in March 1988, that Saddam’s forces employed chemical weapons against the Kurdish town of Halabja in northern Iraq. Using a ‘cocktail’ of mustard gas and the nerve agents sarin, tabun and VX, the attackers killed an estimated 5,000 people and left another 10,000 injured. It was the largest chemical attack against civilians in modern times.5 A few months later chemical weapons were allegedly used again during an Iraqi offensive against Kurdish guerrilla bases.6 Apart from the ethnic Kurds, Saddam had to contend with another inherited conflict situation on the home front. It concerned the religious division within Iraq’s Arab population. Between 55 and 60 per cent of the total population belonged to the Shi’i Muslim sect, against some 20 per cent Sunni Muslims. The Shi’ites, concentrated in the south of the country, felt aggrieved about being politically marginalized and made plain their opposition to the Saddam government. The latter was in effect a dynastic minority government: its power base lay with the Sunni Muslims from the central part of Iraq, and the ruling elite was drawn mostly from a select group within the Sunni community – members of Saddam’s extended family hailing from his home town of Tikrit.7 A further long-standing source of conflict sprang from the nature of Iraq’s (and its neighbours’) inherited borders and its historical desire for hegemony. Throughout history Iraq or the states that ruled in Mesopotamia tried to gain ascendancy over the Middle East region. With the establishment of the Kingdom of Iraq after World War I, the quest for dominance reasserted itself. It was directed at two areas: the Gulf region (with Arab states on the west and Iran on the east side) and Arab states in the eastern area. After World War II Iraq even wanted to seize neighbouring Syria based on dynastic grounds and on the arbitrary nature of their boundaries as demarcated by Britain in the colonial era. Another target was the Emirate of Kuwait, which obtained its independence from Britain in 1961. Iraq’s claim to Kuwait was driven by historical considerations (Kuwait had been part of the Ottoman vilayet of Basra), strategic concerns (access to the Gulf) and economic factors (the territory’s oil wealth). Had Britain not dispatched troops to newly independent Kuwait, Iraq may well have managed to incorporate the Emirate in 1961. In 1973 Iraqi troops briefly occupied an area in northern Kuwait, but two years later Baghdad renounced all territorial claims to the neighbouring state.8 It should be explained that Iraq has a mere 42 kilometers of Gulf shoreline, with only a minor harbour (Umm Qasr) on the Gulf. Its main outlet to the Gulf is the long, exposed Shatt-al-Arab waterway, on which its major port – Basra – is located. The waterway also forms the boundary between Iraq and Iran, the precise demarcation of which has long been a source of contention between the two neighbours.9 With this limited and indirect


access to the sea on the one hand, and its vast resources in oil and water and a population of 17 million people on the other, ‘Iraq has always felt like a man with huge lungs but a tiny windpipe’.10 Iraq’s hegemonic aspirations were reinvigorated by the Baath party that seized power in 1968. With pan-Arabism elevated to the official ideology, the unification of all Arab states became a fundamental goal of Iraqi foreign policy. This drive gathered even greater momentum after Saddam Hussein took over in July 1979. The united Arabs could, according to Saddam’s world view, rival the US, the Soviet Union, Europe or Japan on the global stage. He reserved a critical role for his country and of course for himself in this task of unification. Modern Iraq, Saddam believed, was a direct successor of the great ancient empires of Mesopotamia and he in turn a reincarnation of their imperial rulers, Nebuchadnezzar and Salah al-Din included.11 Even after Saddam acknowledged that Arab states would not dissolve into an integrated Arab nation, he still envisioned an Arab consensus around goals and policies, with Iraq as the role model and leader.12 The ideological radicalism of Saddam’s Iraq was also manifested in a deep antipathy towards the West and pro-Western Arab countries. Conservative Arab states leaning towards the West were denounced as reactionary and agents of Western imperialism, and Iraq plotted their overthrow with the support of local opposition movements. Israel and Zionism were regarded with especially intense disfavour. The Jewish state was viewed not merely as a Western client but the arch-enemy that impeded the attainment of Saddam’s ideal of Arab unity.13 Neighbouring Iran, not being an Arab state, was excluded from Baghdad’s grand designs for pan-Arab unity. But Iran for many years featured more prominently than fellow-Arab states on Iraq’s regional agenda. Ties of ethnic kinship between Iraqi and Iranian Kurds and religious kinship between the Shi’ite communities in the two countries gave each a pretext for interfering in the other’s domestic affairs – with predictably hostile reactions on both sides. Another long-standing cause of tension was their rivalry for regional pre-eminence. And then there were boundary disputes, specifically over ownership of the Abu Musa and Tumb islands (occupied by Iran in 1971) and the location of the southern boundary between Iraq and Iran. There was a brief improvement in bilateral relations following the conclusion of the Treaty of Algiers in 1975, which defined the southern border between the two countries and also obligated Iran to end its support for Kurdish rebels in Iraq. Matters took a turn for the worse in the wake of Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979. In the Ayatollah Khomeini Saddam faced an adversary every bit as radical as he was and one equally dedicated to exporting his revolutionary ideology.14 Sensing the mortal danger that Khomeini’s Iran held for the survival of his regime, and still not satisfied with the demarcation of the border between Iraq and Iran, Saddam decided to strike first. In September 1980

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Iraq abrogated the Algiers treaty and its troops invaded Iran. What Baghdad hoped would be a blitzkrieg bringing Iraq early victory, turned into a war that dragged on for eight years and exacted a terrible toll in lives and treasure for both countries. In August 1988 Iran – although not defeated in military terms – sued for peace. Iraq naturally considered itself the victor and also knew full well that it was then the major military power in the Gulf area. Iraq’s victory and indeed also its military superiority in the region owed a great deal to the support Baghdad had received from Western powers in its war against the Iranians.15 Already in the course of the war against Iran, Iraq began rebuilding, enlarging and modernizing its armed forces. The process was accelerated in the wake of the ceasefire reached in August 1988 on the grounds that Iraq had to be prepared for an Iranian offensive as long as Tehran failed to conclude a peace agreement with Baghdad. Under this pretext Iraq managed to obtain from abroad virtually all the arms it sought and could also count on international support in the development of its own arms industry. In 1990 Iraq ranked as the strongest military power in the Arab world.16 It was then from a position of overwhelming strength that Saddam embarked on another foreign military adventure in August 1990: the invasion and occupation of Kuwait. Tension between the two states had been building up since mid-1990, when Baghdad accused member states of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), notably Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, of persistently exceeding OPEC’s oil production quotas and hence driving down the price. In addition, Iraq charged Kuwait with violating their common border to seize Iraqi oil resources, insisted that Kuwait give it the Gulf islands of Warba and Bubyan, and also demanded that the Emirate should waive Baghdad’s debt repayments. Direct negotiations between the two sides failed to resolve these issues, prompting Iraq to send its forces into Kuwait on 2 August and to annex the territory six days later. The new line-up of forces represented a game of musical chairs. Kuwait, which had supported Iraq in its war against Iran by extending huge amounts of credit (hence the Iraqi debt repayments), became the target. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, previously also financial backers of Iraq’s war effort, were now ranged against Baghdad. Iraq turned against two other wartime supporters of the 1980s, namely the US and Britain. With Iran, by contrast, Saddam moved swiftly to ensure peaceful relations by reinstating the 1975 Algiers Agreement and seeking a formal peace agreement with the old enemy.17 Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was the first major international crisis in the emerging post-Cold War world, presenting a severe challenge to established international codes of state behaviour. Iraq’s deviant conduct produced ‘an international consensus of unusual strength’, allowing the UN Security Council to make the most extensive use ever of its powers.18 Iraq was subjected to wide-ranging and severe international punishment through the


use of military force, economic sanctions and external supervision of critical domestic functions. We will examine the nature and impact of these actions under Iraq’s contraventions and international responses thereto. Defeat in the Gulf War precipitated a serious domestic crisis for Saddam, placing the unity of the Iraqi state in jeopardy. In the south rebel forces including Shi’ite Muslims and disgruntled soldiers took control of several cities. In the north of the country Kurdish separatist forces overran a large part of Kurdistan. Saddam managed to suppress both rebellions, helped along by armed conflict among rival Kurdish factions. The Iraqi dictator likewise managed to survive several reported coup attempts and uprisings within the armed forces in the mid-1990s. By reorganizing his Council of Ministers, senior military staff and the Revolutionary Command Council, Saddam tried to consolidate his power. He also sought popular legitimization through elections to the Iraqi National Assembly in 1996 (the first elections since 1989). Some 90 per cent of the Iraqi electorate turned out to choose 250 Assembly members from the 689 candidates, all of whom had obtained the prior approval of a government selection committee. Opposition groups denounced the elections as a farce.19 While Saddam may have secured his own position within Iraq, the country’s sovereignty was being severely compromised by punitive measures imposed by foreign actors. These (discussed more fully below) included the internationally supervised destruction of Iraq’s WMD, severe restrictions on its production of oil, and the enforcement of no-fly zones in the north and south of the country. Saddam was left presiding over a state with severely diminished statehood.

Labelling the deviant Being a dictatorship, Iraq’s deviant status was inseparable from Saddam’s leadership. In foreign eyes he was the principal deviant, the architect of Iraq’s offensive behaviour at home and abroad. The labels policy-makers and commentators abroad reserved for Saddam, reveal the demonization to which he was subjected. Having left a ‘trail of blood’ in his rise to power, Saddam’s subsequent record earned him the label ‘Butcher of Baghdad’.20 President George Bush (senior) portrayed him as ‘brutal and cruel’, nothing short of a ‘new Hitler’.21 The appellations ‘tyrant’ and ‘despot’ were used widely.22 As for his state of mind, Saddam was diagnosed by outsiders as suffering from manic depression and paranoia, and experiencing unpredictable and uncontrollable behaviour due to the medical treatment he allegedly received.23 In the US, Iraq’s most ardent foe, Saddam joined the exclusive company of such other deviant luminaries as Kaiser Wilhelm, Adolf Hitler and Fidel Castro in the nation’s ‘rogue’s gallery’.24 The Americans, probably more than any other anti-deviant crusaders, typically imbued their actions with a

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moral quality while portraying their foes as moral lepers. Yet as this chapter will illustrate, US behaviour towards Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was by no means a shining example of either noble motives or consistency. Regardless of its real driving forces, fact is that the US, having the influence and power, took the lead in mobilizing international opinion and action against Saddam ever since the invasion of Kuwait. The Americans managed to assemble (and for some years preserve the unity) of a formidable international coalition in opposition to Iraq. Encountering universal opprobrium and ostracism through the UN, Iraq was throughout the 1990s a first-order or global deviant, eclipsing even Milosevic’s Yugoslavia. Thereafter the anti-Iraqi coalition unravelled as several countries began doing business with Baghdad notwithstanding UN sanctions. The US, loyally supported by Britain, remained determined to keep up the pressure on Iraq. President George W. Bush set the scene in January 2002 when he branded Iraq a member state of an ‘axis of evil’ (along with Iran and North Korea) threatening world peace.25 When that perceived threat caused American and British forces to attack Iraq the following year, the two allies stepped up their vilification of Saddam’s government. Bush spoke variously of ‘one of the cruelest regimes on earth’ and ‘an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder’,26 while Prime Minister Tony Blair referred to Iraq’s ‘barbarous rulers’, ‘brutal regime’ and ‘Saddam’s corrupt gang’.27

Iraq’s transgressions Under Saddam, Iraq’s principal sin concerned WMD. It was a multifaceted transgression, as UN Security Council resolution 687 of 3 April 1991 made plain. First, Iraq had actually used chemical weapons and threatened the (further) use of chemical and biological weapons. Second, Baghdad had attempted to acquire materials for a nuclear-weapons programme. It had in the third place fired ballistic missiles in unprovoked attacks. Iraq’s nuclear aspirations ran contrary to its obligations under the 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. The acquisition of chemical and biological weapons were in violation of its obligations under the 1925 Geneva Protocol (banning the use of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases in war, and of bacteriological warfare), the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, and the Paris Declaration of 1989 in which the participating states had agreed to the universal elimination of chemical and biological weapons. The Security Council furthermore implied that Iraq’s pursuit of nuclear weapons contradicted the objective of establishing a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East. All WMD, the Council resolved, threatened peace and security in the region. We have already recorded that Iraqi forces had launched chemical attacks against the Kurdish community in the north of the country. The attack on


Halabja was not the first or the last of its kind on the Kurds: the central government’s first use of poison gas against the Kurdish community in the north had occurred in April 1987, and Human Rights Watch Middle East recorded forty separate attacks on Kurdish targets between April 1987 and August 1988.28 In September 1993 government forces reportedly used chemical weapons against inhabitants of Iraq’s southern marshlands, killing hundreds of civilians.29 UN inspectors found evidence that the Iraqis had on four occasions used chemical weapons in their war against the Iranians.30 Iraq’s resort to chemical weapons and later also missile attacks against Iran (hitting Tehran with 150 missiles over seven weeks in 1988) had a decisive bearing on the outcome of the war.31 With ranges of up to 900 km, Iraqi missiles could reach Israel and other major centres in the region. Israel loomed large in Saddam’s calculations: the possession of WMD, rather than a massive arsenal of conventional armaments, was a prerequisite for achieving strategic parity with Baghdad’s chief bête-noire in the Middle East. In April 1990 Saddam revealed that Iraq possessed ultra-modern binary chemical weapons and gave notice that Israel may find itself at the receiving end: ‘I swear to God’, Saddam told military personnel, ‘that we shall burn half of Israel if it tries to wage anything against Iraq.’32 (Saddam was evidently still smarting from Israel’s aerial bombardment of Iraq’s Osiraq nuclear reactor in 1981.) In January 1991, in the course of the Gulf War, Iraq launched a missile attack against Israel, an action vigorously condemned by the EC as ‘unprovoked and entirely unjustified’.33 The intense alarm that Western powers professed since 1990 over Saddam’s acquisition of WMD seems strange, considering that Iraq’s possession and indeed use of such weapons had been widely known for several years. Nor could Western governments have been oblivious of the fact that Iraq had obtained the essential components for highly destructive weapons and sophisticated missiles from companies in Western Europe and the US – mostly with official approval. By 1990 Baghdad is estimated to have lavished over US$20 billion on arms and equipment for WMD. No country in the Middle East, if not in the entire developing world, had spent as much as Iraq to acquire WMD.34 A combination of strategic, political and economic reasons had led Western states to ignore these ominous features for the sake of cultivating relations with Iraq. After Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait there was no love lost between Baghdad and its erstwhile Western backers. The US and its allies took the lead in getting the Security Council (resolution 687) to order the elimination, under UN supervision, of Iraq’s WMD. The UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) was created to undertake and verify the destruction of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were given responsibility for dismantling Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme. Although Baghdad

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(reluctantly) accepted the Security Council’s orders, the Iraqis went out of their way to obstruct the work of the international arms inspectors. These challenges to the authority of the world body further hardened international opinion against Iraq and ensured the continuation of mandatory economic sanctions. (See below for the discussion of UN sanctions against Iraq.) After seven years, in December 1998, the severely harassed inspection teams were forced to withdraw from Iraq. Despite the obstacles – and repeated Iraqi denials of possessing proscribed weapons and substances – the international inspectors had uncovered and destroyed an awesome arsenal of WMD. The team from the IAEA established that the Iraqis had been a mere six months shy of producing a crude nuclear device using highly enriched uranium. The inspectors successfully dismantled the nuclear programme. The UNSCOM team, in turn, destroyed or accounted for over 800 Iraqi Scud missiles. They also supervised the destruction of more than 40,000 chemical warfare munitions, 480,000 litres of chemical weapons agents and 1.8 million litres of chemical precursors. Much of Iraq’s self-acknowledged biological warfare capability – consisting of anthrax (8,500 litres), botulinum toxin (19,000 litres) and aflatoxin (2,200 litres) – was likewise destroyed.35 The international arms inspectors’ involuntary departure from Iraq in 1998, without having completed their mission, left open the issue of that country’s true WMD status. Although Baghdad subsequently insisted that it possessed no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, this was widely disputed.36 In the words of the International Institute for Strategic Studies of London, ‘war, sanctions and inspections have reversed and retarded, but not eliminated Iraq’s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and long-range missile capacities, nor have they removed Baghdad’s enduring interest in developing these capacities’.37 A British government assessment of Iraq’s WMD, published in September 2002, reached much the same conclusion.38 The Security Council’s creation of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) in December 1999 to replace UNSCOM, indicated that the international community had not reached closure on the matter of Iraq’s doomsday weapons.39 By late 2002 UNMOVIC had, however, still not been able to set foot in Iraq. With international inspections suspended for nearly four years, the UN Security Council’s patience was wearing thin. On 8 November 2002 the Council adopted resolution 1441, which determined that Iraq ‘remains in material breach of its obligations’ under previous resolutions demanding its disarmament in cooperation with UN inspectors. Again acting under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, the Council demanded that Iraq provide UNMOVIC and the IAEA ‘immediate, unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access’ to all facilities they wished to inspect for WMD. That same month UN inspectors returned to Iraq, only to be forced out four months later – then


by the US and Britain on the eve of their military offensive against Saddam. One of the main reasons for going to war, the allies maintained, was to disarm Iraq of remaining WMD. In addition to procuring WMD, Iraq also built up a formidable conventional military capability. Between 1972 and 1990 the country imported conventional arms worth more than US$100 billion.40 Although the war against Iran had taken a heavy toll of its military manpower and matériel, Iraq could within two years of the end of hostilities boast the world’s fourth largest conventional military force, overshadowing that of surrounding countries. It then had an army of close on one million men (Turkey: 647,000; Iran: 504,000; Egypt: 450,000; Israel: 141,000); 5,500 tanks (Israel: 4,288; Turkey: 3,714; Egypt: 3,190; Iran: 500); and 689 combat aircraft (Israel: 553; Egypt: 475; Turkey: 455; Iran: 185).41 This enormous military build-up, regarded by other countries as a potentially serious threat to regional peace and security, constituted a second major transgression committed by Saddam’s Iraq. Again, major Western countries had assisted Iraq in bolstering its military might, in so doing encouraging Saddam to plan his invasion and occupation of Kuwait. Iraq’s third contravention, like the first two, fell in the realm of high politics. By committing acts of aggression against Iran and Kuwait, Iraq had broken a fundamental rule of international law. In February 1986 the UN Security Council, while urging Iran and Iraq to conclude a ceasefire agreement, implicitly blamed Baghdad for starting the war. Five years later the UN Secretary-General, in a report, openly attributed responsibility for beginning the war to Iraq, thus confirming its violation of international law.42 More relevant for our study is Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, which the UN Security Council in resolution 660 of 2 August 1990 called ‘a breach of international peace and security’. Iraq’s subsequent annexation of Kuwait was likewise contrary to international law, hence the Council declared it ‘null and void’ and called on all states ‘(n)ot to recognize any regime set up by the occupying Power’ (resolutions 660 and 661 of August 1990). The fact that Iraq invaded and occupied an oil-rich country and did so in a world no longer divided by Cold War animosities, gave the offence a global salience it may otherwise have lacked. The international community regarded Baghdad’s aggression against Kuwait in a far more serious light than, say, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, China’s subjugation of Tibet, the US invasion of Grenada, Israel’s occupation of Arab territories, or Turkey’s fragmentation of Cyprus. The Iraqis experienced international double standards at work.43 More than a decade later Baghdad’s history of external aggression was raised again, this time by America and Britain as a justification for their war against Iraq. 44 In its military action against Kuwait, Iraq violated the laws of war. An example of this fourth sin was the Iraqi forces’ detention of foreign citizens as hostages, using them as ‘human shields’ in places of strategic importance

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to Iraq so as to deter Allied attacks on these targets. The 12 member states of the EC in August 1990 ‘expressed indignation at the heinous action and contempt for basic humanitarian principles shown by Iraq in grouping foreigners near military bases’.45 Other crimes of war committed by Iraqi forces in Kuwait – and for which they were censured by members of the international community – included the ‘unscrupulous use of prisoners of war’, as the EC put it;46 the violation of diplomatic premises in Kuwait City (thus breaching the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations); the persecution of Kuwaiti and foreign nationals; the looting of Kuwait, including the theft of cultural and personal property; and the torching of several hundred oil wells in Kuwait, an act of environmental warfare (see Chapter 2).47 Iraq’s fifth act of deviance, the pursuit of regional hegemony, is of course an old one. Recall Iraq’s declared aim – since at least the early 1970s – of overthrowing conservative, pro-Western Arab governments. Saddam also on numerous occasions staked his claim to regional leadership. At a meeting of the Arab Cooperation Council in Amman in February 1990, for instance, he urged Arab countries to take action against US influence in the Gulf area and insisted that control of the Gulf and its oil had to be exercised by Arabs – or Iraq, more precisely. Add to this that Saddam had repeatedly stated his conviction that war was a legitimate means of achieving political goals.48 The war against Iran was to a large extent driven by Saddam’s hegemonic ambitions, as was his decision to invade Kuwait in 1990. The incorporation of Kuwait, Saddam reckoned, would ensure Iraq’s predominance in several respects. Possession of the harbour of Kuwait would greatly improve Iraq’s access to the Gulf and reduce its dependence on other coastal states for exporting its oil. Second, it would afford Iraq the opportunity to control the Gulf. Third, incorporation would give Baghdad control over Kuwait’s enormous financial resources, sufficient to repay Iraq’s total foreign debt and finance ambitious industrial development programmes. Finally, and probably most importantly, control over Kuwait would give Iraq possession of the territory’s immense oil reserves. As the undisputed regional hegemon, Saddam’s Iraq could then lay claim to joining the US, Europe and Israel in shaping the destiny of the Middle East.49 Iraq’s defeat in the Gulf War did not spell the end of Saddam’s aggressive designs towards the neighbouring country and perhaps even beyond. Consider the Iraqi leader’s call in 1993 for a jihad to overthrow the ‘treacherous leaders’ of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia,50 and Baghdad’s movement of troops to the Kuwaiti border in 1994 and 1996.51 The pursuit of WMD was a major means to the end of Iraqi dominance in the Near and Middle East. Had Saddam succeeded in building nuclear weapons, he could moreover have become ‘the great hero of the Arab masses’.52 The sixth transgression committed by Iraq was that of genocide, perpetrated against the Kurdish community in 1988. Although this ultimate form


of deviant conduct occurred before our main period of interest – the 1990s and beyond – it is included here because it took place towards the end of the Cold War era and was undertaken by Saddam’s security forces. The Anfal, as the campaign against the Kurds was officially code-named, demonstrated ‘a deliberate intent on the part of the government of President Saddam Hussein to destroy, through mass murder, part of Iraq’s Kurdish minority’, in the words of Human Rights Watch Middle East. Between February and September 1988, at least 50,000 and possibly as many as 100,000 Kurds were killed. Only a small minority of the dead were combatants. The attack on Halabja, mentioned earlier, was part of the campaign of extermination.53 The feeble international response to the outrage in no way detracts from the enormity of this crime against humanity. There is a direct correlation between the genocide of the Kurds and Iraq’s highly authoritarian political order. The absence of democracy and the accompanying violation of human rights constitute Iraq’s seventh transgression. It of course dates back many years, well before Western powers began citing it as a punishable offence. Saddam’s dictatorship began, after all, in 1979.54 Numerous incidents illustrate the persistently brutal nature of Saddam’s rule. One is the execution in March 1990 of Iranian-born British journalist Farzad Bazoft, accused of being a ‘British spy who works for Israel’.55 Another is the economic blockade imposed on the Kurdish region in October 1991 following inconclusive negotiations between Saddam and Kurdish representatives on autonomy for Kurdistan. The withdrawal of all official services reduced the region to a virtual concentration camp and created a dire humanitarian emergency.56 The European Parliament, for one, repeatedly condemned the blockade.57 Another example is the killing of two of Saddam’s sons-in-law upon their return to Iraq in February 1996, after they had fled to Jordan six months earlier. One of them was Hussein Kamel, Minister of Industry and Minerals and chief of the WMD programmes. Baghdad’s explanation of their deaths was that the two had been killed by kinsmen seeking to restore their family’s honour after the defections. Abroad it was generally believed that the men had been executed by the Iraqi intelligence services on instructions from above. Their deaths – as that of Bazoft earlier – provoked considerable international disapproval.58 Executions, the US State Department noted in its 1990 human rights report, was ‘an established Iraqi method of dealing with perceived military and political opponents’.59 The readiness to liquidate opponents showed Saddam’s single-minded dedication to Mao Tse-tung’s maxim: ‘People are not chives; when you cut their heads they do not grow new ones.’60 It is not surprising then that the New York-based human rights organization Middle East Watch in February 1990 published a vehement condemnation of Iraq’s human rights record.61 At the same time Amnesty International said in an appeal to the UN Human Rights Commission that

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it could think of no other case of human rights violations ‘which cries out more for international attention and action’ than that of Iraq.62 Three years later, in a report to the Human Rights Commission, Special Rapporteur Max van der Stoel still described the human rights situation in Iraq as the worst in the world.63 None of these reports contained any startlingly new revelations; they were instead mere confirmations of what had long been known – but conveniently overlooked by those who only in the 1990s suddenly discovered their consciences about the appalling state of human rights in Saddam’s Iraq. True, Saddam made occasional democratic gestures, as in 1988 when he announced the introduction of a multiparty system. In elections to the National Assembly the following year, only a quarter of the candidates belonged to the ruling Baath party.64 Yet the stringent conditions set for candidacies meant that the newly elected legislators did not fundamentally alter the Assembly’s role as another mouthpiece for the leadership. Saddam’s notion of political liberalization stopped well short of any real transformation of the political system. As he explained in 1991, Westernstyle democracy was not welcome in Iraq and Iraqis who supported its importation into the country would not be permitted to hold any leading positions.65 A state’s use of terrorism also featured in our inventory of transgressions (Chapter 2). Iraq under Saddam had for years engaged in terrorist actions at home and abroad, a fact reflected in its inclusion in the US State Department’s annual blacklist of states sponsoring terrorism. In 1982, however, the Reagan administration for patently opportunistic reasons removed Iraq from the list.66 In 1990, as it descended into deviant status, Iraq’s involvement with terrorism was rediscovered, so to speak, by the US and other Western powers – hence its inclusion here as Iraq’s eighth contravention. Iraqi forces’ taking of hostages during their occupation of Kuwait has been described by the UN Security Council (resolution 687) as an act of international terrorism. Between the end of the Gulf War and early 1993, according to US State Department estimates, Iraqi intelligence operatives conducted 39 terrorist attacks (including the killing of enemies in foreign countries and attacks on UN aid workers in Iraq). Iraq’s intelligence service was also suspected of sponsoring an assassination attempt on former President George Bush when he visited Kuwait in April 1993. (The US, as described below, took military reprisals.)67 Baghdad furthermore supported a variety of terrorist movements in the region, including the People’s Mujahideen of Iran, Palestine’s Abu Nidal Organization, the Palestinian Liberation Front and the Kurdistan Workers Party of Turkey.68 Such support was in direct contravention of UN Security Council resolution 687, which forbade Iraqi involvement in any form of terrorism. Not surprisingly, the US State Department in the 1990s restored Iraq to its earlier place of dishonour in the annual terrorist blacklist, Patterns of Global


Terrorism – where it remained for the rest of Saddam’s tenure. Baghdad’s support for terrorism, we will see, featured among America’s pretexts for war against Iraq in 2003. An anti-Western, more specifically anti-American, orientation is a ninth transgression commonly associated with contemporary deviant states. Iraq ‘had long been second to none in anti-American vitriol’, portraying the US as ‘the headquarters of imperialism and Zionism’.69 Yet the US was in the 1980s willing to overlook Saddam’s antipathy towards the West as well as his other misdeeds by supporting Iraq in its war against Iran and as a strategic counter to the Soviet Union in the wake of the latter’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. An asymmetrical relationship developed, with the US (and other Western states) closer to Iraq than vice versa; the US, for one, had been accused of appeasement in dealing with Iraq in the 1980s.70 Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent Gulf War changed this complacency-cum-indifference to Saddam’s anti-American leanings. As if to remove any doubt on this score, Saddam in February 1990 suggested that, with Europe’s help, the Arabs could eventually defeat America – provided they accepted Iraq’s leadership.71 Thereafter Saddam and his subordinates kept up their anti-American invective, frequently extended to Britain, the US’s closest ally. What sharpened Saddam’s focus on the US (and Britain), is that the Western alliance became divided over dealing with Iraq, with France the foremost defector from the earlier unyielding stance in favour of isolating and containing that country. Finally, Iraq in its own eyes committed the transgression of becoming militarily powerful and politically influential, ‘breaking the shackles of military, political, and technological dependence’. These achievements threatened Western domination of the region and posed a danger to the West’s creation, ‘the Zionist entity’ (Israel).72 Iraq was in other words failing to show due deference to the West, notably the US. In American ‘roguespeak’, Saddam’s Iraq was indeed an assertive regional power in the Third World, bent on establishing its hegemony in the area at the expense of Western strategic interests. The vigour with which Western powers – especially the US and Britain – punished Saddam’s Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait over a decade ago, tends to give some credence to Baghdad’s explanation of Western actions against it.

International demands and objectives Although Iraq under Saddam Hussein was an habitual sinner among states, its many violations of international codes of conduct for long went largely unpunished. Consequently, Baghdad was also spared foreign directives for changing its behaviour. It was really only after its invasion of Kuwait that Iraq was subjected to concerted and persistent external demands to mend its ways.

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The first demand, following the occupation of Kuwait, was that Iraq ‘withdraw immediately and unconditionally’ all its forces from Kuwait, in the words of Security Council resolution 660 of 2 August 1990. The resolution also called on Iraq and Kuwait to enter immediately into ‘intensive negotiations’ to resolve their differences. Six days later the Council (resolution 661) determined that Iraq had failed to comply and consequently resorted to sanctions under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter to secure Baghdad’s observance and to restore the ‘legitimate Government of Kuwait’ as well as the country’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. (See the next section for details.) Similar demands were issued by the EC, Arab League and Gulf Cooperation Council.73 The second major demand issued by the Security Council was that Iraq should cooperate fully with UNSCOM and the IAEA in discharging their responsibilities to detect and destroy Iraq’s entire arsenal of WMD. Security Council resolution 687 of April 1991 stipulated that mandatory sanctions would be lifted if Iraq gave the required cooperation. The weapons at issue were specified in resolution 687: all biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and related research, development and support facilities; all stocks of agents; and all ballistic missiles with a range exceeding 150 kilometers as well as related production and repair facilities. Baghdad’s failure to obey led to numerous resolutions condemning Iraq’s defiance, reiterating demands for immediate compliance, threatening further restrictive measures and military retaliation, and refusals by the Security Council to consider lifting or easing sanctions.74 In December 1999 – a year after UNSCOM’s withdrawal – the Security Council (resolution 1284) set a lower demand for Iraq: it only had to demonstrate cooperation with UNMOVIC and progress towards WMD control, rather than cooperation in the elimination of all its WMD. Nearly three years later Iraq had failed to meet this more modest requirement by refusing to allow international inspectors back into the country.75 President George W. Bush responded with an ultimatum in the UN General Assembly in September 2002: either Iraq complied ‘immediately’ with UN resolutions on its WMD and arms inspections, or risked a military attack by the US (with or without UN authorization).76 Goaded by America, the Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 1441 on 8 November 2002, which afforded Iraq ‘a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations’ by cooperating ‘immediately, unconditionally, and actively’ with UNMOVIC and the IAEA. The resolution warned Iraq of unspecified ‘serious consequences’ if it continued violating its obligations to disarm. Iraq accepted the resolution within the seven days allowed by the Council and international inspection teams resumed their work in the country by the end of November. Their efforts were, however, cut short when the US and Britain in March 2003 decided that ‘in refusing to give up his Weapons of Mass Destruction, Saddam gave us no choice


but to act’.77 It was not a determination that the UN Security Council had also made. Thirdly, Iraq was ordered not to use its military or other forces ‘in a hostile or provocative manner to threaten its neighbours or the UN operations in Iraq’ (Security Council resolution 949 of October 1994). This demand came on the heels of a large movement of Iraqi forces towards the border with Kuwait. Baghdad again backed down. After Operation Desert Fox in December 1998 (see below), the US and Britain served notice on Baghdad that they would strike again if Iraq threatened its neighbours.78 In 2003 Britain and America cited Iraq’s ‘aggression’ among their reasons for going to war. A fourth demand, also emanating from the Security Council and echoed by the European Parliament, among other institutions, was that Iraq should recognize and respect the border with Kuwait as demarcated by the UN in April 1992. Baghdad obliged in November 1994.79 Fifthly, Iraq’s internal political order was also the subject of UN demands. In April 1991 (resolution 688), for example, the Council condemned ‘the repression of the Iraqi civilian population’ and demanded that Baghdad immediately end these actions. The US, for one, linked the maintenance of mandatory sanctions also to Iraq’s ongoing repression of its Kurdish and southern Shi’ite communities. In addition to complying with all relevant UN resolutions, Washington insisted that Iraq should stop domestic repression before sanctions could be relaxed or suspended.80 The European Parliament in October 1994 likewise declared that sanctions against Iraq could not be totally removed until Baghdad had fulfilled also the human rights clauses of Security Council resolutions on Iraq.81 When war came in 2003 Baghdad had still not made any noteworthy progress in the areas of democracy and human rights. External demands for internal political change inevitably touched on Saddam’s continued tenure. Security Council resolutions studiously avoided laying down an explicit link between the two, not least for fear of provoking opposition from several permanent and non-permanent members of the Council. The US from the outset considered it inconceivable that Saddam could remain in power if he complied with all UN demands.82 As early as May 1991 President Bush went a step further by stating explicitly: ‘We don’t want to lift these sanctions as long as Saddam Hussein is in power’.83 British Prime Minister John Major spoke along similar lines by asserting that Iraq would remain an ‘international pariah’ while Saddam stayed at the helm.84 By adopting this position, the US and Britain moved the goalposts because the removal of Saddam was not required by any Security Council resolution. They remained firm in this view: in 1997 Secretary of State Madeleine Albright reaffirmed that America wished to see Saddam out of office and would not end sanctions until he had been replaced.85 President George W Bush in turn looked forward to

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the day when the Iraqi people ‘can shake off their captivity’ and live under a government representing all the people of the country and respecting human rights. ‘Liberty for the Iraqi people’, he told the UN General Assembly in September 2002, ‘is a great moral cause.’86 Six months later Bush put his money and military where his mouth was, ordering US forces into war against Iraq. One of the two main goals of Operation Iraqi Freedom was indeed to ‘free the Iraqi people’ from Saddam’s dictatorship. (The other major goal was of course to disarm Iraq.)87 The UN Security Council did not sanction the pursuit of either goal through war. Sixth, Security Council resolution 688 of 5 April 1991 demanded that Baghdad ‘allow immediate access by international humanitarian organizations to all those in need of assistance in all parts of Iraq and to make available all necessary facilities for their operations’. In short, the Council asserted a right to interfere in Iraq for humanitarian purposes and ordered the Iraqi authorities to stand aside while international humanitarian agencies operated freely in the country. It was a potentially far-reaching precedent set by the Security Council.88 The international community did in fact launch a massive humanitarian relief operation in Iraq, as will be described below. Other demands that the Security Council (resolution 687) addressed to Baghdad, were that it cooperate with the International Committee of the Red Cross to facilitate the repatriation of Kuwaiti and third country nationals in the wake of Iraq’s withdrawal from the Emirate, restore all seized and stolen property, establish a fund based on its oil income to pay reparations for damage in Kuwait, and refrain from committing or supporting any act of international terrorism. The US, ever eager to move the goalposts, added more unilateral demands not contained in Security Council resolutions. The Clinton administration not only expected of Iraq to comply with resolution 687 on the elimination of its WMD, but demanded ‘a proven track record of six to 12 months’, in Albright’s words. There was also the vague American stipulation that Iraq should prove ‘its readiness to rejoin [world] society’ for sanctions to be lifted.89 Most of the external demands listed required far-reaching changes in Iraqi policies, such as surrendering its principal weapons to international arms inspectors and ceasing domestic repression. UN resolutions have been careful not to extend the demands explicitly into the realms of government and regime change; it was possible for Saddam to meet UN demands without giving up his power. The US and Britain, however, openly demanded Saddam’s departure – and in the end brought this about by force.

Foreign action against Iraq Iraq’s status as a first-order or global deviant represented a dramatic fall from grace, from ‘ally to adversary’90 or from ‘darling to demon’.91


Following the Iranian revolution and Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, the US and other Western powers embraced Iraq as a quasi-ally, a strategic counterweight to both the Soviet Union and revolutionary Iran. Years of mutual hostility were forgotten as the Americans pursued the old maxim, ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’. Iraq, in turn, also sought a rapprochement with the US after Baghdad had moved away from its previously close friendship with the Soviet Union. During the war with Iran, the US supported Iraq by providing economic credits, secret intelligence data and military-related technology.92 For the Bush administration, Saddam was a ‘force for moderation’ in the region, and political and economic incentives from the US were expected to keep Iraq on the path of reasonableness and bring Saddam Hussein ‘into the family of nations’, as Bush explained.93 Where Baghdad’s domestic or foreign actions contradicted any notion of moderation (read: acceptable conduct), America overlooked or underplayed such behaviour.94 The US was determined to prevent human rights abuses or other instances of deviant conduct ‘becoming an obstacle to the strategic and economic bases for accommodation’.95 But Iraq overstepped the (elastic) mark when it invaded and annexed oil-rich Kuwait. Saddam had badly miscalculated the response of a previously pliant, even supine, America and also misjudged Washington’s ability to mobilize a truly universal front against Iraqi aggression. The family of nations, working through the UN, was ready to resort to forceful and indeed forcible measures against Iraq. The barrage of strident condemnation, radical demands and harsh punishment was a novel experience for Iraq, its long record of delinquent behaviour notwithstanding. The first and most drastic action was of course the use of military force to expel Iraq from Kuwait. The UN Security Council paved the way with the adoption of resolution 678 in late November. Invoking the norm of collective security – under US pressure – the Council permitted the use of ‘all necessary means’ to ensure the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait if they had not departed by 15 January 1991.96 Baghdad refused to oblige, unleashing Operation Desert Storm on the night of 16–17 January. A multinational force began intensive air attacks on targets in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq and quickly established air supremacy. Five weeks later the Allied forces launched a ground offensive to liberate Kuwait. Iraqi troops were decisively beaten and the US announced a ceasefire on 28 February. What Saddam vowed would be the mother of all wars turned into the mother of all defeats as Baghdad in March 1991 publicly renounced all claims to Kuwait, agreed to release prisoners of war and undertook to return all assets seized in Kuwait. In the roughly six weeks that the air and ground war lasted, Iraq was reportedly subjected to ‘a scale of destruction that has no parallels in the history of warfare’. The nature of the weapons used by the US-led multinational force and the magnitude of death and destruction wrought in Iraq, have prompted

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charges in the West that indictable war crimes were committed in the offensive against Iraq.97 The end of the Gulf War did not bring foreign military action against Iraq to an end. Foreign powers used force on several occasions to ensure Iraqi compliance with the two no-fly zones. In June 1993 US aircraft also bombed intelligence headquarters in Baghdad in retaliation for Iraq’s alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate former President George Bush in Kuwait the previous April.98 December 1998 saw a four-day bombing campaign, styled Operation Desert Fox, by US and British aircraft launched in the wake of an UNSCOM report which found that Iraq was still concealing, lying and cheating about its WMD programmes.99 Claiming that Saddam was rebuilding his WMD capability and thus held a potential threat to US security, President Bush junior in June 2002 gave notice of America’s readiness to launch a pre-emptive military strike against Iraq to disrupt plans it may hatch to harm the US.100 Bush’s warning was no idle talk. In March 2003, it will be recalled, US and British forces attacked Iraq. The need for pre-emption featured in Bush’s justification for the war: ‘Free nations will not sit and wait, leaving enemies free to plot another September the 11th – this time, perhaps, with chemical, biological, or nuclear terror. We’ll remove weapons of mass destruction from the hands of mass murderers.’101 The other declared central goal of Operation Iraqi Freedom was indeed to topple Saddam and pave the way for a democratically elected Iraqi government.102 Additional goals or justifications presented by the leaders of Britain and the US were the need to end Iraq’s ‘aggression’ and support for terrorism.103 In under four weeks Saddam was deposed and all organized Iraqi military resistance swept aside. The second major form of collective action against Iraq, sanctions, was in some ways even more devastating in its effects than the use of military force. The UN Security Council imposed comprehensive, mandatory sanctions on 6 August 1990 (resolution 661). A Sanctions Committee was established to monitor the restrictions imposed on Iraq. Subsequent Council resolutions (665, 670, 687, 700) tightened the sanctions regime. Within months of the first sanctions resolution, Iraq found itself subjected to four types of sanctions: an arms embargo (to remain in place until the UN Security Council decided otherwise); a ban on exports, effectively an oil embargo (to stay in force until WMD had been dismantled); a ban on imports, excluding food and medicines (to remain until Iraq complied with the wide range of Security Council demands, including acceptance of the border with Kuwait and an end to the repression of Iraq’s own population – the latter required under resolution 688); and financial sanctions, involving a freeze of Iraqi assets abroad.104 Although some of these punitive measures were performance-related (i.e. tied to Iraq’s compliance with international demands), they were to remain in force so long as any permanent member of the Security Council vetoed their lifting.


At the regional level the EC responded to the invasion of Kuwait by imposing a complete trade embargo on Iraq on 8 August 1990, exempting products for strictly humanitarian uses. In October the EC extended its ban to air transportation and non-financial services.105 According to America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), UN sanctions had within two years cut off more than 90 per cent of Iraq’s imports and 97 per cent of its exports, amounting to a monthly loss of foreign exchange earnings to the tune of $1.5 billion.106 Sanctions have also been effective in putting a cap on the size of the Iraqi armed forces by denying Saddam the financial means for rebuilding his military machine. Their effectiveness could furthermore be seen in Baghdad’s cooperation, albeit reluctant and incomplete, with the international arms inspectors in detecting and destroying Iraq’s WMD arsenal.107 More than a dozen major studies were undertaken in the 1990s on the impact of sanctions and war on Iraqi society, including investigations by UN agencies. While the general population had suffered grievously since the Gulf War as one of the most highly developed countries in the Middle East became badly crippled, the exact role of sanctions remains a matter of controversy. For some analysts there was a direct correlation between sanctions and suffering. Simons, for instance, wrote of a ‘sanctions-induced genocide’ and a ‘new holocaust’ visited upon the Iraqi people.108 Ramsey Clark, a former US Attorney-General, denounced the ‘blockade’ of Iraq as ‘a crime against humanity, in the Nuremberg sense, as a weapon of mass destruction … a weapon for the destruction of the masses’.109 At the end of 2000 the UN Secretary-General conceded that the sanctions regime had ‘been deemed responsible for the worsening of a humanitarian crisis – as an unintended consequence’.110 Others who questioned such a clear-cut causality attributed the dire socio-economic conditions to a range of factors, including sanctions, the Gulf War and the policies of Saddam Hussein (including his initial rejection of the UN oil-for-food programme).111 There is no need to join the inconclusive debate on the impact of sanctions on Iraq. More relevant is to record that the perceived deprivations caused by sanctions were a major motivation behind widespread demands for the easing or lifting of these punitive measures. Another reason was Baghdad’s supposed compliance with most of the demands laid down by the Security Council (especially cooperation in disarmament). These calls came, most notably, from three permanent members of the Security Council – France, Russia and China – badly eroding the Council’s initial united front in dealing with Iraq. Other European countries, Arab and other Third World states, humanitarian organizations and human rights bodies joined the international clamour against the sanctions. In March 2000 Kofi Annan, acknowledging that sanctions hurt Iraqi civilians, suggested that the UN should in future move towards ‘smarter sanctions that

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focus on the individuals whose behaviour we want to target rather than a blunt instrument that may affect the entire population’.112 Iraq itself was of course the principal advocate of an end to sanctions, launching several diplomatic offensives to this end. Britain and the US, however, held out against any relaxation of the punitive measures.113 On the ground, meanwhile, several foreign companies made overtures to Iraq, while Syria (in 2001) and Saudi Arabia (the following year) reopened their borders for trade with Iraq. The latter had moreover since the mid-1990s developed oil smuggling into a thriving business. Up to 100,000 barrels of oil a day were pumped through a pipeline to Syria and oil was also transferred to ships at Iran’s Qeys island. Saddam could use this stream of income for any purpose he chose, including the rebuilding of WMD.114 The UN Security Council reinforced economic sanctions with a ban on air travel to and from Iraq (unless permitted by the UN Sanctions Committee). After a decade the flight ban began to lose its force, as over twenty supposedly humanitarian flights (from France, Russia, Turkey and Syria, among other countries) arrived in Iraq in September and October 2000 – without permission from the Sanctions Committee.115 In the diplomatic sphere Iraq remained notably isolated, as witness the absence of foreign counterparts visiting or receiving Saddam. It was only in August 2000 that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez became the first foreign head of state to visit Iraq since the Gulf War.116 Iraq is unique among our case studies in the extensive international supervision under which it was placed in the aftermath of the Gulf War. It was reduced to a de facto protectorate of the UN, while retaining de jure statehood. The best-known form of supervision – the third international response – concerned the demolition of Iraq’s WMD under the watchful eye of international inspectors. The centrepiece of the supervision regime was Security Council resolution 687 of 3 April 1991, variously dubbed ‘the mother of all resolutions’ (owing to its length, scope and detail) and a ‘Christmas tree’ (because ‘so much was hung on it’); it probably remains the most intrusive resolution ever passed by a UN body.117 Adopted by 12 votes to one (Cuba), with two abstentions (Ecuador and Yemen), resolution 687 decreed inter alia that ‘Iraq shall unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless, under international supervision’, of all its chemical and biological weapons (components and manufacturing facilities included), and all ballistic missiles with a range exceeding 150 kilometers (including related parts and production facilities). The international supervision would be undertaken by the earlier mentioned UN Special Commission on Iraqi Disarmament (UNSCOM). Resolution 687 further determined that Iraq ‘shall unconditionally agree’ not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons or nuclear-weapons-usable material, and that it had to place all such material ‘under the exclusive control, for custody and removal’, of the IAEA, assisted by UNSCOM. What is more, resolution 687


provided ‘for the future ongoing monitoring and verification of Iraq’s compliance’ with demands for the elimination of its WMD. International supervision was thus intended to be open-ended in time. The extensive disarmament imposed on Iraq is reminiscent of that to which Germany was subjected under the Treaty of Versailles, except that Iraq’s was more extensive, intended to be of longer duration and truly represented the will of the entire international community (and not merely the victors in war).118 First under the chairmanship of Swedish diplomat Rolf Ekeus (1991–97) and subsequently Richard Butler (1997–99), an Australian diplomat, UNSCOM’s investigations were from the outset characterized by controversy and conflict. The Iraqi authorities were repeatedly accused of hiding equipment or other components of its WMD from UNSCOM inspectors or of denying access to particular sites. As Ekeus put it, Saddam had ‘decided systematically to mislead, conceal and cheat in an effort to preserve’ Iraq’s military capabilities.119 Baghdad, for its part, objected variously to the highly intrusive nature of the inspections, UNSCOM’s allegedly biased reporting, the ‘disproportionate’ US presence among the inspectors, and America’s abuse of the inspections for espionage purposes. Iraq more than once decided to end all cooperation with UNSCOM and to bar its members from the country. The last showdown, in late 1998, led to UNSCOM’s final withdrawal from Iraq.120 We have already noted that the UN Security Council in December 1999 (resolution 1284) replaced UNSCOM with a new inspection body called the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC). Hans Blix, a former IAEA director-general, was appointed head of UNMOVIC. Baghdad immediately rejected resolution 1284, preventing UNMOVIC inspectors being deployed in Iraq. It was only in November 2002, in the wake of a Security Council ultimatum (resolution 1441), that UN inspectors returned to Iraq. The outbreak of war the following March compelled them to withdraw. Another form of supervision was imposed by a number of major powers, without specific authorization from the UN Security Council. In April 1991 the US, France and Britain deployed military forces in northern Iraq to create a de facto safe have for the Kurdish community. This in due course became the northern no-fly zone (north of the 36th parallel), which the US and Britain under Operation Northern Watch endeavoured to keep clear of Iraqi warplanes. In August 1992 the Western powers also established a nofly zone in southern Iraq (south of latitude 32°N, but subsequently extended by the US to the 33rd parallel, reaching the outskirts of Baghdad). Designated Operation Southern Watch, it barred all Iraqi fixed-wing aircraft from the area. ‘No-drive zones’ for Iraqi military forces were also imposed in southern Iraq. The restrictions came in response to renewed attacks by government forces on southern Shi’ite communities and on the inhab-

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itants of the southern marshlands. The no-drive zone also helped to prevent the massing of Iraqi troops for further aggression against Kuwait. Security Council resolution 688 of April 1991 was sometimes claimed to provide the legal basis for the exclusion zones, but this is disputable because the resolution neither invoked Chapter 7 of the Charter (a necessary condition for the use of force) nor mentioned specific measures to protect human rights (e.g. no-fly zones).121 Even so, the UN SecretaryGeneral expressed the Security Council’s support for this highly intrusive measure of dubious legal standing. The no-fly zones, it soon transpired, were no mere symbolic assault on Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity: Iraqi aircraft challenging the flight ban were shot down by patrolling Western aircraft.122 International supervision of Iraq was also evident in the UN-designed Oil-for-Food Programme. In a move to alleviate the mounting civilian suffering caused by sanctions, the Security Council in April 1995 (resolution 986) authorized states to import up to $1 billion of Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products every 90 days – but under close UN supervision. Each transaction had to be approved by the Council’s Sanctions Committee and the full amount of every purchase had to be deposited into an escrow account established by the UN Secretary-General. The revenue in the escrow account was to be used inter alia for financing medicine, health supplies and foodstuffs imported by Iraq (as approved by the SecretaryGeneral), providing funds to the UN Inter-Agency Humanitarian Programme operating in Iraq, financing the UN Compensation Fund, and paying UNSCOM’s operating costs. Implementation of the Oil-for-Food Programme began only in December 1996, when Iraq eventually agreed to participate. In that month Iraq exported its first oil under the programme and the first shipments of food arrived the following March. Thereafter the programme went through several new phases, the Security Council in each stage extending the life of the programme, increasing the revenue to be generated by Iraqi oil sales and expanding the list of items Iraq was allowed to purchase from abroad.123 In 1999 the Council (resolution 1284) lifted the ceiling on revenues and authorized Iraq to export unlimited amounts of oil and to import a wide range of goods to meet humanitarian needs and rehabilitate the civilian infrastructure. However, this latest phase of the Oil-for-Food Programme still contained the obligatory deductions from the oil income previously imposed by the Security Council. Strict UN supervision of the expenditure of the revenue also remained and the United Nations Office of the Iraq Programme used field observers to ensure that materials and supplies imported by Iraq were used for their intended purposes.124 These prescriptions imposed from outside relegated the Iraqi authorities to little more than onlookers. Nonetheless, Iraq had by May 2003 exported oil valued at roughly $65 billion under the programme, while $28 billion worth of


humanitarian supplies and equipment had by then been delivered to the country. Since December 2000 over 70 per cent of the oil revenue was allocated to humanitarian needs.125 Humanitarian aid was provided by other multilateral organizations and individual countries too. The EC/EU, for instance, granted ECU150 million in emergency aid to Iraqi refugees and displaced people in 1991. In subsequent years the EU chanelled much of its humanitarian aid to Kurdish areas in the north of Iraq and to people in the south.126 The UN Compensation Fund, mentioned above, was established by the Security Council in April 1991 (resolution 687) to use Iraqi money to pay compensation to victims – foreign governments, nationals and corporations – of Iraq’s illegal invasion and occupation of Kuwait. The direct loss suffered could, significantly, include environmental damage and the depletion of natural resources. Initially 30 per cent of the revenue generated by Iraq’s export of oil and petroleum was to be allocated to the Fund (a proportion lowered to 25 per cent in December 2000). The Compensation Fund was administered by the United Nations Compensation Commission, a subsidiary body of the Security Council. (Each year $50 million was deducted from Iraqi oil exports to fund the Compensation Commission itself.) By October 2000 2.6 million claims totaling $320 billion had been received from individuals, companies and governments. Compensation worth $12.5 billion had by then been paid to 1.5 million claims. This compensation package is for several reasons relevant to our study. In monetary terms it was another severe form of punishment inflicted on Iraq. It was also part of a wider foreign scheme to restrict Iraq’s ability to trade freely and to spend its income as it saw fit; the latter limitation was ostensibly designed to prevent Baghdad spending its oil money on highly destructive weapons. And then the compensation arrangement was an exceptional one. A Security Council resolution insisted that Iraq was ‘liable under international law for any direct loss, damage … or injury to foreign governments, nationals and corporations, as a result of Iraq’s unlawful invasion and occupation of Kuwait’. There is probably no precedent, at least since the Treaty of Versailles, for laying the full responsibility for a war on one party and forcing it to pay endless reparations.127 The combination of sanctions and supervision could also be regarded as an exercise in the external containment of Iraq. ‘We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons-of-mass-destruction program’, Clinton explained in 1998. ‘We want to seriously reduce his [Saddam’s] capacity to threaten his neighbors.’128 In the US and Britain containment was more playfully described as ‘keeping Saddam in his box’ or putting the Iraqi leader ‘back in his cage’. Subversion can be listed as a fourth foreign response to Iraq’s deviant conduct. In the Iraqi case perhaps a more appropriate term – one indeed used in the US – is replacement. It refers to foreign moves to topple or,

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more gently, replace Saddam Hussein, whose name was synonymous with all of Iraq’s rule-breaking behaviour. For President George Bush senior ‘the best thing that could happen would be for him [Saddam] to go out of there so we could start new relations with Iraq’.129 Knowing full well that Saddam would not voluntarily oblige, the Americans at first hoped that a popular revolt or coup would do the job. To help get Saddam ‘out of there’, the Bush administration authorized a $15 million programme (later increased by a generous Congress to $40 million) to dislodge Saddam. The US concentrated its hopes and resources on a motley collection of squabbling Iraqi opposition factions to oust Saddam.130 Clinton’s acceptance of the Iraq Liberation Act in October 1998 confirmed that subversion was still being pursued. Under this law $97 million was made available to support antiSaddam dissidents by arming and training them for combat. It remained a tall order, as there were over 70 anti-Saddam factions showing few signs of forming a united front against their supposed common enemy.131 The second Bush administration left no doubt about its commitment to get rid of Saddam by coercive means, one of which was again building up an antiSaddam coalition involving Iraqi Kurds and exiles.132 Whatever the form subversion, this kind of action violates the basic international rule of noninterference in a foreign country’s internal affairs. US plots to topple Saddam ran up against limited support from Washington’s Arab allies, outright hostility elsewhere in the Arab world, and complications in relations with Russia, France and China.133 In the end, Washington opted for open warfare to dislodge Saddam. Legal prosecution has been mooted as a fifth international response to Iraq’s deviant conduct. UN Security Council resolution 674 of October 1990 raised the possibility of war trials, referring to individual rather than collective transgressions.134 In March 1991 President Bush, alluding to the Iraqi leader, insisted that ‘nobody can be absolved of responsibility under international law’ – evidently hinting at the possibility of trying Saddam for war crimes.135 In July 1993 the Clinton administration put a proposal on the agenda of the UN Security Council for an ad hoc international tribunal for Iraq, which would be authorized by the Council to try cases based on evidence collected by a special commission of inquiry.136 Now that Saddam’s government has fallen, criminal proceedings may follow. In the course of Operation Iraqi Freedom both Bush and Blair suggested strongly that Iraqi ‘war criminals’ would face justice.137

Iraq’s reactions to external pressure Baghdad used an extensive repertoire of familiar deviant responses to external pressure and punishment. Despite Saddam’s bravado and bluster, he more than once accommodated foreign demands. One example is Iraq’s unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait, tantamount to a capitulation to


UN demands. Another instance of submission, albeit combined with strong doses of brinkmanship, bargaining and procrastination, concerned Iraq’s participation in the demolition of its arsenal of WMD under international supervision. Bargaining and procrastination were also evident in Iraq’s initial reaction to the UN oil-for-food proposal. As deviants typically do, Baghdad invoked international norms in defending its own behaviour and denouncing that of its foreign opponents. Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz called Operation Desert Fox ‘an unjustified crime’. More generally, Aziz accused the US and Britain of ongoing aggression against Iraq and – in an apparent allusion to their support for efforts to depose Saddam – of financing ‘terrorist’ acts.138 Counter-demonization also featured among Iraq’s responses to foreign pressure. Aziz was one of several exponents, branding British Prime Minister Tony Blair a ‘liar’ and UNSCOM chief Richard Butler ‘a cheap pawn in the hands of the Americans’.139 Although Saddam’s Iraq had no allies and few true friends, it tried to build up an informal international coalition opposing the continuation of mandatory economic sanctions. Baghdad used its oil wealth, foreign aid, the promise of lucrative business deals, and repayment of past debts as incentives to win international support in challenging the sanctions regime. In its immediate neighbourhood, Iraq was not averse to issuing threats of future reprisals against countries supporting sanctions.140 Another technique was that of divide-and-survive, with Iraq exploiting divisions in the Security Council and beyond over the need and appropriateness of ongoing sanctions. Baghdad knew full well that sanctions fatigue had set in among the international community and that the humanitarian deprivations caused by these measures held a powerful moral appeal in the West. Russia, France and China – previously important economic and political partners of Iraq – were the focus of Baghdad’s diplomatic campaign against UN sanctions.141 It is worth adding that the Saddam government’s evident willingness to suffer mandatory economic sanctions indefinitely, instead of submitting to all the demands required for their lifting, may well have contributed to defiant stability in the country. By portraying the Western sanctions-drivers as bent on the destruction of Iraq, Saddam managed to arouse nationalist passions and rally the populace around his leadership in the face of a perceived threat to national survival.142 Yet when the ultimate test came in the shape of the Anglo-American military offensive in 2003, the Iraqi masses failed to rise up against the invaders in a bid to save their leader.

Conclusion Iraq under Saddam Hussein represented the mother of all deviant states. It is hard to imagine that the creator of a fictitious deviant state, writing in

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the post-Cold War years, could have conceived of a more ‘sinful’ state than Iraq. Or if a contemporary picaresque novel were to be written, the author would be hard put to invent a more unsavoury ‘picaro’ than Saddam Hussein. By committing virtually all the transgressions listed in our inventory of deviant conduct (Chapter 2), Iraq can be regarded as an archetypal deviant state – a classic textbook example of how a state should not behave in the post-Cold War era. What aggravated Baghdad’s first transgression, the pursuit of WMD, is that it had actually used some of these against foreign and domestic enemies. Its arsenal of WMD was supplemented by awesome conventional military forces, the build-up of which was related to yet another contravention, namely the quest for regional hegemony. That in turn was a major driving force behind Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, a flagrant breach of international law. Add to this that Iraqi forces committed a variety of war crimes in Kuwait. On the home front, Saddam was guilty of that most grievous of transgressions, namely genocide (against the Kurds). There is a direct correlation between most of these sins and Iraq’s domestic political order: Saddam maintained a ruthless dictatorship that made short shrift of democracy and human rights. Two final and lesser infringements were Iraq’s anti-Western sentiments and an assertive, independent foreign policy that challenged Western interests. Virtually all of Iraq’s transgressions were truly instances of deviance because they elicited international disapproval and led to tangible punishment. Iraq was subjected to three of the most drastic forms of external punishment for offensive behaviour: military force, mandatory sanctions and extensive international supervision. With its autonomy restricted and its dignity impaired, Iraq was reduced to an unwilling protectorate of sorts of the UN. The full restoration of its statehood – together with the end of its deviant status – has been made possible by the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

6 Iran

Iran, like neighbouring Iraq, is a veteran of rule-breaking behaviour within and beyond its borders. Iran’s deviant conduct predates the end of the Cold War and indeed also the ascendance of Islamic rule in 1979. The Islamic revolution, however, heralded a period of greater deviance than under the Shah. Both Iran and Iraq were condemned to the US’s roster of rogue states. But whereas Iraq’s conduct prompted forceful and also forcible collective responses, the international censure that Iran encountered was seldom translated into tangible collective punishment. Few other states or multilateral organizations were prepared to react as vigorously as the US to Iran’s violations of rules of respectable conduct.

From king of kings to mullah of all Muslims Iran, called Persia until 1935, has a 2,500-year tradition of monarchical government. In the 20th century this tradition was represented first by the Qajar monarchy and subsequently by the Pahlavi dynasty. In 1925 Reza Khan, a Cossack military officer who deposed the Qajar monarch, had himself enthroned as Reza Shah (emperor) Pahlavi. In 1941 British and Soviet forces occupied Iran and the pro-German Shah was forced to abdicate in favour of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The latter ruled in the customary authoritarian, even absolutist, style of his father and earlier monarchs. Mohammad Reza Shah, who was to govern Iran for forty years, even assigned himself the historical title of Shahanshah (king of kings). The designation dates back to the Achaemenids (550–330 BC), who ruled the first Persian world empire, and was revived by the Qajar monarchy in the late 18th century.1 Iranian politics and society have since the late 19th century been acutely affected by the often conflicting demands of tradition and modernity. The former is still represented by Islam, as articulated by the country’s influential religious elite. During the dynastic reign of the Safavids (1501–1722), Shi’ite Islam was made the official religion of Iran and Shi’ite 112

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clergy began assuming a distinctly political role. Pressures towards modernity in the shape of Westernization began towards the end of the 19th century as Britain unsuccessfully tried to encourage the modernization of Iran’s infrastructure and liberalization of its trade so as to expand Britain’s commercial ties with that country. A different form of Westernization was the constitutional revolution of 1905–6, prompted by widespread domestic discontent over corruption in the Qajar monarchy. The revolution produced an elected parliament (known as the Majlis), a cabinet approved by the Majlis, and a constitution guaranteeing limited individual freedoms. Reza Shah Pahlavi later introduced measures to reduce the powers of religious and tribal leaders and he also embarked on educational and legal reforms and economic development along Western lines. Pahlavi junior accelerated the process of Westernization, largely ignoring the traditional role of conservative Shi’ite clergy in Iranian society. In the early 1960s he launched the so-called White Revolution of economic and social reforms. Some of the fiercest resistance to this modernization came from religious leaders2 – an intimation of things to come. Meanwhile a popular move domestically had placed Iran on a collision course with major Western powers. In 1951 the Majlis approved the nationalization of Iran’s petroleum industry, then controlled largely by the AngloIranian Oil Company. Prime Minister Mohammad Mussadeq, the principal advocate of nationalization, paid a heavy price for this seizure of foreign assets: he was deposed in a coup d’état plotted by British and American intelligence services. In the wake of the coup the Shah began tightening his personal control of government, to the extent of assuming dictatorial powers in the early 1960s. In 1965 another of the Shah’s prime ministers came to grief with the assassination of Hassan Ali Mansur. The assassin was allegedly a follower of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, a Shi’ite religious leader exiled in 1964 for his anti-government activities.3 If Khomeini did indeed present a significant challenge to the Shah’s government in the mid-1960s, the danger soon receded into the background as Iran entered a period of economic expansion and political stability that lasted from 1965 to 1977. The economy was fuelled by high petroleum revenues, which in turn funded major infrastructure projects and massive arms imports.4 For most of this period the human rights situation showed no similar improvement; UN human rights forums repeatedly drew attention to the Iranian security service’s preference for torture, detention without trial and other violations of international human rights norms. It was only towards the end of his rule that the Shah, under pressure from America’s Carter administration, allowed limited political liberalization.5 The reforms failed to stem a rising tide of popular discontent, though. In the realm of foreign relations, Iran had since the Second World War considered itself part of the Western alliance system. Relations with the US were actively cultivated both out of ideological conviction and as a means


of protecting Iran against potential threats from the Soviet Union.6 The US, in turn, in the early 1970s assigned Iran the role of the Persian Gulf’s policeman in the context of the Nixon Doctrine. It was a role the Shah relished and allowed him to indulge his passion for military hardware: by 1977 he had bought over US$6 billion worth of conventional armaments, with another $12 billion on order. Many Iranians deeply resented what they saw as the Shah’s willingness to make Iran completely subservient to the US and hence sacrifice its independence; his opponents labelled him ‘the American king’. It was indeed a patron-client (or cliency) relationship between the US and Iran under the Shah.7 An economic downturn that began in mid-1977, combined with persistent government repression, sparked a new wave of popular resistance to the Shah’s rule. The following year anti-government demonstrations and strikes became widespread, with both leftist and liberal opponents of the Shah and Islamic activists in the vanguard. The latter were followers of Khomeini, who became the focal point of opposition to the Shah. Then in exile in France, Khomeini campaigned for a new social and political order in Iran based on the fundamental principles of Islam.8 Iran was caught in a ‘revolution of rising alienation’ from the Shah’s regime on the one hand and the US on the other.9 Such was the tide of popular unrest that the Shah was forced to flee Iran in January 1979, paving the way for Khomeini’s triumphant return in February. Within ten days Khomeini effectively assumed power. An Islamic Revolutionary Council was formed to rule the country in conjunction with a provisional government under the premiership of Dr Mehdi Bazargan. Following a referendum, Iran was declared an Islamic republic in April. Under the Constitution of 1979, Khomeini was designated as the faqih for life. The faqih, according to Article 5, was the just and pious jurist recognized by the majority of the people as best qualified to lead the nation. As an expert in religious jurisprudence, he was empowered to issue binding interpretations of religious laws and regulations. Among his secular powers were the approval of presidential candidates and the appointment of chief judges and military leaders. The faqih was thus the Supreme Leader of the country, making for a system of ‘governance of the jurisprudent (vilayat-i faqih)’. The Constitution also provided for an elected president as chief executive, a position assumed by Abolhasan Bani-Sadr in February 1980. An elected 270-member Majlis was charged with passing legislation prepared by the clergy-dominated executive. To ensure that laws approved by the legislature conformed to Islam, the Council of Guardians was created under the Constitution. In elections in 1980, the Islamic Republican Party (identified with Khomeini) took only about 60 seats in the Majlis, but subsequently gained wide support among other deputies.10 In the heady atmosphere of revolutionary Iran, neither Bazargan nor Bani-Sadr, both moderates, could survive in office for long. Bazargan’s

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secular and nationalist government was forced to resign in November 1979 at the start of the so-called hostage crisis. In that month Iranian students seized 63 hostages in the US embassy in Tehran, the original purpose being to compel Washington to return the Shah (then in America for medical treatment) to Iran to face trial. The Shah’s death in Egypt in July 1980 failed to resolve matters, as Iran made further demands, notably for an American commitment not to interfere in its domestic affairs. It was only in January 1981, after intense diplomatic efforts, that the 52 remaining hostages were released.11 Bani-Sadr’s brief tenure had from the outset been characterized by tensions between him and his modernist allies on the one hand and traditionalist Muslims (led by the Islamic Republican Party) on the other. The rift led to violent clashes between supporters of the rival groups, culminating in June 1981 in virtual warfare between a pro-Bani Sadr Islamic guerrilla group called Mujahidin-e-Khalq and the Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Majlis voted to impeach the President and Khomeini dismissed him from office the next day. Bani-Sadr took refuge in France, along with Massoud Rajavi, leader of the Mujahidin. Bani-Sadr’s departure in June represented the final victory for the religious forces of Ayatollah Khomeini.12 And so Iran became the only fully fledged theocracy – or, more playfully, a mullahcracy13 – in the modern world, one in which the rulers represented God in governing a Muslim people Still the turbulence in Iran continued, as the Islamic rulers had to contend with Kurdish, Baluch and Turkoman rebellions inspired by demands for greater autonomy, as well as intensified conflict between government forces and the Mujahidin. By mid-August 1981 some 900 members of the Mujahidin had been executed. Shortly thereafter President Mohammad Ali Rajani (Bani-Sadr’s elected successor) and Prime Minister Mohammad Javar Bahunar were killed in a bomb attack blamed on the Mujahidin. Intensified state repression was the predictable result. These events probably helped to secure the election of Hojatoleslam Ali Khamenei, another Islamic hardliner, as President in October 1981. The conservatives further tightened their grip on the levers of power when the Islamic Republican Party scored a clear victory in elections to the second Majlis held in 1984.14 Iran’s revolutionary rulers lost no time in embarking on a process of ‘Islamizing’ Iranian society. The country’s political, judicial and educational systems were purged and remade according to Islamic principles. In the cultural realm they tried to expunge all non-Islamic and anti-Islamic elements.15 The economy did not escape the missionary mullahs’ attention either. The Western-style modernization of the Pahlavi dynasty, which they blamed for the country’s economic woes, was replaced by a ‘statist, command-type economic system’ in the early 1980s. The mechanism of the market gave way to government control and wartime regulations


(necessitated by the war with Iraq). The revolutionary leadership promised, among other things, to reduce Iran’s economic dependence on the outside (particularly Western) world; diversify the economy to cut Iran’s heavy reliance on oil revenues; make agriculture the pivot of development; achieve self-sufficiency in food; increase non-oil exports and cut imports (especially of consumer goods). After a decade, none of these economic goals had even been approached. At the end of the 1980s, with the war against Iraq over and a new political leadership at the helm, Iran embarked on a new economic course towards deregulation, privatization and free enterprise.16 Nearly a decade later, the Iranian economy still faced a host of ‘horrendous problems’, including declining living standards, high inflation, a widening gap between rich and poor, high unemployment and economic mismanagement.17 Theocratic Iran’s foreign policy was predicated on Khomeini’s vision of a world polarized along power, ideological and spiritual lines. The first portrayed the world as divided into two camps: the oppressor-arrogant camp consisted of the two superpowers and some other powers that dominated and exploited foreign countries and peoples, and the oppresseddowntrodden composed of the Muslim states and most of the Third World. The ideological division was also two-fold, namely the Western capitalist camp led by the US, and the Eastern socialist camp under Soviet leadership. Iran would not side with either, hence the slogan ‘Neither East nor West – only Islam’. This made the Islamic Republic of Iran, in its own eyes, the world’s sole truly non-aligned country. (Bazargan’s provisional government had already given effect to this non-aligned orientation by withdrawing from the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) in March 1979 and in November cancelling the 1959 Executive Agreement on Defence Cooperation with the US. The Bazargan government also abrogated articles of Iran’s 1921 treaty with the Soviet Union on the grounds that the provisions gave the USSR the unilateral right to intervene militarily in Iran whenever it judged its security being endangered from Iranian territory.)18 The spiritual line of division ran between those following the ‘right path’ of ‘God and belief’ and the ‘corrupt path’ of ‘Satan and disbelief’. Khomeini saw Iran as the only country governed according to Koranic principles and striving to follow the divine Islamic path.19 Khomeini insisted that ‘Islam is not peculiar to a country, several countries … or even the Muslims. Islam has come for humanity … Islam wishes to bring all of humanity under the umbrella of its justice’.20 Believing as he did in the universal validity of Islam, Khomeini argued that Iran – as the only faqih-ruled Islamic republic – ‘should try hard to export [its] revolution to the world’.21 Khomeini made it clear that the concept of vilayat-i faqih – which was his creation – was likewise universally applicable. This meant that other Muslim countries should accept his leadership; those that refused had oppressive forms of government, in his view, and should be

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overthrown.22 Rafsanjani in like vein presented the export of the revolution as ‘our duty’ towards ‘the oppressed people of the world’ especially the Muslim world.23 This task was also enshrined in the Constitution of 1979: ‘to perpetuate the revolution both at home and abroad’ was proclaimed a goal of the Islamic Republic of Iran.24 Iran was therefore duty and honour bound to assume the vanguard of an Islamic revolutionary movement – the ultimate aim of which was the creation of an Islamic world order. Although Khomeini emphasized that ‘[i]t does not take the sword to export this ideology’ of his25, others were more forthright. Thus Foreign Minister Hossein Musavi in August 1981 explained that the objectives of the country’s foreign policy were to ‘[c]arry the message of Iran’s Islamic revolution to the world’ and to ‘successfully defend … [it] throughout the world, using all the means and levers we possess’.26 Also in the early 1980s President Ali Khamenei called on prayer leaders from forty countries to turn their mosques into ‘prayer, cultural and military bases [to] … prepare the ground for creation [sic] of Islamic governments in all countries’.27 In practice Tehran used both coercive and non-coercive means to spread the message of revolution. The issue overshadowing Iran’s foreign relations in the 1980s, the war against Iraq, was in no small way related to Tehran’s interest in exporting its revolution. Iraq, like other Arab countries in the Persian Gulf region, were viewed by the theocrats in Tehran as ripe for an infusion of Iranian revolutionary fervour to free these states of their perceived tyrannical leaders and subservience to the superpowers. One of the reasons that Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980, was to silence the latter’s incitement of Iraqis to revolt against Saddam Hussein. Although Iraq had started the war, Iran failed to attract the international sympathy and support a victim of external aggression may expect. Instead, Islamic Iran was treated like a deviant state, shunned by others that took offence to aspects of its domestic and external conduct that had little to do with the war. Iraq, by contrast, could count on weapons and other forms of support from several Western powers, the Soviet Union and most Arab states. The US played a dual role: on the one hand it supported Iraq’s war effort and discouraged foreign arms sales to Iran, but on the other secretly sent three shiploads of weapons to Iran in 1985 and 1986. In what became a major political scandal, Washington had sent Iran arms in exchange for Tehran’s assistance in releasing American hostages held by Shi’ite groups in Lebanon, and for an Iranian undertaking to stop its involvement in international terrorism. In August 1988 Iran sued for peace – taking the ‘poisonous chalice’, in Ayatollah Khomeini’s words – by accepting unconditionally UN Security Council resolution 598 of July 1987. It was the resolution that called for an immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of troops to international borders, and steps towards a peace settlement. Thus ended the armed hostilities, with Iran widely seen (but not bemoaned) as the vanquished state.28


Its humiliation in the war with Iraq, together with the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in June 1989, heralded a new era in the domestic politics and foreign relations of Iran. President Khamenei was elected the country’s new spiritual leader and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the pragmatist Speaker of the Majlis, won the election for President. At home one of the new government’s main challenge was to introduce economic reforms that could reverse the sharp decline in living standards – something that led to repeated demonstrations and riots in the early 1990s.29 On the international front, Iran did not entirely abandon its revolutionary goals – the new leadership insisting that the country’s ‘Islamic responsibility’ transcended national borders30 – but internal and external pressures compelled it to pursue them more cautiously. State interests began to prevail over ideological aspirations.31 This change was part of the leadership’s pragmatic foreign policy designed to normalize Iran’s relations with regional actors (other than Israel) and the West (except for the US) and to end the Islamic Republic’s diplomatic ostracism. Improved relations with the West and stability in the Persian Gulf, Tehran calculated, would eliminate the need for a Western military presence in the region and help Iran to achieve its ambition of becoming the regional hegemon.32 In the early 1990s Iran’s diplomatic gains in relations with the West were undermined by a series of transgressions committed by Tehran.33 Rafsanjani was succeeded as President by Mohammad Khatami, an outspoken reformist who won the 1997 presidential election handsomely against the conservative establishment’s preferred candidate.34 Khatami’s cautious moves at internal liberalization and external moderation led to a further improvement in Iran’s foreign relations. The President’s hand was strengthened when reformist candidates won 222 of the then 290 Majlis seats in the general election in 2000 and Khatami himself polled 77 per cent of the vote in the June 2001 presidential election.35 Despite this overwhelming mandate, Khatami has not lived up to domestic and international expectations of bolder political reforms in his second term of office. The main reason for his disappointing performance has been the political standoff between Khatami’s reformists, controlling the presidency and legislature, and the conservatives grouped around Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and backed by the judiciary, security forces and the Council of Guardians (watching over the Islamic constitution). This conflict is embedded in the constitution, which provided for both democratic rule (by elected representatives of the people) and religious rule (by the unelected representatives of Allah). This makes the Islamic Republic of Iran a ‘theodemocracy’ with two competing centers of power.36

Naming the deviants American officials and observers have been prolific in assigning uncomplimentary labels to the Islamic Republic of Iran. President Reagan immedi-

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ately accused the ‘barbaric’ Iranians for what turned out to be an accidental Iraqi attack on a US warship in the Persian Gulf in May 1987.37 In 1993 Secretary of State Warren Christopher called Iran an ‘outlaw state’38 and also warned that its ‘evil hand’ was present wherever mischief occurred.39 Anthony Lake included Iran among his ‘backlash states’40 and several other commentators branded Iran a rogue state. Foreign critics commonly attributed Iran’s deviant behaviour at home and abroad to Ayatollah Khomeini in the first place. As the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, he was regarded as the principal policy maker in matters domestic and foreign, or at least as the person who provided the authoritative framework within which policies had to be formulated and executed. Khomeini was vilified in much of the West as an ancient Islamic extremist, as intransigent as he was ignorant of the ways of the modern, secular and interdependent world. Under Khomeini and his band of fanatical mullahs, Iran seemed to fit the description of a crazy state,41 willing to take grave and even irrational risks in challenging the prevailing international order while pursuing its particular brand of Islamic fundamentalism within and beyond its borders. Although there had all along been voices in the West and elsewhere that did not subscribe to the demonization of Khomeini, it was only after his death that Iran began to acquire the image of a ‘normal’ state under leaders willing to abide by commonly accepted rules of state conduct. Yet many instances of deviant behaviour remained – something Western observers attributed to conservative clergy among the political leadership. The same duality has been evident under Khatami. Outsiders have again attributed ongoing domestic repression to the hardline religious establishment, rather than to the supposedly well-intentioned President.

Iran’s transgressions The first sin committed by the Islamic Republic of Iran was in the domain of high politics: it endangered regional peace, order and security. In Western eyes a major cause of this threat was Islamic Iran’s deep-seated hostility towards Israel. Under the Shah, Iran and Israel had been de facto allies in the Middle East. The Islamic Republic, however, regarded Israel as an illegitimate state (having come about through the destruction of Palestine) that had to be eradicated so that Palestine could be reconstituted. Tehran banned all trade, especially in oil, with the Jewish state, severed diplomatic relations and handed Israel’s former mission in the Iranian capital to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Iran extended its hostility to those Arab states willing to accept Israel’s right of existence, notably Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia.42 When Israel and the PLO concluded the Oslo Accord in September 1993, Iran immediately declared its implacable opposition and vowed to defeat the peace deal. The US


openly regarded Tehran’s hostility as a serious threat to the agreement and to wider regional peace and security.43 The European Union was sufficiently concerned about Iran’s attitude towards the Middle East peace process to make it a regular item in the EU’s so-called critical dialogue with Tehran.44 For most Arab leaders and also for the US, the main threat to the security of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, especially in the 1980s, resulted from Iran’s incitement of local Shi’ite and fundamentalist Muslim populations in these areas.45 This particular act of deviance was closely tied to Iran’s fifth sin, the export of its Islamic revolution. Another action that threatened regional peace and security, was Iranian forces’ occupation in 1992 of the Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tumb islands. Iran uneasily shared sovereignty over the islands with Sharjah, a sheikdom in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), under an agreement of 1971 (concluded after Iranian forces had seized the islands earlier that year). Strategically located in the lower Gulf north of Dubai, legal possession of the three islands had long caused a bitter dispute between Iran and the UAE. In tune with widespread protests throughout the Arab world over Iran’s offensive action, the Arab League in September 1992 declared its support for the UAE. Subsequent diplomatic efforts to resolve the issue were to no avail. Iran, meanwhile, fortified the islands to reinforce its claims to sovereignty.46 In 1995 Joseph Nye, America’s Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security Affairs, gave notice that the US was ‘closely watching’ the Iranian military build-up on the islands. The ‘creation by a hostile power of bases sitting aside the western approaches to the Straits of Hormuz’, Nye declared, ‘is obviously a matter of serious concern for commercial traffic, our own naval presence, and the security of our Arab friends’.47 More generally, critics maintained that Tehran was out to dominate its neighbourhood and intimidate weaker countries into subservience. It has been a long-standing Iranian conviction that the country’s history, geography, culture, population size and natural resources entitled it to assume a leading role in the region and beyond.48 The Shah’s hopes of making Iran one of the five conventional powers in the world, would of course have added to its regional pre-eminence.49 After 1979 Iran’s traditional regional ambitions acquired a new ideological thrust, leaving virtually all the states in the neighbourhood feeling threatened by Tehran’s revolutionary crusade abroad. Because the export of revolution is discussed as a separate fifth transgression, we need only record here that the six Arab Gulf states in 1981 established the Gulf Cooperation Council as a defensive mechanism in the face of Iranian proselytizing and to counter a possible spillover of the Iran-Iraq war to their territories.50 Post-Khomeini Iran was still suspected by the US of aggressive regional designs. Tehran ‘harbors ambitions of establishing Iranian hegemony over the Persian Gulf’, according to a 1995 report of the Office of the US

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Secretary of Defence. ‘It is obvious that Iran is assertively flexing its muscles vis-à-vis its smaller Gulf neighbors’, the report went on. Of even greater concern in the long term was Iran’s commitment to developing WMD, ‘a prospect that would have serious repercussions for regional stability’.51 Its quest for WMD, its conventional military build-up, occupation of the Abu Musa and Tumb islands, opposition to the Arab-Israeli peace process, as well as its perceived hegemonic aspirations in the Gulf area, are the main reasons why Arab states of the Gulf still felt threatened by Iran in the 1990s.52 The second transgression, which also endangered peace in the region and beyond, involved Iran’s alleged clandestine attempts to obtain nuclear and other unconventional weapons and long-range missile delivery systems. In 1988 President Rafsanjani openly called for the development of WMD: ‘[W]e should fully equip ourselves both in the offensive and defensive use of chemical, bacteriological and radiological weapons’.53 In Western, especially US, security circles this statement was taken as confirmation of what had long been suspected. Although it had signed the 1925 Geneva Protocol, Iran reportedly began a crash programme in the early 1980s to produce chemical weapons. By the mid-1990s, Western security analysts believed, Iran had sizeable stockpiles of chemical weapons. If true, Tehran would have violated also the Chemical Weapons Convention, which it ratified in 1997. Iran is also thought to have begun developing biological weapons in the early 1980s, but it was difficult to determine its warfighting capabilities in this field. Such weapons would again constitute a violation of Iran’s obligations under the Geneva Protocol and the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972. As regards nuclear weapons, Western security experts maintained that Iran’s Islamic government during the war against Iraq revived a programme begun by the Shah to acquire a military nuclear capability. Iran no doubt had the research and industrial base and the purchasing network to maintain a clandestine nuclear weapons programme. Alternatively, Tehran could take the easier option of developing radiological weapons or ‘dirty bombs’, consisting of fissile material enriched to a low level. Neither route would be compatible with the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, to which Iran was a signatory. Finally, the steady improvement in Iran’s long-range missile capability since the start of the war against Iraq, meant that it may have acquired the necessary delivery vehicles for WMD. (In July 1998 Iran successfully test-fired a missile with a reach of 1,300 kilometers – putting, Saudi Arabia, Israel, southern Russia, and US military forces in the Gulf, within harm’s way.)54 The Clinton administration more than once claimed that Iran was committed to developing all four types of WMD, namely chemical, biological and nuclear weapons as well as missile delivery systems.55 This assessment was shared by President George W Bush, who in January 2002 charged that Iran ‘aggressively pursues these weapons [of mass destruction]’. States like


Iran, Iraq and North Korea, he declared, ‘constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world’.56 Washington has remained particularly concerned about Tehran’s nuclear intentions, accusing Iran in 2002 of secretly constructing large nuclear facilities,57 followed by repeated accusations in early 2003 that the Islamic Republic was well advanced with a nuclear weapons programme. Predicatbly, Iran denied all charges of breaking the rules of the NPT.58 Iran’s alleged WMD aspirations were pursued in tandem with a conventional military build-up that began soon after Rafsanjani took power. US$10 billion was to be spent over five years. This programme of military expansion can be treated as Iran’s third sin in the eyes of foreign states.59 The European Council, meeting in December 1992, accepted the right of countries to acquire the military means to defend themselves, but expressed concern that Iran’s arms procurement should not pose a threat to regional stability.60 An official of the US National Security Council was more forthright, declaring in 1995 that the strengthening of Iran’s conventional military capabilities posed ‘real threats to small Persian Gulf states that are friends of the United States’.61 It is worth recording that the Shah already had dreams of elevating Iran to one of the five conventional military powers of the world, an ambition that helps to explain his spending spree on American weapons in the 1970s.62 In recent years little has been heard of a conventional military threat posed by Iran; foreign interest has shifted to Tehran’s supposed nuclear ambitions. The Islamic Republic of Iran was in the fourth place widely accused of involvement in international terrorism, a form of deviant behaviour that went hand in hand with the export of its revolution. By eradicating foreign (read: Western) influences through terrorism, Tehran hoped to create conditions congenial to Islamic revolutions of its kind. In Lebanon, Iran funded and sponsored Islamic extremist organizations, notably Islamic Amal and Hizballah. Iran was also responsible for or implicated in the truck bombings of the US embassy in Beirut in April 1983, the US Marine barracks in that city in October 1983, the attempted truck bombing of the US embassy in Kuwait in December 1983, and the kidnapping of Western nationals in Lebanon.63 The Islamic Republic’s first major act of terrorism against a foreign target was, of course, the seizure of American diplomats in Tehran in November 1979. It was a clear-cut violation of the principle of the inviolability of diplomatic personnel and establishments. Their ‘self-righteous contempt for diplomatic norms and world opinion’ during the hostage crisis, firmly established the Iranian revolutionary leadership’s ‘rogue’ image abroad.64 (Despite the diplomatic damage, the Islamic rulers remained unrepentant after the hostage crisis was resolved in January 1981. The hostage-taking, Majlis Speaker (and later President) Rafsanjani boasted, was one of the ‘greatest constructive measures in history’.65)

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It was only in January 1984 that the US State Department branded Iran as a terrorist state, leading to an American partial trade embargo against the Islamic Republic.66 The State Department kept an annual record of significant terrorist incidents involving Iran: 45 in 1987, 32 in 1988, 28 in 1989, 10 in 1990, 5 in 1991, 20 in 1992, 6 in 1993 and 6 in 1994 (the last six, according to the Americans, included bomb attacks against Jewish targets in London and Buenos Aires).67 Between 1979 and 1996, the US State Department and CIA calculated, more than 1,000 people were killed in 200 terrorist strikes bearing Tehran’s imprint.68 Despite the decline in Iran’s alleged terrorist actions over time, the US State Department’s 1994 report on Patterns of Global Terrorism called Iran the ‘most dangerous state sponsor of terrorism’.69 This assessment seemed to be vindicated two years later when Iran was implicated in the bombing of American soldiers in Saudi Arabia.70 Not surprisingly, Patterns of Global Terrorism identified Iran as ‘the most active state sponsor of terrorism’ in 1997.71 American charges of Iranian support for terrorism abroad were in the 1990s corroborated by authorities in France, Germany, Switzerland and Argentina, where Iranian exiles and others were murdered.72 The UN Special Representative on Iran likewise, in the mid-1990s, repeatedly alerted the world body to the involvement of Iranian agents in assassinations and attempts on the lives of Iranians living abroad.73 Britain’s Parliamentary Human Rights Group reported in 1996 that over the past 17 years more than 150 assassination attempts on exiled Iranian dissidents and other terrorist acts had been committed in 21 countries. Some 350 people had been killed or injured in these attacks, fully two-thirds of which had occurred after Rafsanjani assumed the presidency. The Iranian government ‘is indeed organising an international murder machine’ directed by the President, the British group concluded.74 A particularly notorious incident was the socalled Mykonos case, in which four Iranian exiles were assassinated in a Berlin restaurant by that name in September 1992. In a subsequent trial, the Supreme Court of Justice in Berlin established the involvement of the Iranian agents in the murders. The European Union in April 1997, following the court’s verdict, condemned the Iranian authorities’ involvement in the slayings, declaring that such behaviour was ‘totally unacceptable in the conduct of international affairs’. No progress could be possible in building a ‘constructive relationship’ with Iran – through critical dialogue – ‘while Iran flouts international norms, and indulges in acts of terrorism’, the Union decided.75 Meanwhile, in 1994, the British declared their own dispute with Iran by accusing Tehran of supporting the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in its campaign of terrorism in Northern Ireland.76 The terrorism issue between Washington and Tehran has lately become rather confusing. On the one hand President Khatami boldly denounced the attacks of 11 September 2001 ‘which led to the killing of defenseless people’, a view echoed by Supreme Leader Khamenei days later.77 In the


wake of the September events Britain (America’s staunchest ally in the ‘war on terrorism’) and Iran announced that they were in agreement on opposing terrorism.78 Another promising development for the US was Iran’s offer to assist search and rescue operations in Afghanistan during the Americanled military offensive against the Taliban. (Here it is worth mentioning that Iran had a severely strained relationship with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and the two countries came to the verge of war in the late 1990s.)79 The old antagonisms and suspicions were on the other hand all too evident. Having condemned the terrorist strikes of September 2001, Khamenei bluntly told the Americans: ‘We are neither with you [nor] with the terrorists’.80 Washington evidently had few doubts on whose side the Iranians really were.81 In Patterns of Global Terrorism 2002, the US State Department still featured Iran as ‘the most active state sponsor of terrorism’, having provided funding, training and weapons to Central Asian and anti-Israeli terrorist groups and safehaven to members of al-Qaeda.82 One of the sins that qualified Iran for membership of President Bush junior’s ‘axis of evil’, was that it ‘exports terror’.83 It was hardly conceivable that the US could normalize relations with a terrorist state condemned to a den of demons. We have already alluded to Iran’s fifth sin, the export of its Islamic revolution. In the ruling clergy’s worldview, Muslim countries specifically and Third World states generally could liberate themselves from imperialist domination – represented by local tyrants acting as the agents of the US and USSR, the two principal imperialist powers – by following Iran’s example.84 Iranian policy makers referred to their country as the ‘Mother of all Islamic lands’, meaning the centre of gravity for the entire world’s fundamentalist Islamic movements and their source of inspiration.85 Being opposed to the regional status quo and to the domination of the globe by two superpowers, as well as being determined to change the state of affairs at both levels, Iran was a truly revisionist country.86 For states at the top of the international hierarchy and a great many others benefiting from the regional and global structure of power, Iran’s challenge to the existing order constituted a serious form of deviant conduct. The six Arab countries of the Persian Gulf were regarded by the theocrats in Tehran as the first candidates requiring Iran’s brand of revolution to free them of despotic leaders subservient to imperialist powers. Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were ruled by hereditary monarchs and most of them maintained close economic and military ties with the US. Khomeini branded their monarchies ‘un-Islamic’ and their religion as ‘American Islam’ owing to US influence in those countries. President Ali Khamenei was even less complimentary, depicting the rulers of oil-rich Arab states as ‘greedy pigs that know nothing but satisfying their lust’.87 Against this background Iran was not surprisingly accused of involvement in an attempted coup in Bahrain in December 1981 and of multiple bombings in Kuwait in December 1983. Khomeini also had an

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exceptionally low opinion of Saddam Hussein, denouncing him as an atheist and calling for the overthrow of his government. (With Shi’ites constituting 60 per cent of the Iraqi population, Saddam had reason to be nervous about Khomeini’s subversive pronouncements.) Lebanon’s Shi’ite community too received early attention from Iran’s professional revolutionaries, who dispatched several hundred Islamic militants there to sow the seeds of revolution.88 According to foreign security experts, Iran also supported Islamic extremist groups – against incumbent governments – in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey. Sudan’s Islamic fundamentalist government as well as terrorist groups operating out of Sudan were likewise supported by Iran in the cause of the Islamic revolution.89 The Soviet Union was concerned about the possible contagious effects of the Iranian revolution among its Muslims (notably in Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan). Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Iran was quick to seize the diplomatic opportunities created by the emergence of new Islamic states in Central Asia. The new Russian Federation, still a multinational empire with a strong Muslim component, as well as some Western powers, were distinctly uneasy about the spread of Iranian political and religious influence in Central Asia.90 The sixth transgression, the absence of democracy and the accompanying violation of human rights, predates the birth of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The last Shah, we have already recorded, was a highly authoritarian leader who made extensive use of repression. That the human rights situation after 1979 continued to fall far short of widely accepted international standards, was amply illustrated in the regular and well documented reports from, among others, the UN Commission on Human Rights and its Special Representative on Iran, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Question of Religious Intolerance, the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the US Department of State. Iran’s widespread violation of human rights occurred despite it being a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Islamic Iran maintained several institutions and processes of democracy, such as a popularly elected president and parliament and a measure of electoral competition between rival candidates. The democratic features cannot, however, mask the reality of widespread political repression since the Islamic revolution. Between 1979 and 1985, the UN Commission on Human Rights reported in February 1987, over 7,000 political opponents had been executed in Iran.91 Even after Islamic rule had been firmly consolidated, human rights violations in Iran remained the order of the day. Among the offences repeatedly cited by Amnesty International in the 1980s and 1990s, were the detention of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, detention without charge or trial, unfair trials, torture and illtreatment, the disappearance of people, and extrajudicial executions.92


A special instance of a human rights violation, regarded by the EU as a contravention of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (and also of the principle of state sovereignty),93 was the death sentence Khomeini imposed on author Salman Rushdie in February 1989. The Indian-born British writer’s novel The Satanic Verses was decreed offensive to Islam. The issuing of the fatwa was accompanied by a US$2 million reward for Rushdie’s murder. The Rushdie affair, which can also be regarded as an Iranian incitement to terrorism, severely strained Iran’s relations with Britain and other Western countries. High-level diplomatic contacts between EC member states and Iran were suspended. It was only in September 1998 that the Iranian government announced it would take no action to execute the fatwa.94 Meanwhile, in October 1997 (the year Khatami came to power), the UN Special Representative on Iran reported to the General Assembly that there were many areas requiring change before Iran could meet international human rights norms.95 Two years later the UN Commission on Human Rights similarly expressed concern at the continuing human rights violations in Iran and the lack of respect for internationally recognized legal safeguards.96 The year 2000 witnessed a severe clampdown on freedom of expression, leading to the arbitrary arrest of scores of journalists and the closure of more than 30 pro-democracy newspapers by the authorities.97 These retrogressive steps were, paradoxically, taken at a time President Khatami initiated liberal political and social reforms. Iran, the Special Representative of the UN Commission on Human Rights reported in January 2001, ‘is a conundrum’: on the one hand it could be argued that ‘Iranian society is more open now than it was five years ago’, but on the other it was possible to conclude that ‘breaches of human rights are in large part as egregious today as they were five years ago’.98 The latter observation did not prevent a majority on the Human Rights Commission to decide in April 2002 to lift the long-standing annual censure of Iran’s human rights practices. No resolution critical of Iran was tabled in either the 2002 or the 2003 session of the Commission.99 In return for being let off the hook, Iran agreed to allow a UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to inspect the country’s judicial and penal systems in loco – the first international human rights to delegation to set foot in Iran in seven years. Reporting in February 2003, the group praised the Iranian authorities’ cooperation, but they found that people were imprisoned there for expressing their views on a scale unmatched by any other country investigated by them.100 At about the same time Human Rights Watch, in a briefing to the UN Commission on Human Rights, highlighted the ongoing contravention of human rights norms in Iran through unfair trials, restrictions on freedom of expression, and discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities.101 A vehement anti-Western orientation, with a deep-seated antagonism towards the US at its core, was at least in American eyes a highly objection-

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able feature of Islamic Iran’s worldview. Given the concern and disapproval this stance evoked abroad, it can be regarded as Iran’s seventh contravention. In the new theocrats’ Satanology, the US was the ‘Great Satan’, eclipsed only by Iraq, the ‘Satan of the Great Satan’. America’s West European allies were especially in the early days of Islamic rule also viewed with suspicion by Tehran, with France being singled out as a ‘miniSatan’.102 Britain was consigned to a class of its own, ‘the aged wolf of imperialism’, in Khomeini’s colourful portrayal.103 The brunt of Iran’s fury was reserved for the US. ‘America is the enemy of God, the enemy of Islam, and the enemy of mankind’, Khomeini proclaimed, and for Iranians ‘the source of all our problems’.104 Even after the hostage conflict was resolved in 1981, Rafsanjani was adamant that ‘America continues to remain our enemy and, accordingly, we are America’s enemy. … This will continue for a long time.’105 Several factors explain the intense animosity towards the US: the close ties between America and the Shah; US involvement in the toppling of the Mussadeq government in 1953; America’s cliency relationship with Israel (dubbed the ‘unlawful son’ of ‘US imperialism’), and, of course, the US’s alleged hostility to Islam.106 Feelings on both sides of the divide hardened when the US got drawn into the Iran–Iraq war in 1987–88 over the former’s naval actions in the Persian Gulf. Iranian attacks on USflagged Kuwaiti tankers and on US naval vessels led to American retaliation. In the wake of the Gulf War, the US’s perceived interference in the region helped to sustain Iran’s hostility to America. 107 A further cause of Iran’s antipathy towards the West generally, was the latter’s alleged ‘cultural aggression’ against the Islamic Republic. Western nations were accused of trying to subvert the independence and legitimacy of Iran by attacking its cultural foundations through the media and exposure to decadent Western lifestyles. (A campaign to counter this perceived Western onslaught was launched by conservatives in 1992 after their victory in the Majlis, supported by the Supreme Leader.108) In 1997 Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s religious leader, was still railing against ‘Western materialistic civilization [that] is directing everyone towards materialism while money, gluttony and carnal desires are made the greatest aspirations’.109 Khomeini believed that Iran’s Islamic revolution could succeed only if the Americans were kept out of the country. Likewise, Muslims could only liberate Jerusalem and achieve true independence themselves if the Islamic world freed itself of all US influence. As the vanguard of the Islamic revolution, Khomeini’s Iran embarked on a crusade to drive the US out of the region. In the early 1980s, encouraged by its initial successes in the war against Iraq, Iran launched an ‘aggressive and sustained’ policy of challenging America’s presence in the Middle East and exporting its own Islamic revolution. Lebanon was the focal point of these actions and terrorism the


favoured means.110 The US in turn portrayed Iran as the principal threat to its regional interests. Khatami’s assumption of the presidency in 1997 offered the first serious opportunity for a rapprochement between Tehran and Washington since the Islamic revolution. In January 1998 Khatami said he wanted to crack the ‘wall of mistrust’ between Iran and the US, and proposed a ‘dialogue’ through cultural exchanges among scholars, journalists, artists and tourists of the two countries.111 As for the West generally, the new President also sounded a new note. Islamic civil society and its Western counterpart were ‘not necessarily in conflict and contradiction in all their manifestations and consequences’, he declared in December 1997, adding that ‘we should never be oblivious to judicious acquisition of the positive accomplishments of the Western civil society’.112 US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright reciprocated to these apparent overtures in June 1998 by proposing a series of parallel steps by the US and Iran that would form a ‘road map leading to normal relations’.113 Clinton promptly followed suit by expressing his desire for a ‘genuine reconciliation’ with Iran.114 While Albright acknowledged Iran’s critical regional role and praised its war on drugs, she warned that Tehran’s continued support for terrorism and its pursuit of WMD would compel America to retain economic sanctions. In March 2000, however, Albright announced the easing of non-oil sanctions. Not all Iranian leaders welcomed the new initiatives, though. Supreme Leader Khamenei and other hard-line mullahs continued to lambast the US as hostile and anti-Islamic. Their ongoing diatribes against the US were probably designed more for internal consumption – considering that antiAmericanism had long been an article of faith in Islamic Iran – than for an American audience. Conservative factions in Iran may have become captives of their own demonization of the US.115 Iran’s anti-Americanism, most pronounced during Khomeini’s tenure, touched on another offence featured in our inventory of deviant behaviour (Chapter 2), namely international assertiveness and lack of deference to the US. It is worth recording that the US had already become disturbed about Iran’s growing propensity for independent action in the 1970s as its military and economic power increased. Aware of its strategic location and capabilities, Iran played the role of an assertive regional power. While Western critics denounced the Shah’s ‘imperial megalomania’ and charged Iran with expansionism, the Shah ‘increasingly came to see himself as an ally rather than a surrogate and asked to be treated as such’.116 Islamic Iran’s approach to the US was, of course, the very antithesis of an alliance partner, not to mention a surrogate; the two were adversaries, if not enemies. The Islamic rulers moreover had their own regional ambitions based on the country’s relative power and its revolutionary credentials. Hence there could not have been any expectation of Iranian deference to the US after 1979. More generally, Khomeini’s Iran made a virtue of ex-

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ternal defiance in the face of a perceived foreign conspiracy to destroy Iran’s revolution. ‘Today it seems we are left alone as almost all of the West and the East are either directly opposing us or indirectly working against us’, Khomeini warned on occasion. He vowed that Iranians would fight these forces ‘with our bare hands and the weapons of faith’.117 In the mid1990s, as the US further tightened the sanctions screws, a noted American commentator on Iran observed that the new punitive measures ‘have once again provided rallying points around which to mobilize nationalist passions in a fiercely proud and millennia-old society’.118 Another confrontation with the ‘Great Satan’ moreover provided ‘one of the few remaining legitimizing symbols’ for the Islamic Republic.119 The final sin of which Iran was accused, at least by Washington, was involvement in international drug trafficking. Such activities would of course violate a powerful international norm, one to which Iran had moreover formally subscribed: it was a party to the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and also signed and ratified the UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988. In the US State Department’s 1993 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, Iran was described as ‘a major transshipment point’ for large quantities of illegal opiates produced in Pakistan and Afghanistan and destined primarily for Europe but also for the US. In addition, America estimated that some 3,500 hectares of opium poppy were under cultivation in Iran in 1992 – despite Tehran’s claims that poppy farming had ceased following its banning in 1980. Contrary to Iranian statements, the Report furthermore mentioned that morphine base and heroin were processed in Iran. In the 1997 Report, Iran was still cited as ‘the single largest conduit for Southwest Asian opiates en route to the West’. Tehran’s drug interdiction programmes were described as ‘energetic, even if only partially successful at stemming the flow of illicit drugs’. In a positive development, the Report noted that poppy cultivation in Iran had by then been ‘largely stamped out’.120 As we noted above, Albright, in proposing her ‘road map’ for better bilateral relations, commended Iran for its campaign against illicit drugs. Tehran’s successes in this regard were acknowledged in the 2002 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (released in March 2003).121

Foreign demands The identification of the Islamic Republic’s major sins leads us to the principal demands that foreign actors directed at Tehran. Chief among those actors were the UN, EU and, of course, the US. Following the seizure of the UN embassy in Tehran, the UN Security Council repeatedly called on the Iranian government – in remarkably restrained terms – to release the mission’s personnel (for example, a presidential statement of 9 November 1979, and resolutions 457 (4 December


1979) and 461 (31 December 1979)). In early December the General Assembly by consensus approved a similar resolution, while the International Court of Justice on 15 December issued an Order calling on the government of Iran to ensure the immediate release of all the hostages. A later hostage situation again led to foreign demands. In June 1989, shortly after Khomeini’s death, President George Bush made the normalization of bilateral relations conditional upon the new Iranian government’s willingness to ‘facilitate’ the release of American hostages held by Islamic extremists in Lebanon, and to renounce terrorism.122 In the mid-1990s President Clinton declared that the US was ready to engage in ‘dialogue’ with representatives of the Iranian government ‘at any time’, but insisted that a resumption of ties was impossible ‘before Tehran stops its unacceptable activities’. He listed three: direct and indirect support for ‘terrorist organizations’, involvement in ‘propaganda’ against the US, and military threats against neighbouring countries.123 When he expressed hopes of a ‘genuine reconciliation’ with Iran in 1998, Clinton again made it conditional upon Tehran’s compliance with international standards: the Iranians had to abandon their support for terrorism and their quest for WMD.124 Meanwhile, in March 1995, Assistant Secretary of State Robert Pelletreau explained that US policy towards Iran was ‘to pressure Tehran to abandon specific policies we find abhorrent and a threat to vital American interests’. His blacklist was more extensive than Clinton’s but with some overlap: Iran’s pursuit of WMD; its sponsorship of terrorism and violence ‘designed to undermine the Middle East peace process’; attempts to ‘destabilize’ states in the region, and its record of human rights abuses.125 The Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996 (discussed more fully under the means of punishment below) mentioned only two punishable offences committed by Iran: attempts to acquire WMD, and support for international terrorism. Under President Bush the younger the list of demands seemed to have shrunk to one. Shortly after the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, Bush made it known to the Iranian leadership that they could enter a new relationship with Washington if they renounced terrorism.126 Although Iran’s domestic politics was mentioned in only one of the above statements, demands in this domain had long been made by the US. Consider, for instance, the following pronouncement of US Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger in 1987: ‘There must be a totally different kind of government in Iran, because we cannot deal with the irrational, fanatical government of the kind they now have’.127 This view was later echoed by Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who called for the isolation of Iran (and Iraq) ‘until there is a change in their government, a change in their leadership’.128 Such drastic demands were evidently dropped in later years. As US UnderSecretary of State for Political Affairs, Peter Tarnoff, stated in 1995, ‘we are not seeking to overthrow that government, but we are seeking to demonstrate as

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forcefully as possible that several key aspects of Iranian behavior are threats to peace in the region, and hostile to US interests, and we are demanding and mobilizing support for change in the behavior of that government’. In 1998 Madeleine Albright reassured Iranians that the US was not seeking to overthrow their government, but wanted Iran to ‘live up to its commitments to the international community’. Iran was being asked to observe standards that were not merely Western, Albright insisted, but ‘universal’.129 Calls on Iran to respect human rights featured regularly in resolutions adopted by the UN Commission on Human Rights and the General Assembly. In the 1990s, for instance, the two bodies variously urged Tehran to allow the Commission’s Special Representative on Iran (appointed in 1984) to visit the country and to cooperate with him in his investigations into the human rights situation; rectify human rights problems relating to the administration of justice; comply with international instruments on human rights (especially the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran was a party); eliminate religious intolerance and discrimination against minority religious groups; end human rights violations against women; ensure that capital punishment will not be imposed for apostasy or non-violent crimes; end the use of torture and the practices of amputation, stoning and other forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment; and investigate the suspicious deaths and killings of intellectuals and political activists and bring the alleged perpetrators to justice. Among the other requests that the two UN bodies addressed to Tehran in the 1990s were that it refrain from violent activities against members of the Iranian opposition living abroad, and provide assurances that it did not support or incite threats against Salman Rushdie’s life. When the European Council in December 1992 opted for a ‘critical dialogue’ with Iran, it was decided that the exchange should reflect EU concern about Iran’s behaviour. Three specific areas were mentioned: the human rights situation in Iran, the death sentence on author Salman Rushdie, and terrorism.130 These and other issues were indeed raised by EU representatives in subsequent meetings with Iranian officials with the aim of ‘obtaining improvements’.131 In April 1997, in the wake of the Mykonos case (mentioned above), the EU laid down three demands Iran had to meet if the EU were to continue its critical dialogue. The first two were familiar: Iranian authorities had to ‘respect the norms of international law and refrain from acts of terrorism’, also against Iranians living abroad, and should honour its international obligations concerning human rights. Third, Tehran should abide by its commitments under international agreements relating to WMD and ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention.132 As recently as February 2003 the EU’s External Relations Commissioner, Chris Patten, reminded Tehran of the Europeans’ ‘expectation to see early progress’ with regard to Iran’s human rights situation, WMD and the Middle East peace process.133


Iran’s involvement in terrorism was also an issue for the UN SubCommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. In 1993 the Sub-Commission condemned Iran for the assassination of opponents abroad, followed by a demand two years later that the Iranian government ‘cease forthwith any involvement in or toleration of murder and state-sponsored terrorism against Iranians living abroad and the nationals of other states’.134 Even though the US had blacklisted Iran over its involvement in the international narcotics business, an end to this manifestation of deviant conduct seldom featured in Washington’s list of demands addressed to Tehran. Perhaps the US treated it as a lesser concern than Iran’s other transgressions. In due course Iran’s decisive action against drug trafficking effectively removed drugs as a divisive issue in bilateral relations. To summarize, major foreign actors at one stage or another demanded changes in Iran’s domestic behaviour (human rights, hostage-taking) and political structure (government), as well as in its external conduct (terrorism, Rushdie, anti-Americanism, relations with neighbouring states, Middle East peace, WMD). Between the US and the EU four of these demands have remained in force: renouncement of WMD, an end to state terrorism abroad, improvements in the human rights situation, and cooperating with US peace efforts in the Middle East.

External responses to Iran’s deviant conduct Islamic Iran’s domestic actions have from early on invited diplomatic censure. The country first landed in the dock of world opinion over the seizure of US diplomats in Tehran in 1979. This was virtually universally regarded as an unacceptable act of deviance. The UN Security Council, for instance, in December 1979 deplored the continued detention of the hostages notwithstanding the Council’s earlier calls for their immediate release (resolution 461). In contrast to the Security Council’s isolated involvement, the General Assembly regularly expressed itself on the Islamic Republic’s domestic affairs. Assembly resolution 51/107 of December 1996 is typical of the issues that gave the world body cause for concern or led it to denounce Iran: ‘continuing violations of human rights’ (notably the large number of executions in the absence of international safeguards; torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; the failure to meet international standards in the administration of justice; the absence of due process of law; violations of the right to peaceful assembly; and restrictions on freedom of expression, opinion, thought and the press; ‘grave breaches’ of the human rights of religious minorities; widespread discrimination against women; continuing threats to Rushdie’s life; and ‘politically motivated continuing violence’ against Iranians living abroad. Following President Khatami’s election in 1997, the Assembly welcomed

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moves towards political liberalization, but still found it necessary to condemn Tehran in subsequent years. In December 2000 (resolution 55/114), for instance, the General Assembly recorded its concern at the ‘deterioration of the situation with regard to freedom of opinion and expression’, especially restrictions on press freedom, and about ‘continuing violations’ of many of the human rights mentioned in the December 1996 resolution. The UN Commission on Human Rights dealt more extensively with Iran’s human rights record. We have noted that a Special Representative was appointed to undetake investigations in this field. Although he was mostly denied access to the country, the Commission still produced regular reports on the ‘situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran’.135 These reports usually formed the basis for resolutions adopted by the Commission and the latter in turn informed Assembly resolutions on Iran’s human rights record. In resolution 1995/68 of March 1995, for example, the Commission variously expressed its ‘deep’ and ‘grave’ concern at the ongoing abuse of a wide range of human rights in violation of Iran’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and other international instruments on human rights. In 1997, a critical year for political reform in Iran, the Human Rights Commission still condemned Iran’s abuse of human rights but (like the General Assembly) commended Khatami for improvements in the human rights situation.136 (In 2002, it will be recalled, the Commission lifted its annual censure of Iran indefinitely.) Another UN body that kept a close watch on Iran’s domestic politics was the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. In 1993, for instance, it issued a strong condemnation of ‘the continuing flagrant human rights violations of the Islamic Republic of Iran, including … the continuing execution of political prisoners and the assassination of opponents abroad’.137 The Arab League, at its summit in November 1987, declared the Arab world’s solidarity with Iraq in its war against Iran, and blamed Iranian pilgrims for the ‘bloody criminal acts’ during the haj in Mecca three months earlier. (Political demonstrations staged by Iranians got out of hand, and in the ensuing fighting between demonstrators and Saudi security forces about 300 Iranians and a number of pilgrims from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere were killed.)138 These statements by the Arab League were a reflection of Iran’s deviant image in the region. Isolating Iran through a variety of sanctions was one of the most publicized and contentious foreign responses to its deviant conduct. The Americans took the lead in turning the screws, believing that ‘Iran will not be convinced to change its [offensive] behavior until the world community exacts a sufficiently high economic and political price’.139 The US’s Western allies were notably less enthusiastic about punishing Iran, leaving the sanctions campaign with a largely unilateral character.


Washington’s first sanctions measure against the Islamic Republic was imposed on 8 November 1979 – four days after the start of the hostage crisis – when the shipment of all military spare parts was halted.140 Following the American State Department’s designation of Iran as a terrorist state in 1984, the US imposed controls on the export to Iran of a wide range of items, including all goods and technical data with military applications.141 Over the next few years the US expanded its weapons-related sanctions against Iran by proscribing the sale of chemicals that could be used to manufacture chemical weapons, trying to stem the supply of foreign weapons to Iran, and broadening the range of dual-use export items being embargoed.142 This process continued throughout the 1990s and beyond and included the 1992 Iran–Iraq Non-Proliferation Act that outlawed the transfer of goods and technologies that could help Iran and Iraq acquire advanced conventional weapons. The Act obligated the US government to urgently seek the agreement of other states – under pain of sanctions – to deny Iran goods or technology that could contribute to the latter’s acquisition of unconventional weapons or ‘destabilizing numbers and types of advanced conventional weapons’. This provision gave the measure an extra-territorial dimension. In a further tightening of the nuclear ban, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March 1993 added Iran, Iraq and Libya to the list of countries embargoed from nuclear material and equipment. The National Defense Authorization Act of February 1996 amended the 1992 Iran-Iraq Non-Proliferation Act by expanding its application to chemical, nuclear and biological weapons.143 In forcing others to comply with its dictates, Washington in 2002 imposed sanctions against a dozen foreign firms and individuals for transferring items to Iran that could be used for WMD. Under the measures neither US government agencies nor corporations may do business with those blacklisted.144 In 2003 Iran’s continued status as a state-sponsor of international terrorism still left it subjected to US statutory bans on importing arms and dual-use items from America and on various financial dealings. Meanwhile the EU, following the Mykonos incident, reaffirmed its long-standing ban on the supply of arms to Iran.145 In the diplomatic sphere the US severed its formal ties with Iran in April 1980 in response to the ongoing detention of US embassy personnel in Tehran. EC member states imposed diplomatic sanctions against Iran by withdrawing ambassadors and cancelling high-level visits following Khomeini’s fatwa on Rushdie. Iran’s relations with the Europeans soon improved thanks to Rafsanjani’s election to the presidency in August, Tehran’s assistance in securing the release of Western hostages held by proIranian Shi’ite militias in Lebanon, and Iran’s declaration of neutrality in the 1990–91 Gulf conflict.146 The European Parliament did not share the conciliatory mood, though. In February 1990 it approved a resolution calling for Iran’s immediate expulsion from the UN over its domestic

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political situation.147 Two years later the European Parliament recommended – again in vain – that EC members suspend all commercial relations with Iran until the country ceased all human rights violations.148 In 1997 the EU did impose a new set of diplomatic measures against Iran in the wake of the Mykonos case. Member states were ‘invited’ to recall their ambassadors from Tehran for ‘coordinated consultation’ on the Union’s future relationship with the Islamic Republic; official bilateral ministerial visits to and from Iran were suspended; visas would not be granted to Iranians with security and intelligence functions, and Iranian intelligence personnel would be excluded from EU member states. It was furthermore decided that, under prevailing circumstances, ‘there is no basis for the continuation of the Critical Dialogue between the European Union and Iran’.149 As before, the diplomatic freeze was of short duration. In June 1998 EU foreign ministers decided they wanted a comprehensive and substantive dialogue with Iran in a spirit of increased international cooperation. A new series of talks started in July, with the focus on matters of economic cooperation rather than divisive political issues; the latter were added only in late 2002.150 The restoration of ties with Europe followed on the heels of a spectacular diplomatic coup for Iran: in December 1997 it hosted the eighth meeting of the Islamic Conference Organization attended by 55 countries (many of them represented by their head of state or government). The event symbolized Iran’s break out of deviant status in for it a vital part of the world.151 The US was also out in front – and mostly out on something of a limb – in restricting economic (non-military) ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The first dose of punishment was administered on 12 November 1979, when Washington halted all oil imports from Iran. Two days later all Iranian assets in the US (worth an estimated $6,000 million) were frozen. The end of that month saw a prohibition on direct US foreign aid to Iran. All US exports to Iran, except medicine, food and clothing, were embargoed in April 1980. A ban on the importation of Iranian goods followed later that month, together with a ban on all US financial transactions with Iran and a prohibition on American citizens travelling to Iran. Several other countries, including Japan, Canada and Australia, also imposed unilateral sanctions.152 The incoming Reagan administration, along with US allies, lifted sanctions against Iran following the release of the embassy hostages in January 1981 (and in line with an accord that Washington had signed with Tehran to secure the captives’ release).153 Renewed American economic measures began in 1992 with a ban on US support for assistance from international financial institutions to Iran. In March 1995 President Clinton decreed that Iran constituted an extraordinary threat to US national security and prohibited US companies and individuals from involvement in the development of Iran’s petroleum resources (including a ban on financing, management and supervision of contracts).


The latter measures were expanded by executive order in May 1995 to prohibit imports, exports and re-exports involving Iran, as well as the bulk of financial transactions. The most contentious measure of all was the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of August 1996, which gave the US extra-territorial jurisdiction in its campaign against the two states. In the case of Iran, the law was designed to deny Tehran the ability to support international terrorism and to fund WMD ‘by limiting the development of Iran’s ability to explore for, extract, refine, or transport by pipeline petroleum resources’ (section 3(a)). The measure obligated the President to impose two out of six sanctions against any company investing over $40 million in any one year in Iran’s petroleum industry. The six sanctions included no US ExportImport Bank assistance; no US export licences; no loans exceeding $10 million from US financial institutions in any one year; no eligibility to bid on US contracts and no permission to export any goods to the US. The President was given the authority to waive sanctions if the home country of the company involved ‘has agreed to undertake substantial measures, including economic sanctions’, to prevent Iran acquiring WMD or supporting terrorism. With this drastic measure the Americans overplayed their hand. The extra-territorial reach of the law drew vociferous opposition from individual West European countries. The EU was fundamentally opposed to what it called ‘an extreme case of extraterritorial legislation’ and the European Council in November 1996 adopted a set of counter-measures (that inter alia blocked the enforceability of judgments or administrative decisions based on the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, and entitled European firms to recover penalties imposed pursuant to the American legislation). In a direct challenge to the US law, the EU in 1997 backed a US$2 billion natural gas deal between Iran and a consortium of French, Russian and Malaysian companies.154 Most of the Gulf Arab states and also Turkey likewise opposed the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. In fact, no other country was willing to follow the US in severing its economic links with Iran.155 In May 1998 the Clinton administration decided to waive sanctions under this controversial measure to avoid a showdown with the Europeans and Russians.156 The growing international move to business as usual with Iran received a further boost when the World Bank in May 2000 approved its first loans to the Islamic Republic since 1993. A month later Iran was admitted to the Group of 15 developing countries.157 All along the US was acutely aware that the lack of international support would blunt the impact of its own sanctions against Iran. For many Western states, the lucrative business opportunities President Rafsanjani promised during Iran’s reconstruction after the war with Iraq ‘outweighed the concerns about Iran’s less savory activities’. Probably judging that mere commercial gain was not a respectable justification for their engagement with an Iran displaying many forms of deviant behaviour, America’s allies

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maintained that economic interaction (rather than the US’s attempts at isolation) would encourage more acceptable conduct from Tehran.158 A less than charitable explanation of this approach was that Western states allowed murderers (acting on behalf of Iranian authorities) to escape for fear of their prosecution and conviction damaging Western commercial interests. Another critical view held that Western states displayed outright cowardice in dealing with Tehran’s deviant behaviour, specifically its involvement in international terrorism. They were paralyzed by a fear of terrorist reprisals, as had occurred in France in 1986.159 More than two decades after imposing its first sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, America had precious little to show for all its efforts at coercion. Well into Bush junior’s presidency Iran continued to top the State Department’s annual list of state sponsors of international terrorism, it was still accused of pursuing WMD, remained opposed to the Middle East peace process, and the country’s human rights record still fell well short of international standards.160 True, Khatami’s election as President in 1997 and his re-election in 2001 signalled Iranians’ desire for political reform, but the US could hardly claim credit for these moves; they had domestic roots in the shape of widespread public dissatisfaction with living standards. Subversion, as a means of effecting political change in Iran, was used primarily if not exclusively by the US. In 1982 American intelligence agencies hired a private Texas firm, Peregrine International, to conduct clandestine activities abroad. Peregrine’s plans included support for a military coup against the Iranian government and the assassination of Ayatollah Khomeini. 161 In the wake of the October 1983 bombing of US peacekeeping forces’ headquarters in Beirut – for which Washington suspected Tehran – the CIA increased its clandestine support to exiled Iranian opposition movements. 162 In 1996 the US Congress provided $20 million for a covert action programme aimed at halting Iran’s ability to support hostile activities abroad and promoting a more ‘democratic’ government in Tehran.163 Containment was another of America’s preferred ways of dealing with the more serious instances of Iran’s deviant behaviour. The Clinton administration in fact pursued a strategy of ‘dual containment’ towards Iran and Iraq. The strategy, as Anthony Lake explained, rested on the premise that ‘both regimes pursue policies hostile to our interests’. Building up one to counter the other was rejected in favour of countering the hostility of both Baghdad and Tehran – hence dual containment. It involved diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions and efforts to prevent Iran (and Iraq) acquiring WMD and missile delivery systems. As Lake admitted, Washington’s efforts to contain Iran were not supported by an international consensus in the UN Security Council, as had been the case with Iraq, thus undermining the effectiveness of the strategy vis-à-vis Tehran.164


The US’s European allies and Japan favoured engagement over containment and isolation. Acknowledging Iran’s importance in its region and viewing Iran’s clerical rulers – especially after Khomeini – in ‘far less stark terms’ than the Americans did, the Europeans and Japanese favoured political dialogue and were willing to seek out Iranian ‘moderates’. Economic engagement in the form of trade and investment would, in their view, have a moderating impact on Tehran’s behaviour both domestically and internationally. Not surprisingly, the most ardent advocates of engagement – France, Germany and Japan – each had a strong economic stake in friendly relations with Iran.165

Iran’s reactions to foreign pressure In reacting to charges about WMD, Iran flatly denied that it sought such weapons. In January 1999 Iran’s Permanent Mission to the UN issued a statement reiterating that the country’s ‘peaceful biological program’ fell within the provisions of the 1972 Convention prohibiting biological weapons.166 As if to reinforce its opposition to WMD, Tehran also called for a nuclear-free Middle East.167 The proposal was designed not merely to reflect favourably on Iran, but also to draw attention to Israel’s alleged nuclear arsenal. Accusations of Iranian involvement in terrorism have met with a variety of responses, leaving considerable ambiguity about Tehran’s position. An outright denial of culpability, coupled with a repudiation of terrorism, featured in a statement issued by Iran’s Permanent Mission to the UN in September 1998 in response to American media allegations that Iran had a ‘working agreement’ with Osama bin Laden to act against the US. Iran emphatically denied ‘any sort of relations, coordination or agreement with Bin Laden or his associates for any purpose’. What is more, ‘Iran categorically rejects terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, irrespective of its motivations’, and did not allow terrorists to use its territory as a base for terrorist activities elsewhere.168 Another response was that Iran, far from aiding and abetting terrorist actions, was itself the victim of internationally supported terrorism perpetrated inside the country by the People’s Mujahidin movement.169 An entirely different reaction has been to assert that Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, with which Tehran had close links, were engaged in popular struggles to attain their followers’ due rights – something fundamentally different from terrorism. On other occasions spokespersons for the Iranian leadership asserted that alleged terrorist attacks against Israel constituted acts of martyrdom and would not be condemned by Tehran. What is more, such attacks were said to be the only language Israelis understood and the only means of attaining Palestinians’ legitimate rights.170 The Iranians maintained that they did not support violence to derail the Middle East peace process, but defended their hostility to Israel and

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opposition to the peace process. Israel, they maintained, was an illegitimate state they refused to recognize. The peace process was rejected because it was seen as prejudicial to the Palestinians171 – a view that provoked counter-charges of the Iranians being more Palestinian than the Palestinians. In dealing with American allegations that it sought to dominate the Persian Gulf region and destabilize its smaller neighbours, Iran insisted that it had to maintain a high level of military preparedness in the Gulf to defend against the threatening US naval presence. The American military role in the region was singularly unwelcome for Iran, which saw itself as the rightful pre-eminent power in the Gulf. President Khatami too shared these sentiments. His main foreign policy goal, he revealed in May 1997, was ‘to see the enemy’s fleet leave the region’.172 A few years earlier President Rafsanjani assured nervous Gulf states that they faced no threat from Iran. At a UN Disarmament Conference in Geneva in 1994, the Iranian Foreign Minister proposed a security arrangement for the Gulf and a ban of WMD in the region.173 Foreign condemnation of its human rights practices prompted Tehran to invoke counter-norms. The country’s Islamic leaders resorted to cultural relativism, arguing that Islam represented an entire system of law and morality (including its own standards of human rights) distinct from secular, Western law and morality; Western societies therefore had no right to impose their alien norms on Iran.174 Censure of Iraq’s human rights record has also produced counter-accusations. Western critics have been denounced for overlooking or condoning human rights violations in their own countries – a patent attempt to deflect international attention from Iran’s own deviant conduct. 175 Tehran was on much firmer ground in using another counter-accusation, namely that its critics – Americans in particular – were using double standards. Iran, so the argument went, was being censured and often punished for (alleged) sins that other countries also committed, but the latter’s misdeeds were conveniently ignored. (Consider these examples: Saudi Arabia had a decidedly poor human rights record and had evidently supported Islamic extremists abroad, yet remained a US ally; Israel was an even closer ally despite its ongoing occupation of Arab territories and its possible development of nuclear weapons; Turkey’s repression of the Kurds and its illegal occupation of northern Cyprus did not seem to concern the US unduly either.) The Islamic Republic of Iran was the original demonizer of the superpowers and other Western states, as the rulers’ peculiar Satanology revealed. Foreign censure of Iranian actions prompted a further round of demonization from Tehran. When the US Senate in May 1979 condemned the spate of executions in Iran, for example, Khomeini responded by calling the US a ‘defeated and wounded snake’. Iran’s relations with the US was that ‘of a


ravaged victim with a plunderer’, Khomeini said, adding that Iranians ‘do not need America; it is they who want us’.176 Divide-and-survive was a further Iranian response to external pressure. Tehran exploited differences between the US and its allies on sanctions against Iran by expanding economic ties with European states and Japan. In the early 1990s, for instance, Iran attracted considerable European cooperation in its massive reconstruction programme. This underlined a new era of ‘complimentarity’ in Iran’s relations with EC states. Not only did Tehran drive the wedge deeper between members of the Western alliance, but also undermined the effects of American sanctions, and made it increasingly difficult for Washington to convince its allies of the merits of its approach to Iran.177 There is not much evidence that Tehran consciously pursued another familiar counter-strategy of deviant states, namely to form or join a coalition of outcast countries. Yet Iran, especially in the Khomeini era, forged close relations with the more radical states in the region and beyond, notably Libya, Syria, South Yemen and Algeria. Among them Iran found support for its antipathy towards Iraq and its rejection of any moves towards peace with Israel.178 Finally, we can recall President Khatami’s major gesture of accommodation towards the US in January 1998, when he declared his wish to break down the ‘wall of mistrust’ between the two countries. What detracted from the conciliatory message, though, was that Supreme Leader Khameini was quick to rule out any official dialogue with the US and once again branded America ‘the enemy of the Iranian nation’ and the ‘Great Satan’.179 Iran officially spoke to the world in more than one voice.

Conclusion For most of its existence the Islamic Republic of Iran has been far from an exemplary international citizen. The theocracy that governed the country from 1979 until at least 1997 blatantly flouted international norms of democracy and human rights. The world community, through the UN, voiced its disapproval of Iran’s deviant behaviour, especially in the 1990s. In its foreign relations the Islamic Republic stood accused of breaching several international rules of state conduct. The clearest transgressions were Tehran’s involvement in international terrorism and its attempts to export Iran’s brand of Islamic revolution. Foreign condemnation of the former, in particular, has been severe and widespread. The facts are less clear with regard to Iran’s alleged pursuit or even acquisition of WMD, actions that would of course have violated major international norms. Accusations of Iran endangering regional peace and security, harbouring aggressive designs in its neighbourhood, engaging in an unwarranted conventional military build-up and participating in the international narcotics industry

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were not made or acted upon at a global level. Iran’s anti-Western orientation and assertive foreign policy (challenging Western interests) were real enough and offended some Western states, but did not break any formal international rules of behaviour. Although the Islamic Republic of Iran faced a lengthy series of indictments, very few of them caused the international community to take a collective stand against Tehran. Its violation of human rights and involvement in international terrorism were, however, serious enough transgressions to warrant Iran’s designation as a deviant state. It in fact displayed features of a first-order deviant, given the involvement of the UN in censuring Iran. Since Khatami took power Iran has managed to shed much of its deviant image. The charge of aiding and abetting international terrorism has in recent years seldom been made by governments other than the American. Foreign criticism of Iran’s human rights record has become remarkably restrained, with mild censure typically accompanied by commendations of reformist moves by Khatami’s government. Presently the most divisive issue between Iran and Western states is that of its nuclear intentions – with the US again far more confrontational than EU member countries. In early 2003 Iran’s international status resembled that of a third-order deviant, finding itself seriously at odds with a single major power.

7 Libya

Libya is a deviant state of unusual vintage. We noted in Chapter 3 that Tripoli was one of the four so-called Barbary states of north Africa from where pirates raided shipping in the Mediterranean from the early 16th century onwards. The Europeans and later also the Americans paid tribute to the rulers of the four states for protection against the pirates. President John Adams, who began the practice on the American side in 1799, gave the pasha of Tripoli, Yusuf Karamanli, $18,000 per year for that purpose. When Karamanli increased the annual tribute to $250,000 President Thomas Jefferson objected and in the early 1800s sent US warships to punish the Barbary pirates and their protectors. Apart from bombarding Tripoli, the Americans also made an abortive plan to topple Karamanli and install his brother Hamad in power. In 1815 the European colonial powers finally brought the Barbary states’ involvement in international piracy to an end.1 More than 150 years later the Americans and Europeans again had to contend with acts of deviance by what was then the independent state of Libya ruled by the flamboyant, enigmatic Muammar Qaddafi.

Libya’s road from obscurity to notoriety The land called Tripoli was part of the Ottoman Empire from the mid-16th century – at times enjoying considerable autonomy – until its annexation by Italy following the Turkish-Italian War of 1911–12. During the Second World War Allied forces expelled the Italians from what the latter had called their colony of Libia. Britain and France thereupon established separate military administrations in the liberated territory. In accordance with decisions of the UN, Libya became an independent state in December 1951. The new federal government assumed the powers Britain had exercised in the regions of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica and France in the Fezzan. These territories became the three provinces of independent Libya. The Emir of Cyrenaica and leader of the Senussi religious community, Mohammed Idris el Mahdi el Senussi, became King Idris I of the United Kingdom of Libya.2 142

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The new state was united in little more than name. Libya was not a coherent political entity with historical roots, but like many other African states an artificial colonial creation, a state without a nation. Fortunately for Libya, its population of under 2 million was largely homogeneous: well over 90 per cent were of Arab–Berber origin and Sunni Muslims.3 The reign of King Idris was far from trouble free. Democracy never took root in the country. The first parliamentary election in 1952 was rigged to ensure the defeat of the opposition party, whose leader was then expelled from Libya. The dissolution of the party spelled the end of organized and publicly accountable political opposition to the government. Subsequent elections were also characterized by official tampering to produce results favourable to the ruling elite. A second major problem was discord between the federal and provincial governments, leading to the abolition of the provinces as distinct constitutional entities and Libya’s remaking in 1963 as a unitary state subdivided into ten governates. Finally, corruption had become synonymous with the monarchy.4 On the foreign policy front the United Kingdom of Libya maintained cordial relations with both the Arab world and the West. 5 It joined the Arab League in 1953, associating with the conservative bloc among the member countries. The same year saw the conclusion of a 20-year treaty of friendship and alliance between Libya and Britain, which gave the British military bases in exchange for financial and military assistance. In 1954 Libya signed an agreement with the US under which the Americans too obtained base rights, notably Wheelus Air Base near Tripoli, in return for economic aid. Anti-Western agitation in Libya in the mid1960s – inspired by Gamal Abdel Nasser’s brand of Arab nationalism – compelled the pro-Western royal government to request Britain and the US to evacuate their military bases before the dates stipulated in the treaties. Most British forces left in 1966, while the Americans completed their withdrawal in early 1970. 6 Meanwhile, the 1967 Arab–Israeli War unleashed a frenzy of Arab nationalism and aroused further anti-Western passions in Libya.7 Although strategically located on the periphery of the Arab, African and Mediterranean worlds, with its extensive Mediterranean coastline facing the ‘soft underbelly’ of Europe, Libya was for most of the Idris era something of an international backwater. On the eve of independence, Libya was classified by the UN as possibly the poorest country in the world, one that would for many years depend on foreign grants-in-aid to survive. The general view at the time was that Libya, with its predominantly agricultural economy, had no commercial quantities of mineral resources and little energy potential due to the lack of coal and hydro-electric power. The ‘desert kingdom’ was an apt epithet for the Libya of the 1950s. This bleak economic outlook changed radically after the first commercial oil strike in June 1959.8


A new era in Libya’s domestic politics and foreign policy began in September 1969, following a bloodless military coup by the Free Officers Movement that deposed King Idris. A 12-member Revolution Command Council (RCC), chaired by 27-year-old Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, replaced the 1951 Constitution with a provisional proclamation of December 1969. The proclamation formalized the RCC as the ‘highest authority’ exercising sovereignty on behalf of the Libyan people. With parliamentary institutions dissolved, the RCC assumed legislative functions. A Council of Ministers was appointed to administer the country and execute the policies of the RCC. The monarchy was abolished and the Libyan Arab Republic proclaimed.9 It soon became clear that the coup involved not merely a change of rulers and a replacement of the monarchy with a republic; it was, as Qaddafi said, the start of a long, broad and deep revolution. Virtually all facets of life in Libya as well as its international relations would be transformed in line with Qaddafi’s slogan of ‘freedom, socialism and unity’. For him freedom meant the natural right of each individual to economic, social and political freedom. His socialism had an Islamic bent, as Qaddafi related collective participation in production and consumption to the country’s Islamic tradition. Finally, Arab unity was something of a sacred duty for Qaddafi, who made it a key component of Libyan foreign policy. He viewed Libya as ‘the heart, the vanguard and the hope of the Arab nation’, according to St John, and hence the custodian of the fiery, uncompromising brand of Arab nationalism associated with Egyptian President Nasser.10 The new rulers’ swift and harsh repression of all possible sources of opposition was an intimation of things to come. Members of the royal family, key officials, senior military and police officers, and politicians were arrested. The deposed King was tried in absentia and sentenced to death. Political parties were outlawed. Existing trade unions and other institutions of civil society were banned or placed under severe legal constraints. The state in due course established a monopoly over the communications media.11 Xenophobia also seemed to guide the actions of the new rulers, as witness the expulsion of a small number of Jews and some 30,000 Italians, many of the latter being small farmers.12 The formal structure of power was overhauled in a bewildering and seemingly endless series of institutional changes. The process formally began in the early 1970s with what Qaddafi styled a ‘cultural’ or ‘popular’ revolution designed to instill revolutionary fervour in the masses and involve them in politics. A vast network of people’s committees, embodying Qaddafi’s notion of ‘direct democracy’, took responsibility for local and regional administration. The centrepiece of the system was the General People’s Congress (GPC), a national representative body that replaced the RCC in the mid-1970s. The Arab Socialist Union (ASU), established in 1971 as Libya’s sole political party, was by definition the only party represented in

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the GPC (together with representatives of sub-national ‘peoples’ organs, trade unions, professional organizations and members of government). Although all legislative and executive authority was vested in the GPC, it delegated most of its authority to its Secretary-General and General Secretariat and to the General People’s Committee. As Secretary-General of the GPC, Qaddafi remained the principal decision maker. The General Secretariat comprised the remaining members of the disbanded RCC, while the General People’s Committee replaced the Council of Ministers. Another key component of Qaddafi’s system of government was a network of revolutionary committees across the country to ‘intensify’ the revolution.13 With the ‘people’s authority’ thus established, the country was renamed the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in 1977. (Jamahiriya can be loosely translated as ‘state of the masses’.)14 The various reorganizations left Qaddafi’s position as the supreme leader and effective dictator of Libya unaffected.15 Even when he resigned as Secretary-General of the GPC’s General Secretariat in 1979 to devote more time to ‘preserving the revolution’,16 Qaddafi assumed the titles of ‘Leader of the Revolution’ or simply ‘The leader’, leaving him firmly at the helm. He moreover remained supreme commander of the armed forces.17 Qaddafi’s much maligned Green Book served as his ideological guide. In the first volume of these ‘adolescent musings’,18 published in 1976, he propounded his concept of direct democracy on which the political system described above was based.19 As with dictatorships elsewhere, Qaddafi’s was not welcomed by all his compatriots. Domestic opposition to his rule found expression in sporadic protests and disturbances (as in 1975, the mid- and late 1980s and in 1995) and, more ominously, in numerous coup attempts. The first plot against the new government was unveiled within its first 100 days in power, and there had by one count been at least 20 abortive coups in Qaddafi’s first 17 years in office. As late as 1998 an assassination attempt on Qaddafi was reported.20 As for opposition groups, Qaddafi was particularly concerned about the challenge posed by Islamic militants and by the National Front for the Salvation of Libya. The Front, the principal opposition movement in exile, was accused by Qaddafi of being sponsored by foreign governments. On the home front armed clashes had reportedly taken place in 1995 between Libyan security forces and the Fighting Islamic Group, which exhorted all Muslims to overthrow Qaddafi.21 Like other dictators, Qaddafi continued to deal severely with opposition to his regime. He repeatedly warned exiled opposition leaders to return home immediately and repent, or face ‘liquidation’. In 1980 he encouraged Libyans to eliminate what he branded as enemies of the revolution. These were no idle threats, as proven by a wave of assassinations of prominent Libyan exiles in the 1980s and 1990s.22 The creation in 1984 of the post of Secretary (the equivalent of minister) for External Security and of an office


within the Secretariat (i.e. department) of Foreign Affairs to ‘combat international terrorism’, was evidently a formalization of attempts to silence opponents of the government at home and abroad. Although most of the incidents on foreign soil occurred in Western Europe, some were closer to home. In 1993, for instance, Libyan agents allegedly abducted and murdered an exiled opposition leader (and former government minister), Mansur al-Kikhia, in Egypt.23 Western countries in particular took a dim view of what they considered acts of state-sanctioned terrorism. Qaddafi’s government also made its presence felt in the economic sphere, expanding its control. This was most pronounced in the critical oil sector, where the government in 1971 nationalized the holdings of British Petroleum and two years later obtained a controlling interest in all other petroleum companies operating in Libya. The state thus acquired control of some 60 per cent of domestic oil production by early 1974, a figure that later increased to around 70 per cent.24 In line with the dictates of the Green Book, volume II, nationalization in due course encompassed virtually all Libyan industry and commerce, including most retail business. Property was redistributed on a vast scale. In 1980, in an especially drastic socialist measure, the national currency was demonetized. Done without compensation, the demonetization placed personal wealth under government control.25 To be fair, Qaddafi’s revolution brought material improvements in the quality of life of the Libyan people, including advances in education, health, housing, employment, income and infrastructure.26 Qaddafi on occasion acted the part of liberal reformer. In a move to allay rising domestic discontent and placate foreign critics (as well as accommodate the changing climate of world opinion), the Libyan leader in the late 1980s introduced a series of political and economic reforms. Among other liberalizing measures were an amnesty for prisoners, contacts with Libyan opposition figures in exile, guaranteed freedom to travel abroad, adoption of the so-called Great Green Charter of Human Rights, curtailment of the power of revolutionary committees (which had assumed police and judicial functions), and the reopening of private businesses. Qaddafi’s political initiatives soon ground to a halt as repression took precedence over reform. Economic liberalization proved more enduring.27 The outside world was left in no doubt that Libya was under new management after 1969. Its foreign policy was marked by a drastic departure from the monarchy’s moderate, pro-Western orientation as Libya shifted abruptly from the ranks of conservative Arab countries to that of the radical nationalists.28 A critical area in which Libya’s revolutionary militancy soon became evident, was oil production. Apart from nationalizing the industry, Qaddafi’s government championed the use of oil as a political lever against Israel and its Western backers. Tripoli vigorously supported the formation of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1973 and it was instrumental in OPEC moves to increase oil

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prices and enforce embargoes.29 Libya’s oil wealth had profound implications both at home and abroad. It enabled the country to finance vast economic and social reconstruction, purchase massive quantities of modern armaments, and fund revolutionary groups and terrorists across the world.30

On deviants and dogs The errant behaviour of Qaddafi’s Libya was as longstanding as his rule itself. In the 1980s Libya was portrayed as a ‘pariah state’31 and more recently as a ‘maverick state’,32 ‘backlash state’,33 and of course a ‘rogue state’. Given Qaddafi’s towering national presence and his highly personalized style of government, it follows that foreign critics would identify him as the chief villain of the piece in matters Libyan. In short, Libya’s deviant conduct, whether at home or abroad, has commonly been attributed to the supreme leader. There has been no shortage of uncomplimentary characterizations of Qaddafi, including a ‘free-lance outlaw’, ‘a Barbary pirate’34 and ‘the clown prince of the Middle East’.35 The Economist’s characterization was more expansive: ‘His erratic tactics, his conceit, his readiness to use every sort of violence to fulfill his dreams’, the magazine wrote in 1986, ‘are the stuff of madness’.36 It was speculated in the West that Qaddafi suffered from manic depression and schizophrenia and had since 1982 been visiting a clinic specializing in these illnesses.37 Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat thought the Libyan leader was ‘unbalanced and immature’, a ‘vicious criminal, 100 per cent sick and possessed of the demon’.38 President Gaafar Nimeiry of Sudan offered a comparable diagnosis: Qaddafi suffered from ‘a split personality – both evil’.39 Even the grandfather of contemporary revolutions, Fidel Castro, dismissed Qaddafi as a ‘reckless adventurer’.40 Chad’s President Hissène Habré, who had good reason to loath his meddlesome neighbour, referred to ‘[t]hat disease called Gaddafi’.41 Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, never fond of the Libyan strongman either, was somewhat less uncharitable than Sadat et al., merely dubbing Qaddafi the ‘knight of revolutionary phrases’.42 In the US the demonization of Qaddafi reached its apex during the Reagan era. Reagan’s most celebrated contribution was his portrayal of Qaddafi as ‘the mad dog of the Middle East’;43 Vice-President George Bush referred to the Libyan leader as ‘the world’s principal terrorist and trainer of terrorists’;44 Secretary of State Alexander Haig saw Qaddafi as ‘a cancer that has to be removed’;45 and Henry Kissinger simply branded Qaddafi a ‘rogue criminal’.46 For decades Qaddafi was considered not a mere irritant or nuisance, but a dangerous enemy of the US and hence a hate figure.47 The thaw in US relations with Libya over the last few years has caused American officials to temper their ad hominem attacks on Qaddafi.


Libya’s transgressions For many years Libya’s principal sin was its involvement in international terrorism. This transgression had several distinct elements, namely hit squad operations against dissident Libyans in exile; attacks on non-Libyan targets abroad; providing money, matériel and training to terrorist groups in scores of countries, and offering sanctuary to known terrorists.48 The first type of action was explicitly ordered by Qaddafi. On occasion he declared that ‘the Revolution has destroyed those who oppose it inside the country and now it must pursue the rest abroad’.49 In dealing with exiled members of opposition factions – whom he derided as ‘stray dogs’ – Qaddafi openly advocated ‘revolutionary violence’, as opposed to terrorism which he claimed to reject. By this logic Libya had the right, as he told the GPC in 1985, to liquidate opponents of the Revolution both inside and outside Libya in broad daylight.50 That indeed happened, as with the murder of 11 anti-Qaddafi exiles in 1980-1 and several more in subsequent years.51 Although not strictly a terrorist incident, the killing of a British policewoman outside the Libyan People’s Bureau (embassy) in London in 1984 was an indication of the lengths to which Tripoli would go in dealing with disaffected Libyans abroad. The policewoman died from shots fired from within the Libyan mission during a protest outside staged by Libyan students in Britain. It was only in 1999 that Qaddafi accepted ‘general responsibility’ on behalf of Libya for the officer’s death and agreed to cooperate with the British investigation into the killing. Towards the end of the year Libya paid compensation to the victim’s family.52 Libyan-sponsored terrorists struck at several Western targets. Following bomb explosions in London and Manchester in March 1984, British police arrested four Libyan suspects.53 Twenty civilians, among them five Americans, were killed in terrorist attacks on Rome and Vienna airports in December 1985. Local investigators found that the perpetrators were members of the Abu Nidal group, Palestinian extremists backed by Libya.54 The following year a bomb devastated a discotheque in West Berlin frequented by American military personnel. Two American soldiers and a civilian were killed and 200 people injured, including more than 60 US soldiers. American charges of Libyan involvement were finally confirmed in November 2001 when a Berlin court convicted four people and found that Libyan secret agents and embassy staff had planned the attack.55 When an explosion destroyed an American civilian airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988, the US and also Britain immediately accused Libya of involvement. The following September a UTA French passenger aircraft met the same fate over Niger, and again accusing Western fingers were pointed at Libya.56 The UN Security Council took a particularly serious view of Libya’s response to the two incidents. Tripoli’s failure to demonstrate

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concretely its renunciation of terrorism and its failure to cooperate fully with other countries in establishing responsibility for these terrorist acts, the Council decided in 1992 (resolution 748), ‘constitute a threat to international peace and security’. This formulation, couched in the language of Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, of course paved the way for mandatory sanctions against Libya. Tripoli’s role in the two aircraft bombings was confirmed in subsequent court cases. In March 1999 a French court sentenced six Libyan suspects – including Qaddafi’s brother-in-law – in absentia to life imprisonment for the terrorist attack on the UTA airliner. A few months later Libya started paying over US$30 million in compensation to the families of the 171 people killed, a move Paris took as acknowledgement of Tripoli’s complicity.57 Libya, in turn, evidently saw the move as a symbolic renunciation of terrorism and an expression of its adherence to standards of respectable international conduct. Also in 1999 Tripoli handed two Libyan suspects over for trial in The Hague on charges relating to the Lockerbie bombing. The proceedings, beginning in May 2000, took place under Scottish jurisdiction. In January 2001 one of the suspects was found guilty of killing 270 people in the terrorist attack; the other was acquitted. The convicted terrorist’s appeal against the verdict was rejected by a Scottish appellate court in March 2002.58 The following year Tripoli eventually acknowledged formal responsibility for the Lockerbie incident.59 Moderate Arab leaders were not spared Qaddafi’s ire. Evidence indicated that Libyan agents had targeted Presidents Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Gaafar Nimeiry of Sudan, Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia, King Hussein of Jordan and King Hassan II of Morocco.60 In 1981 President Ronald Reagan claimed that a Libyan hit-squad had been sent to assassinate him too.61 Another element of Libya’s involvement in international terrorism was its support for the more radical factions of the PLO, such as the Abu Nidal Organization and Black September. These links were motivated by Qaddafi’s aims of destroying Israel and punishing Arab groups willing to compromise the struggle against the Jewish state for the sake of regional peace.62 Tripoli also funded an array of terrorist groups in Europe, including the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Armenian Secret Army, Basque separatist movement ETA, Action Directe in France, SIM group in Sardinia, BaaderMeinhof gang in West Germany, Italian Red Brigades, and the Popular Forces of April 25 in Portugal. Elsewhere the Japanese Red Army was a beneficiary of Tripoli’s investment in terrorism abroad.63 By far the most audacious and potentially devastating of Libya’s terrorist plots was one that never materialized. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat revealed that in 1973 he countermanded an order Qaddafi had given an Egyptian submarine based in Tripoli to attack the British liner Queen Elizabeth II as it sailed across the Mediterranean en route to Israel with American Jews aboard.64


By the early 1990s Qaddafi had repeatedly claimed that he had renounced international terrorism. US sources confirmed that Tripoli’s sponsorship of terrorism had indeed declined in the course of the 1990s, and pointed out that Libya had not supported any terrorist actions against America in the 1990s and beyond.65 Qaddafi in December 1999 issued a joint statement with visiting Italian Premier Massimo D’Alema that ‘underlined the necessity of denying protection to those responsible for terrorist attacks’.66 More tangibly, Qaddafi expelled a number of terrorist chieftains from Libya, including the notorious Abu Nidal. These moves led a senior US official to proclaim in early 2000 that Qaddafi was ‘out of the terrorism business’.67 As if to reaffirm his bona fides, Qaddafi in October 2001 publicly condemned the previous month’s terrorist attacks on the US as ‘horrifying and destructive’ and acknowledged that America ‘has the right to retaliate with direct military action’.68 The American CIA is said to have responded by engaging in high-level contact with Tripoli to seek the Libyans’ cooperation in the US war on terrorism.69 The British assessment was that Libya had completely abandoned international terrorism and was ‘definitely on the right side in the war against terror’.70 A further indication that Libya had turned a new page on terrorism was its acceptance in April 2003 of civil liability for the Lockerbie airliner bombing, following an agreement reached between British, American and Libyan officials the previous month on Tripoli’s payment of US$2.7 billion in compensation.71 Given these positive developments, it seems rather incongruous that the State Department’s Patterns of Global Terrorism for both 2001 and 2002 still designated Libya as one of seven state sponsors of terrorism.72 The second offence of which Libya stood widely accused, was regional aggression and threats to regional peace. The outstanding example was Libya’s occupation of the Aozou Strip in Chad in 1973. Tripoli claimed this barren area of 114,000 sq km in northern Chad under an unratified border treaty of 1935 between France and Italy. The real motivation may well have been the uranium deposits that this stretch of land was thought to contain (an interest that could in turn have been related to Libya’s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons). In 1984 a Libyan plot against Chadian President Hissène Habré was reportedly uncovered. (It was only in 1994, after the International Court of Justice rejected Libya’s territorial claims in Chad, that all Libyan troops withdrew and the two neighbouring states concluded a treaty of friendship and cooperation.) Meanwhile in neighbouring Niger Libya had annexed a slice of territory on that country’s northern border and backed a coup attempt against Niger’s president in 1976. Tripoli was also accused of plotting the overthrow of President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire in the mid-1980s.73 In the 1970s and 1980s rebel movements and dissidents were supported against incumbent governments in Sudan, Somalia, Algeria, Mauritania, Mali, Senegal and Tunisia, among other

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African countries. An inventory of ‘Libyan-sponsored attempts at destabilization’ in Africa between 1976 and 1986 revealed that 12 countries were targeted.74 Tripoli’s threat to peace was associated primarily with its implacable opposition to Western-backed peace initiatives in the Middle East. Qaddafi’s view was straightforward: the very existence of the Arab nation was incompatible with a Zionist state in its midst; only one of the two could survive. He was therefore dedicated to the complete liberation of Palestine and the expulsion of all Jews who had settled there after 1948 (when Israel was proclaimed). Qaddafi presented Libya as a base for Palestine’s liberation and propagated jihad or holy war as the preferred means to this end. Following the historic peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in 1977, the furious Libyan leader co-founded the Steadfastness and Confrontation Front along with Syria, Algeria, South Yemen and the PLO, among others. The main purpose of the Front was to coordinate Arab opposition to the Egyptian peace initiative.75 Qaddafi accused both Sadat and his successor Hosni Mubarak of ‘high treason against the Arab nation’ for making peace.76 Even after other Arab countries and the PLO opted for peace with Israel, Qaddafi remained a staunch rejectionist committed to the use of violence to resolve the Palestinian issue. To the brokers and supporters of peace between the Arabs and Israelis, Qaddafi was a spoiler who did not want a negotiated settlement in the region and tried his best to obstruct its realization through word and (often dastardly) deed. It was only over the last two or three years that Libya finally ended its political and material support for militant Palestinian groups opposed to Middle East peace initiatives and accepted the Palestinian Authority as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.77 Libya’s regional adventurism stemmed in large measure from two further, related transgressions: the export of its revolution and a highly ambitious foreign policy. Taking the first of these as Libya’s third offence, Qaddafi from the 1970s boldly proclaimed that Libya had a ‘sacred duty towards all revolutions’, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America.78 In 1989, celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Libyan revolution, Qaddafi still called for its worldwide extension.79 One of the fruits of Libya’s ‘everlasting’ revolution was its supposedly unique system of ‘people’s democracy’, which Qaddafi offered as ‘a universal model for all the Arab peoples’.80 And then there was the Libyan leader’s so-called Third Universal Theory contained in the first part of the Green Book. It encapsulated the revolutionary ideology he had developed under the umbrella of Arab nationalism. His (unoriginal) premise was that capitalism and communism were unsuited to local conditions and that an alternative path – or third road – had to be found between the two rival ideologies. Qaddafi presented his Third Universal Theory as the foundation for a new world order centred on the Arab nation, which in turn had a right and duty to carry this superior alternative to the world at large.81


In giving effect to his commitment to export Libya’s revolutionary ideology, Qaddafi established revolutionary committees (consisting of nonLibyans) in a number of foreign states. Moral and material support was also given to self-styled liberation movements in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, the South Pacific and Latin America. Qaddafi mistakenly believed that these groups’ acceptance of Libyan backing could be tied to their adoption of his Third Universal Theory and the remaking of their societies in the image of Libya. It was only in northern Chad, during its occupation by Libyan forces for several years, that Qaddafi’s supposedly unique political system was applied to any significant extent (except, of course, in Libya itself).82 We should therefore not exaggerate the seriousness of this typical revolutionary action; it was a secondary contravention on the international charge sheet against Tripoli. Tripoli’s extraordinarily ambitious and activist foreign policy was a more substantive fourth sin, for it brought Libya into conflict with other countries in Africa, around the Mediterranean basin and also farther afield. A developing country of around four million people (in the 1980s), Libya was like Cuba a small state with a big state foreign policy. Qaddafi wanted Libya to be a regional power and he entertained personal aspirations for global recognition.83 Based on the belief that he was Nasser’s heir and claiming that the former Egyptian President had designated him the trustee of Arab nationalism,84 Qaddafi ardently promoted Arab unity. He was the architect of several schemes for formal regional integration, but the achievements were far below Qaddafi’s aspirations. The first, in 1972, produced the Federation of Arab Republics comprising Libya, Egypt and Syria. The same year Libya also signed an agreement with Egypt for a merger of the two states in 1973. Neither union survived for long. Qaddafi’s subsequent proposals for union with Tunisia (1974), Syria (1980), Chad (1981), Morocco (1984), Algeria (1987) and Sudan (1990) also came to naught. Libya was involved in the establishment of two other regional organizations, but neither made much tangible progress. The Union of the Arab Maghreb, comprising Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya, was formed in 1989 and the Community of the Sahel-Saharan States, composed of Sudan, Chad, Mali, Niger, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Tunisia and Libya, followed in 1997.85 A more ambitious and frequently stated goal of Qaddafi’s was the creation of a Saharan Islamic state that would encompass about 100 million Muslims in the region south of the Sahara. Such a unified state would, Qaddafi clealy intended, fall under Libyan hegemony. Tripoli’s pursuit of this grand design helps to explain its subversive actions in especially Chad and Sudan in the 1970s and 1980s.86 In actions probably not unrelated to the same goal, Libya in the early 1980s supported military coups in Ghana, Gambia and Upper Volta.87

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Qaddafi’s dreams of Arab unity extended beyond Africa. Describing unity as ‘the most cherished goal of the present Arab generation’ – and reserving a leading role for himself in reconstituting the mythical ‘Arab nation’ – Qaddafi called for a union stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean. His envisaged mergers with neighbouring countries were for Qaddafi a logical step towards greater Arab unity. Such unity was pursued not merely for ideological reasons but for strategic purposes too. Members of an Arab union, Qaddafi believed, would possess complementary resources such as oil and other minerals, manpower and space for population expansion. They would moreover have the military strength to defeat Israel.88 At first Qaddafi adopted a gradualist approach to unity, relying strongly on economic integration. Realizing that the results were unimpressive, he in the mid-1980s switched to the advocacy of Arab unity by revolution, i.e. force. This required a revolutionary movement within the Arab world to break down alien and corrupt national structures obstructing the achievement of Arab unity.89 By then Qaddafi had already resorted to subversion against fellow Arab states hostile to his aspirations; he wanted to force them to change their ways if not their governments. In the 1970s and 1980s, for instance, Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia were among the many Arab countries that claimed to have experienced Libya’s unwelcome attentions.90 In 1985 Qaddafi brazenly promised to ‘go after and destroy’ Arab leaders who remained subservient to the US.91 The Libyan leader’s international ambitions were not confined to his Afro-Arab neighbourhood. In the 1980s he extended his attention – and mischief-making – as far afield as Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia. Libya reportedly supported anti-government factions or insurgents with military training, arms and money in, among other places, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Colombia, Guadeloupe, Martinique, New Caledonia, Dominica and St Lucia. In Asia Tripoli backed anti-government factions in Pakistan and Bangladesh and gave support to Muslim minorities in the Philippines.92 ‘It is conceivable’, Mazrui wrote in 1981, ‘that Libya is second only to the two superpowers in its record of intervention and interference in other societies’.93 The Americans were none too pleased with such assertiveness. ‘Under Colonel Qaddafi, Libya has adopted a diplomacy of subversion in Africa and in the Arab world’, Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker said in 1981. ‘It is a diplomacy of unprecedented obstruction to our own interests and objectives’.94 American reaction to Qaddafi’s Libya was a compound of great power anger at being defied, ‘irritation at his pinpricks’ and ‘a sort of impotent rage’ at the oil wealth that enabled Qaddafi to act as if he were the leader of a big power.95 Instead of securing a greater role for Libya in regional and global affairs, Tripoli’s foreign ventures alienated the country from scores of others. And the Third Universal Theory, far from being embraced by thankful imitators,


was widely dismissed throughout the Third World as ‘simplistic, idiosyncratic and irrelevant’.96 After an apparent respite, Qaddafi returned to his grand integration designs in 1999 on the occasion of his 30th anniversary in power. The Libyan leader hosted an extraordinary summit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Sirte, where he presented his vision of a borderless United States of Africa – a single continental state ruled by a single government. The Sirte Declaration, adopted by 43 member states, laid the groundwork for the new African Union to replace the moribund OAU, but one falling far short of the Libyan leader’s pretentions. Nonetheless, Qaddafi’s proposal represented a deliberate switch to an alliance with black African states rather than with fellow Arab countries, a measure of his disillusionment with the latter.97 Qaddafi’s Third Universal Theory, reinforced by his personal ambitions to being a reckoned player on the global stage, led Libya to commit a fifth familiar transgression: a revisionist approach to a world order it considered iniquitous. Qaddafi’s theory provided the principles of a new world order, one in which the Middle East in general and Libya in particular would play a central role and where there would be no place for ‘imperialism’. He defined the scourge of imperialism in terms of Western colonialism and political intervention. A key ingredient of this rejection of imperialism was the denial of Israel’s right of existence since the Zionist invader state had been created and nurtured by the colonial powers of Western Europe and the US. Through its ongoing intervention in the Middle East, the US secured Israel’s very survival. A holy war against Israel was therefore an integral part of the Libyan leader’s quest for a new international system.98 Qaddafi was, as Harris aptly put it, acting the part of ‘a rebel on a global scale’.99 Since the US was the leading imperialist power and Israel’s patron state, Qaddafi’s revisionism was directed primarily against America’s global role. As our other case studies reveal, it is not the kind of challenge that the US took lying down. The repeated armed clashes between the two countries in the 1980s could be interpreted as a confrontation between a status quo power and a revisionist contender. America’s Western allies were likewise opposed to Qaddafi’s attempts to reshape the global order and even the Soviet Union had its doubts about the Libyan leader’s grand designs.100 But Qaddafi was not easily swayed from his chosen course. As Libya’s conflict with the US intensified, his visions for Libya seemed to become even more grandiose. On occasion he claimed that ‘a new internationalism at world level had been established; its centre is in Libya, its headquarters in Libya, its leadership in Libya’, all for the purpose of struggling with the gallant people of Libya for the Gulf of Sirte, for Palestine ‘and against the United States and Zionism’.101 In more recent years Qaddafi has evidently mellowed in his revisionist sentiments, instead focusing his international aspirations on promoting African unity.

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Western sources repeatedly accused Tripoli of a sixth potentially grievous contravention, namely the acquisition of WMD. Soon after the 1969 military take-over the Western press began carrying unconfirmed reports that Libya wanted to buy a nuclear weapon or the necessary components or at least obtain nuclear technical know-how. Beijing was said to have been the first port of call for Libya’s weapon hunters, but the Chinese sent them away empty-handed. Several Western states did likewise. Libya’s keenness to secure nuclear research facilities and power plants through bilateral negotiations, as well as its dispatch of students to the US to study in nuclear energy fields, have been related to the quest for a nuclear arsenal. Qaddafi’s own utterances were decidedly (and perhaps deliberately) confusing. On the one hand he repeatedly proclaimed Libya’s determination to obtain nuclear weapons mainly because he believed Israel – his archenemy – had acquired such a capability. On the other hand Qaddafi on several occasions dismissed the idea of an ‘Islamic bomb’. Tripoli moreover ratified the NPT in 1975 (the monarchy having signed the treaty in 1969).102 In 1992 Qaddafi declared his willingness to consider international inspections of Libya’s alleged nuclear and chemical weapons sites. IAEA Director Hans Blix subsequently visited the Tajura research reactor outside Tripoli, the only site previously declared under Libya’s safeguards agreement with the Agency. He found the reactor lying idle, having been shut down the year before.103 The Reagan administration in 1988 claimed that Libya was preparing to manufacture chemical weapons at a factory at Rabta, outside Tripoli (using West German assistance). For good measure Reagan warned that the US was considering a military strike against the suspected WMD facility.104 Production at Rabta had allegedly reached an estimated 100 tons of lethal chemical warfare agents by 1992, before being stopped. In 1993 the American media reported that Libya was building an underground factory at Tarhunah, south-east of Tripoli, to make chemical weapons. Three years later the CIA repeated these claims, followed by another warning from Washington that force could be used to shut down the plant. As late as 2003 both the CIA and the Pentagon reported that Tripoli was trying to acquire WMD – including nuclear arms – by seeking materials and technical information from foreign sources. As before, Libya denied any such intentions.105 Libya has since at least the 1980s possessed the capability of delivering nuclear weapons by means of missiles, mostly of Soviet origin.106 Also in 1981 it was reported that the Soviet Union had deployed a dozen SS-12 Scaleboard missiles in Libya, ostensibly to deter US attacks on Libya. In the early 1990s, according to US sources, Libya had a supply of Scud-B missiles and was cooperating with Syria and North Korea in developing more advanced Scud variants.107 Western concerns about Libyan intentions were rekindled in 1999 when British customs officials impounded a consignment


of Scud missile parts destined for Libya. The cargo, sent from Taiwan, arrived in Britain en route to Libya via Malta.108 Libya was in the seventh place suspected of another weapons-related transgression. The country undertook a huge conventional military expansion drive in the late-1970s and 1980s, with military expenditure among the highest in Africa and the ratio of expenditure to population (US$1,000 per capita annually) without parallel on the continent. The number of soldiers increased from 22,000 in 1975 to 85,000 in 1983.109 The mass of weapons acquired far exceeded the needs of Libya’s modest military forces, leading to speculation that Qaddafi was pursuing purposes other than national defence. One explanation had Libya serving as ‘an entrepôt for weapons destined for other points in Africa in which the Soviet Union was involved’.110 Another was that Libya wanted to provide an arsenal for an eventual pan-Arab attack on Israel.111 These charges were not common and evidently failed to generate widespread concern in the non-communist world. Although overshadowed by its other acts of deviance, Libya’s violation of human rights can be listed as an eighth contravention. This form of deviance of course dates back to the era of the monarchy, but matters became much worse under Qaddafi’s tight dictatorial control. His political reforms in the late 1980s, we noted, left the structures and practices of repression intact. In fact, Amnesty International in June 1991 reported a recent deterioration in Libya’s human rights situation with hundreds of political prisoners jailed in the preceding two years, while the whereabouts of several hundred other political detainees were not known to their relatives.112 Matters had not improved by 1995, when Amnesty recorded that at least 600 political prisoners arrested in previous years continued to be held without charge or trial.113 In August 2002 the Libyan government announced the release of over 60 prisoners, including prisoners of conscience. While Amnesty International welcomed the move, it expressed concern about scores of long-term prisoners still suffering in Libyan prisons, some without ever appearing in court.114 Libya’s dismal human rights record did not prevent its election in January 2003 to chair the annual session of the UN Commission on Human Rights beginning in March. First nominated by the African regional group in the UN in August 2002, Libya’s candidacy was subsequently confirmed at the inaugural summit of the African Union. Deploring the nomination, Human Rights Watch pointed out that Libya had over the past decade detained government opponents for years without charge or trial, banned the formation of political parties or independent nongovernmental groups, and muzzled the press.115 ‘Libya’s long record of human rights abuses clearly does not merit such a reward’, the watchdog organization insisted.116 The Americans in their reaction to Libya’s election found it ‘unconscionable’ that other countries could vote for such a

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‘serious human rights offender’ to chair the UN body.117 Most of the 53 states on the Human Rights Commission evidently did not judge Libya’s manifest violation of international standards of human rights as a serious enough contravention to deny it the chair of the body. This applies to EU states too: their representatives abstained from the vote. The US especially took exception to Tripoli’s anti-Western attitude, which can be treated as a ninth – albeit lesser – sin. Although Libya officially followed a policy of what Qaddafi depicted as ‘absolute neutrality without partiality to East or West’,118 there seemed to be a strong antiWestern bias in the Cold War years. A popular theme of Qaddafi’s, at least in the early years of his rule, was the injustice and indignity Arabs had suffered at the hands of Westerners.119 Outraged at the 1978 Camp David Accords, Qaddafi made the absurd threat of joining the Warsaw Pact. In 1986, in the wake of the American bombing attack on targets in Libya, Qaddafi repeated his threat to join the Soviet alliance. (The communist pact was evidently not too keen on Libya’s unsolicited participation.)120 Another expression of Libya’s antipathy towards the West was the reported stationing of some 3,500 Soviet and East European military advisers by the mid-1980s and the country’s dependence on the USSR for military hardware. Although Libya’s relations with the Soviet Union were indeed close in the 1980s, it must be acknowledged that Qaddafi ‘was far too independent to be a submissive protégé’. For one thing, Libya purchased arms from several West European states too in the 1970s and 1980s. On an ideological level Qaddafi’s Third Universal Theory clashed with Marxist notions of class warfare and the vanguard role of the proletariat.121 Qaddafi’s antiWestern sentiments were thus far from synonymous with a pro-communist stance, a feature that ameliorated this offence in Western eyes. The US was, predictably, Libya’s least liked Western power. Qaddafi rightly regarded America as the principal obstacle to achieving his political and ideological objectives abroad. The realization of his megalomaniac ambitions of becoming the leader of the Arab world, the Islamic world and even the whole Third World required the withdrawal of American and other Western power and influence from the regions targeted by Qaddafi.122 Apart from denouncing the US as ‘barbaric’, ‘savage’ and ‘arrogant’,123 Qaddafi portrayed America as ‘an imperialist country which does not like our policy and wants to colonize the world and us, rather it wants to enslave us and we reject that categorically’.124 He was equally categorical in declaring, in 1984, that ‘there is absolutely no possibility whatsoever of reaching an understanding with a mad country afflicted with arrogance, the madness of power’. Instead, US power had to be confronted ‘with a determination of steel’. America, he added, ‘is an arch enemy of the Arab nation’.125 Then there was of course America’s close identification with Israel, hence Qaddafi’s habit of mentioning the ‘struggle’ against Zionism and the US in the same breath.126 His call to arms was that America had to


be forced ‘to fight on a hundred fronts all over the earth’, so overstretching its military capability.127 In addition Qaddafi vowed to pursue the struggle against imperialism ‘to its place of origin’, i.e. US territory. He expressed Libya’s solidarity with America’s ‘five million black Muslims, the leaders of the black movement’ there.128 On another occasion, in 1985, Qaddafi went so far as to claim that ‘we have the right to fight America, and we have the right to export terrorism to them’.129 All this was not mere bravado: Libya indeed gave military support to insurgents fighting pro-Western governments in countries ranging from Lebanon and Sudan to El Salvador and was implicated in plots to assassinate US leaders and diplomats.130 Qaddafi’s vitriolic attacks on the US and his aggressive opposition to the US-brokered peace deal between Israel and Egypt in 1978 cost him any official or unofficial support he may then have had in the US for improving bilateral relations.131 Tripoli’s subsequent involvement in international terrorism merely widened the chasm between the two countries. In 1977 the US Department of Defence added Libya to the roster of potential enemies of America, being assigned position four after the Soviet Union, China and North Korea.132 And as President Jimmy Carter recorded in 1980, ‘[t]here are few governments in the world with which we have more sharp and frequent policy differences than Libya’. He mentioned Tripoli’s steadfast opposition to the Camp David peace process, attitudes towards the PLO and support for terrorism.133 In the course of the 1990s Qaddafi moderated but did not entirely abandon his anti-Western rhetoric.134 Towards the end of the decade Libya’s relations with West European states improved markedly as Tripoli began to heed international demands to surrender terrorist suspects. The extradition in 1999 of two Libyans suspected of the Lockerbie bombing and Tripoli’s acceptance in 2003 of responsibility for the terrorist act, paved the way for a major improvement in US–Libyan relations.

Foreign demands and objectives The Libyan transgressions that caused states and inter-governmental organizations to demand that Tripoli mend its ways, related primarily to terrorism and WMD. True, there were many other aspects of Libyan behaviour to which other states took exception, but few of these prompted explicit for change. For others the most objectionable of Libya’s sins was its involvement in international terrorism. A British statement of 1991 was to the point: ‘There cannot be any improvement [in bilateral relations] until there is convincing evidence that Libya has renounced international terrorism, including support for the Irish Republican Army’.135 Support for terrorism was also first on the list of Libyan offences cited by the US State Department in 1991. ‘We will need very strong signals [of improved behaviour] before a review of

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relations can take place’, the statement added.136 In 1999 the Clinton administration insisted that mandatory UN sanctions against Libya could be lifted only after Tripoli had compensated families of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing and ceased support for terrorist groups.137 When renewing US trade sanctions against Libya in January 2003, President Bush demanded that Libya accept responsibility for the incident and pay compensation.138 Two months later Libya obliged. Not only the British, French and Americans took issue with Libya over its complicity in the terrorist bombing of the two airliners in the late 1980s. The EC, for instance, in December 1991 called on the Libyan authorities to cooperate promptly and fully with the judicial authorities of Britain, France and the US in executing warrants for the arrest of Libyan suspects.139 In a remarkably polite tone the UN Security Council in 1992 (resolution 731) merely urged the Libyan government to heed earlier requests to cooperate fully in establishing responsibility for the two attacks. Libya’s failure to do so prompted the Council (resolution 748 of 1992) to demand that ‘the Libyan Government must now comply without any further delay’ with the above requests, and ‘must commit itself definitively to cease all forms of terrorist action and all assistance to terrorist groups’ and demonstrate its renunciation of terrorism ‘by concrete actions’. Six years later, after two suspects had been linked to the Lockerbie bombing but Tripoli refused to extradite them unconditionally, the Council (resolution 1192 of August 1998) insisted that the Libyan government ‘shall ensure’ that the two accused appear for trial in The Netherlands and that any evidence or witnesses in Libya were promptly made available at the court if so requested by the court. The following year Libya, as mentioned, met their demands. An end to the ‘destabilization’ of foreign governments was another demand addressed to Libya by at least the US. It too was declared a condition for any improvement in bilateral relations.140 The Americans also listed Libya’s ‘development of dangerous weapons systems’ as a major obstacle to the normalization of their bilateral relations.141 Few if any other states made it a condition for improved ties. Official foreign demands for improvements in Libya’s human rights record were few and far between, overshadowed by the issues of terrorism and WMD. An exception was the EU ‘appeal’ to Libya in 1995 to reconsider, on humanitarian grounds, a decision to expel Palestinian citizens from the country.142 Its election to the chairmanship of the UN Human Rights Commission said a great deal about many other countries’ views on the dire human rights situation in Libya.

International responses to Libya’s deviance Considering the extent of Libya’s rule-breaking behaviour, international censure was remarkably limited and constrained. One of the few countries


that over many years had no qualms about denouncing Tripoli’s deviant conduct was the US. In 1980, for instance, Washington listed Libya as one among a number of states that ‘have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism’.143 In the 1990s Libya began encountering unprecedented criticism in two major multilateral forums, the EC/EU and the UN. The principal issue was its alleged involvement in the two already mentioned aircraft bombings. The EC and its member countries, a statement of December 1991 read, ‘take a most serious view of the accusation against officials of Libyan government organizations regarding these terrorist incidents’.144 In resolution 731 (1992) the UN Security Council, in turn, ‘[s]trongly deplores’ the Libyan government’s failure to cooperate with investigations into the two incidents. The following year members of the Council (resolution 883) said they were ‘[d]eeply concerned’ that the government of Libya had still not fully complied with requests to provide such cooperation. The EC repeatedly urged Tripoli to observe these UN resolutions.145 Another cause for censure was Libya’s expulsion of Palestinian citizens in 1995, about which the EU expressed ‘grave concern’.146 The most publicized foreign response to Libyan transgressions was the use of economic sanctions. This form of punishment was first applied by the US in 1982 when it placed an embargo on Libyan oil and introduced an export-licence requirement for all US exports to Libya except for food and medicine. Washington however allowed US oil companies to continue operating in Libya. In 1985 the US turned on the pressure by banning the import of all Libyan oil products, ended direct economic activities with Libya, froze Libyan assets in America and called on the more than 1,000 Americans still working in Libya to return home. American oil companies withdrew from Libya in June 1986, abandoning investments worth US$2 billion.147 The US repeatedly asked West European states to follow suit by punishing Libya for its involvement in international terrorism, but the Europeans failed to oblige. The exception was Britain, which in 1986 introduced a mild restrictive measure by banning flights of Libyan Arab Airlines after the airline was implicated in terrorist activities in the United Kingdom. British carriers also stopped flying to Libya in that year.148 Libya’s refusal to heed the Security Council’s appeals to help determine responsibility for the aircraft bombings led to the imposition of mandatory UN sanctions. Resolution 748 of March 1992, adopted under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, ordered all states to inter alia sever air links with Libya, prevent the operation of all Libyan Arab Airlines offices abroad, ban the supply of parts or servicing to Libyan aircraft, reduce Libya’s diplomatic representation abroad, and refuse entry to or expel Libyan nationals suspected of involvement in terrorist activities. The EC weighed in with its own punitive measures by imposing an embargo on air transport (except

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for humanitarian services) and on goods and services related to the crude oil and natural gas industries.149 UN sanctions were strengthened in December 1993 (under resolution 883), the additional measures including the complete closure of all Libyan Arab Airlines’ foreign offices, a ban on the sale of goods and services for Libya’s aviation industry and on the sale of items for use in the petroleum and gas sectors, and the sequestration of all Libyan financial assets abroad. Still the US was not satisfied, clamouring for tougher UN sanctions – including an embargo on petroleum sales – against Libya. Washington’s repeated failure to persuade the Security Council to do so, led the US to intensify sanctions unilaterally in July 1996. This was done through socalled secondary sanctions, which were also targeted against Iran (see Chapter 6 on Iran). The Iran–Libya Sanctions Act provided for the penalization of foreign companies operating in American markets if they had invested over US$40 million (later reduced to $20 million) in the Libyan oil and gas industries. This extra-territorial measure was from the outset highly controversial. In November the UN General Assembly, in a resolution drafted by Libya, requested the US to repeal the legislation.150 The EU also strongly opposed the Iran–Libya Sanctions Act, causing the Americans to back down in May 1998 by effectively allowing EU companies to invest in Libya without incurring American sanctions.151 The UN sanctions regime against Libya was challenged from early on. Scores of states flouted the mandatory prohibitions on trade with Libya and even US allies were notably reluctant to cooperate with Washington in investigating sanctions-busting activities.152 At the multilateral level, member states of the OAU, the Conference of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic States and the Arab League in the mid-1990s urged the UN Security Council to revoke the sanctions. Several countries, including Saudi Arabia, Niger, Nigeria, Egypt and Ghana, defied the ban on air travel to and from Libya – some of them even receiving Qaddafi. In a similar act of defiance the OAU voted in June 1998 to permit flights for diplomatic, humanitarian and religious purposes.153 Despite these sentiments, the Security Council at regular intervals renewed sanctions against Libya; members typically concluded that Tripoli had still not met Council demands and that ‘there was no agreement that the necessary conditions existed’ for lifting the punitive measures.154 In August 1998 the Security Council decided (resolution 1192) that mandatory sanctions would be ‘suspended immediately’ if the two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie aircraft bombing arrived for trial in The Netherlands and Tripoli has satisfied French judicial authorities about the bombing of the French airliner. For Libya the international tide turned in 1999 when it made a number of critical concessions. First, the suspects in the Lockerbie bombing were extradited for trial in The Netherlands. Legal proceedings as a way of dealing with Libyan deviance could commence. Secondly, Tripoli paid


compensation to the families of those who died in the bombing of the French airliner. Finally, Libya accepted responsibility for the killing of a British policewoman in London in 1984 and compensated her familiy.155 The world community was quick to offer Libya the reward it sought most eagerly, namely a suspension of economic sanctions. This the Security Council did in April 1999 in the wake of the extradition of the two Lockerbie suspects. The EU followed suit by relaxing its economic sanctions.156 UN sanctions, it should be noted, were suspended indefinitely, not revoked permanently; Libya was still required to pay compensation to the families of those killed in the Lockerbie incident. In August 2002 Qaddafi agreed in principle to do that, followed by the finalization of payment arrangements in early 2003.157 Although the US in July 1999 agreed to the sale of food and medical commodities to Libya,158 it has so far rejected the permanent lifting of the UN sanctions and has also refused to end its own secondary measures. In January 2003, we mentioned, Bush renewed American sanctions against Libya.159 Two months later some major US corporations were fined for trading illegally with Libya.160 Washington has kept insisting that Tripoli complies with all UN Security Council conditions for the final termination of mandatory sanctions.161 Diplomatic sanctions began in 1972, when the US withdrew its ambassador to Libya and reduced its diplomatic presence to chargé d’affaires level. In 1980 Washington closed its embassy in Tripoli and in the following year the Reagan administration ordered the closing of the Libyan People’s Bureau (embassy) in Washington and the expulsion of Libyan diplomats. Tripoli’s violation of internationally accepted standards of behaviour, including involvement in international terrorism, was officially cited as reason for the American move.162 In 1984 Britain also resorted to unilateral diplomatic sanctions by breaking diplomatic ties with Tripoli in response to the fatal shooting outside the Libyan diplomatic mission in London.163 Collective diplomatic sanctions were part and parcel of the UN’s punitive measures against Libya in the 1990s. The ban on air travel was in part designed to curtail high level visits to and from Libya. Security Council resolutions 748 and 883 ordered that Libya’s diplomatic representation abroad be reduced. France, Sweden, Belgium and Japan were among the countries that decided to expel some Libyan diplomats.164 Diplomatic ostracism continued as late as January 2000, when the EU withdrew an invitation to Qaddafi to visit its headquarters in Brussels on the grounds that Libya had not accepted EU conditions regarding human rights and democracy, free trade, and support for the Middle East peace process.165 Even so, Libya’s diplomatic isolation was limited in extent and duration. Not all Western states supported for this form of ostracism. In 1997 the Vatican opened diplomatic links with Libya despite strong US opposition. The following year Spain announced the renewal of its political and

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economic relations with Libya and a Spanish minister visited Tripoli. In the wake of the suspension of UN sanctions, the Italian Foreign Minister and later Prime Minister D’Alema visited Libya – the first EU leader to do so since 1992. In December 1999 Britain reopened its embassy in Tripoli.166 Economic sanctions no doubt harmed Libyan society, a fact that helped to shape the widespread foreign opposition to a continuation of the measures. Sanctions among other things aggravated economic inequality and produced drastic increases in the prices of certain commodities that in turn affected the poor in particular and provoked civil unrest. The country’s economy incurred losses estimated at US$24 billion as a result of sanctions and over 20,000 people had reportedly died because they were denied foreign medical treatment.167 Once the Security Council had suspended the punitive measures, Libya moved swiftly to put to tender reconstruction projects of some US$15 billion for 2001–05. Foreign trade missions visited in droves as they vied for a share of the previously forbidden commercial rewards offered by Libya.168 The country was clearly on the road to international rehabilitation Restrictions on military ties date back to the mid-1970s when the US, under its Arms Export Control Act, banned sales to Libya of weapons and other products that could significantly increase that country’s military capability. One of the first concrete actions was to refuse delivery of eight cargo aircraft Libya had ordered from Lockheed Corporation in 1972. The fear was that the planes would be used in Libya’s foreign military ventures. In 1978 Washington blocked the sale of spare parts for US-made cargo aircraft already in Libya’s possession.169 Several other Western states began to embargo arms sales to Libya in the 1970s over its military actions abroad and involvement in terrorism. These unilateral bans were affirmed in the Tokyo Declaration on International Terrorism, which was signed by Canada, West Germany, France, Italy, Britain, the US and Japan in 1986. Several of the signatories had, at least until shortly before, sold Libya arms.170 Under resolution 748 (1992) the UN Security Council for the first time imposed mandatory military sanctions against Libya in the shape of a ban on the provision of all types of arms and related matériel, advice or assistance. The UN arms embargo and also the EU’s remained in force after the suspension of economic sanctions in April 1999.171 The use of military action against Libya was confined to the US. We have already noted the armed clashes between their forces in 1981 and 1986 in an ostensibly territorial dispute. Also in 1986 American military aircraft bombed military installations, government buildings (including Qaddafi’s residence), airports and suspected military training camps and communication centres in Tripoli and Benghazi in retaliation for the West Berlin bombing. A further military confrontation occurred over the Mediterranean in 1989, with the Libyans again taking the losses.172 Libya lost more than military hardware; national pride was injured and Qaddafi suffered a public humiliation.


Washington also employed containment to deal with Tripoli’s deviant conduct. In 1981 Assistant Secretary of State Crocker announced that the Reagan administration would support all African countries asking for assistance to counter Libyan ‘interventionism’. The US accordingly increased military sales and aid to countries such as Egypt, Israel, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Chad. Containment was also effected through diplomatic, economic and military sanctions and military strikes, which helped to isolate the Qaddafi government and deter it from foreign adventures. 173 Subversion was another technique used by the Americans in response to Qaddafi’s offensive ways. They were evidently not content to try to change only Qaddafi’s deviant conduct, but wanted to topple him. In the early 1980s, for instance, the US had reportedly stepped up its clandestine activities in Libya, including a plot to organize a coup within the Libyan Army to depose Qaddafi, disinformation, propaganda, support for dissident groups and sabotage. In 1985 the American press again revealed CIA plans to undermine Qaddafi’s government.174 There was never universal nor sustained support for coercive techniques in dealing with Qaddafi. West European countries all along had reservations about America’s clamour for sanctions and they openly condemned US military attacks on Libya.175 This attitude had much to do with the Europeans’ eagerness to protect their extensive economic interests in Libya, especially access to oil. Italy, France and West Germany were prominent in this group. Even the British had their misgivings about sanctions. ‘We do not believe that the way to make our views known would be to boycott or isolate Libya’, declared Lord Trefgame, Britain’s Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. ‘We believe it to be more effective to encourage the Libyans to adopt acceptable policies by maintaining a dialogue with the Libyan Government and trying to develop as near-normal relations as possible’.176 Engagement has all along been the West Europeans’ preferred way of dealing with Libya’s errant behaviour. In 2003 a panel of experts assembled by the Atlantic Council, a US think tank, called for American ‘reengagement’ with Libya to prevent its acquisition of WMD.177

Libya’s responses to outside pressure Defiance, long Tripoli’s most common response to foreign criticism and demands for political change, displayed such familiar forms as denial, charges of double standards and evil intent, counter-demonization and projection. In 2002, for instance, the Libyan foreign ministry dismissed criticism of the country’s human rights performance by Human Rights Watch as a compound of lies, misinformation and Zionist scheming. Far from being an offender, Libya presented itself as a country ‘witnessing human rights consolidation’, manifested in its political and economic security and stability.178 On an earlier occasion Qaddafi denounced

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American talk about human rights in Libya as ‘worthless’ because Washington was ‘always supportive of fascist and reactionary regimes’ that stifled freedom. A related argument, reflecting an element of projection, was that the US was violating the basic human rights of the Libyan people. By exerting pressure on Libya, Qaddafi reasoned, America was denying the Libyans the right to build socialism and the Jamahiriya, and to live in freedom. The US was likewise violating the Palestinians’ right to live in freedom and dignity in their own country. 179 Qaddafi had no qualms about lecturing the US on human rights, believing that Libya’s revolutionary recipe contained the ultimate form of democracy and human rights. The Libyan leader was so confident on this score that he sponsored the Muammar Qaddafi Prize for Human Rights. The award of the prize to Fidel Castro in 1998 speaks volumes about the requirements for being honoured.180 Responding to American accusations of Libyan involvement in terrorism, Qaddafi charged that the US government ‘is not entitled to talk about terrorism, since it practices the highest degree of terrorism in the world’. This Washington did by producing nuclear weapons, maintaining military bases on foreign soil, deploying the US Navy around the world, imposing economic sanctions (causing starvation), and supporting ‘the State terrorism of Israel’.181 A counter-norm of sorts was Qaddafi’s attempt to distinguish between terrorism and ‘the just cause of people fighting for freedom’ through liberation movements. Whereas Libya was ‘opposed to real terrorism’ (citing the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof group), Qaddafi considered the causes of the Palestinians and the Irish people as just; the PLO and IRA could therefore not be treated as terrorist organizations.182 Another form of Libyan defiance, to which reference has already been made, was to side with the Soviet Union as a way of resisting Western pressure against Libya. In 1982, for example, Qaddafi reaffirmed his determination to ‘conclude a strategic, struggle alliance with the Socialist camp led by the Soviet Union in order to exert the greatest efforts to defeat … imperialism, racism and reaction embodied in the United States itself’.183 In a variation on this theme, Qaddafi warned in the 1980s that Libya would respond to American interference in the Arab world with suicide attacks against US targets and also draw the Soviet Union into the ‘struggle’ in the region, so precipitating a war that would engulf the Middle East.184 Qaddafi did not take his own demonization by Westerners lying down, responding in kind and with a vengeance reserved especially for the US, the ‘satan’ among nations.185 Some of America’s leaders were simply beyond the pale. ‘I believe Reagan is the most stupid and crazy man in the whole world’, Qaddafi decided. ‘Compared to him Carter is an angel.’ Qaddafi’s ultimate act of counter-demonization was probably when he branded Reagan a ‘terrorist pursuing childish policies comparable to those of


Hitler’.186 The British were not spared Qaddafi’s diatribes. In the wake of the US military attacks on Libya in March 1986, he lashed out at the ‘savage, barbaric aggression’ of Reagan and his ally, the ‘child murderer’ Margaret Thatcher (who had allowed US attack aircraft to use British facilities). Qaddafi placed the Americans and British on par when he called them ‘a species which are between pigs and human beings and have not developed yet to become ordinary human beings’.187 Despite all the bluster and bravado, finally, Qaddafi made concessions to international opinion when it served his interests. We have touched on several instances of accommodating behaviour, most notably Libya’s decision to extradite the two Lockerbie suspects for trial abroad, pay compensation to the families of victims of terrorist attacks overseas, and its renunciation and denunciation of terrorism. It should be emphasized that these concessions were made only under relentless external pressure and after Tripoli had long procrastinated. By breaking (at least verbally) with international terrorism, the Libyan leader has nonetheless gone a long way towards ending his country’s most grievous transgression. The foreign rewards, we have noted, were quick in coming.

Conclusion There is no question that Qaddafi’s Libya had long engaged in rulebreaking behaviour within and beyond its borders. Considering the seriousness of its international transgressions in the 1970s and 1980s – supporting terrorism, subverting foreign governments, exporting revolution as well as allegedly pursuing some WMD – the world community treated Libya with astonishing lenience. The exigencies of the Cold War, intra-African solidarity and Libya’s oil wealth help to explain the gap between the country’s patently deviant conduct on the one hand and international disapproval and punishment on the other. The US was the one major exception to this rule of inaction, as witness its range of unilateral diplomatic, economic and military actions against Tripoli. Libya’s two worst terrorist outrages – the bombing of Western civilian airliners in 1988 and 1989 – were badly timed, occurring as they did towards the end of the Cold War. These incidents exposed Qaddafi as never before to the glare of adverse international attention. They also vindicated long-standing American views of the Libyan leader as not a mere maverick with irritating but essentially harmless habits, but as a dangerous, calculating dictator determined to break international rules of behaviour in pursuit of his political goals. It was only in the early 1990s that the international community, acting through the UN (but goaded by the US), mobilized against Tripoli’s challenges to international codes of conduct. Libya found itself condemned to the status of a first order or universal deviant.

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Never content with this status, Libya within the decade made an aboutturn on the issue of terrorism and was promptly rewarded with the suspension of mandatory UN sanctions. By then it had evidently also abandoned any pursuit of WMD, export of revolution, subversion of other states, its assertive foreign policy and virulent anti-Americanism, and its build-up of conventional arms. Tripoli even seemed to tone down its pathological hatred of Israel and its intractable opposition to US-led peace initiatives in the Middle East. Qaddafi, the former ‘mad-dog of the Middle East’, was being transformed into a responsible international statesman. All the while a major transgression has persisted, namely Libya’s systematic violation of human rights. The US, the most outspoken critic on this score, has apparently been willing to overlook such patently deviant behaviour for the sake of Tripoli’s cooperation in the offensive against international terrorism.

8 North Korea

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), or North Korea, has never been an exemplary international citizen. One of the new communist state’s first foreign actions was to launch a war against its southern neighbour in 1950. North Korea’s persistent rule-breaking behaviour has come under renewed international scrutiny since the end of the Cold War, in large measure due to its designation – by the US – as a rogue state and later as part of an axis of evil. As a state thus blacklisted, North Korea makes for a revealing case study. Perhaps more than any other country in the same league, North Korea has exposed the flaws in America’s prescriptions for dealing with seriously deviant state behaviour. The DPRK also provides an instructive example of the freedom for international manoeuvre that a manifestly deviant country can create for itself. Through deft diplomacy, if not blackmail, Pyongyang has managed to persuade major international actors to rely more on cooperative than coercive responses to the worst instances of its rule-breaking behaviour. The world’s last remaining Stalinist dictatorship has benefited handsomely from this approach adopted by outsiders.

Leaders great and dear North and South Korea, like East and West Germany, were early products of the Cold War. Japan’s surrender to the US in August 1945 brought to a formal end the 40-year Japanese occupation of Korea. The Korean Peninsula was divided at the 38th parallel into military occupation zones, with Soviet forces controlling the North and US forces the South. In September 1948 the DPRK was proclaimed in the North, followed by the establishment of the Republic of Korea in the South. At the time of its birth, the DPRK was already under the communist rule of Kim Il Sung and his Korean Workers Party. North Korea’s patron state, the Soviet Union, withdrew its forces from the territory in December 1948. The ancient nation of Korea, which had been unified since 668AD, found 168

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itself divided into two ideologically antagonistic states that were clients of two rival great powers.1 Each of the two new states claimed sole legitimate jurisdiction over the whole of Korea and hence denied the contender’s right of existence. North Korea pushed its claims to the point of all-out war when its forces invaded South Korea in June 1950. A vicious, highly destructive three-year war ensued, with North Korea supported by the People’s Republic of China and South Korea backed by a United Nations force led by the US. Although peace talks began in July 1951, an armistice agreement was signed only in July 1953. The cease-fire line, corresponding largely with the 38th parallel, remains the border between the two Korean states. A demilitarized zone (DMZ), patrolled by UN forces, still separates the countries.2 North Korea paid a heavy price for its aggression against the South: it was virtually flattened by saturation bombing by UN forces in 1952. A ‘forced march industrialization’ produced rapid reconstruction and the first Korean economic miracle after the War – preceding the South’s economic take-off by a decade.3 This remarkable economic recovery helped to consolidate Kim Il Sung’s power as he transformed North Korea into a totalitarian state in the Stalinist mould. Apart from such standard communist features as harsh repression and strict surveillance of the entire population and the elimination of all overt opposition to the ruling elite, Kim Il Sung established a personality cult second to none. The Great Leader was, in Simons’ words, ‘the secure godking, the fount of all wisdom and genius, the omniscient and omnibenevolent father of a devoted and submissive people’.4 Some of this extravagance was extended to his son, Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader, who Kim the elder groomed as his sole successor. Kim Il Sung, who became President under a new constitution adopted in 1972, at first appointed his son to several key positions in the Korean Workers Party in 1980 and only a decade later to a state post (that of first Vice-chairman of the National Defence Committee). When Kim Il Sung died in July 1994, aged 82 years, he was duly succeeded by his 52-year old heir apparent, who was then also elevated to the status of Great Leader. And so the first communist dynasty was consummated. Although he did not assume the title of President, Kim Jong Il was in due course appointed as General Secretary of the Korean Workers Party, Chairman of the National Defence Committee – the highest organ of power – and supreme military commander, positions that made him de facto head of state.5 Another feature of Kim Il Sung’s rule was his peculiar ideological blend of Marxism–Leninism and nationalism. As a communist state the DPRK subscribed to Marxism–Leninism, which meant the belief in socialism’s ultimate triumph over capitalism, in the dual notion of class struggle and proletarian dictatorship, and in the Leninist theory of imperialism. The nationalist component was expressed in the idea of juche, introduced by the


elder Kim 1955. The Socialist Constitution of North Korea described juche as ‘a creative application of Marxism–Leninism to the conditions of our country’. Instead of a replacement for or revision of Marxism–Leninism, juche was designed as a system of concrete policy guidelines derived from communist ideology. Meaning ‘autonomy’ or ‘self-reliance’, juche among other things prescribed national pride and dignity, self-reliance in economic capability, self-defence in military matters, and independence in world affairs.6 Juche provided the ideological justification for the extreme self-isolation long practised by North Korea, a seclusion not equalled by any other communist state save perhaps Albania. Through a deliberate withdrawal from the capitalist world system and a concerted attempt to build an independent, self-contained economy, the DPRK became the most autarkic industrial economy in the world.7 At the same time society was effectively sealed off from foreign ideas and influences, an insularity that served to cement totalitarian rule and leader worship. It was the heyday of the hermit state of North Korea. In an apparent concession to the fall of communism elsewhere, amendments to the North Korean constitution in 1992 led to the omission of all references to Marxism–Leninism and to the promotion of economic openness to allow for limited foreign investment. Even so, the guiding principle of juche was strongly reaffirmed.8 This pointed to an uneasy compromise made by a government struggling to come to terms with a vastly changed international environment and battling to overcome severe economic hardships that were in no small measure related to these external developments over which it had no control. Like Cuba’s, the economy of North Korea suffered enormously from the political metamorphosis in the Soviet Union and the severance of the economic lifeline Moscow had provided its two communist allies. The first major blow fell in January 1991 when the USSR, its principal trading partner, unilaterally abolished the barter trading system with the DPRK in favour of trade in convertible currencies at world market prices. The Soviets moreover gave notice that large-scale investment in the North Korean economy would be suspended and that Pyongyang had to start servicing its debt to Moscow. Shortly thereafter China, another of North Korea’s main trading partners, added to the North’s economic woes by also insisting on payment for trade in hard currency at market prices instead of the longstanding barter arrangements and friendship pricing system. Even before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there had been a substantial reduction in the supply of crude oil and cereals to the DPRK.9 North Korea’s dire economic situation was aggravated by natural disasters from the mid-1990s onwards. Severe hailstorms in 1994 and heavy flooding in 1995 and 1996 affected over one-third of the country’s harvest of rice and other grain and left more than 5 million people homeless.

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Extreme drought in mid-1997, which devastated as much as 70 per cent of the maize crop, was followed by yet more floods in 1999. Famine deaths have been estimated at between two and three million people. The state that had long prided itself on self-reliance was reduced to the begging bowl, forced to appeal to the UN, EU and other international donors for emergency food aid and flood relief. In January 1998 the UN’s World Food Programme requested emergency aid worth US$380 million for North Korea – the largest appeal in the agency’s history. The US, South Korea, Japan and China heeded the repeated calls for help. What contributed to the North Koreans’ miseries were poor economic management and a hopelessly outdated economic system of rigid central planning. In 1998, according to foreign estimates, the North Korean economy experienced its ninth successive year of decline.10 The years 1994 to 1997 were designated as ‘a period of adjustment in socialist economic construction’. The emphasis shifted from mining, power and metallurgical industries to agriculture, light industry and trade. Industrial productivity subsequently went into a steep decline. North Korea was, like Cuba, searching for some compromise between the dictates of communist ideology and autarky on the one hand and the demands of a globalizing post-communist world on the other. The contradictions were only too glaring. Several new laws on foreign investment, relations with capitalist firms and free trade zones were adopted in the mid-1990s, while constitutional amendments introduced in September 1998 allowed for greater private enterprise and market reform. Yet a few months later a new planning law codified the principles and practices of the centralized economy. Government control over economic activity, together with poor commercial and industrial infrastructure, the lack of a firm legal basis for private business, and the ongoing hostility between the DPRK on the one hand and South Korea, the US and Japan on the other, kept foreign investors away.11 North Korea’s international relations have all along been overshadowed by its dispute with its kin-state to the south. For years it tried to persuade other countries, especially its allies, not to recognize the Republic of Korea and to keep the South internationally isolated. In its direct dealings with South Korea, the DPRK employed a mixture of diplomacy, subversion and sabre-rattling. In 1971 the first talks were held between the Red Cross societies of the two sides, but later suspended. In a joint communiqué issued in July 1972, the two countries outlined principles of reunification and agreed to end their propaganda campaigns.12 Hopes for improved relations were dashed when North and South Korean naval vessels clashed in disputed waters in 1974. The two sides resumed their propaganda offensives with a vengeance and minor border skirmishes continued. The discovery in 1978 of a third North Korean tunnel beneath the demilitarized zone added to the strains. By the mid-1980s the political climate had improved enough


for the two Koreas to hold talks – the first since 1972 – on possible economic cooperation. In 1986 North Korea used the annual military exercises involving American and South Korean forces (code-named Team Spirit) as an excuse to suspend all negotiations with the South. The following year Seoul accused Pyongyang of complicity of the fatal bombing of a South Korean civilian airliner. The staging of the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul was another source of discord, with the DPRK trying to persuade other countries to boycott the event. Only Cuba and Ethiopia obliged.13 In what had by now become a pattern, the two sides resumed talks in 1988, only to see them suspended by North Korea in 1989.14 In the 1990s North and South Korea eventually managed to make substantive progress in their talks. In what was probably the most important development in inter-Korean relations since the end of the Korean War, the two sides in December 1991 concluded the Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-aggression and Exchanges and Cooperation between South and North. The parties pledged, among other things, to refrain from mutual slander, vilification and sabotage, to encourage economic and other forms of cooperation, to promote the reunion of families separated by the War, and to work towards a comprehensive peace treaty to replace the Military Armistice Agreement of 1953. (In the absence of a peace treaty, the two Koreas remained technically at war.)15 These undertakings did not at once lead the DPRK to break its old bad habits. In 1992 it seemed intent on wrecking the armistice accord by infiltrating soldiers into the DMZ and then (for the first time) boycotting a meeting of the Military Armistice Commission to discuss the incident. Later that year a vast North Korean spy network – the largest since 1948 – was uncovered in the South.16 Relations were placed in further jeopardy by Pyongyang’s repeated rejection of simultaneous nuclear inspections in the two Koreas. Such were the tensions caused by the nuclear issue (discussed below) that inter-Korean talks remained effectively frozen until mid-1994. A planned détente, in the shape of a presidential summit in July, did not materialize due to Kim Il Sung’s death shortly before his scheduled meeting with his counterpart from the South.17 Kim junior from the outset showed that he would remain true to his father’s two-track approach of confrontation and reconciliation towards South Korea. He continued to use the nuclear issue as a prime instrument of confrontation, but there were several others too. Rebuffing Seoul’s overtures in 1994 and 1995 to get inter-Korean talks restarted, Pyongyang in April 1996 announced that it would withdraw from the 1953 armistice. In September of that year a North Korean submarine was discovered abandoned in South Korean waters, reportedly the fourth such mission undertaken by the North. In March 1997 North Korea switched to reconciliation, joining the first of many rounds of talks with the US and South Korea on the possibility of quadripartite negotiations (as opposed to Pyongyang’s

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preference for bilateral negotiations with the US to the exclusion of the South). No sooner had the first round of talks ended when, in July 1997, the most serious military confrontation between forces from the two sides since 1973 occurred in the DMZ. Even so, a second round of discussions took place in March 1998 – only to be followed three months later by another military incident in which a small North Korean submarine got caught in the nets of a fishing boat from the South. The momentum in the three-way talks was not lost, though, with further sessions held in late 1998 and early 1999. True to form, confrontation was not long in coming: a week-long showdown between naval forces from the two Koreas occurred in the Yellow Sea in June 1999. Predictably, another round of quadripartite talks followed shortly thereafter.18 By this time private and business-related inter-Korean contacts had expanded dramatically. One reason was the ‘sunshine policy’ of cooperation with the DPRK, introduced by South Korean President Kim DaeJung (who assumed office in February 1998), which led to government measures to promote economic ties with the North. Another reason was the parlous state of the North Korean economy, forcing it to open up increasingly to dealings with is southern neighbour. South Korean manufacturing plants were established in the North and bilateral trade increased by an estimated 50 per cent in 1999. Thousands of tourists from the South visited North Korea and joint cultural and sporting events took place. The tortuous process of reconciliation and the beginnings of integration culminated in the long-delayed presidential summit in Pyongyang in June 2000.19 This first face-to-face meeting between the leaders of North and South since territorial partition in 1948, was heavier on symbolism than on substance. Nonetheless, the two Kims signed a landmark agreement dealing with four critical bilateral issues: easing tensions on the Korean Peninsula; eventual reunification; reunifying separated families, and greater social and economic interaction. In the wake of the summit the two sides held a series of meetings to implement the agreements reached in Pyongyang. It soon became clear, as the follow-up meetings ran into difficulties, that the summit did not herald a transition to reunification, but served the more modest objective of promoting longer-term reconciliation between North and South.20 On the broader foreign policy front, meanwhile, Pyongyang had made major strides since the 1990s to free itself of the remnants of its traditional self-isolation and elements of enforced isolation. In September 1991 the two Koreas were admitted to the UN as full, separate members, bestowing further international legitimacy on both. In January 2000 Italy became the sixth member state of the EU and the first of the G7 group of Western industrialized nations to enter into diplomatic relations with North Korea. The following month Pyongyang and Moscow formally signed a treaty of friendship, good neighbourliness and cooperation (replacing a similar treaty of 1961)


and Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Pyongyang in July. The DPRK resumed normalization talks with Japan in April 2000 (the first in seven years) and expanded its ties with China. In May Australia restored diplomatic links with North Korea. A year later Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson led an EU delegation that met with Kim Jong Il. The 15 member states of the EU also agreed to establish diplomatic relations with the DPRK.21 Moves to expand Pyongyang’s foreign relations were extended to the multilateral level, with the North joining the ASEAN Regional Forum – Asia’s premier security body – in 2000 and indicating its interest in membership of the IMF, World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. The DPRK’s urgent need for foreign assistance, loans and investment was a major driving force behind these diplomatic initiatives.22 The progress North Korea made in normalizing its foreign relations did not fit the image of a rogue state left out in the cold. Pyongyang’s diplomatic achievements, together with a seeming willingness to sign away its nuclear weapons programme in 1994, led some observers to conclude that the DPRK was in the process of fundamental transformation towards becoming a responsible and respectable international citizen. A contrary perspective held that Kim Jong Il was merely engaging in tactical maneuvering designed to secure enough foreign aid to preserve his rule – while keeping the (nuclear) powder dry.23 North Korea’s admission in 2002 that it had continued nuclear weapons-related development, confirmed the sceptical view of Pyongyang’s intentions.

Naming the deviants The DPRK was an ideal candidate for demonization by foreigners. On the one hand its known behaviour was that of an archetypal deviant: its war of aggression against South Korea in the early 1950s, its involvement in terrorism against the South, its quest for WMD, its brinkmanship in dealing with South Korea and the US, its rigid communist totalitarianism, and its grotesque personality cult. On the other hand North Korea was an extraordinarily closed society with which foreigners, especially Westerners, had precious little direct contact. Unknown meant unloved. North Korea’s offensive and often bizarre behaviour towards the outside world and indeed also the peculiar nature of its society were commonly attributed to the first Great Leader and subsequently to his dynastic successor. In the West Kim Il Sung was variously portrayed as ‘a latter-day Genghis Khan’24, one of a brand of ‘unpredictable tyrants with chips on their shoulders’25, an ‘absurd megalomaniac’, a ‘Stalinist dictator’, a ‘monster’ who ‘fed his people on a diet of lies’, and a ‘murderer’26 On succeeding his father, Kim junior’s image abroad had been no more benign. It had long been alleged that he was involved in a 1983 bomb attack in Burma that killed members of South Korea’s cabinet, and in the 1987 bombing of a civilian airliner

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from the South. This brutality, combined with his reputedly decadent lifestyle, made Kim Jong Il a ‘sadistic playboy’, in the words of a British newspaper.27 Among the perversions anti-North Korean propagandists attributed to the ‘dissolute wacko’ ruling the DPRK, were a ‘penchant for pornography’,28 a predilection for ‘infusing himself with the blood of virgins to stay young’, and a lust for Western ‘models’ (gender not indicated) lured to his harem.29 North Korea joined the ranks of other states demonized by Washington. In 1985 President Reagan branded the DPRK, Iran, Libya, Cuba and Nicaragua as members of a ‘confederation of terrorist states’ that were ‘run by the strangest collection of misfits, looney tunes and squalid criminals since the advent of the Third Reich’.30 Later, as we will see, President George W Bush condemned North Korea to an ‘axis of evil’. Foreign doubts about the bona fides of the North Korean leadership began to wane when Pyongyang in the mid-1990s engaged in serious talks with the US over the North’s nuclear programme. The two Kims’ apparent willingness to seek a compromise with Washington launched them on the road to rehabilitation in the West. This reassessment of Kim Il Sung was supported by former President Jimmy Carter, who met the Great Leader in Pyongyang in June 1994 on a private mediation mission to try to end the standoff between North Korea and the US over the former’s nuclear ambitions. Carter found Kim Il Sung ‘vigorous, intelligent and surprisingly wellinformed’, and ready to freeze the North’s nuclear programme during ‘good-faith talks’ with America.31 Kim junior, as we will see, eventually struck a major bargain with the US in August 1994. Two years later Washington dropped the rogue label when referring to the DPRK.32 When Kim Jong Il hosted a summit meeting with his South Korean counterpart in Pyongyang in June 2000 and came across as a reasonable and courteous leader, ‘the makeover of the madman image was complete’.33 Madeleine Albright even penned an ode of sorts to Kim Jong Il at the ASEAN Regional Forum meeting in Bangkok in July 2000: ‘Used to think he was a rogue, but here at ARF he’s so in vogue’34 Demonization was making way for normalization in US dealings with North Korea, a process that was by then well advanced in the North’s relations with scores of other countries. But true to form, Pyongyang had a few unpleasant surprises in store to expose the gullibility of its new partners.

The DPRK’s contraventions It was North Korea’s deviant behaviour beyond its borders that had made it ‘the poster child for rogue states’.35 Although these transgressions have caused most of the international disapproval, anger and indignation directed at Pyongyang over the past five decades, there have been other instances of serious rule-breaking conduct too.


The first and gravest sin attributed to North Korea falls in the realm of high politics: its pursuit of WMD, especially nuclear weapons. Since this issue remains at the heart of North Korea’s deviant status, some elaboration is called for. The saga of its nuclear programme can be traced back to the late 1950s, when the DPRK and the Soviet Union decided to set up a joint nuclear research institute. By the mid-1960s North Korea had two Soviet-built nuclear reactors operating at Yongbyon, 90 km north of the capital. The two facilities were opened to regular IAEA inspection in 1977.36 The foundation for weapons building was laid in 1980 when construction began at Yongbyon on a 5MW reactor fuelled with natural uranium and moderated with graphite, and capable of generating 20 to 30MW of thermal power. Also capable of producing small amounts of plutonium (that could be reprocessed into weapons-grade material), the reactor came into operation in 1986. Since the reactor was developed without major Soviet assistance, North Korea was not obligated by the USSR to place it under IAEA surveillance too. Construction on a second indigenously designed reactor began at Yongbyon in 1984 and was due for completion in 1995. With a capacity of 50–200MW, the reactor would be unusually large for research purposes. Like the older 5MW reactor, this one would also be capable of producing plutonium. In the early 1990s another 200MW reactor was under construction at Taechon, with completion planned for 1996. Of all its nuclear facilities, North Korea’s spent-fuel reprocessing plant at Yongbyon – the second largest reprocessing facility in the world – was the one that gave most cause for concern to foreigners. The plant was equipped to extract weapons-grade plutonium from the spent nuclear fuels generated by the various reactors, thus providing the nucleas of an atomic bomb.37 For over three decades neither the US nor other Western countries or the IAEA paid much attention to North Korea’s nuclear programme. It was only after the IAEA’s Board of Governors in February 1989 raised the issue of Pyongyang’s delay in concluding a safeguards agreement that North Korea’s nuclear activities became a matter of major international concern. The ending of the Cold War and the Gulf War ensured an international climate conducive to such anxieties. In the latter war the world’s sole superpower led allied forces in their first offensive against a rogue state. Iraq’s misdemeanours placed America on the alert for other serious challengers of the global order. North Korea, already identified as a rogue, appeared to fit the bill neatly with its alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons.38 Why would Pyongyang embark on a costly and risky quest for nuclear weapons? First, North Korea was acutely aware of the dangers posed by the near certainty of US tactical nuclear weapons deployed in the South. An own nuclear force, the DPRK probably calculated, could deter a nuclear attack by the US. (This may have required aiming its warheads at Japan, a reachable target where American strategic interests in the Asia-Pacific

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region would be hurt most.) Second, South Korea was in the 1970s widely suspected of running a clandestine nuclear development programme. This provided Pyongyang further cause for acquiring its own nuclear deterrent. North Korea may in the third place have sought some insurance against the future loss of its traditional patrons, the Soviet Union and China. The sharp fluctuations in Pyongyang’s relations with the two communist giants gave it reason to question their reliability as guarantors of its security. An own nuclear capability could then conceivably compensate for the loss of such external support. Fourth, nuclear arms may also have served as insurance against South Korea’s eventual supremacy in conventional military capability. Pyongyang had good reason to be concerned that the South’s superiority in terms of economic power (six times the North’s GNP) and population size (about twice the North’s 21 million) would in time be translated into military superiority as well. A fifth likely consideration was the need for a diplomatically isolated North Korea to obtain diplomatic leverage. Nuclear weapons may force the world to heed the DPRK’s concerns and also persuade Washington to engage in direct bilateral talks with Pyongyang. Sixth, the international recognition derived from nuclear status could bolster the domestic legitimacy of the Kim dynasty in the runup to the transition of power from father to son. Finally, juche provided the ideological impetus for an indigenous nuclear weapons programme. In 1967 Kim Il Sung committed his government to ‘increase the defence capabilities of the country so as to reliably safeguard its security on the basis of our own forces’.39 In practice Pyongyang repeatedly and categorically denied having nuclear devices or even aspiring to obtain them.40 ‘We have neither the need to make nuclear weapons nor the will and ability to do so’, Kim senior told foreign journalists in April 1994.41 Evidently frustrated at persistent rumours to the contrary, Kim Il Sung complained to an American journalist in June 1994: ‘It gives me a headache when people demand to see something we don’t have. It’s like dogs barking at the moon.’42 Among foreign observers, by contrast, there was general agreement that North Korea had indeed engaged in a nuclear weapons programme and had at least acquired the capacity to make the Bomb.43 For the US and its allies a nuclear-armed North Korea would constitute a ‘long-feared nightmare’: ‘an overarmed state in a desperate position; with unstable decision-makers and poor command and control’. Both Japan and South Korea would be threatened. Since these were among America’s major allies with which it had formal security accords, Washington would feel compelled to respond to the danger they faced from North Korean nuclear weapons. Alternatively, Japan and South Korea might decide to embark on their own nuclear arms programmes, a development that could subvert regional stability.44 There was mounting international concern in the early 1990s that North Korea had accelerated its clandestine nuclear programme at Yongbyon to


build a nuclear device. The US and Japan took the lead in pressuring Pyongyang to enter into a Nuclear Safeguards Agreement (NSA) with the IAEA. In terms of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which it had signed already in 1985, North Korea was obligated to conclude a NSA within 18 months, allowing IAEA representatives to inspect all its nuclear facilities. The DPRK had, however, steadfastly rejected such inspections unless they were combined with IAEA inspections of US nuclear weapons in South Korea. In October 1991 the US removed this pretext for the North’s stalling by announcing the withdrawal of all US land- and sea-based tactical nuclear weapons abroad, by implication also from South Korea. (Although Washington had a policy of ‘neither confirm nor deny’, it was generally accepted that the US had deployed tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea, by some accounts since 1958.) For its part, South Korea undertook not to develop, deploy or use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. In December the two Koreas signed a Joint Declaration for a Non-nuclear Korean Peninsula. In January 1992 Pyongyang eventually signed a safeguards accord (six years after joining the NPT) and two months later the two Koreas decided to form a Joint Nuclear Control Commission (JNCC) to allow for inter-Korean nuclear inspections.45 The formalities were now in place to bring North Korea firmly into the international nuclear regime. Things got off to an auspicious start when North Korea in May 1992 presented the IAEA with an unexpectedly detailed report on its nuclear facilities and allowed Agency inspectors to visit the country for the first time. However, foreign suspicions about Pyongyang’s nuclear intentions were not laid to rest by the inspectors’ finding that the Yongbyon plant was primitive and incomplete yet potentially capable of producing plutonium. In May 1992 North Korean officials admitted that a small amount of plutonium had in fact been produced in the reprocessing facility. Matters were aggravated by North Korea’s failure to agree to separate nuclear inspections by the JNCC and its threat to boycott all further inter-Korean nuclear talks. Worse was to follow. In February 1993 North Korea refused to allow the IAEA to inspect two so-called undeclared sites near Yongbyon, claiming they were military installations not related to the country’s nuclear programme. The very next month North Korea announced that it was to withdraw from the NPT – the first country ever to do so.46 Sensing the gravity of the situation, the international community responded with marked restraint (yet a keen sense of urgency) to this latest crisis manufactured by Pyongyang. More than 100 member states of the NPT appealed to North Korea to reconsider its plan to withdraw. The IAEA Board of Governors, finding the DPRK in non-compliance with its safeguards obligations, in March referred the matter to the UN Security Council. In a resolution adopted in May, the Council urged Pyongyang to permit the special inspections of the two suspected nuclear waste sites requested by the IAEA and to reconsider its decision to withdraw from the

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NPT. The US also engaged in intensive negotiations with North Korea. These diplomatic efforts paid off, as the North Koreans decided to suspend their withdrawal from the NPT, in return for an American undertaking to assist the DPRK in developing its non-military nuclear programme. Pyongyang also agreed to allow IAEA inspectors back into the country.47 The fact that the international inspectors were obstructed in their work was an intimation of more trouble to come. Following their visit in March, the IAEA representatives concluded that North Korea had in all likelihood produced more plutonium than had been acknowledged. (By mid-1994, according to one estimate, North Korea had produced enough plutonium for at least one nuclear weapon. The American CIA at the time believed that the DPRK already possessed two nuclear bombs.) Probably realizing that it had again been caught out, Pyongyang in June 1994 renewed its threat to withdraw from the NPT. For good measure it threatened the South with war if economic sanctions were imposed by the UN.48 The US again chose diplomacy to respond to North Korea’s latest act of brinkmanship-cum-blackmail. In a major breakthrough the two sides in August 1994 in Geneva approved a set of principles called the Agreed Statement. Following further talks the US and North Korea concluded the Agreed Framework in October. Together the two accords should place relations between Washington and Pyongyang on a whole new footing and also spell the end of the DPRK’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. North Korea seemed poised on the road to international rehabilitation. The price it had to pay, was to freeze activity at its reactors and reprocessing plant; promise not to construct new graphite reactors or reprocessing facilities; replace its existing nuclear reactors with two light-water reactors (considered less easily adaptable to the production of nuclear weapons), recommit itself to the NPT and the North-South nuclear accord, and allow regular nuclear inspections in terms of these agreements. The US, for its part, undertook to form an international consortium to finance and provide the light-water reactors; compensate the DPRK for the shortfall in energy production until the new reactors were fully operational by donating 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil every year; promise not to use nuclear weapons against North Korea, and begin to remove obstacles to political and economic ties with the DPRK within three months. The total price for replacing the nuclear reactors and supplying the oil was at the time estimated at US$5 billion, most of it borne by Japan, South Korea and others; the US share amounted to only $30 million annually.49 Some commentators portrayed the deal as a remarkable triumph for America’s policy of engagement towards North Korea. Others, however, viewed it as a contemptible exercise in appeasement, with the US giving in to the DPRK’s nuclear blackmail. In March 1995 the envisaged consortium, led by the US, Japan and South Korea (and later joined by the European Union) was established. The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), as the


consortium was called, would supply the DPRK with South Korean lightwater reactors. Work on the site began in August 1997. IAEA inspectors had meanwhile overseen the suspension of North Korea’s nuclear programme and US experts sealed spent fuel rods at the nuclear facilities. A further hiccup in the nuclear saga occurred at the end of 1998 when the US expressed concern over a suspected nuclear-related underground facility at Kumchang-ri, near Yongbyon. After considerable wrangling the US was allowed to inspect the facility in May 1999, only to find it incomplete and largely empty.50 Incoming President George W. Bush appeared unconvinced of Pyongyang’s good intentions. In January 2002 he included North Korea – ‘a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction’51 – in his three-state axis of evil. Bush’s misgivings were vindicated when North Korea in October 2002 admitted that it maintained a covert nuclear programme using enriched uranium needed for nuclear weapons. In December Pyongyang threw down another gauntlet by reactivating a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon (decommissioned under the 1994 agreement), removing IAEA seals and cameras from its nuclear facilities and expelling inspectors from the UN agency.52 The following January North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, asserting its ‘total freedom from the binding force of the safeguards accord’ with the IAEA.53 These unilateral actions were in breach of the DPRK’s commitments under the NPT, the North–South joint declaration of 1991 on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and its 1992 Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA.54 North Korea insisted that it was not about to develop nuclear weapons. Instead, it needed nuclear energy to generate electricity because the US, Japan and South Korea stopped providing oil promised under the 1994 deal, Pyongyang maintained. The halt in supplies was in retaliation for the North’s secret nuclear programme revealed in October 2002. The US, among others, was not persuaded by this explanation, suspecting that North Korea would divert spent fuel rods from the restarted reactor into a nuclear weapons programme. By the beginning of 2003, according to American intelligence sources, North Korea had one or two nuclear bombs – something North Korean officials reportedly acknowledged to US counterparts in April 2003.55 The IAEA in February 2003 admitted that it was unable to verify that there had not been a diversion of nuclear material for weapons development. The Agency confirmed that North Korea had indeed violated atomic safeguards and referred the matter to the UN Security Council. The Council considered the issue in April, but chose not to take any action or to condemn North Korea. Instead, they preferred to leave it to Washington and Pyongyang to resolve matters through direct bilateral talks. This astonishing inaction was on the one hand a product of divisions among the great powers on the Security Council and on the other a fear of provoking North Korea into some drastic action.56

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North Korea’s nuclear development was the centrepiece of an extensive programme for the acquisition of WMD, including ballistic missiles and chemical and biological weapons. The DPRK’s ballistic missile programme probably began with the delivery of Soviet Frog-5 surface-to-surface missiles around 1970. The North Koreans launched a programme to reverse-engineer the weapon in order to manufacture missiles domestically. Following the arrival of Soviet Scud-B missiles from Egypt a decade or so later, the North Koreans reorganized their missile programme around the Scud-B. In cooperation with Egypt, China and Iran, North Korea was by 1985 capable of producing an operational model of the Scud-B with a reported range of 320-340km (exceeding that of the original Soviet import). An improved version, with a range estimated between 520 and 780km, was successfully test-fired in October 1991 and was supposed to be ready for production and export in 1992. The following year North Korea launched a new ballistic missile over the Sea of Japan. Called the Rodong-1, with an estimated range of 1,000km, the missile was a local development of the Scud-C. It was hardly a coincidence that the missile was test-fired at the height of the crisis over North Korea’s intended withdrawal from the NPT.57 Even after the agreements of 1994 North Korea had still not ceased serving up unpleasant missile surprises. It seemed as if Pyongyang had decided that if it were to abandon its nuclear programme under duress, it would do so with a bang, not a whimper. In June 1998, following allegations that it had supplied missiles recently tested by Pakistan, Pyongyang publicly admitted to have sold missiles abroad. (Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria had long been suspected buyers.) Two months later the DPRK became the first rogue state to launch a multistage missile. With an estimated range of up to 2,000 km, the Taepo Dong 1 flew over Japan before plunging into the Pacific Ocean. Outraged, Japan broke off normalization talks with North Korea, suspended food aid and postponed its contribution to the KEDO project.58 In 1999, amid growing international concerns over an impending test of a long-range missile, the US engaged the DPRK in talks over its missile development programme. Under a Moratorium on Missiles, concluded by the two sides in September, Pyongyang would suspend test-firing its missiles in return for the lifting of key American sanctions in force since the Korean War. In May 2001 Kim Jong Il announced that he would extend the moratorium on missile tests through 2003. On another occasion the DPRK leader offered to stop his long-range missile programme if North Korea’s satellites were launched by another country.59 The US, South Korea and Japan were the three countries most concerned about North Korea’s missile development. As the range of the missiles increased and Pyongyang edged closer to building intercontinental ballistic missiles, its potential targets of course increased: South Korea, the whole of Japan (including American military bases there), the US naval base at


Guam, and even the US mainland could be placed in harm’s way. The North’s missiles were in all likelihood designed to carry nuclear warheads.60 For the DPRK its missile programme was also a handsome source of foreign exchange (netting about $700 million annually at the peak of exports in the late 1980s) and a means of gaining military and political prestige and influence in buyer countries.61 The two remaining components of North Korea’s pursuit of WMD were chemical and biological weapons. The DPRK began developing capabilities in these fields in the early 1960s, apparently making most progress with chemical weapons. The Soviet Union initially provided technological assistance and some chemical agents and munitions that would eventually allow North Korea to manufacture and export chemical weapons. By the beginning of the 1990s, when its chemical warfare effort was accelerated and expanded, North Korea was capable of producing about 4,500 tons of chemical weapons per year, including chemical warheads. In December 2001 South Korea’s Defence Minister claimed that the North had amassed up to 5,000 tons of chemical and biological weapons primed for deployment.62 By then North Korea had long provided assistance to other Third World countries wishing to develop their own chemical weapons. Syria, Iran and possibly also Libya were said to have received cooperation from North Korea. By engaging in such proliferation, the DPRK was of course breaking formal international rules – even though it had not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention nor ratified the Biological and Toxin Weapons convention.63 While North Korea’s WMD endangered far more than South Korea, its conventional military might was a threat to the South specifically. The DPRK’s massive conventional capability could be regarded as a second form of deviance. The danger to South Korea was heightened by the offensive deployment of North Korean forces close to the DMZ and by the fact that the city of Seoul was especially vulnerable to conventional attack from the North. Located only 40km from the demarcation line, Seoul was home to more than 10 million people, the seat of government and also the commercial and academic hub of the country. By the late 1990s the North still enjoyed superiority over the South in several critical military categories. The DPRK’s 1.13 million men under arms made it the fifth-largest military establishment in the world (after the US, China, Russia and India). Add to this figure a reserve force of more than 6 million (which means that a third of North Korea’s 21 million people were in uniform). The North also overshadowed the South in terms of jet fighters, bombers, tanks, artillery and attack submarines.64 This assessment of the (im)balance of forces was not universally shared. A quantitative North Korean edge did not necessarily mean qualitative superiority. What further neutralized any North Korean military advantage over the South were the presence of over 35,000 US troops in South Korea and the extension of the US security umbrella – both

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conventional and nuclear–over the Republic of Korea. In July President Clinton, on a visit to Seoul, warned that if the DPRK used nuclear weapons against South Korea, the US would quickly and overwhelmingly retaliate so that North Korea would cease to exist.65 North Korea’s quest for WMD, we have suggested, placed security in its regional environment in jeopardy. The threat to regional security, although a corollary of its first sin, can be regarded as a serious enough form of deviance to be listed as a separate third transgression. A North Korea with a nuclear arsenal, ballistic missiles and moreover shunned by the world community, was already widely perceived as a threat to regional security and stability. If South Korea, Japan and Taiwan feared that the DPRK’s missiles could breach their defences, they may be compelled to acquire a credible deterrent capability – something that could of course spark a destabilizing WMD race in the Asia-Pacific region.66 Pyongyang’s bellicose rhetoric also fuelled regional tensions. In June 1994, when it again threatened to withdraw from the NPT, North Korea warned that any attempts from outside to curb its nuclear programme would bring ‘devastating consequences menacing peace in Asia and the rest of the world’.67 It is no wonder then that a senior US official in 1994 called North Korea ‘the single greatest threat to stability in Asia today’.68 An EU presidency statement of March 1994 conveyed a similar message: North Korea’s present position regarding nuclear proliferation ‘constitutes a threat to peace, stability and security on the Korean peninsula and in the whole region’.69 Four years later, at a meeting of the US-Japan Security Consultative Committee, representatives from the two governments said they had no illusions about ‘the potential threat it [North Korea] poses to peace and stability in the region’.70 Despite progress in normalizing relations with the DPRK, ‘we do not trust North Korean intentions’, declared Charles Kartman, the US Special Envoy for the Korean Peace Process. ‘It remains indisputable that North Korea represents a major threat to peace and stability not only in Northeast Asia, but also in other volatile areas in the region’, Kartman said in 1998.71 North Korea’s fourth norm-violating action was involvement in terrorism abroad, specifically against South Korean targets. One of the first major terrorist incidents occurred in January 1968 when North Korean commandos slipped across the DMZ and headed for Seoul in an abortive mission to assassinate President Park Chung Hee. Two years later an infiltrator from the North died while planting a bomb intended to kill President Park in Seoul. In 1974 Park’s wife was killed in another unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the South Korean President. In October 1983 a further attempt was made on the life of the South Korean head of state. A bomb intended for President Chun Doo Hwan while on a state visit to Rangoon, Burma, exploded prematurely, leaving Chun unharmed but killing four of his cabinet ministers and fourteen other South Korean officials. North Korea was also implicated in the bomb explosion aboard a South Korean airliner


in November 1987 while it flew over the Andaman Sea. All 115 people aboard perished. The latter incident led to North Korea’s inclusion in the US State Department’s list of states supporting international terrorism.72 It was a full 13 years later that Washington and Pyongyang reported progress in talks on ending the North’s much resented terrorist status (which, under US law, inhibited trade and other exchanges between the listed country and America). The State Department revealed in October 2000 that North Korea was not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of the South Korean airliner in 1987.73 That same month the US and North Korea issued a joint statement in which they agreed that ‘international terrorism poses an unacceptable threat to global security and peace, and that terrorism should be opposed in all its forms’, including acts involving nuclear, chemical or biological devices. The DPRK affirmed that ‘as a matter of official policy…it opposes all forms of terrorism against any country or individual’. The two sides furthermore declared ‘their commitment to support the international legal regime combating international terrorism and to cooperate with each other in taking effective measures to fight against terrorism’. The Americans made it known that if Pyongyang lived up to its word, it could be removed from the blacklist of terrorist-supporting states. Among other things, the US wanted North Korea to expel terrorist organizations, especially members of the Japanese Red Army faction.74 North Korea took another step in the direction sought by the US when an official mouthpiece of the Kim government called the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 ‘very regretful and tragic’ and gave implicit support to American-led efforts to combat international terrorism.75 Pyongyang also signed six of the twelve international conventions and protocols dealing with terrorism. Still the US complained that North Korea’s response to international anti-terrorism efforts had been ‘disappointing’ throughout 2002, that Pyongyang had sold weapons to several terrorist groups and still provided safe-haven to fugitive members of the Japanese Red Army.76 The US State Department consequently kept listing North Korea as one of seven state sponsors of terrorism in Patterns of Global Terrorism 2002.77 Few other states at that time still shared the American qualms about Pyongyang’s alleged involvement in international terrorism. The DPRK was, in the fifth place, for many years guilty of trying to export communist revolution, not only to South Korea but also much farther afield. Pyongyang’s principal strategic goal, national reunification, carried a distinct ideological imprint. The Marxist–Leninist goal of universalizing socialism and ultimately communism required the completion of the North’s revolution across the entire Korean Peninsula. A pivotal role was assigned to a Marxist-Leninist party to wage a ‘southern revolution’. The united front it should lead would also encompass workers, peasants and progressive intellectuals from South Korea. (North Korea indeed tried to

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set up such a party, but abandoned the effort in the late 1960s for lack of success.) The US military presence in the South, regarded as a major obstacle to reunification of this kind, had to be removed at all costs.78 Once the American imperialists had been expelled from the Korean peninsula and the ‘fascist’ government of South Korea ousted, the ‘people’s democratic revolution for national liberation’ would be concluded with the installation of a ‘people’s government’ – obviously in the image of that in Pyongyang.79 These remained the aims of North Korea well into the 1980s, despite Kim Il Sung’s proposal of reunification in the shape of a confederate state that would allow the two different ideologies and governments to coexist in one state. The North’s commitment to a ‘southern revolution’ contradicted the notion of a confederate arrangement and also violated at least the spirit of the various agreements concluded between North and South Korea since the 1970s. In the mid-1990s the US military establishment still made great play of Pyongyang’s ‘revolutionary indoctrination’ of South Koreans, by which was meant instilling anti-government and anti-American sentiments as part of a struggle for the ‘communization of the entire peninsula’.80 Article 16 of North Korea’s Constitution set the tone for a revolutionary foreign policy extending far beyond South Korea. In accordance with the principles of Marxism–Leninism and proletarian internationalism, the DPRK ‘unites with all the peoples of the world opposing imperialism and actively supports and encourages their struggles for national liberation and their revolutionary struggle’. In like vein the Charter of the Workers Party of Korea committed the ruling party of the DPRK to support the ‘antiimperialist national liberation movement of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, working class of the capitalist countries and revolutionary struggles of other peoples’.81 To this end Pyongyang paid particular attention to Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1960s and 1970s. It provided military training, material and financial support to leftist antigovernment guerrillas in Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Guatemala, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Grenada, among others. Close official ties, also in the ideological and military domains, were maintained with leftist-radical or communist governments in Cuba, Chile and Nicaragua.82 North Korea had precious little to show for its revolutionary efforts in most of these countries and the tide of democratization that swept through much of South America in the 1980s pulled the rug from under the North Koreans’ feet. Africa’s numerous wars provided another fertile region for North Korean involvement in the shape of military supplies and training to sympathetic governments or leftist revolutionaries fighting incumbent rulers. Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Benin, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Libya and Madagascar were among those attracting Pyongyang’s attention.83 In the post-Cold War environment of the 1990s North Korea was compelled to select a new rationale for its foreign policy, stressing sovereign


independence and non-intervention. The strident commitment to antiimperialism was replaced with the promotion of friendship between states and peoples. It was no longer the duty of socialists to export revolution, the new orthodoxy decreed, but to work for socialist change within their own countries in a manner suited to local conditions.84 This new approach was, of course, also in tune with North Korea’s efforts to normalize its foreign relations over a wide front. The singularly undemocratic nature of the North Korean political system, its sixth major transgression, has already been noted. As elsewhere, the designation ‘People’s Republic’ was a mere euphemism for communist dictatorship. Consider the election to the Supreme People’s Assembly, the rubber-stamp legislature: in July 1998 an election was held for 687 deputies, the first in eight years (despite the constitutional requirement of every five years), with a single candidate registered in each voting district (opposition parties being outlawed). As in previous elections, voter turn-out was near 100 per cent and so too was the support for the Workers Party. North Korea’s was moreover a totalitarian regime of exceptional harshness in which the state exerted a measure of control over the lives and thoughts of its citizens that exceeded even the standards set by the Soviet Union under Stalin. The legal grounds for repression were arguably found in the collectivist nature of human rights stipulated in article 63 of the North Korean Constitution, as amended in 1992. The ‘rights and duties’ of citizens of the DPRK, it stated, ‘are based upon the collectivist principle of “one for all, and all for one”’. Instead of regarding human rights as a universal value pursued by humanity, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international instruments, North Korean leaders opted for ‘our type of human rights’ based on the ruling ideology of juche. The collectivist notion of human rights among other things meant the deprivation of the individual’s right to privacy and the freedom to choose a residence. Freedom of conscience, thought and speech was not permitted either. Freedom of information, the right to know and freedom to travel were likewise non-existent.85 Not surprisingly large numbers of political prisoners were held in the DPRK. According to the 1991 human rights report of the US State Department, roughly 150,000 political prisoners and their family members were detained in maximum-security camps. Some international human rights organizations put the figure at 200,000. At least 12 concentration camps were thought to exist.86 A lesser-known form of human rights violation long committed by North Korea, has been the continued detention – against the stipulations of the Geneva Convention – of South Korean prisoners from the Korean War. Several thousand were reportedly being held against their will by North Korea.87 Despite the growing universal preoccupation with human rights since the end of the Cold War, North Korea’s appalling record in this field

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remained something of an international blind spot until well into the 1990s. Perhaps the WMD controversy helped to focus foreign attention on Pyongyang’s seriously deviant behaviour in the realm of human rights. The new international concern found expression in, among other events, the Human Rights Watch-Asia conference in 1998, which focused on North Korea; US Congressional hearings in 1999 on North Korea’s detention camps for political prisoners; an open letter published by dozens of French intellectuals in 1999 in which they called for the immediate improvement of human rights in the DPRK, and a Declaration for the North Korean People signed by over 50 Japanese intellectuals in 1999.88 In their reports for 2003, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch continued to present bleak pictures of the human rights situation in the DPRK.89 The same year, as we will see, the UN Commission on Human Rights for the very first time condemned North Korea’s systematic violation of human rights. The DPRK’s export of revolution pointed to a seventh transgression, namely an assertive foreign policy that challenged the interests of Western powers in distant parts of the world. North Korea underwent a remarkable transformation from ‘a fully dependent infant satellite’ of the Soviet Union to ‘an independent, self-assertive nation that makes the demand for equal locus standi to the United States’. This new approach to world affairs emerged in the 1960s and climaxed in the 1980s.90 By the end of the 1980s North Korea had provided military training to government forces or to leftist anti-government groups in 62 countries: 25 in Africa, 19 in Central and South America, 9 in Asia, 7 in the Middle East and 2 in Europe. Over 5,000 foreign personnel had received military training in North Korea, and more than 7,000 North Korean advisers were sent to nearly 50 states.91 These overt and covert activities, in many cases designed to influence the outcome of armed conflicts within and between states, were highly ambitious for a country of North Korea’s size and relatively modest economic power. In short, North Korea was punching well above its weight, competing in an arena reserved mostly for great powers. In so doing the DPRK confronted US interests in several regions, something that added to the American perception of North Korea as an implacable enemy. An eighth sin, which North Korea had in common with most of the other deviant states examined in this study, was its deep hostility to the US. (The feeling, we have noted, was mutual.) The horrific destruction suffered by the North during the Korean War is a major factor in explaining its obsessive hatred of American ‘imperialism’.92 The US in fact replaced Japan, the former imperial master of Korea, as the DPRK’s principal enemy.93 It was an enemy with evil designs. As Kim Il Sung saw it, US imperialists wanted to keep South Korea ‘under their thumb’ partly because ‘they lust for the [raw] materials’ in the South, and partly because ‘they want the whole Korea and, further, realize their world domination by using


South Korea as their military, strategic base’.94 It is then not surprising that the ruling Korean Workers Party, in the preamble to its Charter, declared that it ‘opposes international capitalism and hegemonism under the leadership of the United States by forming a broad anti-American front’.95 More tangibly, Pyongyang’s hostility to America found expression in the seizure in 1968 of the US Navy intelligence-gathering ship Pueblo and the detention of its crew; the shooting down of an American reconnaissance aircraft the following year, leaving 31 people dead, and the killing of two US soldiers at the Panmunjom ‘peace village’ in the middle of the DMZ in 1976.96 Pyongyang’s anti-American sentiments were frequently directed at US presidents, with Ronald Reagan a favourite target for demonization. ‘Reagan, of clown origin’, North Korea’s official broadcaster commented in 1981, ‘seems to be unfit for a politician of a country styling itself a big power, though he may be fit as a gangster on the theatrical stage’. Apart from his lack of appropriate qualifications for the presidency, Reagan displayed some unsavoury sentiments: he was a ‘war-thirsty element’ and a ‘diehard defender of racism’, the DPRK’s Central News Agency told its readers in 1981.97 In the 1990s North Korea toned down its anti-American invective as it actively sought a rapprochement with Washington. After the Soviet Union had disappeared from the scene in 1991, the DPRK and indeed the world community at large realized that the US would become the principal foreign actor in the Korean situation, holding the key to the resolution of the conflict on the Korean Peninsula. Having lost its economic benefactors of the Cold War era, Pyongyang also viewed the US as a potentially attractive if not vital partner in the North’s economic development.98 America’s rehabilitation in North Korean eyes was certified in Kim Jong Il’s statement in May 2000 that the US was no longer an enemy of his country.99 Four years earlier, the US had stopped referring to the DPRK as a rogue state. The old adverserial relationship could not that easily be replaced by one of amity, however.100 President Bush junior labelled North Korea part of an axis of evil, a status the country seemed to justify with its flagrant transgression of rules against nuclear proliferation. A final set of norm-violating activities that have been attributed to the DPRK, at least by the US, was that it has since the mid-1970s engaged in illicit drug trade, money laundering, counterfeiting, trade in endangered species and cigarette smuggling. According to American officials, North Korea was by 2003 producing 40 tons of opium annually and huge quantities of high-grade amphetamines. North Koreans had in the preceding 30 years or so been involved in arrests or drug seizures in over 20 different countries. As for counterfeiting, North Korea was believed to be the source of the expertly forged American $100 bills, the so-called Super 100s. All these illegal pursuits may be worth about $500 million a year, compared with North Korea’s official exports of $650 million. The North Koreans

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involved – assumed to act with the approval of the authorities – reportedly maintained links with organized crime syndicates in Russia, Japan, Taiwan, China and Thailand.101

Foreign demands and objectives Since the pursuit of WMD was North Korea’s foremost sin, the US and its allies (especially Japan and South Korea, and to a lesser extent European states) have since the 1990s made this their top priority in dealing with the DPRK. Their objective, formally endorsed by the IAEA, the UN Security Council and General Assembly, and the EU, was to ensure North Korean compliance with the NPT and the IAEA’s inspection regime. More ambitiously, the US and others wanted to see Pyongyang abandon its quest for WMD altogether, which meant above all the renunciation of any nuclear weapons programme and also an end to the development and proliferation of ballistic missiles. As President Clinton declared in 1993, North Korea ‘cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear bomb’. 102 Bush was even more forthright when Pyongyang in late 2002 gave notice that it may well develop the Bomb. ‘We will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea’, the President vowed, adding that the US would settle for nothing less than ‘the complete, verifiable and irreversible elimination of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program’.103 Japan and South Korea voiced the same demand. In an unusually frank statement the EU in February 2003 said it ‘insists’ on North Korea’s full compliance with existing non-proliferation and disarmament agreements. The Group of Eight foreign ministers addressed a similar appeal to Pyongyang in May.104 The EU in 2000 linked the expansion of its assistance efforts to North Korea’s ‘response to international concerns’ that went beyond nonproliferation issues; progress on inter-Korean reconciliation, respect for human rights and economic structural reform were also part of the EU’s package of conditions. The US went somewhat further than the above collectively stated demands and appeals. For North Korea to become ‘a responsible international actor’105 and enjoy normal relations with the US, it had to end the violation of its citizens’ human rights; stop its support for international terrorism; provide information on over 8,000 US soldiers listed as missing in action during the Korean War, withdraw its troops from the border with the South, and facilitate progress in the North-South dialogue.106 The second Bush administration announced that engagement in North Korea required of Pyongyang to ‘dramatically … alter its behavior across a range of issues’. The list was familiar: apart from WMD (encompassing also the development and export of ballistic missiles), it included threats to the DPRK’s neighbouring states, the abuse of human rights, and support for terrorism.107


International responses to North Korean deviance Considering the gravity of the DPRK’s rule-breaking conduct at home and abroad, it is remarkable that collective expressions of censure have been so few in number and often feeble in substance. Of course the UN branded the DPRK as the aggressor in 1950, something that paved the way for an American-led military campaign against the North, but nothing nearly as drastic followed in later years. The nuclear issue, more than any other single question since the Korean War, exposed North Korea to international adversity. In February 1993, in the midst of a crisis over IAEA inspections of suspected nuclear sites, an Agency resolution took ‘serious note of the significant inconsistencies’ between North Korean declarations and IAEA findings resulting from ad hoc inspections and sample analyses, matters that remained unresolved despite extensive discussions. The IAEA subsequently referred the matter to the Security Council owing to North Korea’s ongoing non-compliance. In June 1993 the Council passed a resolution calling on the DPRK to reconsider its position and honour its commitments under the NPT and the NSA.108 The following October attention again shifted to the IAEA, which in a resolution expressed ‘grave concern’ that the DPRK had failed to honour its safeguards obligations. In its first resolution on the North Korean nuclear issue, the UN General Assembly at its 48th session merely urged the DPRK to cooperate immediately with the IAEA in implementing the safeguards agreement. Instead, North Korea obstructed the work of IAEA inspectors in 1994 and announced that it would start unloading spent nuclear fuel rods without IAEA supervision. This prompted a forthright condemnation from the IAEA over the North’s ‘serious violation’ of the nuclear inspection programme and a demand that the DPRK immediately stop withdrawing the rods. The Security Council also adopted a tougher line than hitherto. In a unanimously approved presidential statement of May 1994, the Council warned Pyongyang that unloading the rods without IAEA supervision might lead to further Security Council action – a hint at economic sanctions.109 The Council never went that far, though, not least because North Korea on several occasions abandoned its defiance and heeded international demands and requests. The EU had meanwhile criticized Pyongyang over its failure to respect the international nuclear regime.110 In the latest nuclear standoff several EU bodies expressed their concern about Pyongyang’s clandestine nuclear programme and its withdrawal from the NPT, coupled with warnings that the violation of North Korea’s formal obligations under the nuclear regime constituted a serious threat to regional and wider international peace and stability.111 Several individual states, including Russia, Japan and Canada, also denounced North Korea’s actions.112 The UN Security Council, we noted, did not follow suit in April 2003.

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North Korea’s human rights record came in for very little collective international censure. An exception was the UN Human Rights Commission’s condemnation in April 2003 – for the first time – of the DPRK’s systematic rights abuses, including torture, public executions, and all-pervasive restrictions on freedom of conscience, thought, opinion, religion and expression.113 A very different incident that prompted some international censure was the discovery of an abandoned North Korean submarine on the South Korean coast in 1996. The EU, uncharacteristically, said it ‘condemns this action’, while the UN Security Council merely issued a statement (instead of passing a resolution) voicing its ‘serious concern’.114 The US had since 1950 relied on sanctions – which included a total embargo on trade and other economic transactions – as its preferred instrument for dealing with North Korea’s deviant behaviour. As in other cases, e.g. Cuba and Iran, the US again had few backers for its sanctions campaign. Invoking the Trading with the Enemy Act and the Export Administration Act, virtually all commercial and financial transactions between North Korea and individuals or companies subject to US jurisdiction were prohibited. Washington also upheld diplomatic sanctions by refusing to establish diplomatic ties with the DPRK and opposing its admission to international financial institutions such as the World Bank and GATT (later the World Trade Organization).115 In January 1995 Washington eased economic sanctions against North Korea, rewarding it for concluding the Agreed Framework of 1994. The relaxation applied in the areas of telecommunications, financial transactions, imports of North Korean magnesite, and participation by American companies in the light-water reactor project in the DPRK.116 A further reward came in 1999 in the wake of North Korea’s pledge to the US to refrain from testing long-range missiles. Washington decided to lift sanctions relating to non-military trade, investment in certain sectors in North Korea, remittances from American nationals to North Korea, transport of cargo, and commercial flights.117 The renewed rift over North Korea’s nuclear intentions in 2002-3 did not lead to specific US threats of further sanctions, either unilateral or multilateral. Meanwhile, some restrictions associated with the DPRK’s designation as a state supporting terrorism still remained effective, including the export of American military goods, foreign economic aid (except humanitarian assistance), US support for loans to North Korea from international financial institutions, and the freeze on North Korean assets imposed under the Trading with the Enemy Act.118 The bomb explosion in Burma in 1983 in which visiting South Korean dignatories died, caused Burma to break diplomatic ties with North Korea, while Japan resorted to economic sanctions. Following the bombing of a South Korean jetliner in 1987, Japan reimposed sanctions against the North.119


The IAEA in June 1994, exasperated by Pyongyang’s intransigence over the nuclear inspection issue, imposed its own mild sanctions by suspending its technical assistance programme in North Korea, in operation since the 1970s.120 The US was the foremost exponent of shaming as a means of expressing disapproval over North Korea’s deviant behaviour. In the wake of the 1987 bombing of the South Korean passenger aircraft, the US added the DPRK to its list of states supporting terrorism.121 Such a listing, we have just noted, also led to American punitive measures against the offending countries. In 2002, it will be recalled, the Bush administration still classified North Korea as a state sponsoring terrorism. America’s moves to isolate North Korea went hand in hand with containment, hence the US efforts to stop the North’s nuclear and missile programmes and the ongoing presence of US troops in South Korea. One reason for containment was the American concern that Kim Il Sung had both the intention and capability to start another Korean war. In addition, US policymakers tended to view the Great Leader as ‘irrational, unpredictable, and dangerous’.122 While still adhering to the established policy of isolating and containing North Korea, the Reagan administration in October 1988 added an element of engagement. American diplomats were authorized to ‘hold substantive discussions’ in ‘neutral settings’ with DPRK officials. Unofficial, nongovernmental visits from North Korea to the US in the realms of sport, academia and culture were also to be encouraged, and limited commercial export of American humanitarian goods to the DPRK was allowed. These were clearly designed as incentives, albeit modest, to build trust and establish the basis for more substantive rewards for changes in Pyongyang’s behaviour. Over twenty meetings between the two sides were held in Beijing over the next four years.123 Engagement did not sit comfortably with the standard prescriptions for dealing with rogue states, namely containment and isolation. The Americans added an engagement component because of the ‘acute danger’ presented by the DPRK’s mature nuclear programme and the forward deployment of large conventional forces along the DMZ. A purely punitive strategy, the US concluded, was unlikely to achieve the principal objective of persuading Pyongyang to forego the nuclear option and honour its obligations under the NPT.124 Economic sanctions would moreover have been ineffective without the participation of China, Russia and Japan, none of which was comfortable with such a confrontational approach to North Korea. After 1994 serious US concerns over political stability in North Korea following the demise of Kim Il Sung reinforced the pursuit of engagement. A speedy collapse of the North Korean system, Washington feared, could produce a highly volatile situation in which war would have been a real possibility. Steps that may precipitate such a situation, such as sanctions,

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therefore had to be avoided.125 As the emphasis began shifting increasingly towards engagement and away from containment and isolation, Secretary of State Warren Christopher in 1996 quietly dropped North Korea from Washington’s listing of rogue states.126 In October 2000 Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made a historic visit to Pyongyang, where she met with Kim Jong Il.127 The former ‘charter member’ of America’s rogues’ gallery was being rehabilitated in the eyes of the US.128 The final seal of approval of North Korea’s ‘normal’ status eluded Pyongyang, however: Kim Il Sung had invited President Clinton to visit the DPRK before the end of his presidency, but the White House made acceptance dependent on a breakthrough in bilateral negotiations on ending the North’s missile development and exports. In the absence of such an accomplishment by the end of 2000, the visit did not materialize.129 The advent of the second Bush administration and Pyongyang’s admission that it had maintained an illegal nuclear development programme, ruled out any early normalization of bilateral relations. The Administration announced in October 2002 that, in the light of the DPRK’s rule-breaking conduct, it was unable to continue its ‘bold approach to improve relations with North Korea’ through conditional political and economic engagement.130 Even so, Bush indicated that he was willing to engage in talks with the North Korean leadership ‘at any time, at any place’.131 While professing faith in a diplomatic resolution of the nuclear standoff, the Bush administration made it plain that other options – that could conceivably include sanctions and military action – had not been ruled out.132 Engagement had by then become firmly established as the favoured approach of other major players too. It was at the heart of South Korean President Kim Dae-jung’s ‘sunshine policy’ towards the North. By engaging the DPRK diplomatically, economically and culturally, Seoul in the first place wanted to avoid war on the Korean Peninsula. The second was to prevent a sudden collapse of the North with all the attendant risks of major conflict. Through engagement South Korea also hoped to steer its northern neighbour towards a less hostile and more cooperative stance and, more ambitiously, nudge Pyongyang towards democracy and eventual reunification into a democratic Korea. The historic North-South summit in June 2000 gave further impetus to engagement through several follow-up meetings between the two sides dealing with such matters as economic relations, socio-cultural interaction and humanitarian issues.133 Engagement promised to become increasingly a two-way street, with the North not merely a recipient of visitors and goods from the South but a partner in an interactive bilateral relationship. Japan, in turn, saw engagement with North Korea as a means of stopping Pyongyang’s WMD development, helping it to survive, making it less aggressive, and improving the chances for eventual reunification in a peaceful fashion and producing a state that would remain in the American


sphere of influence. For the Japanese, diplomatic exchange, trade, aid and participation in KEDO were the main instruments of engagement with the DPRK.134 The EU, another exponent of engagement, saw it as a means to promote an array of objectives: peace, security, freedom and reconciliation in the Korean Peninsula; and economic reform, sustainable development and an easing of the acute food and health problems in the DPRK. To these ends the Europeans held several rounds of political dialogue with the North Koreans since 1998 and provided extensive development assistance and humanitarian aid.135 Finally, as part of engaging the DPRK, several major foreign actors offered Pyongyang inducements to abandon its objectionable behaviour. The US, for instance, was in 2003 contemplating significant economic assistance in exchange for North Korea’s elimination of any nuclear weapons. The North Koreans have indeed indicated their willingness to sacrifice their nuclear and missile programmes if the US would agree to economic aid, security guarantees, and formal recognition together with diplomatic relations.136 The EU at the same time declared itself ready to consider enhancing cooperation with North Korea if the existing nuclear crisis could be resolved satisfactorily.137

North Korea’s reactions to outside pressure Pyongyang was better known for defiant than compliant responses to external pressures for changing its deviant behaviour. One typical form of defiance was a flat denial that human rights abuses occurred in the DPRK. In reacting to a highly critical report on human rights in North Korea released by Asia Watch in 1988, a diplomat from the DPRK merely insisted that violations of human rights did not take place in his country and were unthinkable. There was no attempt to justify or contextualize the patent abuses. North Korea denied the UN and international non-governmental organizations (such as Amnesty International) permission to investigate the human rights situation there and also refused to submit reports as required by its accession to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.138 In 2001 Pyongyang seemed to have a change of heart, submitting its first report in 16 years to the UN Human Rights Committee. The content was, however, all too familiar: citizens of North Korea ‘are ensured all the rights’ recognized in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.139 Another form of defiant behaviour to which North Korea resorted under pressure, was to invoke counter-norms. The drama over its nuclear activities provides ample illustration. In February 1993, for instance, Pyongyang denounced an IAEA resolution on the inspection issue and unresolved questions over the North’s nuclear programme as ‘an encroachment on the

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sovereignty of the DPRK, an interference in its internal affairs and a hostile act aimed at stifling socialism in our country’.140 Foreign concern about the test-firing of a North Korean missile in early 2003 provoked a similar irate response. The DPRK’s production and deployment of missiles ‘are a matter pertaining to its sovereignty in every respect’. The weapons were intended for self-defence and could never threaten other countries, the official news agency declared.141 Complaints of double standards, another time-honoured response of deviant states, were also used by Pyongyang. In a statement issued in April 1994, for instance, North Korea declared that ‘[i]t must not go unnoticed that the UN Security Council unreasonably took issue’ with the DPRK’s ‘peaceful’ nuclear activities ‘while turning a blind eye to the countries which are hellbent on dangerous nuclear gambling under the patronage of the United States’.142 Like other deviant states, North Korea also practised divide-and-survive as a counter to foreign pressure. Pyongyang was particularly keen to drive a wedge between the US and South Korea, and to a lesser extent between the US and Japan. By improving its own relations with South Korea’s principal allies and benefactors and weakening their commitment to Seoul, North Korea hoped to increase its political and strategic options vis-à-vis the South.143 It was only natural that the DPRK, particularly in the years of relative ostracism combined with a degree of self-isolation, would foster close ties to fellow deviant states. Cuba, Iran, Iraq and Libya were among those on which Pyongyang lavished attention and, in many cases, cemented relations through the provision of arms and other forms of military support. By nurturing such links, North Korea gave credence to America’s rogue state thinking that associated the DPRK with the likes of Cuba, Libya, Iran and Iraq, at least in terms of sponsoring international terrorism.144 Given the deep-seated animosity between North Korea and the US, Pyongyang was bound to claim that a dark American conspiracy was behind the international adversity it experienced. The IAEA resolution of February 1993, North Korea alleged, was the work of certain Agency officials and member states ‘following the lead of the United States’ and acting on the basis of fabricated American intelligence. The US, Pyongyang believed, simply wanted to use IAEA inspections as a cover for spying on its military installations. 145 When the IAEA referred the matter to the UN Security Council due to North Korea’s refusal to heed the call for inspections, the Agency was accused of acting as America’s catspaw.146 We have already touched on counter-demonization, especially of the US, as a further deviant response to external pressure. The US, North Korean ideologues long argued, was ‘the fortress of world imperialism’ from which no good could be expected.147 By the late 1990s the demonization of old


had to give way to a less jaundiced view of the US, which the DPRK was by then keen to engage diplomatically, economically and culturally. North Korea’s legendary brinkmanship was above all practised in the field of nuclear politics. Recall Pyongyang’s dramatic announcement of its unprecedented withdrawal from the NPT in 1993. Only one day before it was due to take effect, North Korea agreed to suspend its departure. 148 Note that it was, in the words of a joint communiqué issued by Washington and Pyongyang, a decision by the DPRK ‘to suspend the effectuation of the withdrawal from the NPT as long as it considers it necessary’ 149 – not a categorical renunciation of withdrawal. During a particularly tense phase in the impasse over IAEA weapons inspections in the mid-1990s, Pyongyang warned that the imposition of UN sanctions (as a means of coercion) ‘will be regarded immediately as a declaration of war’. 150 For good measure the South Koreans were reminded that their capital was close to the border with the North and that Seoul would, in the event of war, ‘turn into a sea of fire’.151 The message was that pressuring the DPRK was too dangerous a policy to continue; far from compliance, it would lead to catastrophe for the entire Korean Peninsula. 152 Yet, shortly after this standoff, Pyongyang concluded a watershed agreement with the US to forego its nuclear development programme in exchange for foreign-supplied and financed nuclear reactors. Agreeing to this unique form of nuclear buy-out was probably the most important formal act of accommodation that North Korea had performed since the end of the Korean War. Honouring its commitments in practice was an entirely different matter. During the second nuclear standoff in 2002–3, Pyongyang again resorted to familiar forms of brinkmanship-cum-blackmail. South Korea was threatened with ‘unimaginable disaster’ over Seoul’s tough stance on the North’s nuclear programme.153 UN sanctions to force its hand, North Korea warned, would be tantamount to a declaration of war.154 The DPRK also threatened to test and export nuclear weapons if the US failed to meet Pyongyang’s conditions for resolving the present crisis (see above). America was indeed concerned that some of the buyers would be states supporting international terrorism.155 Procrastination was a tactic openly employed by North Korea during the two nuclear crises. By playing for time the North may have hoped to wear down its opponents or create discord among them (notably between the Americans, Japanese and South Koreans), and overcome divisions within the North Korean leadership over appropriate policy or build support for potentially risky decisions. A more sinister possible reason for obstructing and delaying international inspections of its nuclear facilities was to gain time for further clandestine nuclear development. We have noted instances of accommodating behaviour amid North Korea’s general preference for defiant responses to external pressures for

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political change. Another to add is Pyongyang’s willingness to start exploratory talks with the EU – the first round took place in June 2001 – on human rights. This amounts to a tacit admission by the DPRK that its domestic conduct was a matter of concern to the EU and could moreover have a material bearing on the state of relations with the Europeans.156 By the second half of the 1990s accommodation rather than confrontation was the watchword in North Korea’s foreign relations. Although Pyongyang still experienced setbacks – mostly of its own creation – in normalizing its international relations over a broad front, the DPRK was increasingly acting the part of a responsible and respectable international citizen. Early in the new century North Korea took several steps backwards by violating its nuclear non-proliferation obligations.

Conclusion By any objective standard North Korea was guilty of a whole series of international transgressions. Its behaviour both abroad and internally was clearly in breach of universal norms. Externally, the sins committed by Pyongyang in the domain of high politics – endangering global and regional peace and stability through the pursuit and proliferation of WMD – were the most serious. Its involvement in international terrorism came a close second in terms of the dangers posed to other countries, specifically South Korea. In the domestic arena North Korea’s communist dictatorship was irreconcilable with the norms enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international instruments. Even so, foreign disapproval, anger and indignation – not to mention material punishment – were remarkably restricted and restrained. The restriction applied to the number of foreign actors involved; only on the nuclear issue was North Korea confronted by something approaching universal opposition, thanks to the unrelenting efforts of the US to universalize the matter through the UN and the IAEA. In this respect the DPRK was a first-order or global deviant state. Most of North Korea’s other transgressions prompted strongly disapproving responses from only the US, Japan, South Korea and occasionally the EU. International reactions were more often than not restrained in terms of the language of disapproval and the nature of tangible action. Even the US and its allies treated the DPRK with kid gloves, not wishing to provoke a potentially dangerous and unpredictable nuclear-armed dictatorship into rash actions. To be fair, Pyongyang has mended its ways in several areas. Apart from (insincerely and temporarily) renouncing nuclear weapons, North Korea has placed a moratorium on missile tests, declared its rejection of all forms of terrorism, ended its export of communist revolution, stopped its ambitious and assertive foreign policy of global mischief-making, abandoned its anti-Americanism, and entered into a cooperative relationship with South


Korea. It has moreover shed its traditional self-isolation in favour of normal diplomatic and trade relations with an impressive range of countries. Yet its totalitarian political order and its deceitful pursuit of nuclear weapons after 1994 leave North Korea guilty of major acts of deviance.

9 Cuba

The celebrated lament of Mexican President Porfirio Diaz (1830–1915), ‘Poor Mexico, so far from God and so near to the United States!’, may as well have been coined by a Cuban leader. It is a sentiment with which generations of Cubans could have identified wholeheartedly. They have made a habit of blaming their small country’s woes on the colossus to the north. So too today, with a great many Cubans – and certainly the Castro government – still regarding the US as a singularly bad neighbour bent on subjugating the island to its will through the use of sanctions and subversion. The Americans, in turn, have never made peace with a Cuba under a communist dictatorship, moreover one pursuing an assertive foreign policy challenging US interests over a wide front. Castro’s Cuba has indeed been the very antithesis of the American client state under previous rulers. Washington has from the outset tried to portray communist Cuba as a deviant state whose behaviour internally and externally was an affront to the world community at large – and hence a state that richly deserved to be punished by others. Has the communist country really been guilty of major breaches of international codes of state conduct, or are we instead dealing with a strictly bilateral conflict in which an innocent Cuba has been suffering at the hands of a vindictive US?

From clientelism to defiance Cuba was under Spanish colonial control from the 16th century until 1898, when the territory was ceded to the USA following its victory over Spain in the Spanish–American War. Although Cuba became an independent republic in May 1902, it was in reality an American protectorate. Cuba’s Constitution contained clauses derived from the so-called Platt Amendment, American legislation that gave the US the right to intervene in Cuba’s domestic affairs. Cuba was moreover required to cede territory at Guantánamo Bay for a US naval base. In a characteristically imperialistic relationship, the US not only interfered persistently in the domestic politics 199


of Cuba, but also occupied the formally sovereign state between 1906 and 1909 and again landed troops there in 1917.1 Following the repeal of the Platt Amendment in 1934, imperialism was replaced by a hegemonic relationship between the US and Cuba. Whereas the US had previously been concerned with the details of Cuba’s internal governance, it now sought to preserve order. Cuba was required to be loyal to the US in war and diplomacy, and the bilateral flow of trade and capital had to be relatively free and unhindered.2 The US influence remained allpervasive for the next 24 years. America retained its naval base at Guantánamo Bay and also dominated the Cuban economy. In the mid1950s, for instance, the US was Cuba’s principal trading partner, accounting for over 70 per cent of the island’s exports and 64 per cent of its imports. US-owned corporations controlled roughly 40 per cent of the Cuban sugar industry and fully 90 per cent of the utilities, mines and cattle ranches.3 In its foreign relations, Cuba was manifestly subservient to American interests. All the while Cuba’s domestic political scene was characterized by turbulence as corrupt and mostly authoritarian rulers succeeded each other in power, frequently by means of coups d’état. One who twice used this route to power was a military officer named Fulgencio Batista Zaldivar. His first stint in office began in 1933 and lasted until 1944, the last four years of which he served as elected President. In 1952 Batista again seized power, quickly distinguishing himself as a harshly repressive and unpopular leader. Batista got a dose of his own medicine when he was deposed less than seven years later by Fidel Castro Ruz, whose guerrilla forces had been waging war against Batista since December 1956. Following Batista’s flight from Cuba, 33-year old Castro assumed power in January 1959. Cuban history repeated itself as one dictatorship was replaced by another. What was fundamentally different, though, is that the new rulers’ seizure of power heralded a full-blown revolution that transformed Cuban society and set a profoundly different course in foreign policy. Cuba’s historical deference to the US soon gave way to a vigorous defiance.4 Riding a wave of popular support, the incoming rulers lost no time in suspending the 1940 Constitution and replacing it by a new Fundamental Law. Legislative and executive power would henceforth be vested in the Council of Ministers led by Fidel Castro as Prime Minister and his brother Raúl as his deputy. Once its power was consolidated, the new government embarked on a radical economic programme that included agrarian reform and the nationalization of industrial and commercial enterprises. In October 1960 all US business concerns in Cuba were nationalized without compensation; other foreign enterprises (from Canada, Switzerland, Britain, France and Mexico, among other countries) received compensation when the state took over.5 Castro’s revolution was driven not merely by nationalistic passions and an urge to right previous wrongs perpetrated by the US

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and other Western powers against Cuba; the country was in the throes of a sweeping communist revolution. Cuba, Castro announced in December 1961, had formally become a communist state and he proclaimed Marxism–Leninism as the country’s model for development. It was also in 1961 that Castro made his celebrated declaration that ‘I am a Marxist–Leninist and shall remain a Marxist-Leninist until the day I die’.6 Not all Cubans were enthusiastic about Castro’s remaking of society, causing thousands of them to take refuge in especially the US. The American state of Florida became a haven for Cuban exiles and a hotbed of opposition to Castro.7 All these events had a profound impact on Cuba’s foreign relations. The US left no doubt about its intense displeasure with the neighbouring country’s revolutionary transformation. In January 1961 America severed diplomatic ties with Cuba and April saw the Bay of Pigs fiasco when a USsponsored force of anti-Castro Cuban exiles launched an abortive invasion of the island. Early the next year Cuba was suspended from the Organization of American States (OAS) and the US imposed comprehensive economic sanctions. As the tension between Washington and Havana increased, Cuba’s relations with the Soviet Union intensified. In October 1962 the two superpowers were brought to the very brink of catastrophic war over Cuba when the USSR deployed missiles, capable of carrying nuclear warheads, on the island. The Americans regarded these as offensive weapons targeted specifically at the US. The crisis ended when the Soviets – to Castro’s chagrin – backed down and removed their weapons from Cuba. America in turn undertook not to intervene in Cuba. Neither Havana nor Moscow seemed prepared to rely on Washington’s good faith, though. In a joint declaration issued in 1963, the two communist states recognized Cuba as a full member of the ‘great socialist community’. The Soviet Union furthermore gave a solid undertaking to ‘defend the liberty and independence’ of Cuba.8 Had it not been for the Soviet Union’s extensive political, economic and military support, Castro’s revolutionary rule could not have survived, least of all in its early years.9 The dependency relationship with the Soviet Union also gave Cuba sufficient resources to pursue a singularly ambitious foreign policy. This is not to suggest that Cuba acted in international relations ‘simply at the bidding of the USSR’; Havana enjoyed ‘a substantial margin of independence within the framework of Soviet hegemony’ and Castro was nobody’s puppet.10 Latin America was a focal point of Castro’s international ambitions. In the 1960s he embarked on a high-risk campaign to export revolution to several states in the region. This predictably alienated Cuba even further from the countries in the Western Hemisphere, and the OAS resorted to diplomatic and commercial sanctions in 1964.11 Eleven years later the OAS decided that members may normalize relations with Cuba, a move supported by the US. By then Washington and Havana had concluded an


anti-hijacking agreement, trade barriers had been relaxed and travel restrictions eased. ‘We see no virtue in perpetual antagonism between the United States and Cuba’, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger declared.12 These promising overtures between the two adversaries broke down in 1976 over Cuba’s participation in wars in Africa. President Gerald Ford declared ‘categorically and emphatically’ in February 1976 that ‘the United States will have nothing to do with Castro’s Cuba’.13 The very next year, however, President Jimmy Carter opted for a rapprochement. Although short-lived, Carter’s approach was more in step with that of the vast majority of countries, which preferred normal relations with Cuba as if it were a respectable member of the world community. This was manifested in Cuba’s election to the chairmanship of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1979. Three years later Cuba was elected to chair the UN General Assembly Committee on Decolonization. Its abysmal human rights record did not prevent Cuba from being elected to several terms on the UN Human Rights Commission (1976–84, 1989–2003), including a stint as vice-president.14 It was only towards the close of the 1980s that Cuba’s military involvement in Africa came to an end. Withdrawal from this latest international venture came none too soon for Castro, as his vital external support pillar was beginning to crumble. In April 1989 President Mikhail Gorbachev gave notice that Soviet aid to Cuba would be reduced and that the Soviet Union was committed to bold domestic political and economic reforms away from orthodox communism. Neither message pleased Castro, who was painfully aware of their potentially damaging impact on Cuba’s domestic and foreign policies. In September 1991 Moscow dealt Havana another blow with the announcement that the majority of Soviet military personnel (some 3,000) in Cuba would be withdrawn.15 Well before the process could be completed, the Soviet Union imploded; Cuba’s communist patron state was no more. The economic lifeline provided by Moscow – with annual aid of up to $6.7 billion provided in the final years of Soviet communism – was severed.16 By then, of course, Moscow’s communist empire in Eastern Europe had also collapsed. The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the communist brotherhood that Cuba had joined in 1972, dissolved in 1990. Having lost its sources of ideological nourishment and economic support, Castro’s communist revolution seemed in mortal danger. The Cuban economy experienced a precipitous decline in the early 1990s. Between 1989 and 1993 the economy contracted by one-third in real terms, imports fell by 75 per cent and exports by 70 per cent. When the economy hit rock bottom in 1993, the Cuban government was practically insolvent. A Special Period in Time of Peace was introduced and the government imposed severe austerity measures, including a ban on all nonessential imports.17 At first Castro rejected any notion of introducing market-related reforms to overcome the economic crisis. “There will be no market economy, or whatever one wants to call that mess that has nothing

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to do with socialism’, Castro vowed in 1991. Cubans, he added, ‘are not going to be crazy enough to believe that spontaneous mechanisms will succeed in developing our country’.18 He was equally dismissive of following the former communist countries of Eastern Europe in adopting political pluralism. On the contrary, internal repression seemed to intensify in proportion to the gravity of the economic situation. The 1992 amendments to the Constitution of 1976 confirmed that Cubans’ freedoms and civil rights could not be exercised ‘contrary to the existence and goals of the socialist State, or contrary to the Cuban people’s decision to construct socialism and communism’. The Communist Party of Cuba remained ‘the superior leading force of the society and state’, a reaffirmation of its elevated and unchallenged status.19 Cuba’s economic plight was in no way relieved by the tightening of US economic sanctions from 1992 onwards. Under an executive order issued by President George Bush in April 1992, ships engaged in trade with Cuba were barred from American ports. The Cuban Democracy Act (the so-called Torricelli Law) of October made it illegal for foreign subsidiaries of US companies to trade with Cuba.20 In July 1993 Castro, despite his earlier intransigence, did the previously unthinkable by lifting a 30-year ban on Cuban citizens possessing foreign currency (effectively the US dollar) in an effort to draw the large amounts of such money circulating on the black market into the formal economy. Limited private enterprise in over 100 occupations was permitted in September, followed by agricultural reforms that transformed collectivized state farms into producer cooperatives. Special efforts were made to attract foreign capital, urgently needed to generate close to one million jobs for under- or unemployed Cubans and to overhaul obsolete productive systems. Diversification to reduce Cuba’s traditional dependence on the often unreliable sugar sector saw a marked expansion in tourism, making it the leading sector in terms of growth. These were major departures from the rigid centrally planned economy brought about by Castro’s communist revolution.21 Inevitably, economic transformation had some adverse effects. One was the emergence of apartheid tourism, which meant that dollar-bearing foreign tourists enjoyed luxury treatment not available to Cubans locked into the peso economy. More seriously, a new privileged class – those with access to dollars, such as workers in the tourist sector – emerged in the previously egalitarian society. The Cuban economy in general began to acquire an apartheid character, with a small, widely resented group of haves in a society of have-nots.22 The mixture of austerity and reform produced some results, though, with an economic recovery beginning in 1994. Economic growth reached 2.5 per cent in 1995, 7.8 per cent in 1996 and 4 per cent in 1997. Even so, the 1997 GDP remained 23 per cent below its 1990 level.23


Within months of introducing these reforms, the government had to contend with the most serious domestic challenge to its authority since the revolution. Thousands of Cubans rioted in Havana, venting their anger over the dire economic conditions.24 Perhaps the rioters were emboldened by a sense that the Castro government was in retreat and hence vulnerable to popular pressure. The upheaval coincided with renewed attempts by thousands of Cubans to flee the country for the US – another unmistakable symptom of serious social malaise in the workers’ paradise built by Castro. With the flood of Cubans trying to reach the US by sea assuming crisis proportions, the two countries began a series of talks in August 1994 to seek a solution. In terms of an immigration accord signed in May 1995, the US would grant visas to most of the 20,000 Cuban refugees detained at Guantánamo. This directly negotiated agreement stood in sharp contrast to the general thrust of US–Cuban relations. Earlier that year the HelmsBurton bill, aimed at tightening the US embargo against Cuba, was introduced in the US Congress. Although President Bill Clinton initially opposed certain aspects in the draft legislation, he reversed his position and signed the controversial measure into law in March 1996 as the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act. This move on Clinton’s part was precipitated by the popular outrage in America over the Cuban Air Force’s shooting down of two US light civilian aircraft the previous month. The four crew members, belonging to the Cuban émigré group Brothers to the Rescue, died in the incident. The Cubans insisted that the unarmed aircraft had violated their airspace, but an investigation by the International Civil Aviation Organization confirmed American claims that the planes had been destroyed over international waters.25 While Cuba made little headway in its relations with the US after Havana’s alliance with the Soviet Union ended, it could boast considerable success in normalizing its international relations over a wide front. In January 1990 Cuba began serving a two-year term as an elected (nonpermanent) member of the UN Security Council – the first time since the Cuban revolution. In 1995 Cuba became a founder member of the Association of Caribbean States. Three years later Pope John Paul II made the first-ever papal visit to the island. Later that year Cuba was admitted to the Latin American Integration Association as its twelfth full member, having enjoyed observer status since 1986. 26 The EU’s opening of an official mission in Havana in March 2003 and Cuba’s likely accession to the Cotonou Agreement between the EU and over 70 African, Caribbean and Pacific developing states, bear further witness to Cuba’s sound international standing. 27 The same can be said of its re-election to the UN Human Rights Commission in 2003. 28 Cuba could also derive great satisfaction from mounting foreign opposition to American sanctions against the island. In November 1992 the UN General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution demanding the lifting of the trade ban. The

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resolution was a forerunner to an annual Assembly challenge to the US embargo. Cuba could record these advances in its foreign relations without making any domestic political concessions to the new era of democracy and human rights in the world at large. The essentials of the communist dictatorship under Castro, entrenched under the Soviet-style Constitution of 1976 (the first since the revolution), remained unaffected by the sea change in world politics. Consider, for example, the general election of January 2003 in which the customary nearly 100 per cent of the Cuban electorate voted for the 609 government-approved candidates who ran uncontested for parliament. Far from portending any change of direction, the election proved that ‘(w)e are perfecting our revolutionary and socialist democracy’, Castro boasted. As if to remove any doubts about Castro’s version of democracy, a wave of a mass arrests of political dissidents – the largest crackdown in a decade – occurred in March. Seventy-five of them were sentenced to jail terms ranging from 6 to 28 years.29

Naming the deviants As Cuba’s unchallenged leader ever since the communist revolution, Castro has understandably been singled out by foreign critics as the figure responsible for his country’s many transgressions at home and abroad. Given the deep hostility between the two sides, it is only natural that mutual demonization has from the outset characterized relations between the US and communist Cuba. President Dwight Eisenhower set the scene by remarking that ‘Castro begins to look like a madman’.30 For Robert Kennedy Castro was ‘that son-of-a-bitch with the beard’.31 In Washington the Cuban leadership was portrayed as ‘a gang of treacherous communists who had enslaved the Cuban population’. On this view, the Castro government had no domestic legitimacy.32 President Gerald Ford described Cuba’s conduct abroad as that of ‘an international outlaw’.33 President Ronald Reagan, known for his passionate dislike of the Cuban leader, proclaimed that ‘Fidel Castro is behind much of the trouble in Central America’. Castro’s ‘consuming hatred of America’ and his ideological commitment to ‘Communist tyranny’, Reagan continued, have ‘impoverished his country and oppressed its people’.34 In like vein President George W Bush branded Castro a ‘tyrant’, a ‘dictator’ and ‘a relic from another era who has turned his beautiful island into a prison’.35 Pejorative labels were even enshrined in law, as in the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act’s reference to the ‘totalitarian Castro (or Cuban) regime’. Regardless of other appellations, Castro’s record as the world’s longest-serving dictator – entering his 44th year in power in 2003 – is in itself a dubious distinction in the world at large.


Cuba’s transgressions During much of the Cold War, communist Cuba’s first and cardinal sin in the eyes of the US was that it constituted a threat to America’s own security. This derived in part from the island’s strategic location: it commanded the Florida Strait, the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico and the sea lanes to Central and South America, making Cuba the ‘watchdog of the Caribbean’.36 Another element of the threat posed by Cuba flowed from its close ties with the USSR which, President Eisenhower declared in July 1960, revealed ‘the clear intention to establish Cuba in a role serving Soviet purposes in this hemisphere’.37 In the 1960 presidential election campaign, John F. Kennedy portrayed Cuba as ‘a new satellite’ established by the Russians close to America’s shores.38 Cuba was thus defined as an integral part of the Cold War threat of Soviet interference in the Western Hemisphere. If the Americans required any confirmation of this assessment, the missile crisis of October 1962 provided it in abundance. Moscow’s attempts to deploy nuclear-capable missiles in Cuba highlighted ‘the growing intervention of the international Communist movement in this hemisphere’, Secretary of State Dean Rusk asserted.39 More than a decade later Assistant Defence Secretary Warren Nutter expressed the still prevalent view that Cuba presented ‘a potential double threat’ to US and Caribbean security: the physical threat to the US from strategic weapons Cuba might acquire, and Castro’s support for subversion and insurgency throughout the region.40 Whether Castro’s Cuba presented a credible security threat to the US was a matter of considerable controversy in America. The two were after all hugely unequal in terms of all components of power. Some observers likened it to a contest between David and Goliath, but for Thomas the image that sprang to mind was rather ‘that of Walt Disney’s elephant driven hysterical by a mouse’.41 Following the demise of the Soviet Union and its East European empire, it seemed rather implausible that a weak and vulnerable Cuba could hold a real threat to the security of any state of consequence in the Americas, least of all to the world’s sole superpower. True, the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act declared that for the past 36 years ‘the Cuban Government has posed and continues to pose a national security threat to the United States’. It was a mixed bag of menaces, ranging from terrorism and the operation of a nuclear facility in Cuba, to the mass migration of Cubans to the US and the absence of democracy and fundamental human rights in Cuba. If the 1996 Act is to be believed, these features presented a threat to more than US security. It was the sense of the US Congress, according to section 101, that ‘the acts of the Castro government, including its massive, systematic, and extraordinary violations of human rights, are a threat to international peace’. Another threat to world peace and security, according to the legislation, emanated

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from the Castro government ‘engaging in acts of armed subversion and terrorism such as the training and supplying of groups dedicated to international violence’. Most of these assertions enjoyed little meaningful international support at the time. Deviance was once again in the eye of the beholder.42 An action widely regarded as deviant, was Cuba’s export of revolution. This second contravention was a violation of the settled norm of noninterference. Castro’s revolutionary messianism was eloquently expressed in the celebrated Second Declaration of Havana in 1962. Class oppression, economic exploitation and oligarchical domination by repressive proAmerican governments, Castro maintained, made revolution inevitable in Latin America. Yet comrades could not merely ‘sit in the doorways of their houses waiting for the corpse of imperialism to pass by’; instead, ‘the duty of every revolutionary is to make the revolution’. He accordingly called for armed revolution on a continental scale to overthrow governments that were beholden to the US and repressed the peasantry, working class and radical intelligentsia of their countries.43 Castro in 1980 reaffirmed his commitment to revolution in the region. The lesson of events in several Latin American states was clear: ‘That there is only one path: revolution. That there is only one way: revolutionary armed struggle!’44 On a grander plane, Castro believed that revolution in one country, in this case Cuba, was impossible because the ‘imperialist enemy’ was actually a world system that had to be confronted with global struggle. Cuban revolutionaries therefore had a duty to make the world safe for revolution – a challenge to the prevailing world order that gave Cuba’s foreign policy a strong revisionist orientation.45 By promoting revolution abroad, Cuba’s communist rulers hoped to enhance their country’s security (which, for them, was synonymous with safeguarding the revolution), increase its international influence, and reaffirm its domestic political values.46 In practice the export of Cuba’s revolution (also styled proletarian internationalism) proceeded at two levels: both revolutionary Marxist-Leninist governments in the Third World and leftist revolutionary movements (especially those opposed to the US) were supported by Cuba in a variety of ways.47 In the 1960s Cuba promoted revolution largely but not exclusively in Latin America through its support for rural guerrilla movements. Perhaps the best-known example was Bolivia, where Ernesto (Ché) Guevara, the Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary, met an ignominious death in 1967. But the most serious cases of Cuba’s revolutionary pursuits in Latin America were Guatemala, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela. In the latter instance Cuban-backed revolutionaries tried to overthrow two democratically elected governments in the 1960s. In the 1970s Brazil, Uruguay and Chile became the focal points of Cuban support for urban terrorism in Latin America. A classified White House report of 1981 entitled Cuba’s


Covert Activities in Latin America, went so far as to accuse Havana of promoting subversion and terrorism in virtually every Latin American country. While this may be an overstatement, Havana did back armed revolutionaries in Chile, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in the 1980s.48 Although Havana had in the 1960s provided military assistance to the Algerian National Liberation Front, trained revolutionary leaders in Zanzibar, supported an anti-government movement in Morocco, and cooperated with rebel forces in the Congo, it was in the following decade that the Cubans targeted Africa for their boldest foreign adventures. In 1975–76 36,000 Cuban troops were deployed in Angola and half that number in Ethiopia in 1977–78 to support the war efforts of the two Marxist governments. The US and other Western governments were alarmed by these Soviet-backed military operations. The two African wars could hardly be related to the vital national interests of a small Caribbean country of some 11 million people.49 Except for the triumph of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1979, Havana had precious little to show for all its expensive and risky revolutionary endeavours abroad. The demise of Sandinista rule in the late 1980s marked the end of Cuba’s export of revolution.50 By the mid-1990s, two Canadian authors argued, it had become a ‘self-evident truth’ that ‘Havana has shown every desire to leave behind its policies of exporting revolution’. Far from engaging in costly foreign adventures, Cuba’s rulers were battling to maintain in the harsh post-Soviet world what they considered the domestic gains of their communist revolution.51 Indeed, in January 1992 Castro had declared that Cuba would no longer support revolutionary movements abroad but instead concentrate national resources on solving the country’s domestic problems.52 Cuba’s third transgression, support for terrorism abroad, went hand in hand with the export of revolution; terrorism was often a preferred means of promoting revolution elsewhere. In the 1960s, Cuban-sponsored insurgencies in Latin America were predominantly rural-based rather than urban in nature. The following decade the proportion was reversed, not least due to the failure of rural insurgencies. Cuban advisers shared their expertise in urban terrorism with thousands of revolutionaries from, among other countries, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Uruguay, as well as from West Germany, Spain, Palestine, Yemen and Namibia.53 The end of Cuba’s revolutionary expeditions abroad in the 1980s probably also brought to a halt most if not all its support for terrorism beyond its borders. Yet, as we recorded above, the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996 described Cuba’s acts of terrorism and armed subversion as threats to international peace and security. In the 2002 edition of Patterns of Global Terrorism, the US State Department listed Cuba as one of seven state sponsors of terrorism

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(together with Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria and Sudan). Although Havana had signed all 12 UN counter-terrorism conventions as well as the 2001 Ibero-American declaration on terrorism, it was accused in the report of remaining opposed to and actively critical of the US-led war on global terrorism, and continuing to host terrorists of the Basque ETA and Colombia’s FARC and ELN groups.54 Few other states of consequence seemed to share these American concerns. The lack of democracy and the accompanying abuse of human rights constituted Cuba’s fourth sin. The political trials of the early revolutionary period, marked by rough justice and numerous executions, set the scene for Castro’s brutal personal dictatorship. In the 1986 World Human Rights Guide, Cuba received a ‘poor’ rating of 24 per cent on the basis of 40 questions derived from international human rights instruments. (The Soviet Union scored 20 per cent and the US 90 per cent.55) Ten years later, in the Freedom House annual survey of civil liberties and human rights, Cuba featured among the four worst-ranked nations out of 191 (keeping company with Iraq, North Korea and Sudan).56 Amnesty International, in its latest report, recorded that in 2002 the Cuban authorities had continued using ‘harsh measures to stifle potential internal dissent’ and that statutory restrictions on freedom of expression, association and assembly remained in effect.57 The same findings appeared in Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2003.58 In this context del Aguila had good reason to categorize the Castro regime as totalitarian because Cuban communism ‘does not allow challenges to the Communist Party’s hegemony, to the official ideology, to the economic system, or to the structure of power’.59 Although it had from the outset been critical of the undemocratic nature of Castro’s rule, the US initially treated this act of deviance as being of secondary importance; the more serious transgressions were the threat to US security and the export of revolution. Towards the end of the Cold War, Cuba’s lack of democracy and consequent abuse of human rights moved to the top of Washington’s inventory of Havana’s misdemeanours. Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, President George Bush senior portrayed Castro as ‘the lone holdout of a Marxist totalitarianism that has failed all around the world’. In the wake of the dissolution of the USSR, Bush charged that ‘Castro’s vision of the future is to cling to a failed past’.60 The Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 reflected the normative concerns of an emerging ‘New World Order’, rather than the earlier preoccupation with matters of security and revolution. Revitalizing the 32-year American embargo against Cuba, the Act set out to ‘promote a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba through the application of appropriate pressures on the Cuban Government and support for the Cuban people’.61 The economic reforms introduced in Cuba in the early 1990s raises the question of whether economic liberalization could be the forerunner of political liberalization. With Castro at the helm, Cuba was not heading


towards a liberal democratic state; instead, he steered the country towards ‘market-Leninism’. This meant that limited market reforms were permitted, while the Communist Party retained its vanguard status and monopoly on power.62 This kind of assessment was reflected in the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, which made great play of Cuba’s sins in the area of democracy and human rights. The ‘Cuban regime’ was portrayed as ‘the only completely nondemocratic government in the Western Hemisphere’, one that repressed the Cuban people inter alia through the continuing violation of their fundamental human rights and a ban on free and fair democratic elections. Since Castro had no intention of tolerating the democratization of Cuban society, the Cuban people ‘deserve to be assisted in a decisive manner to end the tyranny that has oppressed them for 36 years’. The international community’s ongoing failure to do so constituted nothing less than ‘ethically improper conduct’. The purpose of the Act was accordingly to assist the Cuban people ‘in regaining their freedom and prosperity, as well as in joining the community of democratic countries that are flourishing in the Western Hemisphere’. The intensification of sanctions under the Act was considered an appropriate means to this end.63 Canada, an outspoken champion of engaging instead of isolating Cuba, voiced its serious concerns about Havana’s human rights performance, especially in the area of civil and political rights’. That performance, the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Canadian Senate reported in 1995, ‘falls far short of internationally acceptable standards’.64 Canada has lodged repeated formal protests at the Cuban government’s abuse of human rights and has also cosponsored motions to this effect in the UN Human Rights Commission.65 Among inter-governmental bodies, the UN Human Rights Commission was in the 1990s probably the most active in highlighting – albeit in measured terms – the deficiencies in the human rights situation in Cuba. In the ninth such resolution adopted since 1991, the Commission in April 2001 voiced concern about ongoing human rights violations in Cuba. Reference was made to the repression of members of the political opposition and the detention of people for peacefully expressing their political, religious and social views. The resolution went on to call on the Cuban government to honour the commitment to democracy, human rights and fundamental liberties Castro had made by signing the Viña del Mar Declaration at the 1996 Ibero-American Summit. These obligations were reaffirmed at the 1999 Ibero-American Summit held in Havana, and at the EU–Latin America Summit (expressed in the Rio Declaration of 1999).66 Despite Cuba’s exclusion from the OAS since 1962, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights produced periodic reports over the next decades painting a grim picture of the abuse of civil and political rights by the country’s communist rulers. 67

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Cuba’s fifth act of deviance existed in the eyes of the Americans only, namely that the communist state was virulently anti-American. The Cubans for their part of course attributed the reverse sin to the Americans. History and geography, Thomas explained, ‘have locked Cuba and the US into a relationship of reciprocal paranoia in which each side almost automatically makes a worst case assessment of the other’s actions and motives’.68 ‘Yankeephobia’ was used to arouse deep-seated nationalistic passions among Cubans and rally them behind Castro. The government never tired of warning Cubans that the collapse of communism would cause the hated Yankees to recolonize Cuba. Castro’s vow that ‘the Yankee boot will never step on Cuban soil again’,69 was thus tantamount to a pledge to uphold the communist system come what may. The Cuban government has also conveniently blamed its own failings in economic and social policy on a perceived US threat. In like vein ‘counter-revolutionary’ behaviour (read: dissent) was attributed to American incitement, and the establishment of a large new Cuban militia in the early 1980s was justified in terms of a mounting US threat against the communist state.70 Closely related to Cuba’s anti-American sentiments was a lack of deference to the US. This sixth sin also existed in US perceptions only. Generations of American leaders have been exasperated by the Cubans’ failure to show the respectful appreciation for all the sacrifices the Americans had supposedly made on their behalf. In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt complained: ‘I am so angry with that infernal little Cuban republic. … All that we wanted from them was that they should behave themselves and be prosperous and happy so that we should not have to interfere. And now, lo and behold … we have no alternative save to intervene.’71 Once Castro had seized power, the infernal little republic’s behaviour took a drastic turn for the worse in American eyes. For the US it was a ‘standing affront’ and a betrayal of American values that a defiant Marxist–Leninist regime could survive barely 90 miles off the Florida coast, pursue a belligerently anti-imperialist policy challenging American interests abroad, and ally itself with the Soviet Union.72 The presence of communism in Cuba, Brzezinski wrote in 1962, ‘forces the United States to back down from a traditionally proclaimed position and imposes upon it a humiliation which is bound to have international implications’.73 By displaying machismo-leninismo Castro ensured that Cuba from the outset not merely confronted US leadership in the region, but threatened its standing as a superpower.74 Apart from defeating an invasion by a brigade of exiles at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and thwarting several subsequent US attempts to subvert Castro’s rule, the Cubans also managed to survive the American economic squeeze. When the Ford administration issued the by now customary threats against Cuba over untoward behaviour, Castro retorted that ‘they are not the first Yankee rulers who have used, to no avail, these intimidating tactics against


our homeland’. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon had all tried to ‘intimidate’, but without exception underestimated the strength of the Cuban revolution.75 By the end of the 1990s Castro could have added Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush the elder and Clinton to his list. As if to add insult to (American) injury, Cuba conducted a foreign policy of seemingly boundless ambition. Cuban troops were sent to fight in African wars, revolutionary movements in Latin America received material support from Cuba, and the country maintained an extensive foreign aid programme in such areas as the economy, health, education and sports.76 In 1980, Castro revealed, 50,000 Cubans were stationed abroad in 35 countries.77 The spectacle of a little Cuba punching far above its weight in world affairs and moreover doing so in their own backyard, has long exasperated the Americans. ‘It is time that one overcomes the ridiculous myth of the invincible Cubans’, Kissinger declared in 1978. ‘Who ever heard of Cubans conducting a global foreign policy?’78 But that is exactly what the Cubans did for some three decades. In Domínguez’s celebrated observation, ‘Cuba is a small country, but it has the foreign policy of a big power’.79 In the 1990s all this changed: faced with domestic hardship, the loss of a superpower patron and its resources, and without the legitimacy of a widely pursued communist ideology, Cuba no longer had the capability to engage in international activism (or ‘internationalism’). Instead, Cuba was reduced to a marginal actor on the world stage.80 A seventh alleged contravention was Cuban involvement in the international drug trade. Among the charges emanating from US sources were that Castro had used drug money to finance his insurgency in the 1950s, that he later forged an alliance with ‘narco-guerrillas’ in several Latin American states, and also had a long association with Mexican drug dealers. By the mid-1970s drug-running is said to have become a pillar of Cuba’s economy by providing vitally needed US dollars – also to help finance the export of revolution. In 1982 a federal grand jury in Florida accused several senior officials of the Cuban Communist Party of expediting the delivery of drugs from Colombia to the US. The most dramatic confirmation of a high-level Cuban connection in the international narcotics business came from the island itself in June 1989. A number of senior military officers were courtmartialed for aiding Colombian drug traffickers. The accused had allowed members of the Medellín drug cartel, transporting drugs from Colombia to the US, to refuel at Cuban airstrips in exchange for bribes. General Arnaldo Ochoa Sánchez, the former Cuban military commander in Angola, and three other officers were found guilty and executed. Severe prison sentences were imposed on another 14 senior officials for their involvement. In 1990 grand juries in Florida issued indictments against four high-ranking Cuban officials for alleged drug trafficking.81 The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996 listed the Cuban government’s engagement ‘in the illegal international narcotics trade’ as one of its many punishable trans-

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gressions. The State Department’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report released in March 2003 did not support such claims. Cuba did not appear to be a significant producer of drugs or precursor chemicals, the report noted, nor did the US have direct evidence of narcotics-related corruption among senior Cuban officials.82 The final transgression attributed to Cuba also originated in the US and only the Americans regarded it as a serious and actionable form of deviant behaviour: outstanding claims for property seized from US citizens and Cuban-Americans. In 1960 vast tracts of arable land owned by foreigners, especially US companies, were expropriated by the Cuban government (under the Agrarian Reform Law of 1959) and distributed to Cuban small farmers. Washington from the outset rejected Cuba’s compensation formula. Also in 1960 Cuba nationalized the Esso, Texaco and Shell refineries on the island, followed by the expropriation of all remaining US holdings. These seizures represent the largest confiscation without compensation by a foreign government in the history of the US. Registered claims of US citizens and corporations totaled $1.8 billion at the time; by 1993 that amounted to over $5.2 billion (at 6% interest p.a.).83 The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, which provided for the strengthening of international sanctions against Cuba, dealt extensively with the issue of confiscated US property there.

Foreign demands and objectives Being Cuba’s main accuser of wrongdoing, it follows that the US was the principal foreign source of prescriptions regarding appropriate behaviour by Havana. Washington was, however, not alone in demanding that Cuba should mend its ways. A once prominent American objective that is no longer relevant, is breaking Cuba’s ties with the USSR. This was to be achieved by increasing the cost of the alliance through a strict economic embargo against the island.84 The close relationship between Moscow and Havana ended in a far more dramatic fashion than the US could ever have devised: the Soviet Union dissolved and communism collapsed in its patron state. The symbolic or demonstrative purposes that the Americans believed their embargo would serve, have lost their currency. Washington previously wanted to demonstrate to the American public, the Castro government and the Cuban people, other countries of the Western Hemisphere and even the world at large, that the US was fundamentally opposed to Castro’s communist dictatorship, that Castro did not serve Cuba’s interests and that communism had no place in the region. With the passage of time this factor no longer seemed compelling; the US has made its point to all and sundry, but Castro still rules Cuba and there is negligible international support for American sanctions.85


Cuba’s mischief-making abroad has long been in the sights of sanctions advocates. In 1977, for instance, President Carter made a cessation of Cuban interference in the Western Hemisphere a condition for the normalization of relations with the US. President Reagan made similar demands.86 When US Assistant Secretary of State Bernard Aronson in 1990 enunciated conditions for improving relations with Cuba, one was that Havana ‘stops subverting its neighbors’.87 The following year Washington defended the trade ban against Cuba as a means of limiting ‘the flow of hard currency’ that Havana could use to support insurgency in El Salvador.88 Sanctions thus served the US objective of containing the spread of the Cuban revolution. Cubans’ lack of freedom was another favourite target area for foreign critics. Respect for human rights within Cuba was one of the conditions President Carter mentioned in 1977 for improving US–Cuban relations.89 Two of the three conditions Assistant Secretary of State Aronson listed in 1990 for a change in US policy towards Cuba, fell in the same category: Cuba should hold ‘fully free and fair elections under international supervision’, and respect human rights.90 The 1992 Cuban Democracy Act stipulated that the American embargo would be lifted once Cuba has held democratic elections, respects human rights and moves towards a market economy. By tightening the embargo in the meantime, supporters of the Act hoped to ‘promote a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba’.91 In 1994 President Clinton expressed his support for maintaining the embargo against Cuba ‘until there is some real movement toward freedom and democracy’.92 Such movement has, for Washington, long been synonymous with Castro’s departure from office. Following the Bay of Pigs débâcle, President Kennedy sought methods other than reliance on direct American force to oust Castro. Sanctions-induced economic hardship, so the theory went, would foment enough internal dissent to drive Castro from power. Since 1985 Radio Martí, a US-funded radio station beamed at Cuba, has been a voluble advocate of the need to have the Castro government removed.93 Secretary of State Warren Christopher seemed to think along these lines too when he declared in 1993 that retaining the embargo against Cuba was warranted by the fact that ‘Castro is a relic of the past’.94 That same year Vice-President Al Gore stated that ‘our principal policy for hastening the departure of Castro is to convince the people of Cuba that his leadership is an abject failure’.95 Senator Jesse Helms, co-author of the 1996 HelmsBurton Act, was reportedly far more forthright: ‘Whether Castro leaves Cuba in a vertical position or a horizontal position is up to him and the Cuban people. But he must and will leave Cuba’.96 The most elaborate statement of US demands for political change in Cuba was contained in the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act. The US economic embargo could be suspended and extensive

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American aid provided to Cuba once the country has established a ‘transition government’. Such a government had to meet a set of specific criteria, including the legalization of all political activity; the release of all political prisoners; the dissolution of the Department of State Security; public commitments to organizing a free and fair multiparty election under international supervision for a new government within 18 months after a transition government had assumed power; demonstrable progress in establishing an independent judiciary, respect for internationally recognized human rights and basic freedoms; acceptance of independent trade unions, and the exclusion of Fidel and Raúl Castro from a transition government. It was to be left to the US President to determine whether such a government met these requirements and became eligible for the rewards mentioned. George W Bush’s demands were less elaborate but still – for Cuba – very radical: full normalization of bilateral relations, which would include diplomatic recognition, open trade and a robust aid programme, ‘will only be possible when Cuba has a new government that is fully democratic, when the rule of law is respected, and when the human rights of all Cubans are fully protected’, the President insisted.97 The perceived need to retaliate against the Castro government’s nationalization of American property had been an original justification for the US embargo against Cuba.98 The issue of claims by US nationals to confiscated property in Cuba also featured prominently in the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act. One of the purposes of the Act was to ‘protect United States nationals against confiscatory takings and the wrongful trafficking in property confiscated by the Castro regime’. Especially since the end of the Cold War, others have joined the Americans in calling for political change in Cuba. Among them have been leaders in the neighbourhood. Cuba should ‘take a democratic path and respect human and democratic rights’, Mexico’s Foreign Minister suggested, while his Costa Rican counterpart wanted to see ‘a democratic Cuba’ return to the OAS. President Carlos Menem of Argentina repeatedly made similar calls, as did scores of Latin American legislators and other prominent political and cultural leaders from the region.99 First among Canada’s objectives was ‘(s)upport for positive, peaceful change in Cuba, both political and economic, in order that Cuba can become a more pluralistic society’.100 The UN General Assembly repeatedly (as in resolution 48/142 of 20 December 1993) exhorted the Cuban government to stop persecuting and punishing citizens for reasons related to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, allow the legalization of independent groups, and guarantee impartial trials, among other matters.101 The UN Commission on Human Rights had explicit ideas on what Havana should do to improve the fate of its people. Consider the inventory contained in a Commission resolution adopted in April 2000: the Cuban government was called upon to ‘ensure


respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and to provide the appropriate framework to guarantee the rule of law through democratic institutions and the independence of the judicial system’; to honour the commitments to democracy and human rights it had made at the IberoAmerican summit in Chile in 1996 and at subsequent international meetings; to accede to human rights instruments to which it was not yet a party, especially the two international covenants of 1966; and to begin a dialogue with the domestic political opposition.102 At a meeting of the European Council in Dublin in December 1996, the EU resolved that it wished to see ‘progress towards a peaceful transition to pluralist democracy’ as well as economic policies designed to bring about a sustainable recovery in Cuba.103 This common position on Cuba has since been reaffirmed by the EU, most recently in March 2003 when a Presidential Declaration added that the violation of fundamental civil and political rights will continue to influence the Union’s relations with Cuba.104 In sum, foreign objectives and demands covered the full spectrum from policy changes in Cuba through a change of government to thorough-going regime change in terms of norms, values and authority structures. The American preference has clearly been for the latter, which would mean transforming Cuba into a (post-Castro) Western-style market democracy.

Foreign reactions to Cuba’s deviance Communist Cuba’s many transgressions have over the decades met with considerable verbal censure from foreign actors. The US, in the forefront of the critics, condemned Castro’s revolutionary government for such actions as the confiscation of American property on the island, the export of revolution and involvement in distant wars, and the abuse of human rights. Latin American states, via the OAS, were also early critics of the Castro government’s behaviour at home and abroad. In the 1990s, as a new wave of democratization swept across the world in the wake of the retreat of communism in Eastern Europe, foreign condemnation of Cuba intensified. In the first half of the decade, the UN Commission on Human Rights took strong issue with Havana over its human rights record. According to a resolution adopted in March 1994, for instance, the Commission was ‘deeply concerned’ about arbitrary arrests, beatings, imprisonment, harassment and threats against human rights defenders in Cuba; ‘profoundly concerned’ about Cuba’s ongoing violations of fundamental human rights and freedoms enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and ‘regrets profoundly’ the numerous unanswered reports of human rights violations in the country. The resolution was passed by 24 votes to 9, with 20 abstentions.105 In April 1998 the Commission by 19 votes to 16 (with

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18 abstentions) for the first time rejected the by then customary USsponsored resolution condemning Cuba for human rights violations.106 Over the next four years the Commission again approved – by very slim margins – resolutions mildly critical of Cuba’s human rights situation. Then, in April 2003, the Human Rights Commission voted down a proposal to criticize the recent crackdown on dissidents in Cuba. Instead, the Commission did no more than urge Havana to accept a visit by a UN human rights investigator – something Cuba rejected forthwith.107 The mood on the 53-nation body was running strongly in Cuba’s favour. Another multilateral body that took issue with Cuba’s domestic order was the UN Committee against Torture, which on occasion expressed concern over the failure of the Cuban authorities to establish a specific crime of torture as required by the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The Committee was also worried about ‘certain nebulous offences’, such as disrespect, defamation, disobedience, resistance, and enemy propaganda, because of the scope they provided for ‘misuse and abuse’.108 Other UN agencies that censured Cuba’s internal policies were the International Labour Organization’s Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations, and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions.109 The EU was usually guarded in its disapproval of Havana’s normviolating conduct at home and abroad. One exception was the EU’s strong condemnation of Cuba in February 1996 for shooting down – evidently over international waters – two unarmed civilian aircraft flying towards Cuba from the US. The Europeans declared that ‘there can be no excuse for not respecting international law and human rights norms’.110 Another more recent exception was the EU Presidency’s forthright condemnation of the arrest of scores of Cuban dissidents in early 2003, which violated the principle of freedom of speech.111 More typical were statements of the European Council in both June and December 1997 that there had been ‘no substantive change in Cuba’s political and economic situation’ in the preceding months. Far from issuing a forceful denunciation, not to mention imposing or even threatening punitive measures, the Europeans meekly reaffirmed their commitment to encourage peaceful political change in Cuba through dialogue and cooperation with Havana.112 The US was the first state to resort to punitive action, starting with a ban on the sale of American helicopters (for agricultural use) in March 1960, followed in June by a cancellation of present and future US sugar purchases, and the prohibition of all American exports to Cuba save food and medical supplies. The so-called US quarantine of Cuba had begun. In 1961 Washington severed diplomatic relations with Havana, then barred travel by US citizens to Cuba. A total US trade ban against Cuba went into effect in February 1962. Sanctions legislation in 1963 restricted shipping and


banned subsidiaries of US corporations from trading with Cuba, features that gave the embargo an extra-territorial character.113 In January 1962 the OAS resolved that adherence to the Marxist-Leninist ideology was ‘incompatible with the principles and objectives’ of the interAmerican system and that Cuba had ‘voluntarily’ placed itself outside the OAS framework.114 Trade in military goods with Cuba was also terminated. Two years later OAS member states formally excluded Cuba from the organization’s activities and decided to suspend their diplomatic and trade relations with the communist country. These moves were not simply a product of American persuasion or coercion. The Latin American states also wanted to voice their anger over Havana’s support for rebel groups seeking to overthrow their governments. (None too pleased, Havana branded the OAS as Washington’s ‘Ministry of Colonies’.) Apart from Latin American countries, Western states also joined the embargo, making the 1960s the period of the most comprehensive international compliance with the USinstigated sanctions against Cuba.115 During the 1960s and early 1970s the US systematically strengthened its embargo until it became ‘virtually absolute’. In the latter half of the 1970s, however, attempts at reconciliation between the US and Cuba prompted the suspension of some restrictive measures. In 1975 Washington supported the termination of the OAS trade embargo and also allowed trade between subsidiaries of US corporations in third countries and Cuba. The Carter administration in 1977 lifted certain travel restrictions, permitting US tourists to visit the island for the first time since the revolution. During the Reagan and Bush presidencies (1980–92) the embargo was tightened once again, culminating in the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992. The Act moreover tried to expand the embargo by calling for sanctions against foreign subsidiaries of US companies trading with Cuba and banning ships trading with Cuba from docking in American ports for six months. Through these mechanisms foreign subsidiaries and shipping companies were subjected to US policy vis-à-vis Cuba – an extra-territorial dimension of the legislation to which scores of third countries ranging from Britain to Mexico took strong exception.116 The next turn of the US sanctions screw followed in 1996 with the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act. It was the severest tightening of the embargo in its 36-year history. Under the legislation with its extraterritorial reach, Russia could be penalized for its economic ties with Cuba, foreign companies could be punished for ‘trafficking’ in Cuban properties previously confiscated from US owners, and foreign nationals considered to be involved in such trafficking could be denied US visas. As with the Cuban Democracy Act, several other countries and also the European Union objected vehemently to the extra-territorial aspects of the 1996 law.117 By opposing the American legislation, ‘Europe is challenging one country’s presumed right to impose its foreign policy on others by using the threat of

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trade sanctions’, Sir Leon Brittan, Vice-President of the European Commission, explained in 1996.118 The US has never received UN endorsement for its ongoing sanctions against Cuba. On the contrary, international opposition to punitive measures grew steadily in the 1990s. In 1992, 59 member states supported the first General Assembly resolution calling for an end to the sanctions, 3 opposed the resolution (hence supporting the US position) and 71 abstained. In each successive year the number of supporters of what became an annual Assembly resolution increased, the number of states abstaining declined, and those in favour of continued US sanctions ranged between 2 and 4. In November 2002, the 11th consecutive year that the anti-sanctions resolution was tabled in the General Assembly, 173 countries approved, four abstained, and only Israel and the Marshall Islands sided with the US. All the member states of the EU voted in favour of lifting the US restrictions against Cuba.119 Far from approving the ostracism of Cuba, the world body left the US isolated. The American sanctions have undoubtedly exacted a high economic cost of Cuba, but has patently failed to achieve its political objectives. President Clinton was merely acknowledging the obvious when he said in 1997 that the measures had not created ‘an appreciable change in the Cuban regime’.120 As for the material costs, a report compiled by the UN SecretaryGeneral in 2000 cited ‘conservative analyses’ that put the losses suffered by the Cubans as a result of the sanctions at roughly $70 billion. In two lawsuits that the ‘people of Cuba’ brought before Cuban courts against the US government, the ruling was that Washington had to provide reparation and compensation to the Cuban people in the amount of $121 billion for ‘economic damages’ and $181 billion for ‘human damages’.121 Apart from economic sanctions, the US has also tried to isolate Cuba diplomatically. The US was the driving force behind Cuba’s suspension from active participation in the OAS in the 1960s. Although Cuba remains a member of the organization, it could – under a 1991 amendment to the OAS Charter – only resume full participation after holding free, multiparty elections. The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act moreover obligated the US to oppose any termination of this suspension until a democratically elected government had taken power in Cuba. The Act likewise committed the US to oppose the admission of Cuba as a member of international financial institutions (including the IMF and World Bank) until the same condition has been met. Despite Cuba’s exclusion from these institutions, it has been participating fully in scores of UN agencies and regional organizations in Latin America as well as in the Non-Aligned Movement.122 As regards bilateral diplomatic relations, Cuba experienced hardly any isolation. In 1997 Havana enjoyed diplomatic ties with 164 states, albeit on a non-residential basis in many cases. 123 The US was of course the most conspicuous absentee


from Cuba’s diplomatic register, while in Latin America only El Salvador followed suit.124 Containment, in the shape of President Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress, was pursued in tandem with sanctions in the 1960s. This massive economic development programme launched in 1961 was designed to undermine the appeal elsewhere in the region of the Cuban model of revolutionary change – and hence contain both Cuba and its Soviet backer – while at the same time enhancing US influence in the Western Hemisphere. Sanctions could also serve the purposes of containment in that the resultant economic decline would (theoretically) have deprived Havana of the resources to export its revolution.125 Engagement was a contending foreign approach to dealing with Cuba’s errant behaviour. Canada, a prominent Western exponent, believed that the best way to influence Cuban conduct was through constructive engagement and dialogue, not isolation and harassment (as practised by the US).126 The EU favoured what was variously described as ‘constructive engagement’ and a ‘result-oriented constructive dialogue’ with Cuba as ‘the best way of bringing Cuba in from the cold and getting her to behave as a responsible member of the international community’.127 It was not EU policy ‘to try to bring about change by coercive measures with the effect of increasing the economic hardship of the Cuban people’, the Council of Ministers explained in December 1996.128 In another form of engagement the EU provided extensive humanitarian aid to Cuba, making it the focal point of the Union’s humanitarian activities in Latin America in the mid1990s.129 However, full economic cooperation, the EU stated repeatedly, was conditional upon Cuban reforms towards greater democracy and human rights protection.130 Conditional engagement with Cuba was also evident at the nongovernmental level. Foreign companies involved with Cuba introduced – probably with home state sanction – so-called best business principles to help promote human rights, democracy and fair employment practices there (and in some cases other non-democratic countries too). Examples are the International Code of Ethics for Canadian Business and the Principles for Foreign Investment in Cuba (also known as the Arcos Principles), and the endorsement of best business practices by the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue and the Confederation of British Industries.131 Despite Washington’s heavy emphasis on punishing Cuba through isolation, elements of engagement were seldom entirely absent. Diplomatic ties, for instance, were severed in 1961, but the two countries established interest sections in their respective capitals in 1977. In 1973 Cuba and the US concluded an anti-hijacking agreement and in the 1980s and 1990s the two sides conducted bilateral negotiations on matters of immigration and repatriation. Even the highly restrictive Cuban Democracy Act allowed US companies to engage in communications-related trade with Cuba, slightly

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expanded the exemptions to the prevailing US travel ban against Cuba, and authorized American non-governmental organizations to make humanitarian donations to their Cuban counterparts. The provision of private humanitarian assistance to Cubans – through direct cash remittances and humanitarian donations from persons in the US – were regarded by Washington as further means to foster a transition to democracy, protect human rights, help develop civil society, and provide for economic prosperity. In 1995 President Clinton announced new policy initiatives aimed at a fuller implementation of the Cuban Democracy Act’s provisions to support civil society in that country.132 In 1999 direct charter flights from New York and Los Angeles to Cuba were allowed by the Clinton administration in a bid to improve people-to-people contact across the Florida Straits. It was the first time since the imposition of the embargo that flights from these cities to Cuba were permitted. Like the existing charter flights from Miami, the new ones would be available to limited categories of people only.133 Advocates of American engagement, as a preferred substitute for the isolation of Cuba through sanctions, maintained that involvement would pose a greater threat to the Castro dictatorship than ostracism. By lowering tensions between the two countries and opening Cuba up to American influences, it was argued, constructive engagement would undermine the rationale for the garrison state and repression, and expose Cubans to supposedly superior alternative political and social values and lifestyles.134 These possible effects of engagement may, paradoxically, cause Castro – despite his vehement opposition to the American ‘blockade’ of his country – to be less than enthusiastic about a full normalization of relations with his powerful neighbouring state. Subversion, finally, also featured on Washington’s list of instruments for dealing with a defiant Cuba. The removal of that bearded ‘son-of-a-bitch’, Attorney-General Robert Kennedy vowed in January 1962, would be ‘the top priority in the U.S. governement. … No time, money, effort, or manpower is to be spared’. The CIA subsequently launched the largest covert operation in its history to topple Castro.135 Many years later Castro could gleefully remark that ‘I think I have the dubious distinction of having been the target of more assassination attempts than any other statesman in any country at any period in history’.136 By then US influence techniques had become more sophisticated and less covert, but Havana still experienced them as instruments of subversion. At issue were the provisions in the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act to strengthen elements in Cuban civil society through increased communication and humanitarian assistance. Raúl Castro recognized the programme for what it was: ‘This is the “other war”…with the objective of undermining us ideologically from within’. The Cuban authorities would have no truck with it, condemning the initiative to failure.137


Cuban responses to foreign pressure Defiance has been the predominant Cuban response to external pressure for political change. We have already cited some of Castro’s uncompromising rejections of demands for political and economic liberalization and his accompanying affirmations of his commitment to communist politics and economics. As Castro put it, ‘[I]t is the world that is changing. Cuba will not change … even death will not defeat us’.138 He has also cleverly used defiance of foreign adversaries, especially the US, as a domestic political tool. By manipulating popular fears of the ‘Yankee threat’, Schulz observed, ‘Fidel has been able to wrap himself in the cloak of besieged nationalism and pose as the defender of the Cuban people and the revolution.’ Through his deft playing of the ‘confrontation game’ with the US, Castro has thus managed to mobilize both the elite and the masses behind his leadership, helping to ensure the longevity of the dictatorship.139 The American embargo, for one thing, helped Castro to deflect blame for the parlous state of the Cuban economy.140 Brinkmanship was the most daring and dangerous form of defiance pursued by Castro. The missile crisis of October 1962, which had brought the two superpowers perilously close to a direct military confrontation, is one of the most celebrated instances of brinkmanship in modern world politics. It featured Castro in a leading role, at least initially. Denial has been another typically defiant reaction to criticism. Consider the curt reply to US claims against Cuba over confiscated property: ‘there is no U.S. property in Cuba’. All American-owned property in the country ‘passed into the hands of the Cuban people’ through a process of ‘forced expropriation for reasons of public benefit’. It was all done in accordance with both domestic and international law, Havana maintained.141 Cuba liked to engage its foreign detractors in a contest over norms. In challenging the US embargo, Cuba’s Ambassador to the UN argued in 1991 that the ban constituted ‘a flagrant violation of the principles of sovereign equality of States and non-intervention in their internal affairs’, and a ‘constant source of tension’ impairing international relations.142 Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina told the UN World Conference on Human Rights in 1993 that the embargo ‘undoubtedly constitutes the most flagrant, massive and systematic violation of the right to life and to the survival of the entire Cuban people’ and was thus a ‘criminal act’ on the part of the US.143 Ricardo Alarcon, President of Cuba’s National Assembly, was even blunter: the purpose of the American embargo, he said in 1999, was ‘genocide, purely and simply’.144 Legal norms enshrined in both international and US law were cited in support of Cuba’s opposition to the Helms-Burton Act of 1996.145 The message was that the US President and Congress were prepared to break even formal rules of law in their vendetta against Cuba. In addition the Cubans also made great play of the Act’s supposed violation

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of the rules of the IMF, World Bank, Inter-American Bank and the World Trade Organization, among other multilateral organizations.146 In a tacit admission of Cuba’s weaknesses in the field of civil and political rights (as opposed to economic, social and cultural rights), Robaina insisted that ‘the universality, indivisibility and interdependence of all human rights’ had to be fully respected; there were ‘no privileged categories’ of human rights, all of them having the same importance. Yet Robaina singled out ‘one human right, the very fundamental one, whose exercise changed the face of the world’: it was the right of each people to selfdetermination, allowing them ‘to elect the political and socio-economic system that better suits them, without foreign interference’. This was a patent attempt to delegitimize foreign criticism of Cuba’s dictatorial political system. In another telling remark the Cuban Foreign Minister invoked cultural relativism, arguing that ‘one cannot overlook or forget national, regional, cultural and religious features of each people’ when applying human rights standards. He was, in other words, trying to make a case for Cuban exceptionalism in the same breath that he acknowledged the universality of human rights.147 Parochial sentiments were also evident in the defence of the Cuban political order. To have a single party system representing their interests and aspirations ‘is neither strange nor alien to the huge majority of the Cuban people’, the Foreign Ministry argued. This was simply the result of history and experience and ‘their own alienable choice’.148 Far from being a deviant, Cuba presented itself as a paragon and promoter in the field of human rights. Havana maintained that UN member states, especially developing countries, ‘know like no other the true value of human rights and the contributions of Cuba to this noble cause’.149 The double standards argument was, not surprisingly, used by Cuba when facing criticism over human rights. It was pointed out that the US enjoyed good relations with countries whose ‘feudalistic and monarchical’ socio-political systems displayed a total absence of Western-style human rights. Nor had the earlier existence of military dictatorships in Latin America prevented their enjoying friendly relations with the US. The point Cuban defenders of the status quo wanted to make was that Washington’s hostility was driven by ulterior motives. The most popular of these was that the US had ‘lost control over Cuba’s destiny’ after the Cuban people had in 1959 chosen a political system that contradicted and defied US wishes and interests.150 Playing the innocent but fearless victim of the evil machinations of malicious foreigners, above all Americans, has been another favourite Cuban response to foreign pressure for political change. Castro used one popular version when addressing the Pope on the latter’s visit to the island in January 1998: ‘Cuba is confronting the mightiest power in history, like a new David – albeit a thousand times smaller – who with the same sling of


the Biblical times strives for survival against a gigantic Goliath of the nuclear era who tries to prevent our development and subdue our people by hunger and diseases’.151 Scapegoating follows naturally from the innocent victim-line. Cuban leaders blamed their country’s woes on the ‘Yankees’, more than anyone else. US punitive measures, such as the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, gave Castro & Co a handy excuse for holding the US responsible for the sufferings of the Cuban people.152 Counter-demonization was closely related to scapegoating, with Castro typically setting the tone. Even President Carter, who tried to improve US–Cuban relations and for whom Castro had previously expressed some regard, was later denounced by his Cuban counterpart as being ‘dishonest, insincere and immoral’.153 Reagan was beyond the pale: ‘the biggest of terrorists’, Castro called him.154 Following the enactment of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996, Castro offered a rather novel explanation for American behaviour: ‘It seems that there are not enough hospitals for mentally ill persons in the United States’.155 Elements of a divide-and-survive strategy have also been evident. Already in the early 1960s Cuba expanded its trade relations with most West European states, Canada and Japan to help it withstand US and Latin American sanctions.156 Despite the image of steadfastness, finally, Castro has on a number of occasions been willing to make concessions to foreign opinion when he needed political or economic support from abroad. When the economy was in the direst of straits in the early 1990s and Cuba desperately sought debt relief and foreign investment, an easing of repression allowed the formation of the Concilio Cubano, a national umbrella organization. In 1996, however, the interest group was crushed. Consider also the release of nearly 300 prisoners, including over 100 political prisoners, in the wake of Pope John Paul’s visit to Cuba in January 1998. (At least 350 political prisoners convicted of state security offences remained behind bars, and prosecutions and harassment of dissidents were intensified towards the end of that same year.)157 Castro of course also introduced economic reforms that relaxed the iron grip of the state, but these were dictated more by the fall-out from the collapse of the Soviet Union than by the wishes or requests of Western critics.

Conclusion Communist Cuba is a veteran of rule-breaking behaviour on the home front and internationally. In the first fifteen years of Castro’s rule, Cuba was a second-order deviant state, one whose conduct seriously alienated other countries in the region. At issue were primarily Havana’s export of revolution and secondarily its communist political order. Cuba’s principal

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adversary, the US, had considerable success in this period in mobilizing regional support for ostracizing the Castro government. Following the OAS’s lifting of its embargo against Cuba in 1975, the country began normalizing relations with others in Latin America. Until the end of the Cold War Cuba was largely a third-order deviant, seriously at odds with the US only. Yet Cuba retained many features of norm-violating conduct, notably its disdain for human rights and democracy, and interference in other states’ domestic affairs. Unlike the fate of other Soviet allies, the end of the Cold War did not see the demise of Cuba’s communist dictatorship. Cuba’s main transgression today is its violation of international norms of democracy and human rights. Contrary to popular perceptions, it is not only the US that takes exception to Cuba’s rule-breaking behaviour in this area; several multilateral organizations have over the past decade repeatedly censured Havana. It is, however, only the US that remains willing to translate its opposition to the Cuban leadership into tangible punishment – but Washington is motivated by much more than Cuba’s patent abuse of human rights. Although Cuba is therefore still a third-order deviant only, it pays a heavy material price for being persecuted by its powerful neighbour.

10 Myanmar

For over 25 years during the Cold War era a military junta of socialist bent ruled the country then known as Burma. The authoritarian features of Burma’s political order were of little if any concern to governments and the media in the West. The state was of minor geopolitical significance, its neutralist foreign policy kept it out of the great ideological rivalries of the time, and its isolationist orientation made it unattractive to the outside world. The Western community knew precious little about and took hardly any notice of Burma. Hence the quip that if it were swallowed by an earthquake, the foreign press would report: ‘Ne Win [head of state, 1962-88] dies, takes Burma with him’.1 In 1988 Western nations and the international community in general were shaken out of their ignorance and indifference. The military’s brutal repression of pro-democracy demonstrations made world headlines. These events coincided with the approaching end of the Cold War and stirrings of democratic freedom in scores of authoritarian states. Burma was swimming against the rising international tide – and has remained under the heel of a ruthless military dictatorship ever since. Myanmar, as Burma was renamed in 1989, did not commit any major act of deviance in the domain of high politics; its military rulers did not pursue WMD or pose a direct military threat to neighbouring countries or engage in international terrorism. Probably for these reasons Myanmar did not feature among America’s core group of rogues. Even so, the US has treated it as a deviant state by subjecting Myanmar to a range of economic and diplomatic sanctions. A number of other countries and multilateral organizations also instituted punitive measures, confirming Myanmar’s deviant status.

The road to internal turmoil and international adversity Following a series of wars in the 19th century, the British in 1886 finally displaced the ancient Burman monarchy. At first Burma was annexed to British India, but in 1937 became a separate British dependency with 226

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limited self-government. Five years later the Japanese conquered Burma, giving it ‘independence’ under Japanese protection. Allied forces reoccupied the country in 1945 and Britain awarded Burma independence in January 1948. U Nu became the first Prime Minister of the Union of Burma, as it was then styled. Until 1962 Burma enjoyed parliamentary democracy, except for a 16-month period in 1958–59 when a military-led caretaker government held power at U Nu’s request to create political conditions conducive to elections. The political conflict causing this military interlude was related to serious birth defects plaguing the young state. With 140 ethnic groups, Burma was the country with the largest ethnic concentration in the world (one group per 5,000 square kilometers). Not all of Burma’s main ethnic communities had been keen on inclusion in the new union under a central government dominated by members of the Burman* ethnic group, which comprised some two-thirds of the total population. Among the minority groups there was a common suspicion that the ethnic Burmans regarded Burma as theirs only, or at least considered it their exclusive right to rule all of Burma.2 The 1947 Constitution under which Burma became independent reflected these divisions, granting all constituent states autonomy and two of them the right of secession after two years. Within months of independence the Karens and several other ethnic communities as well as political groups – notably the Communists – went into revolt. The armed insurrections brought Burma to the brink of collapse; in the first few months of 1949, the darkest days for the new government, rebels controlled most of the countryside and at times even parts of Rangoon (prompting the jibe of the ‘Six-Mile Rangoon government’). Burma’s early survival was in large measure attributable to the Burmese Army’s growing success in containing the various rebellions. Yet ethnic rivalry remained the single most important challenge facing Burma.3 The Army’s fear that U Nu would allow the Shan State to secede from the Union of Burma, was one of the reasons behind the military coup d’état led by General Ne Win, chief of the Army, in March 1962. The other justifications were the country’s deteriorating economic situation, and the failure of U Nu’s constitutional government to make good on its promises of socialism.4 Thus began an ongoing era of harsh military government. The ruling Revolutionary Council under Ne Win’s leadership suspended the Constitution and outlawed all political parties except for the government-sponsored Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP). The military rulers soon unveiled their blueprint for transforming Burmese society, styled The Burmese Way to Socialism. This idiosyncratic mixture of Buddhism (traditionally the pervasive force in Burmese society), socialism and Burmese nationalism, was created to take Burma well beyond the * The epithet ‘Burmese’ denotes all the peoples of Burma, whereas ‘Burman’ applies to members of a particular ethnic community only.


socialist welfare state – to which U Nu’s government had been committed – to a full-blown socialist society. The following year the Revolutionary Council embarked on rapid nationalization, gaining direct control of the economy. Also touted as an indigenous route to socialism, the result was a tightly state-controlled economy resembling that of East European states. But unlike the countries of the Soviet bloc that formed an interdependent economic community, Burma opted for economic self-reliance. It did not take long for official trade to break down, exports to decline sharply and the black market to become the de facto market of Burma. The country that once boasted one of the highest living standards in Asia, had been the world’s largest exporter of rice, and whose economic prospects were among the brightest in the Southeast Asia in the early 1960s, was reduced to the league of paupers. With a per capita income of under US$250 per year, Burma was designated a ‘least developed country’ by the UN in December 1987 – a status it shared with nine other states.5 Despite the disastrous results of the leap to wholesale socialism, the military remained true to their ideological preferences, to the extent of renaming the country the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma in 1974. A new Constitution taking effect in that year provided for the dissolution of the Revolutionary Council and the creation of a State Council and People’s Assembly, and also confirmed the BSPP’s status as sole authorized political party. The Constitution furthermore allowed for a nominal form of federalism according differing degrees of autonomy to seven states populated by sizeable ethnic groups (Kachin, Shan, Mon, Karen, Karenni, Arakanese and Chin). At the same time Ne Win tried to impose a policy of ‘Burmanization’ aimed at the cultural assimilation of ethnic minorities with the majority Burmans. This further alienated the minority communities and ultimately proved unsuccessful. In an attempt to legitimate the new political arrangements, the military staged a strictly controlled general election in early 1974. Ne Win, by then in civilian guise, was appointed Chairman of the State Council and President of Burma.6 The institutional reorganization made little if any difference to mounting socio-economic problems. Riots over food shortages and social injustices broke out in 1974. Two years later student demonstrations erupted and in July 1976 members of the armed forces staged an abortive coup. Ne Win remained at the helm, though, having his mandate renewed several times. In July 1988 he eventually stepped down as President and Chairman of the State Council amid renewed serious civil unrest. Ne Win’s successor, General Sein Lwin, held office for a mere 17 days as the country became engulfed in widespread popular protests in which thousands of unarmed protestors were reportedly killed by the security forces. Lwin was replaced by a moderate civilian lawyer, Dr Maung Maung, who lifted martial law imposed by his predecessor and supported the holding of a free election by year’s end. The new President’s reformist moves failed to stem the mounting tide of dis-

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content. The new political space created by Maung was seized by several opposition figures who formed the National United Front for Democracy (later renamed the National League for Democracy), while former Prime Minister U Nu proclaimed an alternative government. It was in this unsettled climate that the armed forces, led by Army Chief of Staff and Defence Minister General Saw Maung, seized power in mid-September 1988.7 Saw Maung and his fellow officers reimposed martial law, abolished the People’s Assembly, State Council and other organs of government, and established a State Law and Order Restoration Council (carrying the appropriately ominous-sounding English acronym SLORC) as the centre of power. Maung became Chairman of SLORC and Prime Minister. The new rulers changed the official name of the country back to the Union of Burma. Their first priority, Maung declared, was ‘to restore law and order and peace and tranquility’ amid ongoing (but officially banned) demonstrations in favour of an interim civilian government.8 The cost of suppressing the popular demonstrations and establishing the new military government was horrendous: in the first three days of the new junta, 1,000 people (including schoolgirls, students and monks) were killed; the death toll in the entire year’s political violence was generally estimated to exceed 10,000. Over 4,000 more were jailed and up to 10,000 people forced to flee from urban areas to zones controlled by rebel armies.9 Hand in hand with these assaults on democracy and human rights, SLORC paradoxically prepared the way for a multiparty election to be held in May 1990. The BSPP lost its legal status as sole political party and others were encouraged to register for the polls. The BSPP registered as the National Unity Party (NUP), clearly intended as SLORC’s standard-bearer. U Nu founded a new party, the League for Democracy and Peace.10 But the rising star among the growing number of competing parties was the earlier mentioned National League for Democracy (NLD), whose most prominent leading member (and secretary-general) was Aung San Suu Kyi. Her family connections were impeccable: she is the daughter of General Aung San, founder of the modern Burmese Army and architect of the country’s independence. A national hero destined to become an independent Burma’s first head of state, Aung San was assassinated in 1947. Having spent 28 years abroad – during which time she studied at Oxford and married a British academic – Suu Kyi returned to Myanmar in 1988. (Government propagandists, trying to discredit Suu Kyi, equated her marriage to a foreigner with a crime and suggested that the ‘mixed blood’ of her children sullied the superior Burman bloodline.)11 It was a singularly eventful time for Suu Kyi to return home, for 1988 saw mass protests in favour of a multiparty democracy. She soon found herself thrust into the thick of things, addressing a pro-democracy rally attended by 500,000 people in August. Suu Kyi became ‘the instant darling of the crowds and the immediate focus of the Western media’s attention’.12 This automatically made her a thorn in the flesh of Burma’s military rulers.


The maintenance of martial law until the end of 1989 severely restricted the ability of opposition parties to mobilize support. Party followers were often detained, placed under house arrest and harassed in other ways. Suu Kyi was one of the party leaders barred from contesting the election and placed under house arrest in July 1989 for ‘endangering state security’.13 Despite these inauspicious conditions, 93 political parties fielded nearly 2,300 candidates to contest seats for a new legislative assembly. In balloting that was reportedly free and orderly, the NLD attracted 60% of the total votes and won 396 of the 485 seats contested. The SLORC-backed NUP received 21% of the votes, earning only 10 seats.14 It was then that SLORC snatched authoritarianism from the jaws of democracy and steered the Union of Myanmar* (as SLORC renamed the country in June 1989) decisively away from the international trend towards political liberalization. SLORC announced that the May election had, contrary to popular belief, not been held to elect members for a legislature; instead, it was to provide a Constituent Assembly that would draft a new constitution. That process would take place within narrow parameters: the drafting of a constitution – which should establish a ‘strong government’ – was to fall under the direction of a national convention appointed by SLORC. A draft constitution then had to be endorsed by referendum and thereafter approved by SLORC, before a transfer of power could take place. All the while SLORC would continue to govern.15 SLORC meanwhile launched a vicious campaign of intimidation and persecution against opposition parties and elected members of the Constituent Assembly. Several parties were banned outright and party representatives were detained and driven into exile. Suu Kyi, one of those detained, was ordered to be expelled from the NLD. In September 1991 SLORC announced it would remain in power for another five to ten years. This followed an earlier statement by SLORC that it would not transfer power to the Constituent Assembly because the political parties involved were ‘subversive’ and ‘unfit to rule’. Perhaps anticipating these moves by SLORC, a number of candidates elected to the Assembly formed a ‘parallel government’, the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, based in Manerplaw, in 1991. No foreign government formally recognized the coalition as the legitimate government of Burma.16 In April 1992 Saw Maung retired as SLORC Chairman and Premier, and was succeeded in both posts by Defence Minister Than Shwe. Within months members of SLORC held their first meeting with representatives of * ‘Myanmar’ is a transliteration into English of the historic ethnic Burman name for the country. (‘Myanma’ is the adjective.) Following the UN, the name ‘Myanmar’ is used in this study, especially when referring to events since 1989. It is acknowledged, though, that ‘Myanmar’ is recognized neither by anti-government groups within the country nor by many foreign opponents of the military junta.

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the remaining ten legal opposition parties. This was to prepare for a National Convention, which met at the beginning of 1993. Of the Convention’s 702 members only 106 (15 per cent) were representatives elected in the May 1990 election, the rest being appointees of the junta. Although the National Convention over the next three years managed to adopt guidelines for three important chapters of a future constitution, most meetings were marred by fundamental differences of opinion between the elected (opposition) representatives and SLORC. In November 1995 the NLD withdrew from the Convention, denouncing it as illegitimate and undemocratic. Fewer than 3 per cent of the remaining members of the Convention were by then delegates elected in 1990. In early 1996 the National Convention adjourned indefinitely.17 SLORC under Than Shwe continued to deal harshly with the opposition, but made some conciliatory gestures too. In July 1995 Suu Kyi was after six years released from house arrest, but her movements were still restricted and the military rulers excluded her from most of the talks – few and far between as they were – with the NLD. Following the NLD’s boycott of the National Convention, SLORC again turned the screws on Suu Kyi’s movement. In May 1996, for instance, some 260 NLD members were arrested (including delegates elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1990) and scores sent to prison for a variety of offences. By the mid-1990s more than 200 of the 485 legislators elected in 1990 had reportedly been disqualified or detained, or had resigned under duress, gone into self-imposed exile or died. Government persecution and harassment of leaders and members of the NLD (Suu Kyi included) continued throughout the decade.18 At the start of the new century, however, the military junta seemed in an uncharacteristically accommodating mood and talks with the main opposition began in October 2000.19 Meanwhile, in November 1997, SLORC had unexpectedly announced that it would be dissolved and replaced by the newly created State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). The latter was little more than SLORC under another name: the new 19-member body consisted of military personnel only, with the four most senior members of SLORC retaining their positions at the head of the SPDC.20 The Army thus remained at the forefront of national politics – where it had been ever since the struggle for independence after the Second World War – continuing to assert primary responsibility for ensuring national unity in this deeply divided society.21 The dual threats of national disunity and territorial fragmentation emanated especially from ethnic insurgencies. Although ethnic groups had started taking up arms against the central government from the time of independence, it was only in 1975 that five of them came together in the National Democratic Front (NDF). In due course eleven ethnic minority groups joined the NDF, whose aim was to turn the strongly unitary Burma into a federal union offering minorities meaningful autonomy. Among the


communities with significant military wings committed to armed struggle were the Karen, Shan and Kachin. By the mid-1990s the military junta had managed to conclude ceasefire agreements with 15 of the ethnic rebel movements, having made considerable military gains at their expense.22 The ethnic problem was ‘frozen rather than solved’, though, with no sustained effort to resolve the political issues that led to the ethnic insurrections. There were some 50,000 armed rebels and former rebels not under central government control, and sporadic armed clashes between them and government forces continued. Early in the next century two rebel groups still conducted armed insurgency.23 A close connection existed between several ethnic insurgencies and the drug trade. This was most pronounced in Shan State. Khun Sa, leader of the 25,000-strong Mong Tai (Shan State) Army, controlled much of the narcotics trade in the Golden Triangle, the world’s premier drug-producing area, located where the borders of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos meet. In May 1994 Khun Sa unilaterally declared an independent Shan State and designated himself President. Neither ‘independence’ nor Khun Sa’s presidency lasted long, as government troops captured Shan State by early 1996.24 Several other rebel groups engaged in drug trafficking as a means of sustaining their armed revolts against Rangoon.25 Turning to foreign relations, Burma had a history of self-isolation that was later combined and eventually eclipsed by enforced isolation. In the pre-colonial era (before 1886) Burma was known as the ‘hermit kingdom’ of Southeast Asia, a country that chose to insulate itself against the outside world with its perceived corrosive influences. During the period of democratic rule (1948-62) Burma was a prominent actor in both regional and wider international politics; it was, for instance, one of the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1955. By contrast Ne Win, ‘the great nonjoiner’ who eschewed foreign entanglements, wanted to create an autarkic socialist economy and keep decadent Western cultural influences at bay. He turned Burma into what Carey called ‘an introverted state dominated by a xenophobic military and a dictator swayed more by necromancy than normality’.26 A manifestation of isolationism was Burma’s refusal to join the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO, formed in 1954 and disbanded in 1976) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN, established in 1967).27 In the early 1970s Burma decided to relax its self-imposed isolation by expanding contacts with the outside world. Among the countries involved was the US, which in 1974 signed an agreement to provide Rangoon (Yangon) with aircraft and communications equipment to combat the country’s illegal opium industry. In 1980 the US resumed (modest) economic aid to Burma. The following year Washington renewed military aid and a US naval delegation visited Burma. In a contradictory, seemingly isolationist move, Burma in 1979 withdrew from the Non-Aligned Movement.28

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What remained of Burma’s international seclusion was overturned by SLORC, which further opened up the country to the outside world. In step with the time, SLORC permitted a measure of economic liberalization, such as abolishing some restraints on trade (but retaining the government monopoly on key exports such as rice, teak and petroleum) and promulgating a liberal foreign investment law29; encouraged more extensive diplomatic, commercial and military contacts with neighbouring states; started to participate in international and regional conferences; and began to promote tourism to Myanmar.30 Yet, paradoxically, at a time when Burma’s rulers wanted to shed the remnants of the country’s self-isolation, it found itself subjected to growing ostracism from the international community. The main reason was that Burma’s military dictatorship bucked the international trend of political liberalization. The extent of Myanmar’s international isolation should not be exaggerated. It was never ostracized to the same degree as, say, South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. Myanmar was not, for instance, expelled from the UN General Assembly or other agencies of the world body. In 1992 the NonAligned Movement welcomed Myanmar back into the fold. In its own neighbourhood Myanmar in 1997 joined ASEAN and in May 2000 hosted a high-level meeting of ASEAN member states’ ministers of economic affairs. China, not averse to shield Myanmar from international adversity, became its leading aid donor, arms supplier and source of consumer goods in the late 1980s.31

Deviants and darlings For critical Westerners it was a straightforward matter to distinguish between sinners and saints in Myanmar. SLORC and the successor SPDC were assigned a monopoly of immorality and evil, while the democratic opposition, especially the NLD, were perceived as the custodians of morality and virtue. Suu Kyi, leader of the NLD and a principal target of government repression, achieved celebrity status in the Western world, putting her on par with Nelson Mandela. While Suu Kyi was being deified abroad, there was not a single government figure being correspondingly demonized by foreign critics. General Saw Maung, who led the 1988 coup and headed SLORC until 1992, did not achieve the personal international notoriety of an Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic; Maung, despite the scale of abuse perpetrated by SLORC, was simply not that wellknown abroad. International (effectively Western) demonization was consequently focused on the military junta collectively, rather than on an individual, and more generally on the country as a whole. Thus British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind spoke of Myanmar’s ‘nasty, dictatorial regime’;32 US Under-Secretary of State Robert Zoellick in 1991 depicted ‘undeveloped and undemocratic’ Burma as a ‘cancer of instability’ in the


region;33 Secretary of State James Baker charged that Burma had ‘closed itself from the society of nations by its political brutality and economic disintegration’,34 and a State Department official in 1997 declared that because of the ‘perfidious and inhumane nature’ of its military regime, Myanmar should not be treated as a ‘normal country’.35

Myanmar’s transgressions Myanmar’s first and foremost sin was its gross violation of international human rights standards and the accompanying lack of democracy. Although dating back to 1962 when the military seized power from U Nu’s democratic government, this errant behaviour became an international issue only in the 1990s. There were many facets to the first transgression. One was SLORC’s disregard for the results of the May 1990 general election, something cited repeatedly by various multilateral organizations. The UN Human Rights Commission, for instance, in 2003 once again strongly urged the Myanma government to respect the results of the 1990 election and restore democracy.36 Other human rights violations were on several occasions – most recently in April 2003 – listed by the Commission on Human Rights and included torture, summary and arbitrary execution, forced labour (including forced portering for the military), forced relocation, abuse of women, politically motivated arrests and detention, important restrictions on the exercise of fundamental freedoms, disrespect for the rule of law, and the imposition of oppressive measures directed, in particular, at minority groups.37 The restricted fundamental freedoms just mentioned included those of association, assembly and movement, which were systematically suppressed under an ‘all-pervasive regime of state surveillance and control’.38 In a report to the UN General Assembly in 1999, the Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar recorded that ‘repressive laws are still used to prohibit and punish any exercise of the basic rights of freedom of thought, expression, assembly and association, in particular in connection with the exercise of legitimate political rights’.39 Three years later the UN General Assembly (resolution 57/231) voiced its ‘grave concern’ about the ongoing systematic abuse of human rights, including civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Any political activity not in support of the military regime, the Special Rapporteur had noted earlier, was ‘criminalized’.40 As a direct result of such easy criminalization of political actions, Myanmar held about 1,300 political prisoners in 2002, Amnesty International calculated.41 The talks between the SPDC and the opposition that began in October 2000 were accompanied by confidence-building measures introduced by the junta, including the freeing of some political prisoners and the lifting

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of remaining restrictions on Suu Kyi’s movements. These concessions, widely welcomed abroad, improved the political climate only slightly. Towards the end of 2000 the talks had ground to a halt amid unabated human rights violations.42 The following April the UN Human Rights Commission recorded its serious concern about the rulers’ refusal to engage in a ‘genuine political dialogue’ with Suu Kyi and other democratic leaders, instead subjecting opposition activists to harassment and intimidation.43 The statement was well-timed, for in May Suu Kyi and over a dozen NLD officials were detained by the authorities.44 SLORC’s widespread use of forced labour for infrastructural and historical projects had been confirmed in UN reports in the 1990s. Human Rights Watch estimated that SLORC had used over two million people as forced labourers for the development of roads, railways and tourist facilities in the first half of the 1990s. In 2000 the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions claimed that more than one million Burmese were still in forced labour,45 while the International Labour Organization (ILO) put the figure at about 800,000.46 Branded ‘a contemporary form of slavery’ by the ILO, forced labour violated the agency’s Labour Convention (no. 29, 1930) to which Burma had acceded in 1955.47 Under intense international pressure, Rangoon in October 2000 by law prohibited all government officials requisitioning labour. A year later a so-called High-Level Team from the ILO visited Myanmar and found that the legislation’s impact was limited as forced labour was still being practised in its various forms, especially in areas affected by a military presence. In February 2002 the ILO reported that Mynamar’s military rulers had effectively blocked international attempts to stop the Army’s use of forced labour.48 A related human rights violation involving the Army (and to a lesser extent rebel forces), was the use of child soldiers. This practice, cited by the UN Human Rights Commission and General Assembly (for example, Assembly resolution 57/231 of December 2002), contravened the Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Convention was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1989 and the Optional Protocol in 2000. Myanmar was a party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but not the optional protocol. The recruitment of child soldiers has also been recognized as a war crime under the Statute of the International Criminal Court.49 Amnesty International, in a 1995 report, documented the appalling conditions in Myanmar’s prison labour camps. The widespread abuse of prisoners working on infrastructure projects caused an appalling death rate among them: in one camp 400 prisoners had reportedly died within one month on a construction project.50 The mistreatment of minority communities–among them the Shan, Mon, Karen and Karenni, and also Muslim and Christian religious minorities – was


common. They have been subjected to torture, rape, summary executions, forced relocation, and the destruction of their means of subsistence.51 In October 2000 the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar noted that such abuses remained part of the Myanma Army’s counterinsurgency strategy.52 To escape persecution, more than 120,000 refugees had by mid-1997 crossed the border into Thailand.53 As late as December 2002 the UN General Assembly (resolution 57/231) was still voicing its ‘grave concern’ about the ‘disproportionate suffering’ of ethnic minorities – along with women and children – as a result of the ongoing systematic violation of human rights in Myanmar. In the early 1990s Rangoon’s treatment of Rohingya Muslims attracted much international attention. SLORC tried to forbid this community, resident in Northern Rakhine State, from ever gaining nationality or associate nationality (a form of second class citizenship.) Fearing persecution by the Burman-dominated central government, scores of Rohingya sought refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh. In 1992 alone an estimated 250,000 of them had fled across the border.54 According to a report of the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues released in April 2000, the Myanma government subjected the Rohingyas to forced labour, punitive taxes, extrajudicial killings and attempts to drive them from their native Rakhine State.55 The campaign against the Muslims of Myanmar bore the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing. Official attempts at changing the ethnic composition in politically sensitive areas were also reported in the Chin, Kachin, Karen and Mon states.56 Ethnic cleansing was indeed one of the most serious human rights violations committed by the rulers of Myanmar. Forcible resettlement was another well-publicized human rights violation.57 During 1989–90, for instance, as many as 500,000 city dwellers from across the country, including Rangoon, were relocated in the (malariainfested) countryside. Ostensibly a slum clearance operation, the scheme uprooted many settled communities that had supported the pro-democracy uprising in 1988 and were loyal to opposition movements.58 By 1994 up to 1.5 million people may have been driven from their homes in mass forced removals.59 The EC/EU was one of the international organizations that repeatedly expressed itself against ‘the forcible relocation of large numbers of civilians from urban to rural areas’.60 The UN’s Special Rapporteur was correct in his diagnosis that the lack of respect for rights pertaining to democratic governance – manifested in the absence of significant measures towards the creation of a democratic order – was at ‘the root of all major violations of human rights’ in Myanmar. It was moreover ‘most unlikely’ that these violations would cease before the democratic process initiated by the election of 1990 was restored.61 It should be noted that Myanmar was not a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This, however, did not absolve it of

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the obligations these two instruments placed upon states. As the UN Commission on Human Rights declared in March 1992 (resolution 1992/58), all member states of the UN had an obligation to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms enshrined in the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the two international covenants just mentioned, and other applicable human rights instruments – regardless of whether they had formally accepted the agreements.62 Myanmar, it will be recalled, was a signatory to the 1930 ILO Labour Convention (prohibiting forced labour) and in 1955 ratified the ILO Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize Convention of 1948 – but failed to comply with either.63 The mass exodus of people from Myanmar to Bangladesh, mentioned earlier, was in the early 1990s described as a threat to regional peace and security by UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali64 and the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar.65 Their warnings gained credence when a shooting incident on the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar increased tension and contributed to a massing of troops on both sides.66 In an indirect fashion, the military junta’s persecution of a local community was thus endangering peace and security elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Since this can treated as a lesser transgression than a direct, calculated threat to the peace and security of foreign states, it would be unfair to accuse Myanmar of committing that familiar act of deviance, namely jeopardizing regional peace and security through deliberate threats or acts of aggression. The magnitude of the refugee flow was nonetheless enormous: in the first five years of SLORC’s rule, an estimated 500,000 refugees and migrants had fled Myanmar, mostly to Bangladesh and Thailand.67 The ongoing suppression of human rights has helped to create the political space for another seldom acknowledged dereliction on the part of Myanmar’s ruling military, viz. endangering the environment. It took the forms of over-fishing, mining, deforestation, massive dam-building and hydro-electric projects, and gas pipelines. Some of the environmental threats were in turn caused by ‘a rush policy of selling the country’s natural resources abroad at bargain prices’ as the Government tried to bail Myanmar out of financial crisis.68 Many unique species of fauna and flora were in danger of extinction in what were some of Asia’s last pristine natural habitats. The junta, some environmentalists maintained, was ‘one of the most myopic and ecologically destructive regimes in the world’; 69 US Senator Paul Simon branded SLORC ‘a gang of environmental bandits’. 70 The absence of freedom of expression prevented the officially sanctioned rape of the environment being debated publicly in Myanmar. The lack of democracy meant that the government was not accountable to the people either, effectively giving it a licence to violate environmental rights.71


Myanmar’s involvement in the narcotics business is the second serious transgression, one of several decades’ standing. The annual production of opium in the Burmese sector of the Golden Triangle amounted to some 30 tons at the time of Burma’s independence. The yield in the 1992–3 harvesting season was an estimated 2,575 tons of raw opium – an 8,000 per cent increase since 1948.72 By far the largest drug producer in Southeast Asia, Myanmar was by the mid-1990s one of the top four exporters of opiates in the world. It was the source of an estimated 60 per cent of heroin (refined opium) sold in developed countries, mainly in the US. The American Drug Enforcement Agency reported that Myanmar in the 1990s supplied nearly 75 per cent of the heroin sold in America. For Myanmar narco-dollars were a critical component of the national economy: the value of opiate exports was estimated to equal that of Myanmar’s legal export revenues. By the mid1990s a major share of the income from the narcotics trade was not leaving the country but laundered and reinvested in Myanmar.73 Myanmar in 2002 ranked as the world’s second largest producer of illicit opium (after Afghanistan), but its opium production levels had decreased by some 50 per cent since 1996. Eradication efforts had reduced by about 7 per cent the total area used for such cultivation in Myanmar. These gains were marred by Myanmar’s new status as the principal source of amphetamine-type stimulants in Asia (producing an estimated 800 million tablets annually) – a production first detected in 1996.74 We have already noted the link between rebel insurgencies and the drug trade. A more serious concern for foreign governments was the widely suspected involvement of the authorities in drug trafficking – captured in the popular reference to Myanmar as a ‘narco-dictatorship’.75 As British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook put it in 1997, Myanmar’s was ‘a deeply irresponsible regime in that it is one of the few governments in the world whose members are prepared to profit out of the drugs trade rather than to seek to suppress the drugs trade’.76 In 1992 the US Congress charged that SLORC had used the proceeds from illegal narcotics sales to buy US$1.2 billion of arms from China the previous year. Chinese arms were then used ‘to wage war against prodemocracy forces’ in Myanmar.77 Congress also claimed that SLORC had since 1989 ‘provided both military and economic support to drug-trafficking groups and allows them to produce and trade illicit drugs at their will’.78 Cooler heads, however, widely conceded there was no firm evidence that the military junta itself was encouraging narcotics production or was involved in the drug trade in a direct and formal way. Middle- and lower-ranking military and police officials were, by contrast, known to engage in drug corruption. They have for instance taken payments in exchange for the free flow of drugs through territories under their command, and collected opium or heroin as a form of taxation. The military have also made ‘tactical alliances’ with local leaders, who were rewarded for loyalty to Rangoon and for fighting rebel armies by enjoying unhindered drug production and trade.79

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The military junta has repeatedly stated its commitment to combat drug production and trafficking as a ‘national responsibility’. Apart from pledging to enforce the country’s strict anti-narcotics legislation, which inter alia outlawed money laundering related to the drug trade, the SPDC announced a plan, starting in 1999, to eradicate all narcotics production and trafficking by 2014.80 Myanmar has also acceded to several international anti-narcotics conventions (notably the 1988 UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances), signed agreements for cooperation in narcotics suppression with all five its immediate neighbours (Laos, Thailand, Bangladesh, China and India) as well as Vietnam and Cambodia, and cooperated with the UN Drug Control Programme.81 The latter agency’s representative in Rangoon in 2001 expressed satisfaction that the Myanma government had demonstrated its commitment to containing the drug scourge.82 Several deviant states, our other cases studies reveal, stood accused of imperiling the security of other states by engaging in the excessive build-up of their military manpower and firepower. Myanmar has not been charged with this form of deviant behaviour. However, in July 1991 the Council of the European Communities declared that member states were ‘appalled that the Burmese authorities continue to spend large amounts of their country’s meagre resources on arms’.83 In like vein British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd in 1991 described it as ‘grotesque’ that poverty-stricken Burma should devote such a high proportion of government expenditure to arms purchases.84 The motivation behind ‘the mass buildup of military arms’, according to a concurrent resolution adopted by the US Congress in 1992, was ‘domestic repression’.85 Since Myanmar had no foreign enemies, one could only deduce that the weaponry was indeed acquired for use against the country’s own people.86

External demands and objectives Most of the foreign demands for political change in Myanmar were related to the absence of democracy and respect for human rights. A striking feature of demands in this area is that they were mostly couched in fairly moderate language, even if the demand was the drastic one of the military junta surrendering power to the duly elected representatives of the people. In the wake of the 1990 general election and SLORC’s refusal to transfer power to the victorious NLD, the UN General Assembly (resolution 46/132 of December 1991) politely stated that it ‘looks forward to the early implementation’ of the Myanma government’s commitment to establish a democratic state, ‘stresses the need for an early improvement’ in the ‘grave human rights situation’, and ‘urges’ that government to allow all Myanma citizens free political participation in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.87 In March 1992 the UN Commission on


Human Rights (resolution 1992/58), echoing the temperate language of the Assembly, invited the government of Myanmar ‘to accelerate the process of transition to democracy’ by convening the legislature elected in May 1990.88 Similar calls were also made by the European Parliament and the EC.89 The required transition has failed to materialize, though, and in 2002 both the UN Human Rights Commission90 and General Assembly (resolution 57/231) strongly urged the military junta to take urgent measures to establish democracy in accordance with the popular will as expressed in the 1990 poll. In his 1993 report the Special Rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Commission presented a wide-ranging set of ‘recommendations’ for the consideration of the government of Myanmar, all designed to improve the human rights situation. Apart from calling for a transfer of power to an elected civilian government, the military junta was asked to fulfil its obligations under articles 55 and 56 of the UN Charter (to promote universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all people); accede to the two International Covenants on human rights and the Convention against Torture, Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; make Myanmar’s system of law accessible to citizens; lift the ongoing state of emergency; eliminate martial law as the basis of law; protect physical integrity rights according to international standards; eradicate forced labour practices; abolish burdensome requirements for citizenship (used especially against the Rohingya), and release Suu Kyi and all other political leaders or charge them in a properly constituted and independent civilian court.91 The Human Rights Commission and General Assembly added other human rights-related requests, including the creation of conditions that would end the exodus of Myanma refugees to neighbouring countries and facilitate their early repatriation; improvement of prison conditions; reopening institutions of higher learning (closed by the central government after popular protests), and putting an immediate end to the recruitment and use of child soldiers and ensuring their demobilization and rehabilitation.92 A resolution adopted by the UN Commission on Human Rights in April 2003 contained no fewer than 16 specific measures it strongly urged Rangoon to adopt in order to establish a democratic society respecting human rights.93 Next to the UN, the EC/EU was the multilateral body that took the most active interest in developments in Myanmar after 1988. In their numerous statements, the Europeans echoed many of the demands that the UN had addressed to Rangoon, including the initiation of a substantive dialogue between SLORC/SPDC and pro-democracy groups, the installation of a democratically elected civilian government and the release of Suu Kyi and all other political prisoners. The EC paid particular attention to the ‘intolerable repression’ suffered by Myanmar’s ethnic minorities. Several appeals were made to the military government to cease military and other repres-

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sive actions against these communities, safeguard their rights and allow for the return of refugees from neighbouring countries.94 The Community and its member states were willing to re-establish ‘constructive relations’ with Rangoon, according to a 1992 statement, ‘as soon as Burma becomes a democratic state and respects human rights, in accordance with the UN Charter and universally accepted standards’.95 After 1994, when the EU emphasized ‘critical dialogue’ with Myanmar, member states began referring to such demands as ‘benchmarks’ to test Rangoon’s commitment to political change (which would in turn influence any improvement in the Union’s relations with Myanmar).96 A presidency statement of October 2002 reiterated the gist of the EU’s requirements, namely that Mynamar had ‘to make urgent progress towards the promotion of national reconciliation, respect for human rights and the return of democracy’.97 Appearing before the UN Human Rights Commission in 1993, six Nobel Peace laureates demanded the release from house arrest in Myanmar of their fellow laureate, Suu Kyi, and the re-establishment of democracy in the country. Led by Oscar Arias Sanchez, the group included Elie Wiesel (US) and Rigoberta Menchu (Guatemala). Nelson Mandela made the same appeal in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1993.98 Given the extent of narcotics production in Myanmar, there were some demands from abroad that the authorities in Rangoon take decisive action against drug producers and traders within the country. One of the explicit conditions for the lifting of American economic sanctions, imposed in 1992, was that Myanmar had to satisfy the certification requirements of the Narcotics Control Trade Act of 1986. (The other three conditions related to democracy and human rights, similar to those mentioned above.)99

International responses to Myanmar’s errant behaviour Unlike most other deviant states considered in this volume, Myanmar had a strong and outspoken opposition movement within the country, one with which scores of foreign actors openly sided. In turn these antigovernment forces, especially Suu Kyi’s NLD, helped to keep international attention focused on Myanmar and also influenced foreign responses to the violation of human rights and the lack of democracy in that country. In short, Suu Kyi helped to sour the international environment for Myanmar’s governing junta. She enjoyed international fame, especially after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 – for what the Nobel Committee called her ‘outstanding work’ for democracy and human rights100 – and the European Parliament’s Sakharov human rights prize the same year.101 (India added its Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding to Suu Kyi’s list of international distinctions.102) In November 1995, in the wake of its withdrawal from the National Convention, the NLD for the first time asked for international backing of


its cause.103 In July 1996 Suu Kyi crossed another threshold by openly advocating the imposition of international economic sanctions against Myanmar.104 She repeatedly stressed that ‘it is too early for either tourists or investment or aid to come pouring into Burma’. Such links had to be conditional upon genuine progress towards democratization, Suu Kyi insisted, otherwise putting money into the country ‘is simply supporting a system that is severely harmful to the people of Burma’.105 Most of these appeals were not so much calls for a new foreign approach but rather an endorsement of punitive measures that had by then been applied for a good many years.106 Suu Kyi also favoured some degree of diplomatic isolation. In 1996, on the eve of Myanmar’s admission to the ASEAN Regional Forum, she questioned how her country, ‘where there is no rule of law, there’s no justice, there’s no stability’, could be ‘a credit to the region’.107 In a further direct appeal to international opinion, Suu Kyi in April 1999 reportedly urged the UN High Commission on Human Rights to adopt a ‘firm resolution’ to protect human rights in Myanmar.108 The rival National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, an exiled group that challenged SLORC for the legitimate right to rule the nation, also appealed to Western governments to sever economic relations with Myanmar as long as the military junta remained in power,109 and lobbied at the UN for SLORC’s removal from the General Assembly.110 We have already touched on the international censure to which Myanmar has been subjected from various foreign sources. The principal multilateral body that began to take issue with Myanmar’s human rights record in 1990 was the UN, specifically the General Assembly, Commission on Human Rights and ILO. Considering the gravity of SLORC’s offences, the UN’s initial censure was remarkably mild. In December 1991 the General Assembly (resolution 46/132) merely ‘noted with concern substantive information indicating a grave human rights situation in Myanmar’. The Commission on Human Rights went slightly further in March 1992, saying it ‘deplores’ the fact that the government of Myanmar has not yet fulfilled its commitments to establish a democratic state. The Commission also expressed its ‘concern at the seriousness of the human rights situation’ in Myanmar.111 In due course UN organs began venting their frustration with Rangoon’s intransigence. In a resolution passed in March 1995, the Human Rights Commission stated it was ‘[g]ravely concerned at the violations of human rights in Myanmar, which remain extremely serious’, and then added the familiar litany of abuses.112 By the end of 2000 the General Assembly (resolution 55/112), having little to show for its efforts, was ‘[s]till gravely concerned at the deterioration of the human rights situation in Myanmar, especially the unabated suppression of the exercise of political rights and freedom of thought, expression, association and movement in Myanmar’. Two years later the Assembly (resolution 57/231) could welcome a number of positive

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moves by Rangoon, including visits to Myanmar by the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy and the Rapporteur of the Human Rights Commission, but continued to record its serious concern about the wide array of human rights abuses. General Assembly censure was often based on reports produced by the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar. These detailed the range of abuses committed by the military junta, ranging from forced labour to arbitrary executions and the suppression of ethnic minorities. ‘At the very worst, we are faced with a country which is at war with its own people’, a 1999 report concluded. ‘At the very best, it is a country which is holding its people…hostage’.113 Following an investigation by a Commission of Inquiry appointed by the ILO into forced labour in Myanmar, the ILO in August 1998 released a damning report. The Commission found that the use of forced labour was ‘pervasive’ throughout Myanmar and accused the military junta of beatings, torture, rape and murder in implementing the practice. All this, the report stated, constituted a ‘gross violation of human rights’.114 Member countries of the ILO in June 1999 passed a resolution condemning Myanmar for its widespread use of forced labour and set Rangoon an ultimatum to take serious steps to outlaw the practice. In November 2000 the ILO decided that the ban imposed on forced labour by the military junta in October was insufficient and that adequate steps had not been taken to end the abuse. The agency consequently asked its 175 members to ‘take appropriate measures’ – meaning economic sanctions – against Myanmar. It was an unprecedented punitive action against an ILO member state.115 EC members had voiced a sense of impatience as early as January 1991. ‘They cannot … conceal their growing concern at the continuing failure of the Burmese military authorities to respond to the people’s will and at the continuing rejection by those authorities of requests by properly elected representatives for a democratic process to be initiated’, the European countries declared, adding that they could not ignore ‘the numerous failures to adhere to internationally accepted standards of behaviour, to respect human rights …’.116 The same year the European Parliament, in an even more forceful resolution, expressed shock, alarm and indignation at human rights violations in Myanmar and pledged its support for the continuation of punitive measures should Rangoon refuse to heed the demand of the country’s elected representatives for democracy.117 A decade later the EU still complained that the human rights situation in Myanmar ‘remained extremely serious’.118 Among international non-governmental bodies, human rights organizations have been most outspoken. Amnesty International’s annual reports detailing the violation of human rights in Myanmar were tantamount to a severe indictment of the authorities’ rule-breaking conduct.119 Article 19, the International Centre against Censorship in London, was another


human rights NGO that has publicized the military junta’s persistent disregard for internationally recognized human rights norms.120 Reference has already been made to the highly critical report of the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues in April 2000 on Rangoon’s treatment of the Rohingya Muslims. The US was once again the foreign state most vociferous in its criticism of Myanmar’s conduct, especially with regard to what the US Congress termed ‘the ongoing, horrifying abuses of human rights’.121 Apart from such general condemnations, the Americans directed their fury at the military rulers’ refusal to transfer power to the NLD after the 1990 election, and their mistreatment of Suu Kyi. The US was also highly critical of what Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in March 1999 called the junta’s insufficient action to combat the production of and trade in drugs.122 Canada, Australia and the Scandinavian countries likewise denounced SLORC’s abysmal human rights record. Even Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore in the early 1990s lodged vigorous protests with Rangoon. The cause was the exodus of Myanma Muslims to Bangladesh in the face of persecution by the military authorities. Sensitive to the feelings of their own Muslim populations, the three states felt compelled to raise the issue.123 Myanmar was also subjected to various forms of isolation, albeit limited, through the imposition of sanctions in the economic, diplomatic and military spheres. Punitive economic measures began in the wake of SLORC’s seizure of power in 1988. The country lost all bilateral aid from its traditional OECD donors after the coup and World Bank lending was suspended.124 The US was the most energetic and committed state in punishing Myanmar through economic sanctions. In the early 1990s Washington enforced a strict aid embargo, cancelled Myanmar’s privileges under the generalized system of preferences and refused to renew their bilateral textile agreement. The latter move cut off Myanmar’s single largest category of exports to the US (US$9 million of Myanmar’s total exports of $22 million to the US in 1990.)125 In 1997 Washington banned new American investment in Myanmar. Existing US commercial interests in the country were left unaffected – a major concession to American businesses that scrambled to conclude new contracts in Myanmar in anticipation of the prohibition on further investment.126 Washington used its clout in the World Bank, IMF, Asian Development Bank and other international financial institutions to deny Myanmar access to new lending or grant programmes.127 The US also managed to reach an agreement with the Paris Club of bilateral aid donors in 1995 that a debt settlement with Myanmar had to be sought on the basis of a bilateral agreement with the IMF (where America of course had an effective veto).128 In America restrictive measures against Myanmar were applied at subnational levels too. Five US states, including Massachusetts, and 17 US

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cities, among them Ann Arbor, Berkeley, San Francisco and Madison, had by the mid-1990s passed selective purchasing laws that embargoed trade with Myanmar.129 (In June 2000 the US Supreme Court overturned the Massachusetts state law restricting business with Myanmar, ruling that it impinged on the federal government’s authority to conduct foreign policy.130) The fear of public protests and shareholder action placed a damper on American investment in Myanmar, with the Coalition for Corporate Withdrawal from Burma particularly active in this regard.131 Several American companies indeed withdrew from Myanmar on human rights grounds or due to political pressure, among them Liz Claiborne, Eddie Bauer, Columbia Sportswear, Levi Strauss and Macy’s, followed in October 2002 by the multinational leisure chain Accor.132 SLORC’s disdain for the voters’ verdict in 1990 prompted the EC in 1991 to suspend non-humanitarian development aid programmes to Myanmar and to reduce economic and trade relations to a minimum.133 In 1997 the EU withdrew Myanmar’s access to generalized tariff preferences in agricultural and industrial goods. The move was in protest against Rangoon’s forced labour practices.134 ‘Smart’ sanctions followed in April 2000, when the EU froze funds held in Europe by members of Myanmar’s ruling elite and their families.135 Because of ‘insufficient progress’ in improving Myanmar’s human rights situation, the EU extended its punitive measures on several occasions, and they remained in force into 2003.136 Canada was one of the other industrialized nations to have restricted economic ties with Myanmar: apart from suspending aid in August 1997, Myanmar’s preferential benefits were removed and Canadian companies wishing to export to that country had to obtain a permit from Ottawa.137 Fortunately for Myanmar’s rulers, there has all along been a lack of political will abroad to make economic sanctions effective. Punitive measures were never applied over a wide front and several countries would not stay the course. For one thing, most Western governments were unwilling to interfere in the foreign business activities of corporations based in their countries, perhaps even more so when these were huge oil companies involved in Myanmar (e.g. Amoco (US), Royal Dutch Shell (Britain and The Netherlands) and Petro-Canada). A further consideration was that economic sanctions imposed by Western states would prove ineffectual unless supported by Japan, China and the ASEAN countries. None of them has been enthusiastic about sanctioning Myanmar.138 This was a critical factor, considering that Myanmar conducted most of its foreign trade with Japan, India, Singapore, Thailand and China.139 The case of Japan, Myanmar’s major aid donor before the 1988 coup, is particularly instructive. Within months of suspending aid to SLORC-ruled Myanmar in 1988, Japan recognized the new government and in early 1989 resumed the disbursement of aid already approved before 1988. In 1991 Japan began providing Myanmar with debt-relief grants and in 1994


made two new humanitarian aid grants. Substantial Japanese economic aid was resumed in 1995 – a US$11 million grant for agricultural development – following Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest. In November 1999 Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi met with Senior General Than Shwe during an ASEAN summit in Manila – the first meeting between the leader of a major power and a ranking member of Myanmar’s ruling junta. In April 2001 the Japanese became even bolder, breaking the Western-led ban on non-humanitarian aid to Myanmar by promising nearly US$30 million to upgrade a hydro-electric power plant in that country.140 Punitive economic measures caused material hardship in Myanmar. Even if it was not the cause, the suspension of the bulk of foreign aid to Mynamar after the 1988 coup certainly aggravated the ‘silent emergency’ afflicting the country. The human distress and deprivation suffered by women and children in particular, were manifested in high infant and maternal mortality rates, severe malnutrition, a serious AIDS epidemic, insufficient rural water supply, and declining educational standards.141 Rangoon experienced various forms of diplomatic punishment too. The EU in 1996 (in terms of its Common Position on Myanmar) banned entry visas for senior SLORC members and their families as well as for senior members of the security forces, and suspended high-level bilateral governmental visits to Myanmar.142 The following year the EU cancelled a scheduled meeting between the Union and ASEAN in protest against Myanmar’s attendance. After some wrangling the two sides reached agreement that Myanmar would adopt a ‘passive role’ in the meeting of the Joint Cooperation Committee of the EU and ASEAN in May 1999.143 In 1999 the ILO resolved that the behaviour of the Myanma government with regard to forced labour was ‘grossly incompatible with the conditions and principles governing membership of the ILO’, and barred the country from participating in the organization’s activities.144 The earlier-mentioned group of Nobel Peace laureates in 1993 suggested to the UN Commission on Human Rights that Myanmar be denied UN membership until democracy was restored and that the Security Council should look into the situation in that country.145 Neither proposal was implemented. At the bilateral level the US refused to appoint an ambassador in Rangoon, downgrading its diplomatic representation to chargé d’affaires level in 1990.146 In another punitive measure the US in the mid1990s banned members of the Myanma junta and those who benefit from its rule, from entering America147 – a prohibition subsequently renewed.148 Restrictions on military ties with Myanmar came in the wake of the 1988 military coup and were stepped up after the election of 1990. The EC, for instance, in 1991 suspended military cooperation, banned the sale of arms, munitions and military equipment, and subsequently expelled all military personnel attached to Myanmar’s diplomatic missions in EC member countries. In April 2000 the EU added a ban on the export of any equipment

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that could be used for internal repression or terrorism.149 Several states were, however, still prepared to sell Rangoon arms in the years immediately after 1988. Apart from China, Myanmar’s main source, the list of suppliers included Singapore, Pakistan, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan and the Soviet Union.150 An instance of unofficial cultural isolation could be found in attempts to derail Rangoon’s Visit Myanmar Year (VMY) promotional programme. Launched by the Government in November 1996, the aim was to increase tourist numbers to 500,000 over the next twelve months. VMY fell well short of its target, due to both the political unrest that swept the country at the start of the initiative and a worldwide boycott campaign by supporters of Myanmar’s democratic opposition. The boycott highlighted not only the undemocratic nature of the country’s government, but also the use of forced labour to develop infrastructure projects, forcible mass relocation of people to prepare for the anticipated influx of foreign tourists, and the use of laundered opium money in the construction of tourist facilities. Attention was furthermore drawn to the ownership of hotels by members of the military and their families.151 After more than a decade of economic punishment, the champions of this course of action could produce little tangible evidence of political success. By the beginning of 2003 the military dictatorship still ruled the country as if the electorate had not expressed a very different preference in 1990. Human rights continued to be violated systematically and extensively, as witness the continued detention of hundreds of political prisoners, including scores of parliamentarians elected in 1990. In the economic domain sanctions no doubt contributed to Myanmar’s ongoing status as one of the world’s poorest countries (average per capita GDP of US$300), according to World Bank figures for 2000.152 Foreign inducements were offered on occasion. In 1999, for instance, several states had reportedly promised Myanmar US$1 billion in aid if the junta would permit meaningful political freedoms. The generals were said to have rejected the deal, insisting that they could not be bought.153 Engagement was practised by a range of foreign actors, often in combination with forms of isolation. Foremost among them was the UN, where the General Assembly in 1993 requested the assistance of the Secretary-General in implementing Assembly resolutions by initiating a dialogue with SLORC and between the latter and opposition representatives. The SecretaryGeneral’s Special Envoy for Myanmar (first Assistant Secretary-General Alvaro de Soto and later Razali Ismail, a Malaysian diplomat) held several rounds of talks with government and opposition leaders to facilitate dialogue between the two sides.154 The UN Commission on Human Rights in 1992 appointed a Special Rapporteur (Dr Yozo Yokota from Japan) for the purpose of establishing direct contacts with both the government and the ‘people’ of Myanmar, with a view to examining the human rights situation


there, and following progress towards the transfer of power to a civilian government and the drafting of a new constitution. (The military junta at first denied the Rapporteur’s requests to conduct ‘field missions’ in Myanmar.)155 Engagement of a humanitarian nature has been undertaken by several other UN agencies, notably the UN Development Programme, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Food Programme and the UN High Commission for Refugees. The ILO was formally engaged in Myanmar’s domestic politics in the persons of a Liaison Officer (appointed in 2002), whose role was to ensure the ‘prompt and effective elimination’ of forced labour in the country, and a facilitator (appointed in 2003) tasked with assisting victims of such labour in Myanmar. The UN Drug Control Programme also maintained a presence in Myanmar.156 Since the mid-1990s some Western states have placed increasing emphasis on engagement with Myanmar, rather than on punishment through isolation.157 Consider the remark of Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd in 1994 that Britain’s strong criticism of human rights violations in Myanmar ‘should not impede or prevent trade, and indeed, in certain circumstances, trade can actually have a useful effect in opening up the country and showing the need for change’.158 The criticism alluded to was expressed through so-called critical dialogue with Rangoon. Although it supported ‘meaningful political dialogue’ with the SPDC, the EU insisted that Myanmar’s rulers would have to make more ‘significant progress’ on human rights before the lifting of sanctions could be considered. In the meantime the EU despatched several official-level Troika Missions to Rangoon to explain the Union’s policies, gather first-hand information on the local political political situation and encourage reconciliation between government and opposition.159 The US position was more qualified. It would only ‘look seriously’ at supporting constructive change in Myanmar once ‘significant progress’ had been made towards a transition to democratic rule and greater respect for human rights.160 ASEAN opted unambiguously for what it called ‘constructive engagement’. Assuming that the military would remain in power for the foreseeable future, ASEAN countries believed that expanding economic and other ties with Rangoon and so increasing foreign influence was the most effective way of promoting political change there.161 The manner in which Rangoon was approached was of critical importance. An Indonesian diplomat explained: ‘We are telling them very quietly, in a Southeast Asian way, without any fanfare, without any public statements: Look, you are in trouble, let us help you. But you have to change, you cannot continue like this.’162 An entirely different reason for engagement was ASEAN members’ keenness to counter the growing Chinese influence in Myanmar, the fear being that an expansionist China was intent on suborning Myanmar as a military ally.163 Economic considerations also featured, with Myanmar’s Asian neighbours keenly aware of the country’s abundant but largely

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untapped natural resources and the potential market that its 45 million inhabitants offered.164 In July 1996 Myanmar was granted observer status in ASEAN, followed by full membership a year later.165 Other instances of Asian diplomatic engagement were the visits to Rangoon by the President of Laos in 1992 and Singapore’s Prime Minister Goh Chok-tong in 1994, the first two high-level foreign visitors to Myanmar since the SLORC coup. Among those who followed in due course were Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed of Malaysia and General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, both in 2001.166 China has been Myanmar’s closest ally since the 1988 coup, exchanging not only high-level political visits (Premier Li Peng visiting Rangoon in December 1994) but expanding military and commercial ties too. What also bound the two countries together was a sense of shared experience: both encountered severe international adversity after security forces violently suppressed pro-democracy demonstrations, in Myanmar in 1988 and in China (Tiananmen Square) the following year.167 Australia too supported political engagement as a means of promoting change in Myanmar. Its modest Human Rights Initiative provided training for Myanma officials with the aim of establishing a national human rights commission there. The military junta indeed created such a body in 2001.168 Economic engagement with Myanmar has enjoyed far wider support from influential trading nations than has economic isolation. By the mid1990s Singapore had become the largest regional stakeholder in the Myanma economy, with over US$600 million committed to nearly 40 different projects (mostly in hotels, tourism and property development).169 Companies from Malaysia and Indonesia have also entered into lucrative contracts in Myanmar. China, we have noted, was another major economic partner. Their cross-border trade exceeded US$3 billion per annum by the mid-1990s.170 The engagement lobby also had its vocal supporters in the US business community. According to Ernest Bower, President of the US–ASEAN Council, American investment in Myanmar ‘is an extremely effective means of advancing economic and social development’ and also democratic values.171 In the mid-1990s American companies’ investment in Myanmar stood at some US$203 million, making the US the third largest foreign investor there.172 America allowed limited involvement in anti-narcotics activities despite its criticism of Rangoon’s conduct in this area. The American Drug Enforcement Agency continued to maintain a small office in Myanmar and engaged in no more than basic law enforcement operations with Myanma authorities. 173 The bulk of America’s anti-narcotics aid programme to Myanmar, dating back to the 1970s, was suspended after the 1988 coup. By denying Rangoon much needed assistance in curbing drug production and trade, the Americans may paradoxically


have contributed to the growth of Myanmar’s narcotics industry since the late 1980s.174 Singapore is one the countries that also practised military engagement through substantial arms supplies and in training special units of the Myanma Army. China was Myanmar’s largest foreign arms supplier, providing nearly US$2 billion in military hardware between 1988 and the mid-1990s.175 The charge that isolation has been ineffective in bringing about political liberalization in Myanmar can with equal validity be leveled against constructive engagement. This applies particularly to member countries of ASEAN, the principal proponents of engagement. As critics have pointed out, foreign investment and trade in all likelihood benefited ‘a small oligarchy of generals and their families, increasing their personal wealth and consumption’, leaving the vast majority of inhabitants mired in poverty.176

Rangoon’s responses to international pressure Defiance has long been the defining response of the military junta to foreign appeals and demands for domestic political liberalization. SLORC and subsequently the SPDC have after all clung to power despite numerous appeals of the international community to respect human rights and restore democracy. One of Myanmar’s defiant responses is a stock-in-trade of deviant states. When the Japanese government made representations to SLORC on behalf of political prisoners, the Myanma Foreign Minister’s curt response was that such detentions were ‘internal affairs’ and hence out of bounds to foreigners.177 Reacting to the 1993 General Assembly resolution censuring Myanmar, the country’s UN representative complained the resolution ‘flagrantly attempted to interfere in the internal affairs’ of his country. What is more, the resolution ‘completely ignored the principles … of impartiality, objectivity and non-selectivity, on the promotion of human rights’.178 Even UN efforts to assist the people of Myanmar in achieving national reconciliation have been rebuffed by Rangoon. As Myanmar’s UN ambassador told the General Assembly in 1994, national reconciliation was an internal matter. ‘We shall seek to … find a domestic solution … without any outside involvement’, he insisted.179 Closely tied to the charge of foreign interference was Rangoon’s habit of questioning the veracity of foreign accusations and the motives of critics. In 1998, for example, the Myanma representative in the UN Human Rights Commission dismissed a report of the Special Rapporteur on Myanmar as lacking in balance and accuracy and being a ritual repetition of a litany of unproven allegations provided by sources hostile to the country’s government.180

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Projection was a related form of defiance practised by Myanmar’s rulers. A classical illustration is Rangoon’s reaction to British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook’s earlier-quoted denunciation of the junta’s irresponsibility in profiting from the international drugs trade. ‘Whether Mr Cook is ignorant of the fact or deliberately trying to cover up the most irresponsible and unforgivable criminal act Britain committed by forcefully introducing opium into Asia (150 years ago) is anybody’s guess’, a Myanma official retorted.181 Denial was another familiar defiant reaction. In November 1998, for example, the SPDC vigorously denied that it was responsible for the widespread infringement of human rights in Myanmar.182 Instead, as Foreign Minister U Ohn Gyaw had tried to convince an American audience in 1997, Myanmar’s internal arrangements were fully in step with the time. The ‘fundamental changes’ introduced by SLORC after 1988, he maintained, led Myanmar from an isolationist socialist state ‘to a democracyoriented multiparty state…with a market-oriented economy’.183 When pressed on the twin issues of democracy and human rights, the military leaders also invoked counter-norms. ‘In our country’, a SLORC member explained, ‘human rights mean security, food, clothing and shelter, non-disintegration of the country, and perpetuation of the country’s sovereignty’.184 Burma’s junta furthermore argued for cultural relativism, contending that Western concepts of human rights and democracy were inappropriate in the cultural and economic environments of Asia.185 Thus another SLORC official maintained that ‘Myanmar ensures human rights in accordance with Myanmar’s traditional values, customs and religion.’ The cultural values and way of life of Eastern nations ‘are totally different’ from those of the West, he continued. ‘It must be understood that “East is East and West is West.”’186 In like vein SLORC chief Saw Maung proclaimed in 1990 that ‘I can only grant rights suitable for the Myanmar people’.187 What he did not add, was that SLORC claimed sole authority to determine what rights were suitable. A variation of the assertion of cultural relativism was that Western notions of human rights ‘are targeted to limited people’, as a member of the junta put it. This was an indirect reference to Suu Kyi. The government, he declared, was concerned not merely with a few prominent individuals but with the welfare of the entire population.188 A counter-norm of sorts was the military junta’s portrayal of its rule as an indispensable stabilizing force. ‘There could be no peace, democracy or human rights where there was anarchy and the law of the jungle ruled’, a spokesperson explained in 1993. This then led to the assertion that SLORC, far from preventing democracy, ‘was attempting to create an atmosphere conducive to [the] establishment of a democracy’.189 The military rulers’ ‘inherent xenophobia’ found expression in abusive anti-foreign campaigns orchestrated through the state-controlled media.190 Mouthpieces of the ruling elite reserved the brunt of their fury for the


foreign media, which was portrayed as the ‘sky full of lies’. News blackouts have been imposed several times by expelling or barring foreign journalists from the country. BBC news reports, a senior military officer claimed, had made the situation in Myanmar so unstable that the Army had no choice but to seize power in 1988.191 There have been numerous other acts of defiance on the junta’s part. In March 1999, for instance, it ignored requests from several foreign governments to grant Suu Kyi’s terminally-ill husband, Michael Aris, a visa to visit her in Myanmar. Aris, a Briton who resided in the United Kingdom, died a few weeks later. (Suu Kyi refused to oblige the junta by visiting her ailing spouse in Britain instead, fearing she would not be allowed to return home.)192 The International Committee of the Red Cross was for long not allowed to inspect prison conditions in Myanmar and human rights NGOs from abroad were refused permission for fact-finding visits. The junta’s non-cooperation extended to the UN and its human rights mechanism. Rajsmooer Lallah, during his tenure as Special Rapporteur (1996–2000), was never able to enter Myanmar.193 Myanmar’s military leaders had good reason to complain about double standards in the sanctions campaign. Why, they would ask, did the US – again in the vanguard of the sanctions drive – punish Myanmar by curtailing economic links and imposing diplomatic sanctions, yet chose policies of engagement in dealing with North Korea, China, Vietnam and other countries patently guilty of gross human rights violations?194 Despite its generally unyielding response to external pressures for domestic political change, the military junta more than once made conciliatory moves – not least to gain some reward from abroad. The unexpected release of NLD leader Suu Kyi from house arrest in July 1995 has been interpreted by outside observers as at least in part a concession to foreign pressure: the military junta wanted to placate the Japanese especially and so improve the climate for badly needed capital from abroad. By releasing Suu Kyi, the junta may have reasoned further, international sympathy for her would be diminished and the government’s foreign standing would improve correspondingly.195 Similar considerations probably influenced the SPDC’s release of scores of political prisoners in 2000 and 2001 (including a British human rights activist).196 The very creation of the SPDC in 1997 to replace SLORC – in fact little more than a name-change – has likewise been portrayed as an attempt to gain international legitimacy for the ruling junta.197 We could also allude to the junta’s banning of forced labour in October 2000, a vain attempt to forestall ILO sanctions.198 Early in the new millennium Sergio Paulo Pinheiro became the first UN Special Rapporteur on human rights to be allowed to visit Myanmar in six years; UN Special Representative Razali Ismail went to Myanmar to facilitate a dialogue between the military junta and Suu Kyi’s NLD; a delegation from the

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International Committee of the Red Cross received permission from Rangoon to visit prisons and labour camps in Myanmar; a high-level ILO team did an in loco investigation into forced labour, and an ILO liason officer was appointed to stop the use of forced labour in the country.199

Conclusion The Cold War and Burma’s isolationism helped to keep the country’s systematic violation of human rights since 1962 off the international agenda. After 1988, when SLORC came to power, Burma/Myanmar no longer had the luxury of international ignorance and indifference. In the new post-Cold War era the international spotlight fell sharply on the country’s continued breach of generally accepted norms of human rights. The military junta’s abuse of human rights had several dimensions, ranging from the denial of democracy to the Burmese people (by refusing to honour the results of the general election of 1990) through forced labour to ethnic cleansing. These constituted serious acts of deviance. Myanmar’s other main transgression, which directly affected several major states, was its involvement in the international drug trade. In the course of the 1990s Rangoon managed to convince its foreign critics that it was genuinely committed to eradicating the drug scourge, thus getting itself off the hook on this count. The world community, acting through the UN, from the early 1990s treated Myanmar as a deviant state. The General Assembly, Human Rights Commission and also the ILO roundly condemned the abuse of human rights and the accompanying denial of democracy and pressured the military junta to uphold international norms of behaviour. The UN’s involvement made Myanmar a first-order or universal deviant. The EU went further by imposing tangible punitive measures. Individual states, notably the US, have done likewise. Myanmar is unique among our case studies in that its errant conduct was confined mainly to the domestic arena. It did not pursue WMD, harbour aggressive designs towards its neighbours, try to export its internal political arrangements or support international terrorism. Even so, its defiant dictatorship has condemned the country to true deviant status. Myanmar’s full international rehabilitation seems inconceivable with the military junta in power.

11 Yugoslavia

The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY, composed of Serbia and Montenegro) provides another telling illustration of the flaws of the rogue state doctrine. In the 1990s Yugoslavia richly deserved the designation of a rogue state and was in fact treated as such by the US – yet Yugoslavia was excluded from Washington’s core group of rogues. True, the FRY did not pursue WMD or engage in international terrorism, two cardinal sins of rogues, but its behaviour at home and in its immediate neighbourhood violated settled, high-consensus international norms. This conduct, together with the international adversity it provoked, made Yugoslavia a full-fledged member of the league of deviant states.

A doomed state One need not be blessed with that most profound insight of many a social scientist – hindsight – to know that the proverbial dice had been loaded against Yugoslavia from its inception. The seeds of its eventual destruction lay in its very construction. The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was proclaimed in December 1918. It brought together in a new state the three south Slavic territories of Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which had been ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the small independent kingdoms of Serbia (under Ottoman rule until the 19th century) and Montenegro. Prince Alexander, Regent of Serbia, became monarch of the newly created Kingdom. The justification for the state lay in the principle of national self-determination, championed by President Woodrow Wilson in his Fourteen Points. Yet instead of being a manifestation of truly national self-determination, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was a multinational state – ironically born out of two sprawling multinational empires that had collapsed partly under the weight of their own diversity. Its inability to accommodate its own heterogeneity – in terms of language, culture and religion, compounded by deep-seated ethnic animosities – 254

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would eventually be the undoing of Yugoslavia (‘south Slavia’), as King Alexander renamed the state in 1929.1 The political life of the first Yugoslavia was relatively nasty, brutish and short. Its component units were torn by the fundamental issue of whether the country should have a unitary or federal system, a question accentuated by the fact that King Alexander had from the outset established a Serbdominated government. The political scene was decidedly unsettled, as witness the banning of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in 1921 (forcing it underground), King Alexander’s assumption of dictatorial powers in 1929 and his assassination five years later, internal unrest especially in Croatia, the overthrow of Prince Paul (Alexander’s successor) in 1941, German and Italian occupation the same year and the exile of the royal family, and civil war between royalists and communists. Josip Broz Tito’s communist partisans eventually won the internal war, the monarch was deposed in 1944 and the Federative People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed in 1945 with Tito as Prime Minister.2 Thus began the second Yugoslavia under communist leadership. A Soviet-style constitution, adopted in 1946, established a federation of six republics (Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia and BosniaHerzegovina) and two autonomous regions (Kosovo and Vojvodina). In true communist fashion, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (as the Communist Party of Yugoslavia renamed itself) had by the early 1950s established exclusive political control of the country. In 1953 Tito became President and remained in office until relieved by death in 1980. Meanwhile, in 1963, the country’s name had been changed to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). Compared with the upheaval that marked its predecessor, the second Yugoslavia was for some decades a place of political tranquility. As in other communist states, the heavy hand of dictatorship had much to do with it. Another was Tito’s deft balancing act of the conflicting centripetal and centrifugal forces in Yugoslavia’s ethnically diverse society. In 1971 he introduced a system of collective leadership and regular rotation of personnel between posts in an attempt to accommodate and unify the various nationalities. Under a new constitution promulgated in 1974, republics were given extensive rights in various domains.3 Tito’s death ushered in a new period in the life of the second Yugoslavia. The collective State Presidency, to which Tito’s responsibilities were transferred, soon proved unable to hold together the fractious collection of eighteen national minorities and six distinct nationalities, dispersed in six republics and two autonomous regions, practising three religions and using two alphabets. The 1980s saw the gradual disintegration of the state as inter-ethnic tensions, long suppressed, resurfaced with a vengeance. It began in Kosovo – an autonomous province in Serbia – in early 1981 when the Albanian community (constituting 90 per cent of the population)


embarked on widespread demonstrations for full republican status. In what became a repetitive cycle of events, the authorities responded with harsh repression, prompting further resistance, violence and bloodshed, the fleeing from the area of the minority Serbian and Montenegrin communities, and a surge in Serbian ethnic consciousness. Matters took a turn for the worse after Slobodan Milosevic became First Secretary of the Serbian branch of the League of Communists in 1987 and President of Serbia two years later. A hardline Serbian nationalist, he vowed to reverse the emigration of Serbians from Kosovo and to put an end to Albanian nationalist activities. In 1990 Serbia unilaterally terminated the autonomous status of Kosovo and Vojvodina and dissolved the Kosovo Provincial Assembly and government. In response, over 100 ethnic Albanian deputies to the Assembly made an abortive attempt to declare Kosovo’s independence from Serbia. Vojvodina, with its large Hungarian minority, and multinational Montenegro had by this time also experienced serious ethnic unrest.4 It is a moot point whether the Kosovar nationalists’ aims were solely secessionist (independent statehood) or actually irredentist (joining a Greater Albania) in nature. Milosevich’s Serbia would not countenance either; it rejected relinquishing part of its ‘own’ territory (Kosovo) and was equally opposed to the dissolution of the Yugoslav federation through the secession of any of the other republics. The scene was therefore set for serious confrontation when the Slovene Assembly in September 1989 asserted the sovereignty of Slovenia and its right to break away from Yugoslavia. In retaliation Serbia imposed economic sanctions against Slovenia. An unstoppable process had, however, been set in motion. Croatia (in December 1990) and Macedonia (January 1991) also claimed a right to sovereignty and to secede from the federation. Overwhelming popular support for independence was confirmed by referendums in all three republics. In May 1991, following failed talks between the leaders of the six republics on the future of Yugoslavia, Slovenia and Croatia unilaterally declared their independence. Federal troops, mostly Serbian, were dispatched to Slovenia to quash the secessionist bid with force, sparking a brief war between the two sides. War also broke out in Croatia, where settlements of ethnic Serbians proclaimed their autonomy from Croatia and federal troops sided openly with local Serbian nationalist forces. Following mediation by the EC, agreement was reached in July 1991 on the immediate cessation of hostilities and a three-month suspension of the independence declarations of Slovenia and Croatia. The moratorium did not produce any political settlement and in October Croatia and Slovenia formally dissociated from Yugoslavia. Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina followed suit in 1992. International recognition of the new states was not long in coming. So ended the second Yugoslavia. The two remaining republics, Serbia (including the province of Kosovo and Metohija – as it was renamed – and the province of Vojvodina) and Montenegro, in April 1992

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reconstituted themselves as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), thus becoming the third Yugoslavia in 75 years.5 The breakup of Yugoslavia, a local commentator wryly observed, meant the ‘rebalkanization of the Balkans’.6

Yugoslavia III: leaner and meaner The first decade of the FRY’s existence was a singularly turbulent period. The most dramatic feature was a set of interlinked wars: ‘a war between states, a civil war, a secession war, an ethnic conflict, a conflict between nations, to some extent a religious war, and certainly a war which includes much hate’.7 Secondly, Milosevic’s harsh and ethnocentric rule, initially as President of Serbia and later as Yugoslav President, provoked widespread opposition both within Serbia and the broader Federation. The third outstanding characteristic of these eventful years was the extensive as well as intensive international disapproval of Belgrade’s actions at home and in former republics of the defunct SFRY. The keys to understanding the protracted crisis the FRY lay in the demographic composition of the states and territories involved, the conditions of Yugoslavia’s (re)birth, and the decisive role of Milosevic. Just as the original Yugoslavia was anything but a homogeneous state, most of the successor states born out of the SFRY displayed various degrees of ethnic heterogeneity. Bosnia-Herzegovina was composed of Serbs (40 per cent of the total population), Muslims (38 per cent) and Croats (22 per cent). Croatia’s largest group, ethnic Croats, constituted roughly 75 per cent of its population, followed by Serbs (12 per cent) and smaller communities of Slovenes, Italians, Czechs and Muslims. Ethnic Macedonians formed the majority in Macedonia, while Albanians were the largest minority group (some 30 per cent of the total); other minority groups were the Turks, Romas, Serbs and Bulgarians. The new, leaner FRY also had a highly heterogeneous ethnic mix, with Serbs making up 63 per cent of the Federation’s population, ethnic Albanians (heavily concentrated in Kosovo) a further 17 per cent, Montenegrins 6 per cent (but 62 per cent of the population in Montenegro), and ethnic Hungarians 3 per cent; an assortment of other ethnic minorities and people who defined themselves as ‘Yugoslav’ (a mere 3 per cent of the total) accounted for the rest. The most homogeneous state of them all was Slovenia, where ethnic Slovenes constituted nearly 90 per cent of the population.8 Ethnic minorities in several of the new states, fearing for their physical safety and national identities under ‘alien’, even hostile rule, were none too keen on the new political arrangements. This applied especially to Serbs and Croats suddenly consigned to the diaspora. Attempts by such groups to declare themselves autonomous of the successor states or to link up with their mother countries, as well as the latter’s efforts to come to the rescue of their kith and kin in the new


abroad (an obvious play on Russia’s ‘near abroad’), provided major incentives for armed conflagration. These conflicts produced two of the most brutal wars Europe had witnessed since the Second World War, namely those in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. They were continuations of the Wars of Dissolution that had begun in Slovenia. Among the numerous atrocities committed during the hostilities in Bosnia-Herzegovina was the worst war crime in post-war Europe. In July 1995 General Ratko Mladic’s Bosnian Serb forces took over the UN safe haven of Srebrenica, cleansing the area of its entire Muslim population of 40,000: 4,000 to 10,000 were systematically killed, some were deported and others forced to flee.9 The war ended formally with the internationally-brokered Dayton Accord of November 1995 and the subsequent signing of a peace treaty in Paris in December. Kosovo, in turn, exploded onto the international scene in 1998 after serious ethnic tensions had been building up for at least a decade. In 1990, it will be recalled, the Serbian Assembly unlawfully revoked Kosovo’s autonomy and dissolved the province’s Assembly. This paved the way for an intensification of discriminatory government policies designed to ‘Serbianize’ Kosovo (where ethnic Serbs constituted only 10 per cent of the population), producing a vicious cycle of Albanian resistance and Serbian repression.10 Preoccupied with the wars elsewhere in former Yugoslavia, the international community did not regard Kosovo as a priority.11 International indifference ended with the Serbian massacre of 58 Albanians in early 1998 and the outbreak of open war between Yugoslav forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The armed conflict lasted until June 1999, the last few months coinciding with the NATO air campaign that began in March. In the first phase of the war in Kosovo, from February 1998 to March 1999, fewer than 2,000 civilians were killed, but over 400,000 people were driven from their homes. From the end of March to mid-June 1999, according to estimates of the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, 10,000 people – mostly Kosovar Albanians – were killed by FRY forces; 863,000 civilians sought or were forced into refuge outside Kosovo, and an additional 590,000 were internally displaced. The Commission also cited evidence of widespread rape and torture.12 The atrocities committed by the Serbs in Kosovo, an impending humanitarian disaster with winter imminent and thousands of Kosovars displaced, together with the repeated failure of joint Western and Russian peace initiatives for Kosovo, weighed heavily with NATO leaders when they ordered an air offensive against the FRY. After 11 weeks NATO had effectively bombed Yugoslavia into concluding a peace deal in 1999 that placed the disputed province under UN administration.13 At the same time that Milosevic’s forces were undertaking wars of aggression beyond the boundaries of Yugoslavia and committing human rights abuses in Kosovo, he engaged in undemocratic practices at home. One

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celebrated instance was Milosevic’s annulment of local election results in November 1996 in which opposition parties recorded major gains at his expense. Taking this action as another confirmation that Milosevic was the villain-in-chief, foreign countries resorted to punitive measures. International opprobrium could not obstruct Milosevic’s upward mobility, though: in July 1997 he landed the top job by becoming President of Yugoslavia, having served as Serbian President for some eight years. Milosevic reached the highest office only to preside over a fragmenting state and an eroding power-base. In Kosovo, already engulfed in civil war, he was losing his grip. There was a growing rift between Milosevic and the political leadership in Montenegro, Serbia’s sole partner in the FRY. Under the democratically-oriented Milo Djukanovic Montenegro distanced itself from Milosevic’s dictatorial behaviour in Belgrade, instead opting for a reformist political and economic course and attaining quasi-independent status for the tiny territory. (Montenegro had 680,000 inhabitants against Serbia’s 10 million.)14 In the Serbian Republika Srpska in BosniaHerzegovina a ruthlessly assertive local leadership caused Milosevic to lose control of events. Even in Serbia, his principal power base, Milosevic’s legitimacy was under threat as a war weary and impoverished population became increasingly disaffected. Milosevic had after all led Yugoslavia into a succession of lost wars and international isolation. In the late 1990s he was left ‘fighting a rearguard battle to protect his shrinking power-base’.15 It was to no avail, for in September 2000 the voters of Yugoslavia (effectively Serbia, because Montenegro boycotted the polls) turned their backs decisively on Milosevic. Vojislav Kostunica, the presidential candidate of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) and an anti-communist committed to market democracy, emerged victorious. True to form, Milosevic refused to accept defeat, causing a popular uprising that swept him from office in October.16 Thus ended a distinct period in the domestic politics and foreign relations of the FRY. Under the new federal president Yugoslavia became a full democracy, a move strengthened by DOS winning a majority of the Serbian seats in the federal legislature and also achieving a landslide victory in the subsequent legislative election in Serbia.17 Yugoslavia also moved quickly to demonstrate its commitment to regional peace based on respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of former republics of the disbanded SFRY. Early manifestations of Yugoslavia’s return to the international fold included the lifting of EU economic sanctions, the assumption of its seat in the UN General Assembly (after an enforced absence of eight years), its readmission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and to the EU’s Stability Pact for southeastern Europe, the EU’s commitment to help Federal Yugoslavia (alongside Croatia, BosniaHerzegovina, Macedonia and Albania) to become potential candidates for EU membership, and the resumption of diplomatic ties with the US,


Germany, France and Britain (which Belgrade had severed at the onset of NATO’s air bombardment).18 In February 2003 yet another new era arrived when the Yugoslav federation was dissolved and replaced by a loose union between its two component units. The state now carries the unwieldy name Serbia and Montenegro. This development still leaves the final status of Kosovo’s Albanians unresolved.

Naming and shaming the deviants Yugoslavia’s legions of foreign critics identified and demonized a whole network of deviants. The principal one was of course Slobodan Milosevic, who stood individually accused because he had the whip hand in both Serbian and national (Yugoslav) politics. Even as President of Serbia, he had been ‘the dominant Serbian political figure exercising de facto control of the federal government as well as the republican government’, in the words of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. After being elevated to the federal presidency, Milosevic retained his influence over the Serbian government in part through his successor as President of Serbia.19 Among those demonized collectively were the Serbian political leadership, the Yugoslav National Army and the leadership of the Bosnian Serbs. In popular Western perceptions even the Serbian people carried the stigma of outcasts in the community of nations. In June 1992 the Council of Europe articulated what was by then a commonly held view in Western capitals and in major inter-governmental organizations: ‘Although all parties have contributed, in their own way, to the present state of affairs’, the Council declared with regard to the violence ravaging former Yugoslavia, ‘by far the greatest share of responsibility falls on the Serbian leadership and the Yugoslav army controlled by it’.20 What was thought to have made Serbian atrocities different from those committed by other parties to the conflict, is that ‘they represented not an incidental development in the conflict, but a deliberate instrument of policy’.21 As we will see presently, scores of authoritative reports confirmed that Serbian forces (whether local or federal) were from the outset responsible for the overwhelming majority of war crimes and other atrocities committed in the conflict. Milosevic, in his capacity as President of Serbia first and subsequently as Federal President, was variously portrayed as a ‘bully’, ‘butcher of the Balkans’22 and, worse still, ‘a new Hitler’.23 Not only was he a politician ‘willing to set a match to this [Yugoslav ethnic] tinderbox by endeavoring to stoke and exploit ethnic hatreds for his own purposes’24 but, like a Wild West bank robber in a John Wayne movie, Milosevic ‘behaved as if he had removed himself and his people from the international legal system’.25 Milosevic’s other outstanding trait was reputedly that of ‘the master

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conjurer, a latter-day Machiavelli of the kind that is born perhaps once in a couple of centuries’.26 Even the sober report of the Independent International Commission on Kosovo pictured Milosevic as ‘an adversary with a track record of manipulation and criminality, and one whom few trusted to implement negotiated agreements’.27 The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia put the seal on Milosevic’s outlaw status by indicting him in May 1999 for war crimes. He became the first serving head of state to be thus accused.

Yugoslavia’s contraventions The UN Security Council determined that Belgrade was the principal cause of a situation in the former SFRY that ‘constitutes a threat to international peace and security’ (for example, resolution 757 of May 1992). This threat was in turn brought about by Belgrade’s aggression against the newly independent states of Slovenia, Croatia and especially Bosnia-Herzegovina after their secession. Yugoslavia’s first sin thus encompassed a second, namely that it threatened and indeed undermined the security, stability and sovereignty of surrounding countries. For these related transgressions Yugoslavia was severely censured by the universal body and other multilateral organizations. Many observers believed that ‘Belgrade was waging war not to defend or restore Yugoslavia’, in the words of a senior German diplomat deeply involved with the Yugoslav issue, ‘but to create an ethnically more homogenous Greater Serbia’28 – one comprising Serbia proper, Montenegro, and the Serbian-populated areas in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.29 In the process, federal and Serbian forces violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the other states, Bosnia-Herzegovina in particular. As the UN Secretary-General put it in a report of May 1992, ‘all international observers agree that what is happening is concerted efforts by the Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the acquiescence of, and at least some support from, the Yugoslav People’s Army, to create “ethnically pure” regions’.30 A related offence was that Belgrade for the first time in post-war Europe raised territorial issues and tried to settle them by force of arms.31 These were clearly deviant actions, for they violated fundamental norms of international conduct: non-aggression, peaceful resolution of disputes, non-interference, and respect for states’ sovereignty and territorial integrity. Yugoslavia’s third and fourth offences were in practice closely connected, viz. genocide and other crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Atrocities committed during the armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia in the first half of the 1990s were extensively reported by the Western news media – creating a sense of moral outrage in the West – and carefully documented by international investigators. Among the first bodies involved, were a Commission of Experts appointed by the UN Security Council in


October 1992 and a Special Rapporteur appointed by the UN Human Rights Commission the same year. Both found that the Serbian and Bosnian Serb forces were the principal (not sole) violators of international humanitarian law.32 A resolution adopted by the UN Commission on Human Rights in March 1994 on the situation of human rights in Bosnia-Herzegovina, serves as a useful summary of the various transgressions of which the Serbs in particular had by then been accused of committing in that country: genocide and ethnic cleansing, the indiscriminate shelling of civilian populations, the forced deportation of populations, attacks against civilian targets, the detention of civilians, the use of military force against defenceless civilians, the practice of rape as a weapon of war, and the strangulation of populations by obstructing emergency food supplies and other essentials.33 In the International Criminal Tribunal’s indictment of Milosevic, it was recorded that during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (1991–95) Serbian military, paramilitary and police forces had used the same method of operations employed in Kosovo in 1999: ‘heavy shelling and armed attacks on villages; widespread killings; destruction of non-Serbian residential areas and cultural and religious sites; and forced transfer and deportation of nonSerbian populations’.34 Official condemnation of the atrocities was swift, severe and sustained. The EC/EU, CSCE, Council of Europe, UN Security Council, UN Commission on Human Rights and its Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, an EC-ASEAN ministerial meeting, Gulf Cooperation Council and Islamic Conference Organization were among the multilateral political forums to castigate Yugoslavia.35 The international mood was neatly captured in two UN General Assembly resolutions (47/121 and 47/147) of December 1992. The world body declared that the Serbian leadership in Bosnian territories under their control, the Yugoslav Army and the political leadership of the Republic of Serbia bore ‘primary responsibility’ for the ‘abhorrent’ and ‘reprehensible’ practice of ethnic cleansing. It was a practice that flagrantly violated the most basic principles of human rights, the Assembly resolved, and constituted a form of genocide. Those ordering or committing acts of ethnic cleansing were individually responsible and should be brought to justice, the Assembly decided. Such expressions of censure usually mentioned the Serbs (from Serbia proper) and the Bosnian Serbs (living in Republika Srpska, the Serb ministate in Bosnia- Herzegovina) in the same breath. The assumption was that the two entities not merely belonged to the same ethnic group, but that they operated as a single political actor in Bosnia-Herzegovina – under the firm direction of Belgrade. Far from acting independently, the Bosnian Serbs were thus regarded as little more than the agents of Belgrade. This situation changed in the mid-1990s, when the international community targeted the Bosnian Serbs separately for criticism over their refusal to

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accept an internationally brokered territorial settlement in BosniaHerzegovina.36 It was a transgression related to Yugoslavia’s first sin, namely endangering international peace and security. To force their hand, the Security Council imposed a set of restrictive political and economic measures against the Bosnian Serbs. The distinction between the two Serbian entities became even more pronounced when the FRY towards the end of 1994 did the previously unthinkable of imposing an economic blockade against the Bosnian Serbs – also designed to coerce them into accepting the settlement plan.37 This move, together with its cooperation with the International Conference on Bosnia-Herzegovina, gave Belgrade some respite from UN denunciations and tangible punishment over its role in neighbouring countries.38 Meanwhile, the Bosnian Serb forces also came in for severe Security Council censure over their military offensives against UN-designated safe areas in Bosnia-Herzegovina, attacks on the civilian population, mass murder, forced labour, rape, deportation of civilians, ethnic cleansing, and detention of UN personnel.39 Even after the signing of the Dayton Agreement and the subsequent General Framework Agreement in Paris on 14 December 1995, the Security Council still issued strong condemnations of Bosnian Serb forces’ ongoing violations of international humanitarian law40 – the third transgression on our list. As in the decade’s three previous wars in the former Yugoslavia – in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina – the Serbians were in the case of Kosovo again regarded by the international community as the principal transgressors, committing three of the four sins identified above. Security Council resolution 1160 of March 1998 set the tone by ‘condemning the use of excessive force by Serbian police forces against peaceful demonstrators in Kosovo’. Members of the Council agreed that the FRY was primarily responsible for what resolution 1199 of September 1998 called an ‘impending humanitarian catastrophe’; that the catastrophe involved serious violations of international human rights norms; that the situation in Kosovo posed a threat to international peace and security; and that it could not be treated as a matter within the FRY’s domestic jurisdiction.41 Even NATO’s heavy bombing campaign from March to June 1999 could not immediately halt the atrocities in Kosovo; Serb forces in fact intensified their campaign of mass expulsions and massacres of ethnic Albanian civilians, prompting renewed international claims of genocide.42 These charges culminated in the International Criminal Tribunal’s indictment of Milosevic and four other Serbian leaders for their role ‘in a campaign of terror and violence directed at Kosovo Albanian civilians living in Kosovo’.43 Turning to the domestic front within Serbia and Montenegro, the Milosevic government in the fifth place stood accused of a variety of undemocratic practices, including human rights abuses.44 Four examples will suffice. In October 1991 the Committee of Senior Officials of the CSCE denounced the ‘usurpation of power’ by Serbia and Montenegro in the


collective Federal Presidency. The two republics’ effective seizure of power violated the established constitutional order of Yugoslavia as well as the Charter of Paris, the CSCE officials declared.45 In August 1992 the same body accused the Serbian government-controlled media of subjecting the Serb population ‘to a constant barrage of hate and xenophobia’ – an allegation that underlined the lack of press freedom in Serbia.46 Four years later Milosevic’s temporary suspension of municipal election results in Serbia – unfavourable to his government – provoked yet another storm of protest from abroad. Milosevic’s attempt to cling to power after his defeat in the presidential election in September 2000 likewise outraged Western powers in particular. The UN Human Rights Commission in April 2000 listed specific human rights offences committed by Belgrade in the FRY itself: ongoing repression of the independent media, political opposition and non-governmental organizations; police intimidation; and the arbitrary administration of justice and application of the law.47 The sixth contravention is one Yugoslavia claims to have committed in Western eyes and was punished for accordingly: it pursued an ‘independent foreign policy’ that represented ‘an impediment to hegemonism and domination’. NATO and the US, Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic asserted in the dying days of Milosevic’s rule, were in the vanguard of attempts to subordinate other countries. Yugoslavia, however, ‘refuses to accept the doctrine of limited sovereignty and intervention’ – an allusion to NATO’s air attacks on Yugoslavia and the imposed international presence in Kosovo.48 It is difficult to give credence to the claim that the FRY was being punished for acting independently – unless independent action meant the right to flaunt international norms of behaviour. We conclude this discussion by referring back to the inventory of 11 offences contained in the analytical framework (chapter 2). We have recorded that Yugoslavia clearly committed five of them: it threatened international peace and security (albeit not by pursuing WMD); it committed acts of aggression against and tried to dominate neighbouring states; it engaged in genocide and other crimes against humanity; it committed war crimes, and it violated democratic principles and practices. Yugoslavia certainly tried to defy the international community and paid the price for it, but this does not mean that Belgrade was being punished for acting too independently in world affairs. Nor was Yugoslavia targeted for being antiWestern; its anti-American and anti-NATO diatribes were responses to the air war of 1999 rather than a considered foreign policy orientation. What is more, the FRY never left any doubt about its keenness to be fully reintegrated – politically, diplomatically, economically and culturally – with the rest of Europe, where it believed it rightfully belonged. As far as the transgression of terrorism is concerned, a case could be made that Belgrade had engaged in state terrorism in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, even though critics seldom if ever used this term. To be fair, the FRY did not use

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terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy in the same way as Iran, for example. The three remaining sins in the inventory were not attributed to Yugoslavia (or the Serbs for that matter): the acquisition of a vast arsenal of conventional weapons, a revolutionary foreign policy, and involvement in the international drug trade.

External demands and objectives The identification of transgressions has touched on the main external demands directed at Yugoslavia. The behavioural codes proposed or prescribed by outsiders covered three distinct issue areas: the status of republics that had or aspired to secede from the Federation, the future of Kosovo, and the FRY’s internal political arrangements. Already in the very early phases of the Yugoslav crisis of dissolution, the international community specified the principles that should guide all domestic parties in the search for a peaceful settlement. In July 1991 a ministerial meeting of the EC called for a dialogue between all parties on the future of Yugoslavia, based on respect for human rights – including minority rights and the rights of peoples to self-determination – and the territorial integrity of states.49 Other principles enumerated at subsequent EC ministerial meetings, were that ‘full account be taken of all legitimate concerns and legitimate aspirations’ (the antithesis of unilaterally imposed ‘solutions’); that political pluralism be recognized; that there be no unilateral change of Yugoslavia’s internal or external borders by force (which the EC ‘are determined not to recognize’), that the basic humanitarian standards set out in the Geneva Convention be complied with, and, of course, that the use of force was unacceptable and that agreements entered into (especially cease-fire arrangements) had to be respected.50 Two further guidelines stipulated by at least the EC in the early days of the conflict (but soon abandoned), were that the unity of Yugoslavia should be retained and that it was ‘only for the peoples of Yugoslavia themselves to decide the country’s future’.51 Another general appeal, which the UN Security Council in May 1992 directed at ‘all parties’, asked them to ensure the immediate cessation of forcible expulsions of people from where they lived ‘and any attempts to change the ethnic composition of the population’ anywhere in the former Yugoslavia.52 This was an early reference to what became known as ethnic cleansing. The general international norms that underlay all these requirements were enshrined in major international agreements and declarations, cited on numerous occasions by inter alia the EC/EU (including the European Parliament),53 UN General Assembly,54 Security Council55 and Human Rights Commission,56 CSCE,57 EC and US jointly,58 EC, US and Soviet Union collectively,59 the Group of Seven (major industrialized states), and the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers.60 The inventory contained the


UN Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Geneva Convention and its Additional Protocols, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, Helsinki Final Act, and Charter of Paris. As the EC declared in October 1991, the norms in question constituted ‘universal, objective standards, which leave no room for compromise’.61 With regard to Bosnia-Herzegovina specifically, the EU at first called on Serbia (and Croatia) to exercise all their ‘undoubted influence’ to end foreign (read: Serbian and Croatian) interference in the then newly independent state and to condemn publicly and unreservedly the use of force in Bosnia-Herzegovina.62 The CSCE likewise requested Serbia and the Yugoslav National Army to ‘demonstrate respect for the independence, borders and territorial integrity and the legitimate Government’ of BosniaHerzegovina.63 Such calls, informed by basic international codes of conduct, were endorsed by the UN Security Council.64 Reference can also be made to the International Court of Justice’s issuing of an Order of provisional measures in April 1993. The Court instructed the FRY to immediately – in compliance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention – ‘take all measures within its power to prevent commission of the crime of genocide’.65 On Kosovo, the EU Council in April 1997 stated that it expected of Belgrade to engage in ‘real dialogue’ with the province’s Albanians ‘on the status of Kosovo within the borders of the FRY’, adding an explicit prerequisite: the ‘effective granting of a large degree of autonomy’ to the province. These conditions appeared in the EU’s ‘strategy of conditionality’ designed to govern the Union’s relations with Yugoslavia and other southeast European states. Trade preferences, financial assistance, economic cooperation and contractual relations with the EU depended on the conditions being met.66 Additional demands on Kosovo addressed to Belgrade in 1998–99 by the UN Security Council and the Contact Group on Yugoslavia (the US, Russia, France, Germany, Britain and Italy), were that it should cease its violent and repressive actions forthwith, enter immediately into a meaningful dialogue with the Kosovar Albanian leadership, allow humanitarian organizations unimpeded access to the province, withdraw its special police units, and facilitate the return of refugees and displaced people.67 The EU laid down four main conditions regarding the internal political organization of Yugoslavia and its neighbouring states: democratic principles (including representative, accountable and constitutional government, and regular free and fair elections); human rights and the rule of law (involving, among other things, freedom of assembly, association and expression, and equality before the law); respect for and protection of

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minorities (including minorities’ rights to establish and maintain their own educational, cultural and religious institutions and use their own languages before public authorities); and market reform (inter alia privatization of state-owned enterprises).68 As a 1997 message of the EU put it, the Union wished to see a FRY ‘that is peaceful, prosperous and democratic, one that has taken its rightful place in the European family’. That in turn required Yugoslavia ‘to live up to the same standards as the rest of Europe’.69 The so-called outer wall of sanctions (or secondary sanctions), retained against Yugoslavia even after the Dayton Agreement of 1995, was essentially a restatement of the conditions Belgrade had to meet before it could become completely rehabilitated, at least in the eyes of the US and its European allies. The ‘wall’ tended to be rather elastic as the catalogue of demands expanded. Or to use a familiar metaphor, the goal-posts were kept moving. By mid-1998 there were at least nine demands addressed to Yugoslavia (and in some cases to other former SFRY republics too): (i) completion of mutual recognition and normalization of relations between the former republics of the SFRY, including progress in talks on dividing the assets of the SFRY; (ii) cooperation with the International Tribunal for Yugoslavia, including the apprehension and extradition of persons indicted for war crimes; (iii) resolution of the situation in Kosovo through negotiations with the ethnic Albanians; (iv) facilitation of the repatriation of refugees and the return of citizens residing illegally in EU countries; (v) fulfilment of the Dayton peace accord; (vi) introduction of democratic reforms and respect for political pluralism; (vii) respect for individual and minority rights; (viii) upholding the freedom of the independent media, and (ix) introduction of economic reforms (liberalization and privatization).70 Would compliance with such conditions have been possible with Milosevic at the helm? In the early 1990s both the Council of Europe and the CSCE indicated that Yugoslavia could meet external demands regarding Bosnia-Herzegovina through a ‘radical change of policy’ and ‘genuine cooperation in the peace process’.71 The FRY could, at least in theory, fulfil its obligations in Bosnia-Herzegovina while Milosevic remained in power; he was, in other words, not (yet) written off as an agent of positive change. In time the EU came to the conclusion that Milosevic’s continued tenure was incompatible with democratic norms. His government had amply demonstrated its inability or unwillingness to heed the Union’s repeated calls for changes in this area. The EU consequently raised its demands from policy to personnel change. In March 2000 EU leaders vowed to retain sanctions against Yugoslavia for as long as Milosevic was in office.72 They were merely echoing an earlier public statement by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: ‘We are making it quite clear that we don’t see Milosevic in the future.’73 In September 2000, in a blatant attempt to influence the outcome of the imminent Yugoslav presidential election, EU


ministers promised Serbian voters that a series of trade and financial concessions from the EU would be activated if Milosevic was voted out of power.74 When it subsequently emerged that Milosevic had lost the first round of the presidential race to Kostunica but was trying to rig the outcome to force a second round of voting, foreign powers – including the US, Russia, Germany and Britain – were quick to turn the pressure on Milosevic to quit.75 This he eventually did in the face of a mass popular uprising. What the international community sought and what eventually happened in Yugoslavia, was a threefold change: in policy, government and regime. While the first two are rather obvious, regime change refers both to the introduction of a fully democratic political order in the FRY and to the change in Kosovo’s status. Serbia, it will be recalled, was coerced into surrendering authority – probably irrevocably – over the province.

International measures against Yugoslavia In dealing with Yugoslavia’s deviant behaviour, members of the international community resorted to an array of measures heavy on coercion and light on persuasion. First, the FRY became the direct target of a foreign military offensive in 1999. Belgrade’s actions in Kosovo and the failure of the Western-initiated Rambouillet peace conference (February–March 1999) to resolve the SerbAlbanian conflict in the province, prompted NATO – under US leadership – to launch an intensive bombing campaign against strategic and symbolic targets across Yugoslavia.76 After 78 days Serbia was effectively bombed into submission, forced to accept a peace deal under which it signed control of Kosovo over to a UN-authorized civilian administration in the territory (see below). The international community in the second place made extensive use of diplomatic, economic and military sanctions. As in nearly all our contemporary case studies, the US was in the vanguard of the sanctions offensive against Yugoslavia, this time with the EC/EU a close partner. The US and the EC set the process in motion in 1991, with the imposition of an embargo on armaments and military equipment. In addition the EC suspended its second and third financial protocols with Belgrade.77 The UN Security Council weighed in with resolution 713 in September 1991 that – in terms of Chapter 7 of the Charter – imposed ‘a general and complete embargo on all deliveries of weapons and military equipment to Yugoslavia until the Security Council decides otherwise’. The resolution marked the start of the UN’s active involvement in the situation. The following month the EC removed Yugoslavia from the list of beneficiaries of the General System of Preferences, terminated its 1980 trade and cooperation agreement with the SFRY, restored quantitative limits for textiles, and suspended

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Yugoslavia’s benefits under the EC’s PHARE programme (designed to assist applicant countries of Central Europe prepare for joining the EC/EU).78 Washington in December 1991 suspended tariff preferences on Yugoslav exports to the US (but left the rest of bilateral trade unaffected).79 The isolation offensive took an ominous turn for Yugoslavia in May 1992 when the UN Security Council (resolution 757) imposed comprehensive mandatory sanctions. All states were instructed to inter alia prevent the importation or trans-shipment of products from Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), deny the FRY financial resources, sever all air links with Yugoslavia, reduce the staff levels at diplomatic and consular missions in the FRY, institute a sports and cultural boycott against the country, and suspend scientific and technical cooperation. Two months later Yugoslavia was suspended from the CSCE.80 In November 1992 the Security Council (resolution 787) approved additional measures to strengthen the existing trade ban against Yugoslavia. By then, ships and aircraft of member states of the Western European Union had for four months been monitoring compliance with the May 1992 embargo and the Council’s preceding mandatory arms ban (imposed in September 1991).81 Yugoslavia’s membership of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank was terminated in December 1992, the IMF Executive Board deciding that the SFRY had ceased to exist and was hence no longer a member state (and that the FRY had to apply anew for membership).82 The Security Council in April 1993 (resolution 820) ordered a further tightening of the UN trade ban. In the mid-1990s the Bosnian Serbs became separate targets for UN punishment. In response to their representatives’ failure to accept the internationally brokered peace deal for Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Security Council in September 1994 imposed sanctions specifically against the Bosnian Serbs. The Council, under resolution 942, ordered states to desist from any ‘political talks’ with the leadership of the Bosnian Serb party, prevent Bosnian Serb officials and military officers from entering their territories, prohibit trade with Bosnian Serb areas, and freeze Bosnian Serb financial assets abroad. What Yugoslavia also regarded – and deeply resented – as a form of diplomatic ostracism, was the refusal of the international community to recognize the FRY as the successor state of the SFRY. Whereas Belgrade insisted that the FRY was indeed the sole successor, informed international opinion held that independent Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and BosniaHerzegovina were also successor states of the SFRY. One consequence for the FRY was that it could not automatically continue the membership of the SFRY in multilateral organizations.83 The UN General Assembly accordingly decided in September 1992 that the FRY ‘should apply for membership in the United Nations’, and shall not participate in the work of the General Assembly. (Meanwhile in May 1992, the General Assembly had admitted Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina to UN membership.


Macedonia followed suit in April 1993.)84 In April 1993 the Assembly decided to exclude the FRY from the UN Economic and Social Council as well.85 All this was as much a political as a legal issue: non-recognition and exclusion from international forums was yet another punishment for Serbian aggression against its former fellow-republics.86 In the mid-1990s the FRY received some respite from mandatory UN sanctions. Following confirmation that Belgrade had closed its border with Bosnian Serb areas in accordance with UN demands, the Security Council in September 1994 (resolution 943) suspended restrictions on transport links and sports and cultural exchanges with Yugoslavia. Following the conclusion of the peace agreement on Bosnia-Herzegovina towards the end of 1995, the UN Security Council (resolutions 1021 and 1022 of November 1995) lifted its 1991 arms embargo and suspended economic sanctions placed on the FRY. The implementation of the Bosnian peace accord, including the holding of elections, the mutual recognition of the successor states of the erstwhile SFRY and moves to normalize their relations, all helped to speed the FRY on the road to international rehabilitation. Belgrade also earned international credit for some political liberalization at home, by allowing opposition parties to debate on television and agreeing to relax restrictive media laws.87 The EU restored Yugoslavia’s commercial trade privileges, and recommended that its member countries recognize the FRY and upgrade their diplomatic presence in Belgrade to ambassadorial level. Most of them did so right away. (The EU itself, however, still did not extend formal recognition to the FRY.) Several non-European countries also resumed diplomatic relations with Belgrade.88 Despite the easing of international pressure, the ‘outer wall of sanctions’ was retained by the EU and America. One consequence was that Yugoslavia was not allowed to settle its membership of the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization. (Meanwhile, Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia had joined the IMF in 1993, and Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995.)89 The improvement in Yugoslavia’s international fortunes in the wake of Dayton received its first setback when Milosevic annulled Serbian local election results in November 1996. It undermined Yugoslav hopes that the outer wall of sanctions would come down in 1997. But worse was to follow. The sharp escalation in hostilities in Kosovo in 1998 and Belgrade’s reign of terror in the province returned it to the dock of world opinion. In March the UN Security Council (resolution 1160) once again resorted to an arms embargo, this time against both the FRY and the KLA in Kosovo; the sixnation Contact Group for Yugoslavia in April announced that Yugoslav assets abroad would be frozen, following it up in May with a ban on foreign investment in Serbia; the EU between September 1998 and September 1999 confirmed the latter restrictions and added prohibitions on the supply of petroleum (except for humanitarian purposes), proscribed economic cooperation with the FRY and placed a ban on flights by the Yugoslav state

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airline to EU member countries. (Unlike their previous unity, the major powers had considerable difficulty finding common ground on this new round of sanctions. While the Americans had lost none of their fervour for punitive measures, Russia in particular frequently objected to new restrictions against Belgrade.)90 Even after the Kosovo peace agreement and Serbia’s military and political withdrawal from the territory, the FRY still had to contend with punitive measures from abroad. This time they were in direct response to the Milosevic government’s undemoratic machinations at home. The EU, for instance, first imposed but later suspended a ban on commercial air travel to and from the FRY. It also introduced financial and visa restrictions against members of Belgrade’s ruling elite (as opposed to more general measures affecting the population at large). By February 2000 650 people were blacklisted, preventing them from travelling to EU countries.91 It was only after Milosevic had left office that the sanctions tide eventually turned for good. Following Kostunica’s inauguration as FRY President, the EU in October 2000 lifted economic sanctions (but retained restrictions on Milosevic and his allies). The US followed suit by ending its oil embargo and flight ban against Yugoslavia, yet left the outer wall of sanctions intact (thus denying Belgrade access to aid from the IMF and World Bank).92 In January 2001 the US finally lifted its remaining sanctions affecting commercial trade and Yugoslavia’s access to international lending institutions (while keeping targeted sanctions against Milosevic, his family and allies, and indicted war criminals).93 The Security Council completed the process of normalizing the FRY’s international relations by lifting all remaining UN sanctions in September 2001 (resolution 1367). The world community’s third response was international supervision in the shape of the Kosovo International Security Force (KFOR) and the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). These foreign military and civil presences in Kosovo were authorized by the UN Security Council under resolution 1244 of 10 June 1999, which was in turn based on a peace plan for Kosovo proposed by Western powers and Russia. KFOR’s mandate, executed by 40,000 NATO troops and a contingent from Russia, included the creation and maintenance of a ‘secure environment for all citizens of Kosovo’. For this purpose NATO divided the province into five sectors under the respective control of Germany, France, Britain, Italy and the US. Under the peace agreement, all Serbian forces had to be withdrawn from Kosovo. UNMIK, present in Kosovo since July 1999, had an even more far-reaching mandate. It acted as the supreme legal and executive authority there, charged with providing basic civilian administration as long as necessary. At the same time UNMIK was responsible for promoting the establishment, pending a final political settlement, of ‘substantial autonomy and self-government in Kosovo’. Besides UNMIK’s taking care of civilian administration, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees dealt with


humanitarian affairs in Kosovo, the OSCE took the lead with democratization and institution-building, while the EU was responsible for economic development. All this was supervised by the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative in Kosovo, the effective ruler of the territory. Frenchman Bernard Kouchner was the first incumbent, serving for 18 months.94 Although legally still part of the FRY – and formally recognized as such by the EU and others after the conclusion of the Dayton Agreement – Kosovo was undoubtedly an international protectorate, with Security Council resolution 1244 serving as its ‘constitution’.95 Whose protectorate exactly is a moot point: the UN, NATO, EU and OSCE could all qualify. More important for our purposes is the fact that the FRY had effectively surrendered authority over Kosovo to foreign institutions, with little chance that Kosovo will in future return to the de jure and de facto status of a part of Serbia (and hence the FRY). Belgrade cannot be faulted for suspecting that UNMIK was grooming Kosovo for statehood. Considering Serbia’s deep historical and cultural bonds with Kosovo, it was being forced to pay a high price for its violently repressive behaviour in the province. To add insult to injury, Serbia has had to watch helplessly as Kosovar Albanians embarked on an orgy of retaliation – or reverse ethnic cleansing – against Serbs in the province, despite KFOR’s presence. Within barely a month of KFOR’s arrival, at least 70,000 Serb civilians had reportedly fled Kosovo. An OSCE report released in December 1999 confirmed a ‘systematic pattern’ of hundreds of attacks over the past five months aimed at intimidating minorities. By the time a five-nation European defence force, Eurocorps, assumed control of KFOR operations in April 2000, some 200,000 Serbs were estimated to have left Kosovo under duress.96 KFOR’s was not the first foreign military presence in the former Yugoslavia. The United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) was established by the Security Council in 1992 as an interim arrangement to create conditions of peace and security necessary for reaching an overall settlement of the Yugoslav crisis. UNPROFOR’s operational mandate extended to Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, with a liaison presence in Slovenia.97 In the wake of the Dayton Accord a NATOled multinational force, called the Implementation Force (IFOR), was deployed in Bosnia-Herzegovina under UN Security Council authorization to implement the military aspects of the peace agreement. When IFOR’s mandate expired in December 1996, its duties were taken over by another NATO-led unit, the Stabilization Force (SFOR). Also authorized by the Security Council, SFOR, like its predecessor, functioned under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter as a peace enforcement operation.98 The fourth collective external response to events in Yugoslavia involved the meting out of international justice. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was established in terms of UN Security Council resolution 827, adopted unanimously on 25 May 1993. The

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Tribunal, based in The Hague, has jurisdiction over grave breaches of the Geneva Convention of 1949, violations of the laws or customs of war, genocide, and crimes against humanity committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991. Its eleven judges, elected by the UN General Assembly from a list of nominees compiled by the Security Council, may judge individuals only, not organizations too (as Nuremberg had done). But like the Nuremberg Tribunal, that for Yugoslavia also has the purpose of bringing alleged criminals to justice, halting and redressing violations, and acting as deterrent against further transgressions.99 The first case to be heard by the Yugoslav Tribunal was that of a Bosnian Serb, Dusan Tadic. In April 1995 he was charged with ‘genocide, through the policy of ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, such as assault, murder, rape and persecution based on religious grounds’. Tadic was eventually sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment.100 In May 1999 the Tribunal took the drastic but not unexpected step of indicting President Milosevic and four other serving Serb leaders on charges of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war resulting from their alleged role in the deportation of over 800,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and the murder of about 600 others. There was of course no chance that Milosevic would voluntarily step down and surrender to the Tribunal. Once he had lost power, his successors had to decide the former strongman’s fate. Kostunica opposed Milosevic’s extradition, wanting him to be tried in a Yugoslav court on charges of corruption, abuse of power and war crimes. In April 2001 Milosevic was arrested by Yugoslav authorities, ostensibly to face trial at home. In June, however, he was secretly transferred to The Hague to be brought before the Tribunal. Going against Kostunica’s wishes, the Serbian cabinet led by Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic intervened to deliver Milosevic to the International Tribunal.101 A combination of foreign pressure and domestic hardship weighed heavily in this Serbian decision. Djindjic realized that Serbia’s economic rehabilitation – necessitated by the deprivations caused by war, sanctions and economic mismanagement – was critically dependent on foreign assistance, something that may well be jeopardized if Milosevic was not surrendered to the Hague Tribunal. Washington had indeed warned that it would withhold US$50 million in aid and boycott a June conference of international donors to Yugoslavia if Milosevic was not extradited. Djindjic was concerned that other countries may also pull out of the donor conference, denying Serbia vital aid and the rescheduling of its foreign debt.102 Pressure on Belgrade to cooperate fully with the Tribunal was also brought to bear by chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte and the UN Security Council.103 The Serbian government knew only too well that the republic’s international standing and that of Yugoslavia as a whole would suffer as long as Milosevic remained on home soil. Once the former leader was extradited, Belgrade was promptly and handsomely rewarded


with the release of $1.28 billion in foreign loans and grants to rebuild the FRY’s economy.104 In July 2001 Milosevic made his first appearance before the Tribunal. According to the indictment, he ‘planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted in a campaign of terror and violence directed at Kosovo Albanian civilians’. Later two further charges were added. The first related to Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Milosevic had allegedly committed genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, and violations of the laws or customs of war. According to the other indictment, Milosevic had committed the latter three offences in Croatia too.105 Apart from Milosevic, 20 other suspects were waiting to be tried by the Tribunal in the second half of 2001. By then 60 suspects had been brought to trial in The Hague, including former Bosnian Serb Deputy Prime Minister Radislav Brdjanin, General Momir Talic (the most senior figure in the Bosnian Serb command which operated concentration camps) and General Radislav Krstic (an Army commander of the Serb Republika Srpska). Among the convictions that had been handed down by mid-2001 was that of Krstic, found guilty of genocide for the massacre of at least 7,000 Bosnian Muslims in 1995. He was sentenced to 46 years in jail for what historians have described as the worst instance of human rights abuse in Europe since the Second World War.106 By then several people indicted were still at large, including Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and army commander Ratko Mladic. Both were charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws of war.107 Some foreigners have in the fifth place used subversion to deal with Yugoslavia’s deviant behaviour. Belgrade had no doubt that it was the target of a subversive plot from outside. Besides armed aggression and economic sanctions, its enemies were using unspecified ‘subversive methods to try and undermine Yugoslavia from within’, the FRY’s Foreign Minister said in August 2000. In addition, ‘centres’ had been established in adjacent countries ‘for the subversion and destabilization of Yugoslavia in our neighborhood’.108 If the Yugoslav authorities had the US in mind, they were probably right. In 1999 President Clinton is reported to have issued a secret presidential ‘finding’ giving the CIA the green light to try to oust Milosevic. The CIA’s covert operation – which was to include attempts to disrupt Milosevic’s suspected private financial transactions abroad and support dissidents and opposition groups in the FRY – was merely part of a wide-ranging plan Clinton had approved to topple Milosevic.109 We have thus far listed five forms of international punishment to which Yugoslavia was subjected: military action, isolation, supervision, judicial prosecution and subversion. Of the remaining responses featured in our analytical framework, four more were used in the case of Yugoslavia. The UN arms embargo imposed at the start of hostilities in the former SFRY, could be interpreted as a form of containment directed against Belgrade in

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the first instance. Incentives were repeatedly offered to the FRY to heed international demands. After the Bosnian peace deal had been struck, Yugoslavia was rewarded by the UN and EU for good conduct. The same happened upon Milosevic’s extradition to The Hague. Foreign actors, despite subjecting the FRY to isolation, retained a degree of engagement in that country for the sake of ending the conflicts there. Hence international mediators (from the EC/EU and the Contact Group, among others) frequently visited Belgrade for talks. Such interaction could be described as qualified engagement; there was no significant international support for ‘business as usual’ with Belgrade during the Bosnian and Kosovo wars. Nor was there any serious international consideration of the supposedly moderating or civilizing effects that normal, unfettered engagement might have had on the FRY. In fact, the EU for one tried to support democratic values and behaviour in Yugoslavia during Milosevic’s rule by giving technical and financial assistance to non-governmental organizations, the independent media and educational institutions, as well as delivering heating oil to opposition-run municipalities. (In addition the EU provided ‘non-political and non-conditional’ humanitarian assistance to refugees, internally displaced people and other vulnerable groups in Milosevic’s Yugoslavia.)110 Finally, we have already noted that foreign censure of Belgrade’s deviant behaviour was widespread. In visiting its wrath upon Milosevic and his country, the international community acted with a degree of unity and commitment last seen in the universal campaign against apartheid (see Chapter 4) and against Iraq in the early 1990s (Chapter 5). That Yugoslavia was a veritable global cause is borne out by the fact that the UN – acting primarily through the General Assembly, Security Council and Commission on Human Rights – was actively involved in censuring and punishing its deviant behaviour. At the regional level a host of multilateral organizations joined in, including the EC/EU, CSCE/OSCE, NATO, Western European Union, Islamic Conference Organization, Gulf Cooperation Council, and Association of South East Asian Nations. Smaller groupings of influential states, notably the Group of Seven (later Eight) major industrialized nations and the ad hoc Contact Group for Yugoslavia added their weight to the campaign against Belgrade’s numerous acts of deviance. A range of non-governmental organizations, including human rights groups like Amnesty International and Helsinki Watch, also featured in the process. In terms of our typology of deviant states (Chapter 2), Yugoslavia under Milosevic indisputably ranks as a first-order or global deviant – its sins gave global offence and were punished on a universal scale.

Yugoslavia’s responses to foreign pressure Deviant countries are known to respond to international pressure by invoking counter-norms or by pretending that they, instead of their critics, were


the true upholders of the international norms in contention. Yugoslavia did likewise. In the same breath that he accused NATO and the US of ‘hegemonism and domination’ vis-à-vis his country (see above), Foreign Minister Jovanovic portrayed Yugoslavia as a model international citizen: ‘It is exclusively striving for a world of equal nations and States in which international laws and the Charter of the United Nations are complied with and where all peoples are treated equally’. If it were true that NATO’s aggression had ‘global hegemonistic aims’, he argued, ‘it is equally true that the defense of Yugoslavia from that aggression has global freedom values’.111 Belgrade made much of NATO’s ‘aggression’ against the FRY. The air campaign was ‘genocidal, immoral and illegal by any standards’, Jovanovic asserted. The perpetrators were guilty of crimes against peace through aggression and the unauthorized use of armed force; crimes against humanity; genocide; and war crimes through the use of prohibited weapons such as cluster bombs, depleted uranium munitions and chemical weapons, according to Jovanovic.112 The message was clear: far from being the prime villain of the peace, Yugoslavia was the innocent victim of aggressive powers who blatantly violated critical international codes of conduct. Consider also Yugoslavia’s interpretation of humanitarian intervention. NATO’s bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999 was widely portrayed in the West as a case of humanitarian intervention at the behest of the grievously suffering Albanian population of Kosovo. ‘By establishing a monopoly over judging where and how human rights are violated’, the Federal Foreign Minister argued, ‘the US administration opens the door wide for gross interference in the internal affairs of other countries, even for military intervention’.113 Yugoslavia viewed itself as an early victim of this kind of conduct that breached one of the most fundamental norms of inter-state relations, that of non-interference. The legality of the NATO military action has indeed been the subject of intense debate not only in Yugoslavia but elsewhere too. Perhaps the most balanced assessment came from the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, which concluded that the NATO military intervention was ‘illegal but legitimate’. It was illegal because it had not obtained prior UN Security Council approval. The action was however legitimate because all diplomatic avenues to resolve the conflict had been exhausted, it was undertaken for the express purpose of implementing Security Council resolutions, and because the intervention managed to liberate the Kosovar Albanians from Serbian oppression. The Serbian government was forced to withdraw its army and police from Kosovo and it also signed an internationally brokered peace deal that effectively converted the province into a UN protectorate. Yet NATO’s bombing offensive failed to achieve its stated objective of preventing massive ethnic cleansing in Kosovo; as an exercise in so-called humanitarian intervention it was of dubious success. Milosevic moreover remained in power.114

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In its diplomatic response to the NATO air offensive, Yugoslavia also invoked a time-honoured complaint of vulnerable small states against assertive great powers. The entire NATO campaign showed Europe’s ‘subservience’ to an American diktat, Jovanovic asserted.115 Although no formal international norm was at stake here, Belgrade wanted to portray itself as yet another small state victim of a marauding big power. This claim of victimization was a patent attempt to mobilize support from other small countries that may also find themselves at the mercy of powerful bullies. Jovanovic combined counter-norms with projection. We have recorded his claim that Yugoslavia was punished for pursuing an independent foreign policy that challenged Western ‘hegemonism’ and intervention in the FRY. Far from acknowledging that Belgrade was violating universal codes of conduct, the Foreign Minister tried to shift the blame onto foreign critics and absolve Yugoslavia of any wrongdoing. No doubt stung by international criticism of its behaviour in Kosovo, Belgrade was at pains to draw the international community’s attention to the use of terrorism by Albanian separatists against the non-Albanian population in Kosovo. In a patent attempt to discredit the KLA, Jovanovic claimed that the movement received considerable assistance from ‘the international narco mafia and Islamic terrorists and extremists’. While all this may have been designed to deflect international censure from the actions of its own forces, the fact is that Yugoslavia could justly invoke formal international norms proscribing terrorism. (Claims about the KLA’s links with Albanian narcotics dealers seem reasonably well founded, thus touching also on international norms against drug trafficking.)116 Yugoslavia furthermore indulged in what may be described as counterdemonization. Conceding that Western states had managed to demonize the FRY as an ‘uncivilized criminal nation’, Foreign Minister Jovanovic portrayed the Western states involved in the NATO air war as perpetrators of ‘barbaric aggression’ who with impunity committed grave crimes against humanity.117 There is a lack of evidence to support any contention that the FRY, even in the darkest days of its international ostracism, tried to join forces with other outcast countries to present a united front against Western powers in particular. In a shrewd move Belgrade did, however, cultivate links with Russia and China. Milosevic went on a state visit to China in November 1997, where he and President Jiang Zemin signed a declaration on friendly relations and cooperation between their countries. The following month FRY Prime Minister Radoje Kontic paid an official visit to Russia, during which the two governments concluded agreements on trade, credit, military and cultural-educational cooperation. Milosevic followed suit with a visit to Moscow in June 1998, meeting with President Boris Yeltsin.118 It is instructive that all three visits took place during a brief period of recovery in the FRY’s foreign relations. After the worst storms over Kosovo had


subsided, Li Peng, chairman of China’s National People’s Congress, went to Belgrade to underline the closeness between the two countries.119 If Milosevic had intended a divide-and-survive ploy, the results were modest. Neither Russia nor China could prevent NATO’s air assault against Yugoslavia or Kosovo’s de facto detachment from Serbia (and the FRY). Finally, Yugoslavia’s response to international pressure included instances of accommodating behaviour. The most extreme example was Belgrade’s capitulation over Kosovo. Surrendering control of the province to the UN was an enormous sacrifice, one made only under severe duress. Milosevic had previously also given in to international demands over Bosnia-Herzegovina by signing the Dayton peace accord. In both cases he made extensive use of bargaining and procrastination, identified in our analytical framework as typical tools of deviant countries under heavy external pressure to change their ways fundamentally.

Conclusion During the 1990s the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s behaviour on three fronts directly challenged key international norms. In its immediate external environment consisting of recently seceded, newly independent states, the FRY was guilty of gross interference in their domestic affairs, violating their sovereignty and territorial integrity, and committing acts of aggression. In Bosnia-Herzegovina in particular, Belgrade engaged in war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity. The second area was Kosovo, constitutionally part of federal Yugoslavia. Here too the Milosevic government’s well-documented excesses violated international humanitarian law. On the home front, finally, Belgrade’s frequent undemocratic machinations flew in the face of codes of domestic conduct commonly accepted, especially in Europe. So grave were Yugoslavia’s transgressions that the international community, with the UN Security Council in the vanguard, subjected it to an extensive range of non-violent punitive measures. NATO went further, resorting to military action to bring Belgrade to heel over Kosovo. That Yugoslavia conceded – or, more accurately, capitulated – to international demands over both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo was primarily due to the unremitting foreign pressure brought to bear on Belgrade. The fall of Milosevic and the triumph of democracy in Yugoslavia had as much if not more to do with internal pressure for political change. In combination, the changes on the three fronts – tantamount to policy, government and regime change – finally ended the FRY’s international deviant status and ensured its resocialization into the community of states. It is perhaps appropriate that the rehabilitated state has chosen to discard the name Yugoslavia.

12 Additional African States

Only one African state, Libya, has featured among our seven principal case studies of deviant countries. Of course many more African states merit examination. It is especially in the area of human rights that scores of them were guilty of rule-breaking behaviour. In the World Democracy Audit released in 2002, only two African states – Mauritius and South Africa – were among the 34 unquestionably free countries in the world. Five more African states, including Botswana, Mali and Ghana, were classified as ‘free but with a distance to go’. All remaining African countries (with populations exceeding one million) were placed in the ‘unfree’ category.1 Despite their persistently poor human rights records, few African states have been condemned to true deviant status. One reason is that among African leaders considerations of sovereignty and solidarity have traditionally taken precedence over concern with human suffering in fellow African countries. Three additional African cases – Nigeria, Rwanda and Sudan – have been selected for consideration in this chapter. Although none of them appeared on Washington’s declaratory list of rogue states, several American commentators labelled Sudan as such2 and the Clinton administration in fact treated Sudan as a deviant country because of several alleged contraventions. Rwanda and Nigeria have been manifestly guilty of human rights violations. Limitations of space compel us to examine each of the three cases only briefly, instead of the detailed analyses in the preceding seven chapters.

Nigeria Nigerians lived under the heel of military dictatorships for nearly 30 years of the country’s first four decades of independent statehood, achieved in 1960. Nigeria’s long association with stratocracy began in 1966, when its first democratically elected government was deposed by the men from the barracks. In 1975 the country experienced its third military coup. Civilian rule was restored in 1979, courtesy of General Olusegun Obasanjo who had 279


seized power three years earlier. The so-called Second Republic was born and the popularly elected Shehu Shagari was installed as President. In 1983 he too succumbed to the soldiers.3 For decades authoritarian government and changes of incumbency through coups d’état were the rule rather than the exception not only in Nigeria itself, but in scores of African countries. The exigencies of the Cold War led Western powers, not to mention the Soviet bloc, to turn a blind eye to the way in which black African states were ruled (or misruled). What mattered instead to the Cold War rivals was where these Third World countries positioned themselves in the East-West contest. Nigeria’s repeated rounds of military dictatorship therefore caused no real harm to the country’s foreign relations. True, Nigeria was subjected to an American arms embargo during the first bout of military rule in the late 1960s, but this was in response to the civil war (1967–70) between the federal government and secessionist Biafra. The US ban, applied to both sides in the conflict, had nothing to do with the lack of democracy and human rights in Nigeria.4 On the African political scene Nigeria was a key player. It featured prominently in the creation and functioning of the OAU. In West Africa, where it was the indisputable hegemon, Nigeria was the driving force behind the creation of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Nigeria also made its influence felt in the struggle against Portugal’s colonial presence and against white minority rule in South Africa and adjacent territories. Nigeria’s own blemished human rights record, like that of scores of other African states, was no impediment to participating in a moral crusade against the abuse of such rights in white-controlled parts of the African continent.5 Once the Cold War was over, Nigeria’s human rights situation came under the international spotlight. A critical year was 1993, when Nigeria seemed poised to return to democratic rule. After an elaborate six-year transition period, an election was held to choose the country’s first civilian president in a decade. Business tycoon Moshood Abiola won (reportedly gaining 62 per cent of the vote) in what international observers rated as a free and fair contest. The US Congress passed a resolution recognizing the legitimacy of the election. The military, under General Ibrahim Babangida, instead chose to annul the election results and blocked the inauguration of Abiola. The military junta, critics immediately charged, was simply unwilling to surrender power to a democratically elected civilian government.6 The US responded to Babangida’s power play by denying entry to senior Nigerian military leaders and their families, restricting arms sales, stopping all economic and military aid (except for humanitarian and democracy assistance), and terminating Nigeria’s access to trade credits and guarantees.7 Canada imposed an arms embargo, discontinued military training assistance, and ended high-level visits between the two countries.8 The EU

Additional African States 281

in 1993 imposed a similar set of restrictive measures, except for an arms ban.9 Babangida’s refusal to accept Abiola’s victory sparked widespread popular protests in Nigeria, forcing the military leader to surrender power to a transitional government. Out of this turbulence emerged a new dictator, former Defence Minister General Sani Abacha, who seized power in November 1993. Ruling by military decree, Abacha disbanded all the institutions Babangida had created for the transition to democracy and clamped down heavily on political opposition. Thousands of pro-democracy and human rights activists, labour leaders, journalists and other opponents were jailed and hundreds more killed. Among those incarcerated were Abiola and former military head of state Obasanjo.10 Despite his initial promise to restore democracy by January 1996 (subsequently postponed to 1998), the very harshness of Abacha’s rule and the relentless persecution of political opponents left the impression that he was intent on leading Nigeria even further away from democracy than Babangida had.11 What made the Abacha government unique among Nigeria’s many military dictatorships, was ‘its open avowal to remain unaffected by the West’s disapproval’.12 Foreign objections to Nigeria’s domestic politics reached an unprecedented intensity after the Abacha government’s execution of an internationally renowned writer, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and eight of his fellow activists in November 1995. They had been sentenced to death by a Nigerian court for the murder of four Ogoni chiefs in the trouble-torn southeastern state of Ogoniland. It all happened in the context of protests against the military dictatorship and its involvement in Shell oil company’s environmentally destructive oil exploitation in the region.13 Despite world-wide pleas for clemency, the military government had the men put to death. If Abacha’s intention had been to thumb his nose at international opinion, the timing was superb: the executions took place while Commonwealth heads of government, assembled for a summit in Auckland, New Zealand, were still pleading for the condemned men’s lives. The Commonwealth immediately suspended Nigeria’s membership for two years. If democracy had not been restored or appreciable progress to that end made within this period, Nigeria would be expelled from the Commonwealth.14 In 1995 a fact-finding mission to Nigeria, sponsored by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, released a report containing a searing indictment of Abacha’s military dictatorship. Titled Nation Stolen by Generals, the report laid the groundwork for further action against Nigeria.15 The following April the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG, formed to deal with the violation of human rights and democratic norms by member states) recommended eight additional punitive measures against Nigeria. These included an arms embargo, sports boycott, downgrading of diplomatic missions, and denying members of the Nigerian government and their families entry into other Commonwealth


countries. Only Britain and Canada implemented all eight measures, South Africa and Jamaica enforced about half, other member states applied even fewer, and Ghana imposed none at all. Clearly, the Commonwealth was deeply divided over the merits of a confrontational approach to Nigeria.16 The EU in November 1995 added an arms embargo and the suspension of development cooperation to its existing punitive measures against Nigeria.17 Even the OAU, traditionally the mainstay of (black) African solidarity, expressed dismay at the Ogoniland executions.18 In another unprecedented response, the UN General Assembly in December 1995 took Nigeria to task. In resolution 50/199 (adopted by 101 votes to 14, with 47 abstentions) the world body condemned the ‘arbitrary execution, after a flawed judicial process’, of the Ogoniland nine and expressed ‘deep concern about other violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Nigeria’. Although the resolution did not explicitly call for sanctions, it welcomed punitive measures taken by the Commonwealth and other states and expressed the hope that ‘these actions and other possible actions by other States’ would encourage Nigeria’s rulers to return to democracy and observe human rights. Among the actions taken by states individually, was the recall of over 25 ambassadors from Nigeria in protest against the executions.19 The US threatened to freeze Nigerian assets in America and to impose additional economic sanctions, including a ban on oil imports, but these measures were not implemented. Instead of tightening the screws, Washington opted for ‘constructive dialogue’ with the Abacha government.20 The result was ‘a tenuous mixture of quiet diplomacy and limited sanctions’.21 In the wake of the Ogoniland incident the UN Human Rights Commission decided to send two rapporteurs to Nigeria to prepare reports on arbitrary executions and the integrity of the country’s judiciary. Although Nigeria barred the investigators, they produced reports scathing of the Abacha government. A fact-finding mission sent to Nigeria in 1996 by the UN Secretary-General, made several recommendations concerning judicial reform and the stationing of international observers in Nigeria to monitor any transition to democratic rule. Although the military government chose to ignore most of the recommendations,22 Nigeria was being treated like a deviant state in need of externally prescribed corrective measures. At their Edinburgh summit in October 1997, Commonwealth heads of government extended Nigeria’s suspension from the organization for another year. Nigeria was warned of expulsion and the imposition of more sanctions if Abacha reneged on his pledge to restore democratic rule by the following October. Before that deadline could be reached, Abacha died unexpectedly.23 Apart from the violation of human rights norms, Nigeria’s international standing suffered from the wholesale plunder of state resources for personal


enrichment. Although corruption in its many guises – bribery, embezzlement, maladministration etc. – had long been synonymous with Nigeria’s military and civilian governments, Abacha took the abuse of power for personal material advantage to unprecedented depths. The massive scale of official thievery was revealed only some time after his death. In five years in power Abacha and his underlings were thought to have stolen up to US$4 billion from the Nigerian treasury. Over half this amount had reportedly flowed into foreign banks or offshore companies.24 Looting of public resources, on whatever scale, of course violated the standards of good governance. During the years of military dictatorship Nigeria also drew some international attention over its reputed role as a major transshipment centre in the transnational narcotics business. For most of the time this did not become a serious issue in its foreign relations and Nigeria’s rulers were not accused of direct involvement. Far from being charged with committing a transgression, the military rulers were assisted to combat the scourge. In 1987 the US signed a mutual-assistance treaty with Nigeria to enable American drugenforcement officials to help the Nigerians stem the budding drug flow from their country to the US.25 In 1994, however, the US classified Nigeria as a major drug trafficking country that failed to cooperate with American drug control efforts. Under US law the Clinton administration was compelled to vote against – and effectively block – any IMF and World Bank loans to Nigeria. In addition, federal law obligated the US government to suspend consideration of Nigerian applications for Overseas Private Investment Corporation and Export-Import Bank projects in that country.26 For the US and other major powers too, there were compelling reasons for not alienating Nigeria’s military rulers. Nigeria was by far the most populous state in black Africa (over 100 million inhabitants) and boasted the continent’s largest domestic market. One of the world’s leading oil exporters, Nigeria was an important source of foreign oil for the US. Although it provided only 8 per cent of America’s total oil imports or about 500,000 barrels a day in the mid-1990s, Nigeria had a record as a reliable oil producer. It did not, for instance, participate in the Arab oil squeeze against the West in the 1970s. The US, for one, had investments approaching $4 billion in Nigeria, mainly in the petroleum industry. Nigeria was America’s largest trading partner in the whole of Africa. Britain too had huge interests in the Nigerian oil sector, especially through the operations of Shell Petroleum. Nigeria’s established proWestern orientation earned it further credit in Washington and other Western capitals. The country was a key actor in regional and continental African politics, playing a leading role in peacekeeping operations in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s. Nigeria over many years also contributed personnel to UN peacekeeping missions elsewhere in the world.27 ‘We thus have come to value Nigeria as an important potential partner in helping bring security to troubled


neighboring states’, the US Under-Secretary of State for African Affairs explained in 1998.28 In Africa there was no sustained coalition favouring sanctions against Nigeria, even at the height of Abacha’s excesses. Fellow African states, in the name of African solidarity, shielded Nigeria from damaging punitive measures despite the manifest violation of universal human rights standards to which the country had formally subscribed.29 Even President Nelson Mandela, who had initially pushed for Commonwealth sanctions, was forced to back down in the face of opposition from fellow African member states. Unable to beat them, South Africa then joined other African countries in pursuing constructive engagement instead of coercive confrontation in dealing with Nigeria.30 If Abacha arrived on the political scene with a bang, he seemed to have departed with a whimper. ‘No one expected this brutal dictator to expire under mysterious circumstances in the night’, was how one group of commentators delicately described his bizarre exit in June 1998.31 Another source was less circumspect: Abacha, then 54, died in the company of prostitutes, reportedly of a heart attack brought on by sexual exhaustion.32 There had earlier been speculation that he suffered from cirrhosis of the liver.33 Whatever the immediate cause, fact is that Abacha was relieved of office before he could give effect to his carefully laid plays to become an elected president. In April 1998 five political parties, approved by the military rulers, had chosen Abacha as their joint presidential candidate. The struggle for power was further reconfigured when Abiola also died unexpectedly shortly after his release from prison in mid-1998.34 Abacha’s successor, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, committed himself to complete the transition to civilian rule by the end of May 1999. The five authorized parties created under Abacha were dissolved and the entire political process unshackled. Given these auspicious developments the CMAG recommended in October 1998 that Commonwealth member states lift sanctions against Nigeria and it envisaged the restoration of the country’s membership of the ‘Club’. At the same time the EU ended its diplomatic sanctions, but left the arms embargo intact.35 Nigeria’s full international rehabilitation followed the restoration of democratic government in May 1999. Olusegun Obasanjo, the former military ruler who had transferred power to a democratic government 20 years earlier, was inaugurated as the country’s first popularly elected civilian president in 16 years. On the very same day Nigeria was readmitted to full membership of the Commonwealth.36

Rwanda The independent state of Rwanda, which came into being in 1962, had a serious birth defect: a deeply divided population with a recent history of


violent conflict. In anticipation of independence, Belgium in the late 1950s began introducing democratic reforms in Rwanda. The minority Tutsis, the traditional leaders of Rwanda, sensed that majority rule would endanger their privileged status acquired at the expense of the Hutus. For their part, the Hutus knew full well that their vast numerical preponderance would ensure them victory in any free electoral contest and hence governing power. So tense was the atmosphere that a minor violent incident in November 1959 sparked a Hutu uprising in which hundreds of Tutsis were killed and thousands more displaced or forced to take refuge in neighbouring countries. It was the start of the so-called Hutu peasant revolution that would last until 1961 and see the end of Tutsi domination of Rwanda’s political (and economic) life. An election and referendum in September 1961 heralded the beginning of Hutu rule.37 Independence marked another cycle of ethnic conflict between the new state class, the Hutus, and the now politically marginalized Tutsis. The government of Gregoire Kayibanda (1962–73) killed or expelled most former Tutsi powerholders and politicians. In December 1963 alone, at least 10,000 Tutsis were butchered. Tutsi refugees in Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and Zaire, bent on regaining their former status in Rwanda, began forming armed groups and launched military attacks against the Hutu government and other Hutu targets inside Rwanda. The attacks sparked retaliatory killings of large numbers of Tutsis and produced new waves of refugees. By 1964, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported, 150,000 Rwandans – nearly all Tutsi – had fled to surrounding countries.38 In 1973 Major-General Juvenal Habyarimana, also a Hutu, seized power in a military coup d’état and imposed a dictatorship under the dominant Mouvement revolutionnaire national pour le developpement (MRND).39 In an overtly anti-Tutsi move, the Habyarimana government rejected the demands of Tutsi refugees in neighbouring countries – constituting half of Rwanda’s total Tutsi community – to exercise their international legal right to return to their home country. The official excuse was that population pressures in Rwanda were already too heavy and economic opportunities too scarce to accommodate large numbers of Tutsi refugees.40 The denial of Tutsi refugees’ right of return was a manifestation of Habyarimana’s brand of ‘social revolution’. Its underlying ideology claimed that Rwanda belonged to the Hutus, its true inhabitants, who had for centuries suffered subjugation by Hamitic invaders and exploiters, the Tutsis. In 1959 the Hutus had freed themselves from their former masters, so the orthodoxy read, and established a true democracy representing the majority of the people.41 It was under these ominous conditions that the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) was founded in Uganda in 1988. Composed mostly of Tutsi exiles in Uganda, the RPF was a political and military movement with the declared aims of securing the repatriation of exiled Rwandans and political reforms


(including power-sharing) in Rwanda. In October 1990 the RPF launched a major military offensive against Rwanda from its bases in Uganda. Although repulsed by the Rwandan Government Army (RGA), the RPF managed to hold on to territory inside Rwanda from where it staged further raids.42 The RPF’s military attacks were one of a series of factors that threatened the Habyarimana government at the beginning of the 1990s and compelled it to begin a political dialogue with the RFP. Another was strong international pressure, after the Cold War, on the Rwandan government to begin a process of political liberalization and to engage the RPF in talks on peace and power sharing.43 A comprehensive cease-fire agreement between the government and the RPF was concluded in March 1991. Political parties (besides the ruling MRND) were allowed under a new liberal constitution adopted in June 1991, a supposedly broad-based ‘transitional’ government under the incumbent President was formed the following April, and peace negotiations (coordinated by the OAU and facilitated by Tanzania) commenced in Arusha, Tanzania, in August 1992.44 These seemingly positive developments were little more than tactical manoeuvres on the part of Habyarimana, who had no intention of making peace with his Tutsi adversaries or sharing power with them. Instead, he wanted to buy time for his government and curry favour with foreign donors. The strength of the RGA was increased from 5,000 prior to October 1990 to 24,000 a year later. To rally the populace around the government, undermine the appeal of legitimate opposition parties, counter the RPF and render democratization impossible, Habyarimana ‘took recourse in the usual, time-tested solution: the revival of ethnicity’ and the accompanying ‘radicalization of prejudice’.45 With active support from the presidency, Hutu activists formed an unofficial, clandestine political movement known as Hutu Power. Included in the extremist movement were MRND die-hards and their militia, the interahamwe and the Coalition pour la defense de la republique (CDR), an offshoot of the MRND with its own militia, the impuzamugambi. The President’s wife and members of her family were prominent in Hutu Power. Championing an ideology of ‘tropical nazism’,46 these groups openly preached hatred and violence against the Tutsi. The extremist parties were excluded from the Arusha negotiations but – with support from the highest echelons – organized themselves for their ‘final solution’ of the Tutsi problem.47 In this highly charged atmosphere further large-scale violence was inevitable. Several cease-fire violations occurred as the RPF and government forces resumed their fighting. Thousands of Tutsis were moreover massacred between 1990 and 1993.48 An independent international commission of inquiry into human rights violations in Rwanda since 1 October 1990, reported in 1993 that these massacres had not been the result of chance or spontaneous popular movements or even inter-party competi-


tion. ‘There seems to be a central hand, or a number of hands, that master the genesis and the unfolding of these events’.49 These observations were confirmed by a Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights. Massacres of civilians could be attributed to government officials, militia of the MRND and CDR, or to clandestine armed groups allegedly close to the ruling party, the Rapporteur found. As to whether the violations of human rights between 1990 and 1993 constituted genocide, the Special Rapporteur stated that the victims of the attacks, Tutsis in the vast majority of cases, ‘have been targeted solely because of their membership of a certain ethnic group, and for no other reason’. The Rapporteur ended with an appeal to the international community not to remain indifferent to the plight of Rwandans.50 Another call for international involvement in Rwanda was contained in the Arusha Agreement, which was coincidentally concluded in the same month that the Special Rapporteur issued his grim findings. The peace accord signed by the Rwandan government and the RPF reserved a major support role for the UN during a 22-month transitional period beginning with the installation of a broad-based interim government and ending with a national election. (Habyarimana was to remain in office until the outcome of the election.) In line with the Agreement the UN Security Council in October authorized the immediate deployment of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), charged with providing overall security in the country, safeguarding the delivery of humanitarian assistance, and monitoring the cease-fire agreement contained in the Arusha accord.51 The international presence failed to stabilize the domestic situation. Massacres and rumours of massacres continued to plague Rwanda, even though the two warring sides adhered to their cease-fire agreement. The deep mistrust between them and a lack of commitment to progress in the political domain, led to repeated postponements of the installation of the transitional government envisaged under the Arusha Agreement. January and February 1994 saw an increase in the assassination of political leaders and murder of civilians. In March the UN Secretary-General yet again drew the Security Council’s attention to the deteriorating security situation in Rwanda, especially in the capital Kigali.52 The country was, as Prunier put it, ‘hanging on to the cliff’s edge’. The following month Rwanda fell off the cliff.53 Its descent into the abyss was triggered by Habyarimana’s death on 6 April 1994. He and his Burundian counterpart were killed when their aircraft was shot down on approaching Kigali airport. The systematic slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus (members of the opposition) began almost at once. The next day fighting between the RGA and the RPF resumed. Authority in Kigali collapsed, with the murder of the moderate Hutu Prime Minister, the Speaker of the National Assembly and the


President of the Supreme Court, among other leading figures. On 8 April some elements of the former Habyarimana administration formed an ‘interim government’, of which Jean Kambanda became Prime Minister, but it failed to establish its authority in the capital in the face of mounting hostilities. By mid-July the RPF controlled the entire country and installed a broad-based Government of National Unity (which pointedly excluded representatives of the MRND and CDR) for a transitional period of five years. Pasteur Bizimungu assumed the presidency.54 These political moves in the capital were accompanied by killing on a scale unprecedented in the history of Rwanda and all of Africa.55 Between April and July 1994 Rwandans suffered ‘the bloodiest 100 days in the second half of the twentieth century’, far worse than the seven large-scale massacres they had endured since 1959.56 Between 750,000 and 1 million people were killed in this latest outrage. Of the approximately 930,000 Tutsis living in Rwanda on the eve of the genocide, only about 130,000 survived – probably one of the highest casualty rates ever from non-natural causes.57 It was indeed genocide, as the UN Secretary-General repeatedly reminded the international community in that period; the massacres intended the complete annihilation of Rwanda’s Tutsi community.58 The UN Commission on Human Rights’ Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Rwanda endorsed this assessment after visiting Rwanda and adjacent states in June and July 1994. He determined that the conditions specified by the 1948 Genocide Convention existed in Rwanda and that the term ‘genocide’ was indeed applicable to the killings of Tutsis.59 A Commission of Experts, appointed by the Secretary-General at the request of the Security Council to review evidence of grave violations of international law in Rwanda, concurred with the Rapporteur. Reporting towards the end of 1994, the Commission found ‘overwhelming evidence’ that the extermination of Tutsis by Hutu elements had been planned months before its actual execution, carried out ‘in a concerted, planned, systematic, and methodical way’, and had been motivated by ethnic hatred. The Commission too concluded that the mass exterminations violated the Genocide Convention (to which Rwanda had acceded in 1975).60 The execution of the genocide makes for chilling reading. Suffice it to quote from the UN’s report on its involvement in Rwanda: ‘The massacres were all the more horrific for the inhuman way in which they were carried out, often with machetes, axes, cudgels and iron bars. Women and young girls were systematically raped, tortured and maimed, while males were subjected to torture and extreme degradation before being killed.’ The genocide in Rwanda, the report went on, ‘spared no one, not even infants or the elderly…the victims were hunted down even in their final places of refuge: orphanages, hospitals and churches’.61 Both the Special Rapporteur and the Commission of Experts made findings on who was responsible for planning and executing the geno-


cide. The former concluded that a campaign of incitement to ethnic hatred and violence had been orchestrated by the public authorities and the media belonging to the then government. The overwhelming majority of the massacres had been carried out in areas under government control by militias aligned to the MRND and CDR. The Rapporteur found that the Presidential Guard and other elements of the RGA had trained, armed and led some of the militias. He also submitted to the Human Rights Commission a list of 55 persons he identified as chiefly responsible for the massacres.62 The Commission of Experts in like vein reported ‘abundant and compelling evidence [that] supports the conclusion that prior to 6 April Hutu elements conspired to commit genocide’.63 Having established the nature and extent of the norm-violating behaviour in Rwanda (genocide) and the identity of the perpetrators (the central government and its agencies and allies), we should next consider the international responses to this ultimate manifestation of deviant conduct. In the months immediately prior to the genocide, when massacres were already commonplace and the fires of ethnic animosity were being stoked by the Kigali government, some foreign pressure was exerted on Habyarimana to honour his commitments under Arusha and to prevent further bloodshed. The UN Secretary-General and his Special Envoy to Rwanda, neighbouring leaders and the EU all tried to influence the Rwandan leader, even resorting to threats of material punishment for noncompliance. Yet they stopped well short of treating Rwanda as a true deviant country not fit for membership of the community of states. By the time Habyarimana died, the pressures had evidently not produced their intended results.64 Once the genocide proper had begun on 6 April 1994, the outside world’s indifference was carried to new depths with what became a scandalous act of desertion – one that gave encouragement to Rwanda’s merchants of death. Within a fortnight the Security Council scaled down UNAMIR to only 270 troops (from 2,165). This came in the wake of Belgium’s unilateral withdrawal of its over 400 soldiers serving with UNAMIR. The remaining UN force had neither the manpower nor the mandate to intervene in the orgy of killings. In late May 1994, when the world knew that Rwanda was convulsed by genocide, UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali felt constrained to complain publicly that ‘the international community is still discussing what ought to be done’. A few days later he had a blunt message for the Security Council: ‘We must all recognize that…we have failed in our response to the agony of Rwanda, and thus have acquiesced in the continued loss of human lives.’ He attributed the international community’s paralysis to ‘the absence of the collective political will’.65 In May the Council (resolution 918) reversed its earlier decision by expanding the original UNAMIR mandate and authorizing an increase in its force level to 5,500. Its added responsibilities would allow UNAMIR II, as it was then


styled, to contribute to the security and protection of displaced persons, refugees and civilians at risk in Rwanda. The actual deployment of UNAMIR II proved a difficult and protracted process, though. Member states were loath and lax to contribute troops, equipment and transport. By 25 July a mere 500 UNAMIR II troops were on the ground in Rwanda – with the genocide and internal war then more or less over.66 When the world’s soldiers might have prevented the worst of the genocide, they had been conspicuous by their absence.67 Meanwhile, in June, France – with the authorization of the UN Security Council (resolution 929) – launched Operation Turquoise to rescue French nationals from Rwanda and later also to provide a safe humanitarian zone for refugees. Composed of over 2,000 troops mainly from France and based in Zaire, the operation had a strictly humanitarian character and did not constitute an interposition force between the warring parties in Rwanda. Italy and Belgium also sent in soldiers to evacuate their citizens. Among the few locals to be rescued by the French forces were none other than members of the Habyarimana family – perhaps an apt conclusion to France’s close association with the Habyarimana government.68 The feebleness of the international response to the crisis in Rwanda was also evidenced in the lack of moral leadership. Foreign governments and NGOs could already at an early stage in the massacres have condemned those responsible by name and threatened them with indictment for crimes against humanity. In equally short supply were what De Waal and Omaar called ‘repeated public expressions of solidarity and moral outrage’.69 In this regard it is instructive to note an official US statement made on 10 June after a lengthy period of silence over events in Rwanda: ‘Although there have been acts of genocide in Rwanda’, explained a spokesperson for the State Department, ‘all the murders cannot be put in that category’.70 Prunier interpreted this contorted declaration as an attempt to avoid having to act according to the 1948 Genocide Convention, which obligated signatory states to take immediate action once a genocide had been clearly identified.71 This may explain also other states’ unwillingness to call the genocide by its proper name. The use of economic sanctions was, strangely, not considered by the UN when Rwanda still had a Hutu-led central government that could have been targeted. Nor was Rwanda’s diplomatic isolation seriously discussed in the world body or given practical effect by individual countries (by, for example, breaking diplomatic ties with Kigali). Instead of treating Rwanda as an outcast, it was elected (by the General Assembly) to a two-year term as a non-permanent member of the Security Council beginning in January 1994. After the collapse of the government in Kigali in April, Rwanda was left without an accredited representative at the UN and could not assume its seat in the Council.72 On 17 May, to be fair, the Security Council (resolution 918) placed a mandatory embargo on the delivery of arms,


ammunition and related material to all forces in Rwanda. This, the only concrete measure, was taken more than a month into the holocaust. It is highly doubtful whether it in any way curbed the wave of killings.73 Once the genocide and war were over, the international community, acting through a range of humanitarian organizations within the UN family and from the non-governmental sphere, embarked on an extensive relief effort in Rwanda and in neighbouring countries hosting its refugees. With 13 per cent of its resident population dead, over 2 million as refugees outside the country, half a million displaced within, and 150,000 children orphaned or left on their own, Rwanda’s people were utterly deprived. Among the refugees were over one million – almost exclusively Hutu – who had fled to Zaire as the RPF’s military offensive advanced. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees described it as the largest and most sudden population movement in modern history. Among the refugees were almost the entire surviving RGA, wholly outclassed by the RPF.74 The ominous feature is that these refugee flows were not the familiar ‘unplanned flight of civilians caught in war’, but largely ‘the planned exodus of a population under the political direction of those responsible for the killing’ (the RGA and Hutu Power militias). The killers, well armed and well organized, were suspected of seeking sanctuary abroad from where they could regroup and attack Rwanda.75 In due course the international community made provision for bringing individual deviants to justice, i.e. persons identified as having violated human rights, international humanitarian law and the Genocide Convention. In November 1994 the UN Security Council (resolution 955) created an international criminal tribunal for the prosecution of persons responsible for genocide and other serious contraventions. It could deal with such offences committed within Rwanda and in adjacent countries in the course of 1994. Although its statute was largely identical to that of the Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Tribunal for Rwanda was the first ever to have been established for an internal conflict. Based in Arusha, Tanzania, the six judges of the Rwanda Tribunal heard their first case in 1996. By early 2003 the Tribunal had apprehended over 50 of the indicted suspects but convicted only ten, among them former Premier Kambanda, of genocide.76 Rwanda has meanwhile against heavy odds achieved a remarkable degree of domestic stability under President Paul Kagame’s RPF-dominated government. Incursions by armed opposition groups had stopped and in an orderly and free internationally observed referendum in May 2003 Rwandans voted overwhelmingly for a new democratic constitution. Some bad habits persisted, though, with the government demonstrating ‘continuing hostility towards political dissent, press freedom, and an independent civil society’.77 The country’s standing abroad has also improved, as witness the extensive international involvement in rebuilding Rwanda,


the lifting of the UN Security Council’s arms embargo, and Kagame’s meeting with President George W Bush in September 2002.78

Sudan Formerly an Anglo-Egyptian condominium, Sudan achieved independence in 1956. As happened in so many independent African countries, statehood was conferred on Sudan before it had achieved nationhood in terms of a united people that identified with and were loyal to the state, its institutions and symbols. Geographically the largest country on the continent, Sudan straddled the frontiers between Arab-speaking Africa and the rest, and between Islamic and non-Islamic regions. Herein lies a divide that has bedevilled Sudanese politics ever since independence: the conflict between the predominantly Arab and Muslim northern Sudan and the southern part populated mainly by black African people with their animist and Christian beliefs. (A fairly recent demographic breakdown showed that 31 per cent of Sudan’s total population was Arab, 61 per cent black African and 8 per cent other. Only 30 per cent of the Sudanese lived in the south – which was nearly exclusively African – leaving a sizeable proportion of the black African majority in the north of the country.)79 From the outset political power in independent Sudan had been monopolized by the Arabs in the north, who tended to see the state as their preserve and tried to impose their cultural and religious values on the country as a whole. The Africans in the south of Sudan, often thwarted in their quest for regional autonomy and for maintaining their ethnic identities, soon rebelled against the central government in Khartoum. Civil war between the northern-based rulers and the alienated southern region has, with one interlude, raged uninterrupted since the mid-1950s. By early 1971, the UN estimated, over 500,000 Sudanese had died in the war, the vast majority of them southern civilians.80 Sudan’s regional-cum-ethnic divisions were, if anything, compounded by the country’s lengthy spells of authoritarian rule and the accompanying disregard for human rights. The parliamentary democracy introduced in the run-up to independence was overturned in 1958 when Sudan experienced its first coup d’état. A Supreme Council of the Armed Forces ruled until 1964, when it was deposed in a civilian revolution. With the new government as inept as its predecessors in arresting Sudan’s economic decline and resolving the north-south conflict, it was simply a matter of time before the soldiers again seized power. That duly happened in 1969, when a group of officers led by Colonel Gaafar Nimeiri installed themselves as the new rulers. Supreme authority was vested in the hands of the Revolutionary Command Council, the Sudanese Socialist Union was proclaimed the only political party and Nimeiri assumed the presidency of the inappropriately renamed Democratic Republic of Sudan.81


Highly critical of previous governments’ failures in this field, Nimeiri made it a priority to seek a political settlement to the country’s civil war. Under the Addis Ababa agreement of 1972, the three southern provinces were to function as a self-governing region. The subsequent devolution of power to regional authorities managed to restore peace and stability to southern Sudan for the first time since independence. It was not to last, though. In 1983, the year Nimeiri was re-elected for a third six-year term of office, he by decree unilaterally revoked the Addis accord and dissolved the institutions of self-government in the south. Nimeiri moreover imposed strict Islamic law (Sharia) across the country.82 The central government was, as Johnson remarked, ‘becoming ever more entrenched in a purely Arab and Muslim national identity’.83 The predictable outcome was that the south rose in armed revolt against the government in Khartoum. This time the southern forces were spearheaded by the newly formed Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) led by John Garang de Mabior. In April 1985 Nimeiri was unseated in a bloodless military coup.84 The incoming military rulers changed the country’s name to the Republic of Sudan and abandoned Nimeiri’s pro-Western stance in favour of a non-aligned international orientation. True to its word, the military government also held a multiparty election and reinstated civilian rule after a year. The government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi, elected in 1986, engaged in some promising peace initiatives with rebel movements in the south, but these failed to bring the hostilities to an end. The protracted civil war, economic decline, the issue of Sharia, and an inefficient and corrupt party system all contributed to the weakening and eventual demise of democratic rule. In June 1989 the military again seized power.85 The new Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation, chaired by coup leader Brigadier Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, abolished the constitution, the legislature, political parties and trade unions, and declared a state of emergency.86 Al-Bashir’s coming to power, Amnesty International recorded, ‘ushered in a new era of human rights violations characterized by a range and scale of abuse unprecedented in Sudan’s history’.87 EC members thought likewise, in 1992 expressing ‘abhorrence of the systematic abuses of human rights throughout the country’.88 Sudan’s plunge into another dark era in domestic politics coincided with the end of the Cold War. With the exigencies of the East-West contest no longer shielding Sudan from the critical attention of foreign powers, it also entered a period of unprecedented hostility in its international relations.89 In the UN, the Human Rights Commission had since the early 1990s included the situation in Sudan on its annual agenda. A resolution adopted in April 2001 was typical of the Commission’s views. It expressed deep concern over the impact of the ongoing armed conflict on the human rights situation in Sudan and made specific reference to violations in areas under government control. The abuses included restrictions on freedom of


religion, expression, association and peaceful assembly; arbitrary arrest and detention without trial, and torture.90 The General Assembly took its cue from the Human Rights Commission and the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Sudan when it began adopting annual resolutions on the country in the 1990s. The Assembly’s catalogue of serious human rights violations included summary executions, detentions without due process, torture, forced displacement, forced labour and slavery. On occasion the Assembly (resolution 50/197, December 1995) branded the latter practices, imposed on women and children belonging to ethnic and religious minorities, as ‘atrocities’. In December 2002 the world body (resolution 57/230) still had cause to name (and shame) the Sudanese government for a range of contraventions, including the retention of the state of emergency; restrictions on freedom of thought, conscience, religion, association and expression; extensive use of the death penalty; and violations of the rights of women and children. The resolution also addressed a lengthy list of requests for political change to Khartoum, beginning with the call that the Government comply fully with its obligations under international human rights instruments to which Sudan was a party. The EU in January 2003 reiterated its concern about respect for human rights in Sudan following death sentences and ‘barbarous practices’ imposed on five persons.91 Another human rights abuse highlighted by London-based African Rights, among other NGOs, concerned Khartoum’s attempts at the forced assimilation of non-Arab, non-Islamic peoples. In a report dealing with such practices in northern Sudan, released in 1995, African Rights mentioned the ‘appalling suffering’ that the Sudanese government had inflicted on several millions of its citizens displaced from their homes ‘through a systematic and brutal policy of forcible change of cultural identity’. The tragedy of these displaced people, the report continued, ‘is on a scale with few parallels’.92 In like vein the UN General Assembly in 1997 (resolution 52/140) expressed serious concern about continuing reports of religious persecution, including the forced conversion of Christians and animists in government-controlled areas of Sudan. The US, which took the lead in getting Sudan’s human rights violations denounced in the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Commission, was also at the national level the severest of Khartoum’s foreign critics. Sudan ‘has one of the worst human rights records in the world’, even allowing ‘slavery’, a senior Clinton administration official charged in May 1997.93 Three years later a US special envoy was appointed to focus international attention on Sudan’s breach of rights.94 The intended attention, if any, could not have been all that beneficial, for in May 2002 President George W Bush branded Sudan ‘a disaster area for human rights’.95 These denunciations of Khartoum’s human rights situation were made notwithstanding al-Bashir’s introduction of some ostensibly democratic


arrangements. In March 1996 the first presidential and legislative elections since 1989 were held. Al-Bashir, opposed by token candidates, polled over 75 per cent of the votes cast and started a new five-year term as president. Opposition parties fielded candidates for the National Assembly, but complained of widespread irregularities by government officials. In a referendum in 1998 nearly 97 per cent of the electorate approved a new constitution that would guarantee freedom of thought, religion and association. These promising moves were largely undone towards the end of 1999 when al-Bashir, locked in a power struggle with the President of the National Assembly, by decree dissolved the legislature, imposed a threemonth state of emergency and suspended some articles of the 1998 constitution. It was in this political climate that presidential and legislative elections took place in December 2000. As expected, al-Bashir was reelected in a landslide, securing 86.5 per cent of the votes cast (against less than 10 per cent for his nearest rival, former President Nimeiri). The ruling National Islamic Front (NIF) took 355 seats in the new 360-member National Assembly. The main opposition parties boycotted the elections and dismissed the official results. No voting took place in the three warravaged southern provinces.96 In May 2002 amendments to the constitution granted the incumbent President greater executive powers and allowed for his indefinite rule. Repression of basic human rights and fundamental freedoms remained the norm.97 The international indignation and anger aroused by Khartoum’s dire human rights record prompted only very limited punitive measures. A notable example was the decision of the US Agency for International Development in February 1990 to stop providing aid to Sudan. This was in line with an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Appropriations Act of 1989 that barred aid to countries in which democratically elected governments had been deposed in military coups d’état.98 Scores of other states evidently cared little about the state of human rights in Sudan, as witness the country’s election to the UN Commission on Human Rights in May 2001. In another expression of indifference over Sudan’s human rights record, the Commission in April 2003 rejected a resolution critical of Khartoum’s behaviour in this area and ended the mandate of its Special Rapporteur on human rights in Sudan (appointed in 1993).99 Sudan’s civil war – after more than four decades the longest running conflict of its kind in Africa – gave rise to a second major area of concern to important segments of world opinion. At issue were the ways in which the warring parties conducted their hostilities and the humanitarian costs involved. These transgressions were closely related to Sudan’s violation of human rights. Amnesty International in 1993 accused the Sudanese government of practising ‘ethnic cleansing’ against the Nuba people in the south.100 In like vein a noted American anthropologist spoke of Khartoum’s policy of


‘migratory genocide’ aimed at either killing or expelling the African population of southern Sudan.101 More generally Amnesty International recorded in 1995 that the war ‘has created a catastrophe of immense human cost as all parties flagrantly violate human rights and the humanitarian laws and principles governing armed conflict’.102 One of the manifestations of the humanitarian tragedy was a massive flow of refugees: in December 2000 the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported that nearly 500,000 Sudanese had taken refuge abroad, mostly in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Kenya.103 Throughout the 1990s and up to at least December 2002 (resolution 57/230), the UN General Assembly repeatedly recorded its concern about the impact of the ongoing armed conflict on the human rights situation, its adverse effects on the civilian population, and about the violation of international humanitarian law by all parties involved. Among the litany of offences committed against civilians in the climate of war were indiscriminate aerial bombardment and artillery shelling, forced conscription and displacement, kidnappings, torture, sexual assault, burning of villages and destruction of crops. (These contraventions of the laws of war were confirmed by independent human rights organizations.104) Coupled with the Assembly’s censure were regular calls to all parties to the Sudanese hostilities to respect international humanitarian law and to find an ‘equitable solution’ to the internal war (e.g. resolution 48/147 of December 1993). In 2002, we will see, good progress was indeed made towards a peaceful settlement. US denunciation of the hostilities was customarily forthright. President Clinton in 1997 spoke of a ‘fratricidal war’ Khartoum was waging against its internal enemies. 105 This view was echoed by the House of Representatives which, in a resolution adopted in June 1999, branded Khartoum’s conduct in the Sudanese civil war as genocidal. 106 To their credit, the Americans did not merely criticize from the sidelines, but also provided humanitarian assistance on a large scale (amounting to $650 million between 1988 and 1997)107 and took an active part in peace initiatives to end the civil war.108 Another feature of the southern war that exercised foreign consciences was the effect of the hostilities on humanitarian relief operations, including those run by the UN’s Operation Lifeline. The UN General Assembly repeatedly expressed concern that Sudanese civilians’ access to humanitarian assistance from abroad was being impeded by both government and rebel forces in the war-torn south, thereby posing ‘a threat to human life and an offence to human dignity’ (e.g. resolution 47/142 of December 1992). The EC/EU, also a major source of humanitarian relief for Sudan, likewise voiced its ‘shock and dismay’ over Khartoum’s continued failure to help ensure that emergency assistance reached the needy population.109 In 1998 it was reported that two million people had perished in the fighting


and the war-induced famine over the previous 15 years and as many had been displaced. It was one of the largest humanitarian disasters in recent years.110 The discovery of oil in southern Sudan in 1979 has since fuelled the flames of war. The ruling elite in the north, fearing that the new riches would reinforce separatist trends in the south and threaten national unity, resolved not to relax its grip on the rebellious provinces. The prospect of vast oil revenue also encouraged Khartoum to prosecute the war in the belief that it had the financial means to achieve an outright military victory over the southern rebel forces. The SPLA, in turn, made oil installations a primary target of its military operations, so as to deny the government essential resources and so erode its power. The oil factor has also exacerbated the human rights situation as the opposing forces showed scant regard for the rights of people as they fought for control of the oilproducing areas.111 The third form of deviant behaviour, which also provoked severe international condemnation, was Sudan’s involvement in terrorism. The indictment was formidable. In the 1990s Sudan extended hospitality to both Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, the Venezuelan-born terrorist better known as ‘Carlos the Jackal’, and Osama bin Laden. During his stay in Sudan from 1991 to 1996, the authorities in Khartoum worked closely with bin Laden and Egyptian radicals to strengthen the transnational mujahideen movement and train a new generation of Islamic militants. Without the Sudanese connection, bin Laden ‘could not have incubated the networks that have caused such devastation in subsequent years’.112 Meanwhile, in 1993, a plot was uncovered to blow up buildings and road tunnels in New York, and to assassinate Egypt’s President Mubarak on a visit to America.113 Of those subsequently convicted for terrorism by a New York court, four were believed to be Sudanese nationals, and two Sudanese diplomats in the US were suspected of assisting those sentenced.114 Sudan was again the prime suspect in another abortive attempt on the life of President Mubarak, this time on a visit to Addis Ababa to attend an OAU summit in June 1995. Not only did three of the Egyptian assassins escape to Sudan, but Khartoum’s security agents were allegedly deeply involved in the conspiracy.115 The next major terrorist incidents were the dual bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998. The Americans accused Sudan of involvement in the attacks, which they believed were masterminded by bin Laden.116 Among the terrorist groups Sudan was alleged to have harboured in the 1990s were the Abu Nidal group, Hamas, the Lebanese Hizballah, Palestine Islamic Jihad and Egypt’s Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya. Khartoum also gave support to opposition groups in Algeria, Uganda, Tunisia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, which used terrorist methods against the incumbent rulers.117


Sudan’s refusal to heed international demands (also from the OAU) to hand over to Ethiopia the suspects implicated in the attempt on Mubarak’s life, prompted three UN Security Council resolutions. In January 1996 the Council adopted resolution 1044, which called on Khartoum to take immediate action to extradite to Ethiopia the suspects sheltering in Sudan. The Council also asked the government of Sudan to desist from ‘assisting, supporting and facilitating terrorist activities and from giving shelter or sanctuary to terrorist elements’. Still Sudan refused to obey, leading the Council to invoke Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. Khartoum’s continued non-compliance, resolution 1054 of April 1996 determined, constituted a threat to international peace and security. The Council demanded that the Sudanese government give immediate effect to the requests for extradition and for an end to involvement in terrorist activities. All states were instructed to significantly reduce the number and level of staff at Sudanese diplomatic and consular missions, and to restrict the movement within their territory of all remaining Sudanese staff; and to limit the entry into or transit through their territory of members and officials of the Sudanese government and armed forces. International and regional organizations were also requested not to convene any meetings in Sudan. When that resolution too failed to move the Sudanese authorities, the Security Council in August 1996 (resolution 1070) decided that all states should ban flights into or from their territories by Sudanese-owned or registered aircraft. Khartoum’s support for terrorist organizations was one of the main reasons why the Clinton administration singled out Sudan as ‘the only country in Sub-Saharan Africa that poses a direct threat to United States national security interests’.118 Apart from verbal denunciations, the US also imposed unilateral punitive measures to express its disapproval of Khartoum’s alleged links with terrorism. Already in 1993 Sudan featured on the American list of state sponsors of terrorism on the grounds that the country ‘was known to provide refuge, logistical support such as training facilities, travel documents, and weapons to a variety of radical terrorist organizations’.119 Consistent with Sudan’s designation as a sponsor of terrorism, the US by law applied sanctions to Sudan too. These included curbs on the sale of American-manufactured military equipment and dual-use items, a ban on economic assistance and preferential trade treatment, and a US vote against loans or grants by international financial institutions to Sudan.120 The country’s terrorist links was the first motive the Clinton administration cited for a set of restrictive measures announced against Sudan in November 1997. All Sudanese government assets in America were blocked, most financial transactions between the US and the government of Sudan stopped, and bilateral trade prohibited.121 (When the US issued a special exemption to American companies to pursue interests in the lucrative Sudanese oil sector, they ironically found that Khartoum had closed the


door to them.122) Although officially billed as a package of ‘sweeping new sanctions’, the measures were more impressive in symbolism than in substance: trade and financial dealings between the US and Sudan were very modest.123 The US also opted for military action in trying to end Sudan’s involvement in international terrorism. In 1998 an American missile attack destroyed what Washington alleged was a chemical weapons factory in Khartoum in which bin Laden had a financial interest. It subsequently emerged that the plant produced pharmaceuticals.124 Khartoum did make occasional gestures to distance itself from international terrorism. In 1994 Carlos the Jackal was handed over to French authorities.125 Two years later the Sudanese expelled bin Laden and many of his followers, who were then ostensibly banished to Afghanistan, as well as members of some other terrorist groups.126 Although welcoming these moves, Washington was still not satisfied. Bin Laden was said to retain ties with several businesses in Sudan and with NIF leaders.127 In mid-2000, however, the two sides began a ‘counterterrorism dialogue’ and after the attacks of 11 September 2001 Sudan stepped up its cooperation with the US in combating terrorism.128 Even so, the US State Department in 2002 still designated Sudan as one of seven state sponsors of terrorism. The reason was Khartoum’s support for terrorist groups such as Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad.129 Sudan’s fourth transgression, closely linked to the third, was its alleged destabilization of surrounding states. During the 1980s and 1990s Sudan supported rebel movements in Uganda, the Congo (Zaire), Ethiopia, Eritrea, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya, among others. In the case of Uganda, for instance, Sudan was charged with backing the murderous Lord’s Resistance Army and the West Nile Bank Front against the government of President Yoweri Museveni. Even after an agreement between Sudan and Uganda in December 2000, the Lord’s Resistance Army continued with its atrocities. (Khartoum in turn accused Museveni of backing the SPLA.) Farther afield Tunisia and Algeria suspected that Sudan had a hand in training local antigovernment Muslim militants.130 During Nimeiri’s rule subversive activities were never part of some grand scheme to export the Sudanese revolution or ideology.131 In the 1990s the NIF government, bent on founding a theocratic state, was committed to exporting its radical designs to other countries.132 Insisting that ‘Sudan’s history of aggression toward its neighbors must stop’, President Clinton resorted to containment to help achieve this objective.133 So-called non-lethal defensive military assistance worth $20 million was provided to Uganda, Ethiopia and Eritrea in 1996-97.134 By supporting these ‘frontline states’, Washington hoped to restrict Khartoum’s mischief-making in the region – a response that fell far short of any deliberate attempt to remove al-Bashir’s government.135


The Americans have in the fifth place made vague claims of Sudan pursuing mass destruction weapons. According to a Pentagon report on proliferation published in 2001, Sudan had been intent on acquiring chemical weapons. The following year the CIA reported that Sudan may be interested in a biological weapons programmme.136 Although there was no evidence of Sudan having a nuclear weapons programme, the Americans suspected the country of serving as a transshipment point for nuclear smuggling.137 Khartoum for its part indignantly denied that it possessed or aspired to WMD.138 A sixth form of offensive behaviour was directed specifically at the US. In the wake of the Persian Gulf crisis in 1990-1, the NIF launched a panIslamic, anti-imperialist front to combat America’s ‘recolonization of the Islamic world’. Militant Islamic groups from different states were drawn into the new front, which received handsome financial support from bin Laden.139 A final Sudanese misdemeanour, in American eyes if in no others’, was Khartoum’s links with so-called rogue states. Washington frequently voiced its concern over Sudan’s close ties with Iran, Iraq and also Syria.140 The Iraqi connection, for instance, was highlighted in Khartoum’s backing of Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War.141 Later Sudan allegedly provided a front for Iraq to import components for WMD. Libya, in turn, became one of Sudan’s principal military patrons in the second half of the 1980s, as US military assistance to Khartoum began declining. In the 1990s relations between Sudan and Libya soured after Tripoli accused Khartoum of backing anti-Qaddafi factions.142 The period of serious confrontation between Khartoum and the international community lasted less than ten years. Even then the front against Sudan was neither united nor firm. The UN’s punitive measures were soft in substance and far from universal in application. The airline sanctions mentioned in resolution 1070 were not imposed. The Europeans also seemed to prefer ‘critical dialogue’ (labelled ‘soft dialogue’ by the Americans) to punishment as a means of correcting Sudan’s deviant behaviour.143 Oil was a major factor in Sudan’s ability to overcome international adversity. As a growing number of foreign countries acquired interests in Sudan’s petroleum industry, commerce increasingly seemed to drive diplomacy.144 Even Washington, which in 1997 favoured a change of regime in Khartoum,145 reached a modus vivendi with Sudan when the US decided in 2000 to relax sanctions on the export of food and medicine. Shortly thereafter Sudan met one of the conditions the Americans had laid down for a review of the sanctions package when it signed the 1996 Chemical Weapons Convention. Also in 2000 the Americans reopened their embassy in Khartoum, which had been closed since 1996 (initially due to safety concerns), and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited the country.146


Further evidence of a new relationship between Sudan and the US was contained in a statement by a White House official in June 2001: ‘We’re not interested in isolating or containing Sudan, we’re interested in ending the war’.147 The latter interest led to the appointment of John Danforth in September 2001 as special American envoy to promote a peace settlement in Sudan. Within months the warring parties concluded four agreements proposed by Danforth and in July 2002 they signed initial peace protocols in Machakos, Kenya. Danforth also helped to bring about the first meeting between al-Bashir and rebel leader John Garang in the wake of the Machakos peace deal.148 The US Congress, however, still seemed sceptical about the true intentions of the Sudanese government. The Sudan Peace Act, adopted by Congress and signed into law by President Bush in October 2002, was designed to facilitate a comprehensive solution to the civil war in Sudan by increasing pressure on al-Bashir’s government to negotiate in good faith. Should the latter fail to oblige or interfere unreasonably with humanitarian relief efforts, a range of military, economic and diplomatic sanctions would be imposed against Khartoum. What happened instead, is that Bush informed Congress in April 2003 that peace efforts were progressing as the Government acted in good faith and that further sanctions were consequently not justified.149 Meanwhile in September 2001 Sudan had gained a major diplomatic prize when the UN Security Council (resolution 1372), after intense lobbying by Khartoum and its growing body of supporters, decided to lift its mandatory sanctions after five-and-a-half years. Only the US abstained from the vote. Although the assassination suspects had still not been handed over to Ethiopia – they were though to have left Sudan – Khartoum acceded to all international anti-terrorist conventions.150 In addition the Sudanese authorities had by then engaged in discussions with the US and UN on ways of fighting terrorism. By ending sanctions, the Security Council acknowledged that Sudan had mended at least some of its deviant ways. The decision was also a green light for Sudan’s accelerated return to the international fold. The EU resumed development aid151 and France announced in February 2002 that it would include Sudan in its ‘priority solidarity zone’ and assist in that country’s ‘reintegration into the international community’.152 Washington’s self-declared objective in punishing and containing Sudan had been ‘to oblige the Sudanese Government, by exacting a price for unacceptable behaviour, to change its domestic and international conduct’.153 The deviant conduct referred to Khartoum’s human rights record, support for terrorism, destabilization of neighbours, and prosecution of the civil war. Sudan’s international rehabilitation, which gained momentum in 2001, was a direct consequence of the advances that the National Congress government (as the NIF then called itself) had made on most of the four fronts.


Conclusion The systematic violation of international human rights norms was a transgression common to all three our case studies. The scale of abuse varied greatly, however, with Nigeria’s military dictatorship at the lower end of the spectrum, Rwanda’s genocide at the other and Sudan’s violation of human rights standards and international humanitarian law somewhere in between. Whereas Rwanda and Nigeria were essentially single-sin offenders, Sudan stood accused of several misdeeds that included international terrorism. Although foreign responses to the three states’ rule-breaking conduct ranged widely, the extent of international disapproval, anger, indignation and punishment was sufficient to classify Sudan and Nigeria as true (as opposed to nominal) deviant states. Sudan was moreover a first-order or global deviant, denounced and punished (albeit mildly) by the UN, while Nigeria was more of a second- than first-order deviant given the Commonwealth’s central role in acting against the African colossus. Rwanda’s is the tragic story of international indecisiveness, indifference and even callousness in the face of the ultimate form of deviant behaviour – genocide. Nigeria’s return to democracy has completely freed the country of its deviant status and Rwanda has restored domestic stability and regained international respectability. Sudan has been undergoing some international rehabilitation with the recent progress in the peace process and its willingness to join the US in combating international terrorism. However, its continued abuse of human rights in the absence of democratic rule still leaves Sudan with the mark of at least a nominal deviant.

13 Some Other Deviant States

Altogether ten case studies of deviant countries, including the core group of American-designated rogues, have been presented in chapters 5 to 12. These still represent only a selection of contemporary states manifestly guilty of violating major international norms. Among the many other qualifiers for deviant status, three (non-African) states have been chosen for brief consideration in this chapter: Afghanistan, China and Syria. The final mini-case studies show once again how widespread rule-breaking behaviour is in modern world politics – and how divergent the international reactions.

Afghanistan Although its status as a true international deviant was confined to the Taliban’s brief rule from 1996 to 2001, Afghanistan had hardly been a model state in the preceding decades. From before independence from Britain in 1919 until the 1970s, Mohammadzai Pushtun dynasties reigned in Afghanistan. The last King, Mohammad Zahir Shah, also from the numerically and politically dominant Pushtun ethnic group, occupied the throne from 1933 to 1973. During the final seven years of the monarchy Afghanistan was ruled under a nominally democratic constitution that combined Western ideas with Islamic political and religious beliefs.1 Following Zahir’s ousting in a coup, Afghanistan was declared a republic. The first President (and a former Prime Minister), General Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan, held office until 1978 when he too was deposed in a coup d’état. The new President-cum-Prime Minister, Nur Mohammad Taraki, continued his predecessor’s practice of a one-party system – but now the single legal party was Taraki’s own (previously banned) communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). In line with the new leader’s ideological leanings, the country was renamed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the already close ties with the Soviet Union were further strengthened. These political changes imposed from above were not widely welcomed from below. Opposition to 303


the new communist regime spawned an armed rebellion by Islamic tribesmen collectively known as the mujahidin and another coup in September 1979 that unseated Taraki. His self-appointed successor, Hafizullah Amin, a hardline communist, quickly lost both his job and his life in a coup in December. Amin’s ignominious departure was facilitated by the uninvited arrival of 80,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan. While Amin’s removal raised little surprise or regret abroad, the Soviet Union’s forcible intrusion sparked worldwide denunciations.2 In the time-honoured tradition of an occupying force, the Soviets installed their handpicked ruler in Kabul. Babrak Karmal, a former Deputy Premier under Taraki, was brought home by the Soviet Union from virtual political exile in Eastern Europe. And in keeping with another custom, developed in the Cold War era, intervention by one superpower provoked countermoves from the other. The US gave considerable financial and military support to the mujahidin guerrillas who fought against the Soviet occupation forces and their local allies, the Afghan Army. Britain, China and Pakistan were among the mujahidin’s other main backers.3 Fighters from several Islamic countries also joined the Afghan resistance. A then largely unknown benefactor, Osama bin Laden, sponsored scores of foreign recruits for the war against the Soviet army of occupation. On the Kabul political scene, meanwhile, leaders and policies changed rapidly and abruptly. One of the victims was Karmal, who lost all his government and party posts in 1986. The Soviets were evidently content with the election of Dr Ahmadzai Najibullah – a man whose credentials included stewardship of the Afghan state security service and leadership of the communist PDPA – to the presidency in 1987. Neither a policy of national reconciliation introduced by the Afghan government in 1987 nor the reversion of the country’s name from the Democratic Republic to the Republic of Afghanistan, nor an election for the national legislature in 1988, managed to heal the deep political divisions among Afghans. The seven-party mujahidin alliance vowed to continue its armed rebellion until a complete and unconditional Soviet military withdrawal.4 By mid-February 1989 the Soviet forces had done just that. The mujahidin’s tenacious guerrilla warfare had much to do with Moscow’s retreat. The Soviet leadership under Mikhail Gorbachev realized that the Afghan war was unwinnable, immensely unpopular in the Soviet Union and a hindrance to the normalization of relations with the West. The departing Soviets left behind an Afghanistan as fractious and unstable as ever. In March 1990 an unsuccessful military coup was staged against Najibullah. A year later he was forced to resign by his own ruling party as guerrilla groups made major military advances against government forces. Shortly thereafter rival mujahidin factions took control of Kabul, plunging the capital into fierce violence between the former alliance partners. Despite a peace agreement between most of the mujahidin groups and the

Some Other Deviant States 305

installation of an interim multi-faction government in March 1993, large parts of the country were soon engulfed in civil war.5 It was in this turbulent climate that the Taliban emerged in the latter half of 1994 as a new political and military force. A militant Islamic grouping, its name literally meant ‘seekers of religious knowledge’ and its leader was an Islamic cleric Mullah Mohammad Omar. Initially the Pushtundominated Taliban set out to cleanse Afghanistan of feuding mujahidin warlords, restore order and enforce true Sharia (Islamic law); the leadership asserted that they had no interest in taking power. As Omar described it, the movement was born as ‘a simple band of dedicated youths determined to establish the laws of God on Earth and prepared to sacrifice everything in pursuit of that goal’.6 However, with some 25,000 armed men under its banner (up to one-third of them non-Afghan), the Taliban soon revealed itself as another warlord party pursuing power. But unlike many other armed factions, the Taliban had a clear and radical political programme based on its harsh version of ‘pure’ Islam.7 With extensive military support from Pakistan and some backing from Saudi Arabia and the US, the Taliban began its march to power when its forces captured the city of Kandahar in October 1994. Four months later the movement controlled 10 of the 31 provinces. Another key city, Herat, fell to the Taliban in September 1995 and year later it won the grand prize by seizing control of Kabul. By then the Taliban had conquered two-thirds of Afghan territory.8 Once ensconced in the capital, the Taliban lost no time in stamping its authority on the country. Not only was the government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani deposed, but former communist President Najibullah was summarily executed. The new rulers declared Afghanistan a ‘complete’ Islamic state and imposed a strict Islamic code. Women were not allowed to take up employment or be formally educated beyond the age of eight; they were also ordered to wear head-to-toe garments (the burqua); all men were compelled to attend mosques; television and non-religious music was banned; and amputations and public stonings were enforced as means of punishment. In due course the Taliban changed the country’s name to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.9 The Taliban government was from the outset an international outcast. Pakistan was the first country to officially recognize the new rulers. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates soon followed suit, but that is where international recognition stopped.10 The UN General Assembly added to Afghanistan’s diplomatic isolation by consistently rejecting the Taliban’s claims to represent the country in the world forum – even when the Taliban by the end of 2000 had 95 per cent of Afghanistan’s territory under its control. The Afghan seat was still occupied by the ousted Rabbani government.11 The Islamic Conference Organization left Afghanistan’s seat vacant until the country’s warring factions peacefully resolved the issue of


legitimacy among themselves.12 The US, which had supported the Taliban between 1994 and 1996 in the hope that the movement would stop drug cultivation and expel Arab militants from Afghanistan, quickly distanced itself from the Taliban after it took power. The new government not only failed to oblige the US on the issues of drugs and Islamic militants, but perpetrated gross and systematic human rights abuses.13 The Taliban rulers’ woes were compounded by the lack of a united populace at home. In October 1996 three opposition militias formed an alliance and intensified their military offensives against the new government. They were said to receive support from abroad, including Iran, Russia, India and some Central Asian countries.14 Besides assistance from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the Taliban government could for its part count on bin Laden’s 055 Brigade consisting of elite Arab fighters (the so-called Afghan Arabs) loyal to al-Qaeda’s cause. Bin Laden had reportedly also provided generous financial support to the Taliban both before and since seizing power. In return for this backing, the Taliban rulers allowed al-Qaeda to use Afghanistan as its main base for training and launching foreign operations.15 This special partnership – in which a government’s very survival depended on a terrorist organization – eventually proved the downfall of the Taliban. The ongoing hostilities caused widespread suffering. The UN Security Council and Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International were among the organizations that voiced their concern about the civilian casualties and human rights abuses resulting from the civil war.16 International relief efforts also fell victim to the conflict. Following attacks on UN personnel and continuous harassment by the Taliban, the UN stopped its aid programmes in the Kandahar province in March 1998. A few months later UN personnel were evacuated from Afghanistan after three of them had been murdered. The UN Security Council branded the attacks on UN staffers as ‘heinous crimes’ (resolution 1193, August 1998) and flagrant violations of international law (resolution 1214, December 1998). The Taliban, seemingly indifferent to the misery of the people of the war-ravaged country, at this stage expelled nearly all international aid agencies. Not even the Red Cross was spared. An attack on its employees by suspected Taliban fighters in mid-1999 led to the temporary withdrawal of all nonessential Red Cross personnel from Afghanistan. After the return of UN personnel in 1999, attacks on them still occurred. Following one such incident staged by Taliban followers, all UN expatriate staff were withdrawn from Kandahar in March 2000. On other occasions the Taliban blockaded the delivery of UN food relief to particular areas and also used donor food as a bait to lure men into their militia.17 The Taliban’s callous attitude towards humanitarian relief was consistent with its disdain for human rights, which was in turn one of its principal transgressions in the eyes of the international community. True, the


Taliban was not the only group in the conflict-ridden country to violate human rights, but as government it had special responsibilities to uphold such rights – which it patently failed to discharge. In April 2000, for instance, the UN Commission on Human Rights passed a resolution strongly condemning the mass killings and systematic human rights violations against civilians and persons deprived of their liberty for reasons related to the armed conflict.18 Violations of the laws of war by Taliban fighters (and by opposing factions too) became commonplace. In 2001 Human Rights Watch reported that Taliban forces ‘subjected local civilians to a ruthless and systematic policy of collective punishment’ that included massacres, summary executions, the deliberate destruction of homes, and the confiscation of farmland.19 Women’s rights, or rather the lack thereof, ‘became a principal battleground between the Taliban and the international community’. In addition to the restrictive measures mentioned earlier, the Taliban forbade women to travel unless accompanied by a close male relative, banned them from working outside their homes, except in health care; denied them medical treatment by male doctors, and excluded women from Kabul University.20 As Amnesty International put it, ‘(t)ens of thousands of women effectively remained prisoners in their homes under Taleban edicts’.21 Discrimination against non-Muslims (a mere one percent of the total population of over 25 million) was pronounced. In 1998 they were, among other things, instructed to identify their houses with a yellow cloth on rooftops and non-Muslim women had to be clothed in yellow. Later Afghan Hindus were ordered to wear a yellow badge, ostensibly to protect them from the religious police. (The similarity with Nazi practices was not lost on critics of the Taliban.) The prime enforcer of the religious and gender restrictions was the notorious Taliban religious police, formally known as the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Suppression of Vice.22 Among the many other recorded human rights violations committed by the Taliban government, were the mass detention of civilians (including prisoners of conscience) and their torture and ill-treatment, public amputations, and public executions.23 The second major transgression committed by the Taliban was, of course, involvement in international terrorism. The terrorist connection went beyond sheltering al-Qaeda, since Islamic extremists from many parts of the world – including Europe, Africa, Asia and North America – were allowed to use Afghanistan as a training venue and operational base for their worldwide terrorist activities.24 (This support was closely linked to the Taliban’s fourth sin.) The UN Security Council repeatedly confronted the Taliban government on this matter. In December 1998 the Council (resolution 1214) demanded that the Taliban stop giving sanctuary and training to international terrorists. The following October the Security Council


(resolution 1267) strongly condemned the Taliban for continuing with these practices, making particular mention of the safe haven provided for bin Laden. He was allowed to use Afghanistan ‘as a base from which to sponsor international terrorist operations’. The Council reiterated its earlier demand that the Taliban cease sheltering terrorists and added the demand that bin Laden be extradited to a country where he had been indicted on charges of terrorism. More than a year later, in December 2000, the Council (resolution 1333) repeated these denunciations and demands. Afghanistan was made to pay a heavy price for giving sanctuary to terrorists, especially bin Laden and his al-Qaeda movement. In August 1998, in the wake of the bomb attacks on the American embassies in East Africa, the US launched cruise missile strikes against alleged terrorist training camps used by bin Laden in Afghanistan (and Sudan). The Americans suspected al-Qaeda of plotting the two terrorist incidents. In a further attempt to coerce the Taliban into extraditing bin Laden, the US in July 1999 imposed unilateral financial and economic sanctions against the Afghan government. Still the Taliban refused to comply.25 The mandatory sanctions that the UN Security Council ordered in October 1999 (resolution 1267) consisted of a freeze on all Taliban-controlled funds and other financial resources abroad and a ban on international flights by aircraft owned or operated by or on behalf of the Taliban. The next turn of the UN sanctions screw followed in December 2000 when the Security Council under resolution 1333 issued an ultimatum: unless bin Laden was surrendered to face justice and terrorist training camps in Afghanistan closed within a month, further sanctions would be imposed. The new round of sanctions, duly applied in January 2001, included an embargo on arms sales and military advice and training from abroad, the withdrawal of foreign military advisers to the Taliban, a ban on the supply of acetic anhydride (a chemical used in drug manufacturing) to Taliban-controlled territory, a reduction in the number and level of Taliban diplomats allowed in foreign countries, the closure of the Afghan national airline’s offices abroad, and the prohibition of landing and overflying rights for aircraft originating in or destined for Taliban-controlled territory in Afghanistan. The UN also closed its special mission in Afghanistan, adding to the country’s diplomatic ostracism.26 The Taliban’s third offence was a familiar one for a revolutionary movement that had seized power: its revolution had to be exported. Secular regimes in other Muslim states had to be replaced by political orders based on Sharia. To this end the Taliban gave sanctuary to a range of foreign rebel groups, including the Harakat ul-Mujahedeen and others from Kashmir, Sunni Iranian groups, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and militants from Chechnya. Afghanistan, Rashid noted in 2001, ‘is fast eclipsing other states, like Libya and Iran, as the world’s largest training ground for the purported Jihad International, Inc.’ The countries targeted for revolutionary activity, among them Central Asian states, took a decidedly dim view of


what they considered Taliban sponsorship of terrorism. The Taliban’s involvement in international terrorism was indeed closely related to its quest to ‘Talibanize’ Muslim countries.27 The fourth serious contravention was not unique to the Taliban, but had been committed by preceding Afghan governments too: involvement, through acts of omission or commission, in the production and trade of illicit drugs.28 In 1994, with the mujahidin in power, Afghanistan eclipsed Myanmar as the world’s major producer of opium. Although the Taliban government in 1997 publicly condemned and prohibited illicit drug production and trafficking, it was not averse to using the drug trade as its principal source of unofficial revenue. This was earned through levying a tax on drug dealers for transporting opium out of the country. Between 30 and 40 per cent of the Taliban’s war chest, estimated at US$100 million in 2001, was raised through the drug trade (with the bulk of the funds derived from smuggling other commodities and a small portion from direct financial aid). In the late 1990s poppy cultivation increased as new areas were opened up to farmers. There were even accounts of farmers being forced to grow poppies and receiving fertilizer for this purpose from the Taliban authorities. In 1999, the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention reported, Afghanistan’s production of opium was almost twice the average of the preceding four years. This represented a 117 per cent increase in the output of raw opium between 1998 and 1999. A further Taliban decree in July 2000 placing a total ban on poppy cultivation led to an immediate decline in output, but in that very year Afghanistan was still responsible for 75 per cent of global opium production.29 In December 2000 the UN Security Council (resolution 1333) considered it necessary to demand that the Taliban halt all illicit poppy cultivation and other illegal drugs activities, ‘the proceeds of which finance Taliban terrorist activities’. For the Taliban the sale of opium abroad opened up an extensive transnational network of links with drug dealers in Pakistan, Iran, Central Asia, the Gulf states, Chechnya and the Caucasus. These contacts facilitated illicit arms transfers to extremist Islamic movements across a vast region. Foreign militant groups enjoying sanctuary in Afghanistan also funded their activities in their home countries through opium smuggling.30 A final act of deviance peculiar to the Taliban could be depicted as cultural terrorism. It refers to the highly public destruction, in March 2001, of two giant Buddha statues at Bamiyan. Built in the second and fifth centuries AD, these were among Afghanistan’s greatest cultural treasures. The Taliban predictably justified the action, which caused international outrage, on religious grounds.31 At the heart of the Taliban’s clash with the world community were fundamentally different conceptions of rules of international (and indeed national) behaviour. ‘We do not accept something which somebody imposes on us under the name of human rights which is contrary to the


holy Koranic law’, Mullah Omar declared in 1997. The Koran, he insisted, ‘cannot adjust itself to other people’s requirements; people should adjust themselves to the requirements of the holy Koran’.32 Under this uncompromising world view, standards of behaviour prescribed by international law or international organizations and expected by international opinion had to be disregarded if they contradicted the Taliban’s peculiar interpretation of Koranic law.33 Conversely, Taliban rules about the treatment of Afghan women and of criminals (e.g. inflicting capital punishment by the cutting of throats and stoning) could not be judged by alien, un-Koranic codes of conduct. Such fundamentalism fed the common opinion abroad that the Taliban were a gang of deviant characters wholly out of step with the time and unworthy of a seat at the table of nations. As the Director-General of UNESCO exclaimed, the Taliban were ‘madmen’ and ‘barbarians who interpret the Koran as they see fit’.34 Most of Afghanistan’s neighbouring states were distinctly uneasy if not avowedly hostile to the Taliban’s rule. Iran, Russia, some Central Asian states and India openly supported the Northern Alliance, the main antiTaliban grouping. The Central Asian countries were particularly concerned about a spillover of Afghan fundamentalism to their soil through Talibansponsored insurgencies.35 Russia was outraged when the Taliban officially recognized the separatist Islamic Republic of Chechnya and allowed the Chechens to open an embassy in Kabul in January 2000. A few months later the Russians threatened to bomb Taliban bases in Afghanistan suspected of harbouring Chechen rebels and other Islamic militants from Central Asia. Iran and the Taliban government nearly came to war following the murder of 10 Iranian diplomats and an Iranian journalist by Taliban militia in Mazar-i-Sharif in August 1998. China, by contrast, entered into a military cooperation agreement and oil and gas contracts with Afghanistan in 1998–99, but shied away from diplomatic links. A year or two later China was not prevented by these economic and military ties from taking strong issue with the Taliban over its support for international terrorism.36 By the late 1990s Afghanistan’s handful of diplomatic partners had become wary of links with the Taliban. In what was a major diplomatic setback for the Taliban, Saudi Arabia in September 1998 froze official relations by recalling its envoy from Kabul and suspending political and financial support for the Afghan leadership. This move was evidently prompted by the Saudis’ distaste for the brutalities of the Taliban authorities and their sheltering of bin Laden. In the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, the Saudis formally severed their ties with the Taliban government.37 Pakistan’s relations with the Taliban became rather ambiguous after the military coup that brought General Pervez Musharraf to power in Islamabad in October 1999. On the one hand Pakistan reportedly continued its military support for the Taliban, but on the other it complied


with UN sanctions by freezing Taliban financial assets in the country and pledging support for the establishment of a ‘truly representative government’ in Kabul. In September 2001 Pakistan withdrew its diplomats from Afghanistan without breaking diplomatic ties. In the aftermath of 11 September 2001 the United Arab Emirates rescinded its diplomatic recognition of the Taliban government.38 The diplomatic plight of Talibanruled Afghanistan by late 2001 was aptly summed up by Rashid: ‘There is no movement or political group in the world today that is more isolated, ostracized or demonized by the international community and most of the governments of the Muslim world than the Taliban in Afghanistan.’39 Few tears were shed abroad when the Taliban government was deposed by a US-led multinational military force that invaded Afghanistan in October 2001. This paved the way for a UN-sponsored conference between Afghan political factions in Bonn, where agreement was reached in December 2001 on the creation of an interim government. The Interim Authority, chaired by Hamid Karzai, was duly installed later that month. It was replaced by a Transitional Authority, also led by Karzai, in June 2002. This body was tasked with drafting a new constitution and preparing for a national election within two years.40 Having to contend with an unsettled domestic situation and violent challenges to its authority, the new government was heavily dependent on a foreign military presence to consolidate its power and establish order in the country. In an apparent attempt to retain some leverage over this dual process, the UN Security Council in January 2002 (resolution 1390) decided to maintain sanctions imposed under resolution 1267 for another 12 months. This move did not prevent foreign donors from pledging, in May 2002, US$4.5 billion for the reconstruction of Afghanistan.41 It was an investment in the country’s future domestic stability and international respectability.

China The People’s Republic of China (PRC, or China for short) never featured on Washington’s roster of rogue states, but the US on several occasions treated China as a deviant country. Aspects of the latter’s domestic and international behaviour led the Americans to impose punitive measures to express their disapproval and compel the Chinese to mend their ways. More often than not, such measures were of short duration and their suspension was not occasioned by substantive domestic policy changes in line with international standards of good conduct. Instead, Washington frequently compromised or simply capitulated to the demands of realpolitik as strategic advantage and monetary gain took precedence over supposedly moral considerations. Put differently, might prevailed over right and conscience submitted to commerce.


The PRC’s derelictions can be traced back to its very origins as a revolutionary communist state, hence its inclusion among the outcast countries considered in Chapter 3. There we dealt with the PRC’s offensive behaviour from its birth in 1949 until the normalization of its relations with the US in 1979. In the present chapter the focus is on China’s more recent normviolating conduct. It is nonetheless worth reminding ourselves that during its early years of its international adversity, the PRC’s domestic human rights record was hardly an issue to the US, other foreign nations, inter-governmental organizations or international NGOs.42 No UN discussions were held on human rights violations in China as a whole, not even during the years of the Cultural Revolution when some of the worst excesses since 1949 occurred. For a variety of reasons the Western media by and large did not scrutinize the PRC’s human rights situation. One was that the rule-breaking behaviour was committed by a leftist regime and did not involve whites suppressing black people (in contrast to South Africa under apartheid). Another reason was that access to reliable information on human rights practices in China was often difficult to obtain.43 The only exception to the indifference was the situation in Tibet: the UN General Assembly in 1959, 1961 and 1965 passed resolutions calling on China to stop depriving the Tibetan people of their fundamental rights and freedoms. The Tibetans, the General Assembly declared in 1961, met all the requirements for selfdetermination. UN concern about the ongoing repression of the Tibetans diminished as support for the PRC’s admission to the world body grew.44 It was only in the second half of the 1970s, under Deng Xiaoping, that some critical international attention came to be directed at the human rights situation in China proper. The Helsinki Accord of 1975 invigorated the international human rights movement, with the Paris-based Fédération Internationale des Droits de l’Homme, Freedom House in New York and Amnesty International in London the first to draw attention to China. Most notable was Amnesty’s comprehensive report, Political Imprisonment in the PRC, published in 1977. In the US, Congress in 1979 decided that the State Department’s annual human rights review of countries receiving American aid should be extended to all states, including China. These reports helped to sensitize American opinion to the PRC’s still abysmal human rights record.45 On the whole, however, such awareness and concern were too limited to have caused any significant damage to Beijing’s international standing. By the late 1980s there were hopes in the West that the PRC would join the international trend towards democratization. The world was witnessing a historic global transition from the Cold War period to that of a hopefully ‘new world order’ based on freedom, peace and stability. China had for over a decade enjoyed extensive diplomatic and commercial relations with the West, a form of engagement that would supposedly help to liberalize


the Chinese political system – as it had done in the economic domain. There were indeed stirrings of freedom among groups of Chinese, especially students. Add to this that Communist Party chief Deng had established a reputation as a bold reformist, especially in unshackling the Chinese economy. Under these circumstances the Western media paid more intense attention to China than perhaps ever before.46 Expectations of the PRC embarking on political liberalization were dashed in June 1989 when Chinese security forces brutally repressed a prodemocracy demonstration on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. In what was commonly portrayed abroad as a massacre, troops probably killed anywhere between 1,000 and 5,000 protestors.47 Occurring literally under the international media spotlight, the incident caused an outcry abroad, especially in the West. China stood exposed as a vicious communist dictatorship swimming against the international tide of democratization – a seriously deviant state, in short. Foreign condemnation of Tiananmen was swift and severe. Sanctions, including diplomatic isolation, the suspension of aid and loans, bans on military sales and visits, and the cancellation of cultural exchanges were imposed by several countries, among them France, West Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Italy, Britain, Belgium, The Netherlands, Australia, Japan, Indonesia, Canada and the US. At the multilateral level the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank temporarily suspended loans to China.48 The human rights situation in China overshadowed the August 1989 session of the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. The upshot was a mild resolution – adopted by 15 votes to 9 – in which members recorded their concern ‘about the events which took place recently in China and about their consequences in the field of human rights’, requested the Secretary-General to transmit to the UN Human Rights Commission information provided by China and other reliable sources, and appealed for clemency for persons ‘deprived of their liberty’ due to the occurrences at Tiananmen.49 In what was a severe diplomatic humiliation, China became the first permanent member of the Security Council to be censured in a UN forum for its human rights performance.50 But that was also the first and last UN resolution critical of China’s human rights situation after Tiananmen. In March 1990 the Commission on Human Rights voted against the adoption of a watered-down resolution that avoided direct criticism of Beijing but instead praised recent ‘improvements’ in China’s human rights practices. Each year between 1990 and 2001, save for 1998 (the year of a Sino-American summit meeting and of China’s signature of a major international human rights convention), the US tabled charges of PRC human rights violations at the annual meetings of the UN Commission on Human Rights – but the


Chinese managed to block consideration of the allegations. Despite Beijing’s stonewalling, China’s domestic affairs featured in reports and discussions of the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance, Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions, Special Rapporteur on Summary and Arbitrary Executions, Committee against Torture, Special Rapporteur on Torture, and Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. NGOs rather than governments were usually the source of damning information about China.51 Foreign censure and tangible punishment in the wake of Tiananmen were neither universal nor sustained. Not even the US, where public clamour for tough action against China was strongest, was willing to persist with coercive measures and risk rupturing key relationships with Beijing. Punitive actions taken after Tiananmen included a ban on all American military sales to China, a halt to further liberalization of high-technology transfers, and the suspension of high-level official visits and military exchanges. Washington took care to limit the impact of the sanctions on bilateral relations so as to preserve a working relationship with Beijing.52 Barely a month after resorting to sanctions against China, the US began waiving or modifying several of the measures. The sale of Boeing commercial aircraft to China was authorized, Chinese military officers and technicians were allowed to resume their work at US facilities, and export licences were issued for American-built satellites.53 Incoming President Bill Clinton, who had denounced his predecessor for ‘coddling’ the Chinese dictatorship, in May 1993 decided to condition the extension of most-favoured nation (MFN) status to China on its performance in particular areas, especially human rights. Within five months Clinton approved a new non-confrontational strategy, though: most of the remaining post-Tiananmen restrictions on ties with the PRC were lifted, cabinet-level visits were authorized, military contacts restored, and a summit meeting between Clinton and his Chinese counterpart Jiang Zemin was arranged. In May 1994 Clinton began delinking human rights issues from the annual extension of MFN status to China, even though the US was not entirely satisfied with Beijing’s efforts to improve human rights. There had been some movement on the Chinese side, including the release of prominent Tibetan and Chinese political prisoners, the initiation of talks with the International Committee of the Red Cross on monitoring detainees in China’s prisons, and an understanding with the US on restricting the export of prison labour products from China to America.54 Clinton argued that more progress on human rights in China could be achieved ‘if our two nations are engaged in a growing web of political and economic cooperation’,55 and Washington embarked on what it called ‘comprehensive engagement’ with the PRC. Two years later it was succeeded by a policy of ‘strategic dialogue’56 – both the antithesis of isolation through sanctions.


Human rights thus remained a secondary concern in US relations with China; security on the Korean Peninsula, arms proliferation to Iran and Pakistan, and the trade deficit then took precedence.57 As Nathan had remarked in 1997, the US ‘defends its human rights concerns [regarding China] half-apologetically, as if attempting to leaven necessary realpolitik with a measure of fidelity to its parochial values’.58 In 2000 the US took the final step in delinking trade and human rights matters when Congress approved a Clinton administration proposal to exempt China from further annual reviews in anticipation of its entry into the World Trade Organization and to extend permanent, unconditional normal trading rights (NTR, as MFN was renamed) to the PRC.59 In November 1999 the US and China signed a bilateral agreement paving the way for the PRC’s admission to the WTO, which duly took place in December 2001.60 Other Western countries had meanwhile also abolished the punitive measures imposed against China after the Tiananmen massacre. The advances in the PRC’s foreign relations in the first half of the 1990s were not accompanied by a fundamental improvement in the country’s human rights situation. True, its political system had ‘slowly loosened up from the totalitarian state of Mao Zedong, to the hard authoritarian state of Deng Xiaoping, to the soft authoritarian state of Jiang Zemin’ and personal freedom and security for the average Chinese citizen had expanded markedly since the 1980s.61 This ‘progress’ did not mean the end of systematic violations of basic international human rights standards, though. Established human rights NGOs such as Amnesty International, the International League for Human Rights and Asia Watch kept calling international attention to human rights abuses in China as previously critical states conducted business as usual with the PRC.62 These human rights advocates have sought to ‘shame’ Beijing into compliance with universal norms by exposing and condemning abuses and trying to erode the PRC’s international prestige.63 Freedom House, for instance, in its 1996-97 annual survey of human rights gave China its lowest possible rating, finding that ‘the regime continues to have one of the worst human rights records in the world and the rule of law is nonexistent’.64 In 1997 the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists published a report accusing Beijing of suppressing nationalist dissent in Tibet and attempting to extinguish Tibetan culture.65 In its World Report 1999 Human Rights Watch noted that despite some ‘encouraging development’ towards greater freedom of debate among intellectuals on matters of political and economic reform, China retained generally strict controls on expression, association and assembly, with political and religious dissidents especially targeted for arrest and detention.66 Between 1999 and 2001 Beijing’s suppression of the nationwide Falun Gong society as an enemy of the nation, drew sharp criticism from many quarters in the West, who regarded it as a clear-cut case of religious


persecution (whereas China asserted that the Falun Gong was not a religion but a harmful cult).67 Other specific human rights contraventions that were recorded in the 1990s and beyond, were related to criminal procedure (including unfair trials and a lack of judicial independence); torture and abuse of inmates of prisons and labour camps; forced resettlement, suppression of dissent and violation of labour rights related to the Three Gorges dam project; forced abortion and sterilization as part of population planning; the exceptionally wide use of the death penalty (applicable to 45 crimes – many of them non-violent – committed by civilians and ten more for military personnel) without adequate safeguards; harvesting of organs from condemned prisoners for transplantation without donor consent; and the export of items produced by (forced) prison labour.68 Despite the abolition of sanctions, several foreign leaders and other public figures have tried to exert verbal pressure on Beijing over human rights. A procession of eminent visitors, including the French and Japanese prime ministers, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and parliamentary delegations from Europe, Australia and the US, among others, made representations to the Chinese leadership.69 Another influential voice of concern was that of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson. On three visits to China between 1998 and 2002, Robinson highlighted what she called ‘very serious’ human rights problems there, including curbs on freedom of expression, association and religion, and the repression of ethnic minorities.70 The EU, which had engaged Beijing in a so-called Human Rights Dialogue since 1997, in January 2001 voiced its concern over persistent, widespread restrictions on freedom of assembly, expression, association and religion, the situation of minorities (including in Tibet), and the extensive use of the death penalty. At the same time the EU acknowledged improvements in such areas as the reform of China’s penal code and criminal procedures.71 Most of these human rights violations ‘transgress China’s international obligations’, Nathan observed, ‘and are indefensible under even the most culturally relativist standards’.72 The obligations in question were contained in several international human rights agreements adopted by the PRC. Already in the 1980s it became a party to seven such conventions, including those dealing with torture, genocide, apartheid, racial discrimination, discrimination against women, and refugees. The PRC subsequently acceded to conventions on children’s and workers’ rights. It was only in 1998 that Beijing accepted the critically important International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, having signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights the year before. The gap between promise and performance was highlighted by Chinese authorities’ crackdown on dissidents hard on the heels of Beijing’s adoption of the


Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Among those sentenced to long jail terms were three veteran political activists convicted of subversion for trying to form the China Democratic Party, the PRC’s first opposition party since 1949.73 As the PRC entered the new century, it was still an authoritarian state in which the Chinese Communist Party was the paramount source of power, its members holding nearly all top positions in the government, military and police. Citizens lacked the right to change national leaders or the form of government or the freedom to peacefully voice their opposition the to the political system. The government human rights record remained ‘poor’, as it continued to commit ‘numerous and serious abuses’. This assessment, contained in the China section of the US State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2002, 74 was confirmed in the latest annual reports of both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.75 For the US specifically, there were several other features of China’s behaviour – apart from its dismal human rights record (Tibet included) and the accompanying nature of its political order – that also caused some offence and reinforced the popular image of the PRC as a less than respectable state. These included its revisionist international orientation that was designed to regain for China its ‘rightful’ place as a great civilization and world power; its history of aggression against foreign states; Beijing’s ambitious territorial claims over islands in the South China Sea (drawing it into more territorial disputes than any other power); its persistent threats to use force against Taiwan (exacerbated by the firing of missiles towards Taiwan in 1996); the reported transfer of complete missile systems or missile technology to countries such as Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria and North Korea; the sale of nuclear technology to Iran and others, and Beijing’s alleged theft of American nuclear secrets ever since the 1970s (revealed in 1999 by a congressional investigative panel chaired by Christopher Cox). To these we must add that Americans experienced a sense of threat engendered by China’s economic growth, its huge population, its military modernization coupled with the build-up of its strategic nuclear strength and the expansion of its power projection capabilities, and the PRC’s assertive foreign policy. For the US China was not merely a major player in regional and global politics, but one that could become a military rival, particularly by challenging American interests in the seemingly fragile security environment of Asia.76 The Americans have in recent years also been irked by what they saw as China’s obstructionist behaviour by expressing solidarity with Yugoslav strongman Milosevic at a time when Western powers tried to depose him; Beijing’s opposition to the establishment of a war crimes tribunal to try Khmer Rouge followers in Cambodia, and attempts to block the deployment of UN peacekeepers in several international trouble-spots. Disputes


over intellectual property rights, market access to China and other trade matters have added to strains in Sino-American relations.77 In 1991 the US imposed some highly publicized unilateral sanctions in response to China’s horizontal proliferation of WMD.78 More recently Washington threatened Beijing with sanctions over trade disputes. All this happened strictly within the context of bilateral relations and the punitive measures were of short duration. China’s overall international standing suffered little lasting damage. The reluctance of the US – not to mention other Western countries – to impose and uphold punitive measures against the PRC was based on a number of considerations. China was great power (a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a nuclear-weapons state) whose growing economic wealth, military capability and political clout meant that it could exert increasing influence on matters vital to Western security interests, notably arms control and weapons proliferation, the fate of the Korean Peninsula and multilateral intervention in world trouble-spots. More recently the US solicited China’s support in America’s self-styled war on terrorism and in resolving the nuclear standoff with North Korea (see Chapter 8). Beijing obliged by strongly condemning the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001; supporting two subsequent UN Security Council resolutions, one of which authorized the international use of force; and establishing a practical working relationship with the US in counter-terrorism.79 Broader geostrategic considerations thus weighed with the US and its allies in dealing with China’s rule-breaking behaviour; an antagonistic, ostracized and uncooperative China could seriously jeopardize Western interests. Further constraints on the use of extensive sanctions were that they would be difficult to implement in the absence of international consensus and commitment, and such measures were bound to harm the domestic economies of Western countries as other states seized market opportunities in China.80 International reluctance to challenge China openly over its domestic politics was also evident in the decision of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in July 2001 to award Beijing the 2008 Olympic Games. More generously, the IOC vote was something of a referendum on the PRC’s standing in the world community. (China’s unsuccessful bid in 1993 to host the 2000 Olympics had been related to lingering international antagonism caused by Tiananmen.)81 Another example of a non-confrontational approach was Washington’s decision not to back a resolution in the UN Human Rights Commission in April 2003 that would have condemned China’s human rights situation. The US justified this break with custom in terms of giving the new government of President Hu Jintao a chance to prove itself. The move probably had more to do with the high politics of Sino-American relations than the low(er) politics of improving Beijing’s human rights practices.82


Syria Modern Syria, born out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, became independent in 1946. Less than three years later Syria’s fragile democracy came to an end in the first of a series of military coups. Two more followed within nine months. A pattern of unconstitutional changes of government and ‘almost pathological political instability’83 continued until 1970, when Defence Minister Hafez al-Assad seized power in a bloodless coup d’état. It was the beginning of a lengthy personal dictatorship characterized by what was for Syrians an unparalleled concentration of power in the hands of one person.84 Challenges to Assad’s rule were not long in coming. There were popular protests in Damascus and other major centres in the first half of the 1970s, all of them put down brutally by the authorities. More violent clashes followed between 1976 and 1982, a period depicted as ‘the great repression’. Aleppo, Syria’s second city and a hotbed of democratic opposition and Islamic activism, was occupied by security forces in 1980–81. Between 1,000 and 2,000 people were reportedly killed in confrontations between protestors and government forces and a further 8,000 arrested. Another bloody incident in 1980 was the raid on the Tadmur Military Prison by soldiers, in which more than a thousand inmates may have perished. The most notorious confrontation took place in early 1982 in the historic city of Hama, another centre of the opposition Islamic movement. Determined to crush long-simmering resistance to Assad’s regime, security forces killed thousands of civilians (estimates ranged from 5,000 to 25,000) and laid waste to entire sections of the city. At least a third of Hama’s housing was completely destroyed, leaving over 60,000 people homeless.85 Compared with Syria’s turbulent history, Assad managed to create (or impose) unprecedented political stability. This was achieved at the expense of human rights and fundamental freedoms. The undoubted material gains brought by Assad’s government also helped to keep most of the population fairly docile. Under his rule Syrians experienced increased standards of living, the reduction of illiteracy, the development of infrastructure, and improvements in public services such as water and electricity provision.86 President Hafez al-Assad died in June 2000 and was succeeded by his son, 34-year-old Dr Bashar al-Assad. The new leader has cautiously pursued a reformist agenda at home, liberalizing Syria’s centrally planned economy. Domestic and international hopes of political liberalization have been largely disappointed during Assad junior’s first 30 months in office. Although the harshest features of his father’s personal dictatorship have been softened, Bashar al-Asad has left the structures of authoritarianism essentially intact and resorted to the accompanying practices of repression. On the foreign policy front the new incumbent has upheld his father’s legacy by linking a peace deal with the Jewish state to an


overall resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. At the same time Assad junior has engaged in intensive diplomacy to expand Syria’s international relations and eliminate remnants of its earlier alienation from several other states.87 The Syrian leadership has taken their country’s election in October 2001 to a two-year stint on the UN Security Council – the first time in 20 years – as evidence of Syria’s high standing in the world community.88 Although omitted from America’s list of rogue countries in the 1990s, Syria was an eminently deserving candidate for inclusion. Charges levelled by the US suggest that Damascus met the principal criteria for a place in America’s bad books. Syria was moreover guilty of several other transgressions at home and abroad. First, the US has long made a major issue of Syria’s alleged involvement in international terrorism, having included the country on the State Department’s terrorist list ever since its inception in 1979. Syria was accused of providing safe haven and other forms of support to Palestinian terrorist groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In 1983 Syrian-backed terrorists inflicted heavy casualties in attacks on the US embassy and Marine headquarters in Beirut. Syria’s support for terrorist groups elsewhere in the Middle East, the US feared, could endanger pro-Western governments in Jordan and Saudi Arabia and also jeopardize efforts at peacemaking between Israel and the Arabs.89 The Syrian intelligence agency was furthermore believed to have sponsored the killing of Assad’s opponents in other Middle East countries and beyond.90 Syria was, for instance, accused of complicity in assassinations and other acts of terrorism against French officials in Beirut and Paris in 1982–83; linked to a terrorist attack on Rome airport in 1985; allegedly involved in the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin discotheque, and in the same year implicated in an attempt to bomb an Israeli civilian airliner in London.91 Syria had reportedly also provided training and other forms of support to a host of terrorist groups and liberation movements elsewhere, including Germany’s Baader-Meinhof gang, Action Directe in France, the Japanese Red Army, Armenian Secret Army, Kurdish Labour Party, Tamil United Liberation Front of Sri Lanka, and Moro National Liberation Front of the Philippines.92 In its annual reports on terrorism, the American State Department acknowledged that there was no evidence of direct Syrian involvement in or support for terrorist actions since 1986. More recently Syria had cooperated with the US against the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. The country remained blacklisted, though, because the Syrian government continued to provide political and limited material support to Palestinian groups, notably Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad, according to Patterns of Global Terrorism 2002 (released in 2003).93 It was, then, Syria’s ongoing ‘terrorism by proxy’94 that in 2002–03 still left it in the company of Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya,


North Korea and Sudan as the State Department’s seven designated state sponsors of terrorism. Syria’s case was not helped by Assad junior’s public rejection of an appeal from Prime Minister Tony Blair in October 2001 to rein in anti-Israel militants based in Damascus. Assad moreover insisted that the militant groups operating out of the Syrian capital were not terrorists but ‘freedom fighters’.95 With his patience evidently wearing thin, Secretary of State Colin Powell warned President Basharal Assad in May 2003 that the US would be watching closely to see whether he honoured his promises to remove terrorist organizations housed in Damascus that ‘continue to undertake activities that are destructive to the peace process’ in the Middle East.96 Damascus has in the second place been accused by the US in particular of possessing WMD. Not for the first time a senior US official in May 2002 declared that Syria was one of the countries (along with the likes of Iraq and North Korea) ‘that are pursuing or have the potential to pursue weapons of mass destruction or have the capability to do so in violation of their treaty obligations’. He claimed that Syria maintained a chemical warfare programme, was able to produce biological warfare agents and possessed missiles that could strike Israel, Jordan and Turkey.97 President Bush in April 2003 repeated the charge that Syria possessed chemical weapons, something immediately denied by Damascus.98 A third transgression allegedly committed by Syria, was endangering regional peace and security through aggressive actions in its neighbourhood. Assad was a master at exploiting Syria’s critical geographical location at the centre of the Middle East and bordering on five countries, leading him to intervene in several surrounding states. Although the US had supported Syria’s intervention in the Lebanese civil war in 1976, the two states found themselves on a collision course over Lebanon in the 1980s. The cause of tension was the role of US and Israeli forces in Lebanon after Israel invaded the southern part of that country in 1982. Such was the friction that US and Syrian forces engaged in violent skirmishes in 1983.99 US observers also began viewing Syria’s ongoing military presence in Lebanon as more than a temporary exercise in stabilizing a neighbouring state whose deep societal cleavages had plunged it into a devastating internal war. Damascus was variously suspected of wishing to impose a ‘Pax Syriana’ on Lebanon, assert protectorship or suzerainty, and wanting to transform Lebanon into an anti-Israeli ‘confrontation state’. Another perspective held that the Syrians harboured expansionist designs, seeing Lebanon as part of ‘Greater Syria’ that would encompass Jordan and Palestine too. (Syria also had an historic claim to the Turkish frontier province of Hatay.) As if to confirm suspicions, Syrian forces launched a new and especially brutal offensive in Lebanon in 1990, resulting in the expansion of Syria’s 15-yearlong occupation to nearly two-thirds of the country. A number of treaties


in the early 1990s consolidated Syria’s hold over Lebanon, leaving the latter a vassal of Damascus. It was only under Bashar al-Assad that Syria began reducing the scale of its military presence in Lebanon.100 Syria’s sins in the region went beyond its occupation of Lebanon. Washington made it clear to Damascus that its involvement in terrorism, albeit indirectly, were ‘a threat to Syria’s neighbors, to the peace process, and to the stability of the region’.101 In addition Syria blocked Iraq’s oil shipments to the Mediterranean, threatened to invade Jordan, interfered with the Palestinians, established itself as Israel’s most committed adversary against which the Jewish state had to be on constant guard, and supported Kurdish rebels in Turkey through the Workers’ Party of Kurdistan (PKK).102 In 1998 Turkey threatened to invade Syria if it failed to heed Ankara’s demands to end its support for the PKK’s separatist campaign in Turkey’s Kurdish region.103 For the US a particularly worrisome aspect of Syria’s regional role was its efforts to obstruct or derail America’s peace initiatives in the Middle East. Assad refused to negotiate with Israel after the 1967 war and would not endorse UN Security Council resolution 242 (requiring Arab recognition of Israel in return for the latter’s withdrawal from occupied Arab territories) without reservation. The Syrian leader was also vehemently opposed to Egypt’s separate peace treaty with Israel, denouncing the Camp David initiative for not being comprehensive and excluding Syria.104 Syria mobilized the handful of ‘rejectionist’ states – Libya, Algeria and South Yemen – into the Arab Steadfastness and Confrontation Front, which engaged in a fierce war of words against the so-called capitulationists who advocated concessions to Israel. Verbal rejection of US peace initiatives was reinforced by Syria’s support for Palestinian terrorist groups.105 By the end of the 1980s Assad adopted a more flexible position on peace with Israel. He declared his support for UN resolutions 242 and 338 (peace in return for territory), began a rapprochement with Egypt, and evidently came to the realization that peace in the Middle East could not be achieved without the US. In 1990 Assad met with President George Bush in Geneva, symbolizing America’s recognition of Syria as an indispensable partner in the quest for peace in the region.106 The following year Syria participated in the Madrid Middle East peace conference chaired jointly by Presidents Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev and attended also by Israel, Lebanon, a combined Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, and representatives from the UN and EC.107 In 1992 the Syrians eventually mentioned the possibility of recognizing Israel, reaching a peace agreement with the Jewish state and living as good neighbours (provided Israel withdrew from all occupied Arab territories).108 Clinton, whose visit to Damascus in October 1994 was the first by a US president for 20 years, acknowledged that ‘Syria is the key to the achievement of an enduring and comprehensive peace’ in the Middle East.109 During the second Gulf War in 2003, Syria did not receive the same


honourable mention from the US. Instead, Damascus was accused by Washington of harbouring Iraqi leaders who had fled from American forces, and possibly hiding some of Iraq’s WMD.110 The old mistrust was still bedevelling relations between Syria and the US. The Americans in the fourth place took strong exception to Syria’s open hostility to the West, in particular the US. Syria’s world-view was shaped by ‘a profound sense of having been victimized by Western imperialism’. The US replaced France and Britain as Syria’s principal antagonist after the Americans had unambiguously demonstrated their support for Israel in the 1960s.111 It was not merely a case of anti-American sentiments; the Syrians seemed prepared to threaten US strategic interests in the Middle East112 – and in turn felt threatened by this adversary. In seeking foreign material support against perceived threats from the West and Israel, Damascus had turned to Moscow. In the first half of the 1980s Soviet military aid to Syria surpassed that provided to any other developing country, making Syria one of Moscow’s principal client states (in the sense of an independent actor contracting a patron to provide certain services it cannot provide for itself, such as sophisticated arms).113 Although Syria and the USSR had concluded a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in 1980, neither the friendship nor the cooperation lived up to the expectations of either side; theirs was a frequently troubled relationship in which Syria refused to be subjected to the role of a mere Soviet proxy or puppet. The wily, fiercely independent Assad would never accept such subservience.114 Nonetheless, the US, especially during the Reagan presidency, strongly objected to what was viewed as Syria’s role as a ‘truculent Soviet surrogate’.115 This fourth problem area in US-Syrian relations began to wane towards the end of the 1980s when Washington initiated an intensive ‘dialogue’ with Damascus in a bid to solicit Syrian support for American peace efforts in the Middle East. The rapprochement was symbolized by Syria’s participation – in the form of 19,000 troops – in the American-led Operation Desert Storm to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991. The US in turn welcomed Syria as an important regional counterweight to Iraq’s aggressive designs. Equally important, Syria’s decision later in 1991 to attend a Middle East peace conference sponsored by the US and the Soviet Union seemed to vindicate Washington’s diplomatic overtures to Damascus.116 Syria’s sense of past victimization has helped to shape its revisionist international orientation, which constitutes a fifth contravention. Independent Syria had from the outset rejected the political map of the Middle East devised by European colonial powers. The colonialists had carved out illegitimate entities – Syria among them – that divided and weakened the Arab nation, it was believed. Syrians wanted to see these artificially created political entities replaced by an Arab state extending from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. In the Syrian view of the world, Israel was another, albeit the most pernicious, legacy of colonialism in the


region. The ‘Zionist entity’ had no right of existence and Syria was committed to its destruction. Consequently, pan-Arabism, anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism formed the guiding principles of Syrian foreign policy for most of its independent existence.117 These features have in turn spawned an assertive and ambitious foreign policy, with Syria regarding itself as the ‘beating heart’ of Arab nationalism and entitled to speak and act on behalf of all Arabs.118 The sixth sin, of which Damascus has been manifestly guilty, was the violation of international standards of human rights. One of the instruments of repression Assad senior employed was a state of emergency. Dating back to 1963, it allowed for the suspension of virtually every constitutional protection of rights and liberties. In 1990 the scope of these measures was restricted, but highly repressive provisions relating to ‘state security’ remained in place.119 In 1991 Middle East Watch, a human rights NGO, reported that Assad’s government ‘denies freedom of expression and association to its citizens and refuses them their right to democratic participation in government’. The report also mentioned the following abuses: ‘Security forces operate with impunity, censors insist on conformity, minorities face continued persecution and discrimination, torture is a standard feature of interrogation, and thousands languish as political prisoners.’120 By the end of the decade, Amnesty International found, fundamental human rights were still being violated systematically by the Syrian authorities.121 With the exception of Iraq under Saddam Hussein, possibly no other Middle East government had a worse human rights record than that of Assad senior.122 Improvements since then have been marginal. Positive developments included the release of about 600 political prisoners in November 2000 and an announcement the following January that the emergency law in force since 1963 would be ‘frozen’ and ‘not applied’.123 These encouraging moves were largely negated by several repressive actions typical of the first Assad era. In August and September 2001 ten prominent prodemocracy activists were arrested and in early 2002 sentenced to prison terms ranging between two and ten years. The State Security Court, whose procedures did not meet international fair-trial standards and whose decisions cannot be appealed, convicted the defendants of ‘attempting to change the constitution by illegal means’, ‘spreading false information’ and other vaguely worded political offences.124 ‘The imprisonment of Syria’s peaceful political critics is disgraceful’, Human Rights Watch protested. ‘Instead of fulfilling public expectations of more space for political debate, the [Syrian] government is closing it down’. 125 This space was further restricted by the continued detention of large numbers of political prisoners and the enactment of a new press law in September 2001. Decree 50/2001 gave authorities the instruments to close down newspapers and prosecute and jail journalists and writers for offences


ranging from reporting on ‘national security’ and ‘national unity’ to publishing ‘falsehoods’ and ‘fabricated reports’.126 Significant restrictions on freedom of speech and of the press were only one set of human rights violations in Syria catalogued in the US State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2002. Among the other ongoing ‘serious abuses’ listed were torture of detainees, poor prison conditions, arbitrary arrest and detention, prolonged detention without trial, fundamentally unfair trials in security courts, and an inefficient and corrupt judiciary subject to political influence.127 A final and lesser-known form of deviant behaviour of which Syria has been accused, was involvement in narcotics trafficking. The smuggling was said to originate in parts of Lebanon controlled by Syrian forces. Senior military and security officials from Syria, it was claimed, aided and abetted the flow of drugs through Lebanon. In addition, laboratories converting opium into heroin were reportedly operating not only in Syrian-controlled areas of Lebanon but in Syria itself – the latter inconceivable without the collusion of Damascus.128 Syria has since the early 1980s been named (and shamed) in the US State Department’s annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. Although the US on a number of occasions raised the issue of drugs with Assad, Washington evidently took care not to allow the matter to interfere with the perceived need to draw Syria into the international fold. For its part Damascus has denied any official involvement in drug trafficking, emphasizing its endorsement of the 1988 UN Single Convention on Narcotics. In November 1997 the country was removed from the American blacklist following moves by Syria to stamp out drug production and trafficking in Lebanon’s Beka’a Valley, which was under Syrian military control.129 Given, then, that Syria had actually or allegedly broken widely accepted rules of behaviour both at home and abroad, how did members of the international community respond? The US State Department’s annual report on human rights regularly expressed concern about the abuses committed by Damascus. ‘When it comes to action, however, the American record has been abysmal’, Middle East Watch noted in 1991. Washington’s view was that such issues could be raised in private conversations only, not through public diplomacy. There was little evidence, Middle East Watch reported, that the matter came up in private.130 The EU on a number of occasions voiced its mild displeasure over Syria’s violation of human rights, including the imprisonment of political activists. In August 2002 the EU Presidency issued a ‘declaration of concern’ about the ‘limited progress’ made on political and economic reform since Assad the younger had taken office. The Europeans took care, however, that their misgivings about Syria’s behaviour did not jeopardize ongoing negotiations over an Association Agreement between the EU and Damascus.131


The US took a far tougher stance on Syria’s support for terrorism than on human rights. The first tangible punishment, in 1980, followed in the wake of Syria’s inclusion in the US State Department’s terrorist list. The export to Syria of certain US-manufactured military and civilian goods required a validated licence.132 In 1986, after a British law court implicated Syrian agents in an attempt to bomb an El Al aircraft, Washington withdrew its ambassador from Damascus, banned all high-level discussions with the Assad government, imposed new export controls, suspended Export-Import Bank loans, stopped subsidized wheat sales, and suspended air traffic agreements.133 The EC likewise in 1986 resorted to sanctions over the terrorism issue. New arms sales to Syria were banned (but existing contracts honoured) and high-level diplomatic visits suspended. West Germany unilaterally added further economic and diplomatic sanctions (including the suspension of development aid) later in 1986 after a German court found that Syrian agents had provided the bomb that exploded at a West Berlin social club earlier that year. Also in 1986, following information that Syria was developing chemical weapons, the US banned the export of eight chemicals that the Syrians might use to produce nerve and mustard gases.134 Within a year of imposing these punitive measures against Syria, both the US and EC member countries began relaxing or lifting many of the sanctions.135 However, as long as Syria appeared on the State Department’s terrorist list, the country remained subject to legislatively mandated American penalties. These included prohibitions on economic aid and military sales, controls on dual-use equipment that could support military or terrorist activities, and a ban on official US support for multilateral economic assistance to Syria.136 By the end of the 1980s engagement had replaced isolation and containment as America’s principal approach to Syria – even though most of the instances of deviant behaviour continued. The process of engagement expanded under the first Bush administration and reached a new intensity under Clinton, has been continued – albeit in a more qualified fashion – under Bush junior.137 The political rationale behind the ‘perceived disjunction between the realities of Syrian behavior and this policy of political cultivation’ followed by the US and other Western states, was to be found in the realization that ‘Syria’s imprimatur is essential if a peace agreement between the Arabs and Israelis is to have credibility’.138 Treating Syria as an outcast or rogue state, the US feared, would jeopardize efforts to enlist Assad’s support for peace efforts in the region. Likewise, the advantages of drawing Assad into the coalition against Iraq in 1990–91 were such that America chose to ignore his domestic excesses. In America’s war against terrorism after September 2001 and in the second war against Iraq in 2003, it was again more important for the US to get Syria ‘on side’ than to get its human rights situation in


shape. Such considerations also held true for other Western states, whose silence and inaction in the face of Syria’s deviant behaviour were often deafening.

Conclusion None of the countries discussed in this chapter was a single-sin deviant; each was accused of or had actually committed a range of transgressions. The one offence that Afghanistan under the Taliban, the PRC ever since its founding and Syria under the Assad dynasty had in common, was the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Serious though this shared transgression was, Western states were far more concerned about another misdeed of which Afghanistan and Syria were guilty: involvement in international terrorism. In Syria’s case terrorism was closely linked to its regional designs, and the Taliban’s desire to export its Islamic revolution influenced Afghanistan’s connections with terrorism. Another contravention these two countries shared was involvement in drug trafficking. Syria and China, in turn, have both been accused of a sin in the domain of high politics, viz. the proliferation of WMD. Afghanistan paid the ultimate price for its role in international terrorism, being subjected to foreign military intervention and the overthrow of its government. Its other transgressions were of lesser concern to the intervenors. Syria, whose involvement with terrorism was more limited and indirect than Afghanistan’s, experienced limited punitive measures from abroad. Its dismal human rights record did not lead the US or other Western powers to take strong and concerted issue with Damascus. Western countries dealt very leniently with Syria’s offences lest they alienate an Arab state crucial to the success of any major Middle East peace initiative. Strategic considerations weighed even heavier in Western responses to the PRC’s rule-breaking behaviour. They judged it unacceptably risky to invite a major confrontation with the Asian great power that boasted the world’s largest population, a rapidly expanding economy and an awesome military capability. In the politics of deviance, as we have discovered before, punishment is not always chosen to fit the crime, but rather to fit the criminal.

14 Non-State Deviants

In Chapter 2 brief reference was made to five prominent types of rulebreaking activity by contemporary non-state actors in world politics. These were terrorism, armed rebellion, trade in conflict diamonds, mercenarism, and transnational crime. The behavioural norms that have been formulated by the world community to prevent, curb or eliminate such deviant conduct have been recorded. It now remains to describe, in greater detail, the identities and activities of a selection of deviant actors in each of the five areas, and some of the international responses elicited.

Terrorist organizations When referring to terrorism, one is immediately confronted with a problem of definition. There is still not a comprehensive, universally accepted definition of and convention against terrorism in all its guises. Global consensus will remain hard to achieve as long as one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. The latter designation is of course based on the declared or attributed ends of the person or group involved. And the typical ends – freedom from prevailing oppression – often justify the means, which may well involve the use of terrorism. In trying to overcome the definitional dilemma, a wide range of international actors have focused on the means rather than the ends of individuals and organizations when determining what is terrorism or a terrorist. This approach was evident in the dozen international conventions against terrorism and was also followed by the US, arguably the single state that has been keeping the most elaborate check on the activities of international terrorist organizations. The definitions used in the US State Department’s Patterns of Global Terrorism are consistent with most scholarly conceptions of terrorism and will inform our own discussion. By ‘terrorism’ is meant ‘premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience’. ‘International terrorism’ refers to terrorism 328

Non-State Deviants 329

involving citizens or the territory of more than one country, and a ‘terrorist group’ is any group practising or having significant subgroups engaging in international terrorism.1 Despite the absence of a globally approved definition of terrorism, the world community has been developing an anti-terrorism norm that is enshrined in the dozen international conventions prohibiting particular acts of terrorism. These instruments, mentioned in Chapter 2, together with several UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions, made it abundantly clear that the international community viewed terrorism as a seriously deviant kind of behaviour. A typical example is Security Council resolution 1269 of October 1999, in which the Council ‘[u]nequivocally condemns all acts, methods and practices of terrorism as criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, in all their forms and manifestations, wherever and by whomever committed’. The suppression of acts of international terrorism, Council members reaffirmed, was ‘an essential contribution to the maintenance of international peace and security’. In various other resolutions of the Security Council and the General Assembly it was stated explicitly that every state had a duty to refrain from organizing, instigating, assisting or participating in terrorist acts in another state or acquiescing in organized activities within its territory directed towards the commissioning of such acts (see, for example, Council resolution 1373 of September 2001). Although our focus is on present-day international terrorist groups, these are of course not a new type of international actor. Recall the wave of terrorist incidents in the 1970s, which included the assassination of the Jordanian Premier by Palestinian terrorists in 1971; Black September’s killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich; the seizure of the US vessel Mayaguez by Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Cambodian waters in 1975; the hijacking of an Air France passenger aircraft in Athens in 1976 by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the German Baader-Meinhof gang; the murder of Lord Mountbatten by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1979; Hizballah terrorists’ hijacking of a Trans-World Airlines jet en route from Athens to Rome in 1985; and in the same year the hijacking of the Italian passenger liner Achille Lauro in international waters by members of the Palestine Liberation Front.2 One of the most extensive listings of current terrorist organizations is maintained by the US State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism. In an update of January 2003, the unit designated 36 groups as foreign terrorist organizations (based on the definitions cited earlier). Among them were the Abu Nidal Organization (also known as Black September) based in Iraq; Abu Sayyaf Group operating in the southern Philippines; Armed Islamic Group (GIA) active in Algeria; Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA) fighting for an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain; Gama’a al-Islamiyya, Egypt’s largest militant group; Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas),


operating primarily in Palestine and Israel; Party of God (Hizballah), active in Lebanon and with cells across the world; Kahane Chai (Kach), an Israeli terrorist group; Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), primarily composed of Turkish Kurds and fighting for an independent Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey; Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a secessionst movement in Sri Lanka; Palestine Islamic Jihad, operating mainly in Israel and the Palestinian territories; Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), active in various Middle Eastern countries; al-Qaeda; Real IRA, a hardline Irish Republican group; Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), engaged in a Marxist insurgency in Colombia; Revolutionary Organization 17 November (17 November), a small radical leftist group in Greece, and Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), a leftist terrorist group based and operating in Peru. The activities of nearly all these organizations involved the territory or citizens of more than one state. Most of the groups received assistance from states, whether in the form of sanctuary or military, financial and moral support.3 The weapons of death and destruction hitherto used by terrorist groups have been of a conventional nature. (A notable exception was the Japanese apocalyptic cult Aum Shinrikyo’s deadly nerve gas attack in Tokyo in 1995.) Although many Western security experts maintain that WMD are beyond the reach of terrorist groups, their acquisition of such a capability – especially a so-called dirty bomb – cannot be ruled out. Another nonconventional danger is the use of information technology by terrorists, producing what is known as a ‘cyber attack’ aimed at penetrating and disrupting the target’s computer network. In its report released in mid2000, the US National Commission on Terrorism warned that ‘a conventional terrorist attack along with a coordinated cyber attack could exponentially compound the damage’ suffered by the target.4 Al-Qaeda’s coordinated attacks on US targets in September 2001 revealed extensive use of sophisticated information technology. These exploits have made al-Qaeda the most notorious terrorist organization in the world today. The group was founded by Osama bin Laden in 1988, during the Afghans’ war against Soviet occupation forces. Bin Laden, the wealthy 17th son of a Saudi construction magnate and a qualified civil engineer, had joined the Afghan resistance shortly after the Soviet invasion in December 1979. He soon made a name for himself as a generous sponsor of Arab volunteers who joined the Afghan fighters. After the Soviets’ ignominious departure from Afghanistan in 1989, bin Laden graduated from sponsor of Muslim causes to terrorist extraordinaire, using al-Qaeda as operational hub for Muslim extremists and as vehicle for promoting his brand of religious-inspired revolution abroad. In both instances terrorism has been the preferred form of action. Al-Qaeda, it should be emphasized, had a global network of affiliates in the form of other Islamic terrorist organizations that included Egypt’s Gama’a al-Islamiyya and the Egyptian


Islamic Jihad (both listed as foreign terrorist organizations by the US State Department).5 Driven by an especially militant strain of Sunni Islam, bin Laden believed that the Muslim world was being poisoned and desecrated by infidels. These heathens, in bin Laden’s book, included not only outsiders like the Americans and Israelis, but also moderate Arab leaders.6 Bin Laden’s primary goals have consequently been to expel American military forces from the Arabian Peninsula, ousting the Saudi royal family from power, and liberating Palestine. His secondary goals called for the removal of a Western military presence in Arab countries, and the overthrow of what he branded as corrupt, Western-oriented governments in predominantly Muslim countries. In short, bin Laden wanted to cleanse Muslim countries of Western influence and corruption, abolish existing state boundaries and unite all Muslims under a puritanical government following ‘the rule of the caliphs’.7 It is no wonder then that bin Laden imagined himself as a latterday Salah al-Din, the Muslim commander who liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187.8 These goals were expressed in two declarations of holy war (jihad) against America. In his first fatwa (Muslim religious decree) issued in 1996, bin Laden focused on ‘Americans occupying the land of the two holy places’, i.e. his native Saudi Arabia, home of Mecca and Medina. Some 5,000 US troops had been stationed there since the 1991 Gulf War. To bin Laden and like-minded Muslims, the presence of foreign forces violated the injunction of the prophet Muhammad that there ‘not be two religions in Arabia’.9 The second edict was issued in early 1998 by bin Laden and leaders of allied groups in the name of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders.10 Following the earlier decree, the statement asserted that the US ‘has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula’, but added that the US was ‘plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim people’. Apart from reiterating America’s desecration of Islam’s holy places in Saudi Arabia and Jerusalem, this list of accusations alluded to US actions against Iraq, attempts to reduce other Arab states to clients, and its complicity in the suppression of the Palestinians through its support for Israel. All Muslims had a religious duty to wage jihad against American citizens, whether military or civilian, anywhere in the world in order ‘to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip’. The latter call to arms was a significant broadening of the first fatwa.11 For bin Laden his was a just war against US ‘terrorism’, manifested in among other misdeeds American ‘occupation’ of Saudi Arabia and the ‘starving’ of a million Iraqi children through UN sanctions.12 For the US, bin Laden had by the turn of the century become ‘the most immediate and serious [terrorist] threat’ to American security.13


Bin Laden’s revisionist designs for the Muslim world drew religious extremists from far and wide into his terrorist network. Al-Qaeda sent trainers throughout Afghanistan as well as to Tajikistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, and has trained fighters from various countries, including Eritrea, Libya, Egypt, Pakistan and the Philippines.14 In Afghanistan, meanwhile, the Taliban movement had made decisive military gains at the expense of government forces, culminating in the capture of Kabul in September 1996. The Taliban’s military successes were in no small way attributable to the assistance of some 1,000 fighters from alQaeda’s 055 Brigade.15 The symbiotic relationship between al-Qaeda and the Taliban was rather unique in that the latter, even after seizing power, remained heavily dependent on al-Qaeda for military and financial support. According to US intelligence reports, bin Laden had given the Taliban US$100 million in cash and military aid between 1996 and late 2001.16 In return for the lifeline provided by al-Qaeda, the Taliban rulers allowed the movement to operate a quasi-state within Afghanistan, running military training camps and exercising de facto authority over parts of the national territory. Although bin Laden’s major terrorist strikes occurred after his enforced return to Afghanistan in 1996, he has since the early 1990s been accused of involvement in acts of terrorism against US targets. The first was a hotel bombing in Yemen in 1992, which targeted US troops; a truck bombing at the World Trade Centre in New York followed in 1993; in October of that year American soldiers were killed in Somalia.17 Although al-Qaeda may not have been behind the bombing of US military barracks in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, in June 1996 in which 19 American soldiers died, bin Laden praised the attackers for targeting American troops but sparing Saudi nationals.18 Far worse was to follow in August 1998 with the bombing of American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam that killed more than 220 people (among them 12 Americans) and injured over 4,000. In December 1998 bin Laden denied involvement in the attacks, yet said he had ‘instigated’ them.19 A terrorist attack on the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden in October 2000, which claimed the lives of 17 American sailors, was widely attributed to bin Laden and his associates.20 The most devastating series of terrorist strikes in recorded history, for which bin Laden subsequently acknowledged responsibility, occurred in the US in September 2001. Nearly 3,000 people from over 80 countries were killed when 19 terrorists belonging to the al-Qaeda network flew three hijacked US passenger aircraft into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, while a fourth crashed in Pennsylvania.21 Al-Qaeda was widely suspected of direct or indirect involvement in three major terrorist attacks in 2002. The detonation of two bombs on the Indonesian resort island of Bali in October killed nearly 200 people. December witnessed the coordinated car bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel near Mombassa, Kenya (leaving 13 people dead),


and an abortive missile attack on an Israeli passenger jet that had just left Mombassa.22 A week of terror in May 2003 produced deadly bomb attacks in Casablanca, Riyadh and Chechnya, at least some of them said to bear the hallmarks of al-Qaeda.23 However devastating or unusual, all these acts of terror involved conventional weapons of a kind. Al-Qaeda had, however, long been suspected of seeking WMD. According to an FBI court document made public in New York in 1998, al-Qaeda had since 1993 tried to purchase enriched uranium to develop nuclear weapons. There has also been speculation about a secret al-Qaeda nuclear weapons laboratory in Afghanistan.24 In the wake of the attacks of 11 September, bin Laden himself claimed that al-Qaeda had acquired nuclear and chemical weapons, which it kept as deterrent against a US attack with such weapons.25 The US State Department, in its 2001 report on international terrorism, said that al-Qaeda continued to seek chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological capabilities.26 In August 2002 evidence emerged that al-Qaeda had conducted at least laboratory experiments with deadly chemical substances.27 In many parts of the Muslim world, particularly in the Middle East, bin Laden enjoyed cult status as a heroic champion of the Islamic faith fighting to protect Muslim lands and holy sites from infidel forces.28 Al-Qaeda’s terrorist acts were no doubt acclaimed in these circles. The general international reaction to bin Laden’s terrorism was, however, one of fierce disapproval. In December 2000, for instance, the UN Security Council under resolution 1333 compelled all states to freeze funds and other financial assets of bin Laden and al-Qaeda. International anger reached a climax with the events of 11 September 2001. The UN General Assembly on 18 September 2001 (resolution 56/1) strongly condemned ‘the heinous acts of terrorism’ that had caused ‘enormous loss of human life, destruction and damage’ in the US. Without naming any suspects, the Assembly urgently called for international cooperation to bring to justice ‘the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of the outrages’, and to prevent and eradicate acts of terrorism. Similar calls were made by the Security Council in the wake of the terrorist attack on Bali (resolution 1438) and the hostage taking by Chechen separatists in Moscow later in October (resolution 1440). Al-Qaeda’s involvement in international terrorism had made it a target for punitive measures since the mid-1990s. The US anti-terrorism act of 1996, for instance, was swiftly invoked to block al-Qaeda’s assets in America. After the August 1998 bombings of two US embassies in East Africa, bin Laden was placed on the FBI’s list of the ten most wanted fugitives in the world, with a $5 million bounty on his head. America also retaliated by firing cruise missiles at the movements’s training camps in Afghanistan. Later the US took the lead in calling on banks worldwide to freeze accounts linked to bin Laden.29 The Americans responded to the


events of 11 September 2001 by launching a self-styled war on terrorism. ‘Our war on terror begins with al-Qaida, but is does not end there’, President George W Bush declared on 20 September 2001. ‘It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated’.30 Emboldened by UN Security Council resolution 1368 of 12 September, which paved the way for forcible action against al-Qaeda and its Taliban hosts, the US rallied what the State Department depicted as ‘the most diverse international coalition ever assembled’. Nearly 140 countries and scores of multilateral organizations pledged support of one kind or another for the American-initiated offensive against terrorism.31 US forces, augmented by those from 55 other states, launched a major military campaign, Operation Enduring Freedom, in October 2001 to topple the Taliban government and capture or kill al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. The first of these objectives was accomplished quickly, when forces of the opposition Northern Alliance entered Kabul unopposed in mid-November 2001. Several al-Qaeda training camps and other military facilities were destroyed in the allied offensive. The action against al-Qaeda was simultaneously pursued beyond Afghanistan. Within months nearly 1,000 of its operatives were arrested in over 60 countries,32 but by mid-2003 both bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar were still unaccounted for. To conclude this section, we should take account of the links between terrorist groups and some of the other non-state deviants considered in the present chapter. In a resolution on terrorism adopted in September 2001 (resolution 1373), the UN Security Council noted with concern ‘the close connection’ between international terrorism and transnational organized crime. The latter involved such activities as drug smuggling, moneylaundering, illegal arms-trafficking, and the illegal movement of potentially deadly materials (e.g. chemical, biological and nuclear). The resolution stressed the need to coordinate national, regional and international efforts so as to ‘strengthen a global response to this serious challenge and threat to international security’. These dire warnings were well-founded. According to American anti-narcotics agencies, the international drug trade provided the largest source of illegal revenue for terrorist groups. US intelligence services, in turn, reported in September 2001 that al-Qaeda had been trying to obtain components for WMD from the Russian Mafia,33 while the British NGO Global Witness revealed in 2003 that al-Qaeda had made a strategic move into the unregulated international diamond trade.34

Rebel movements The type of rebel group that has acquired international deviant status in recent years, was one that used force against an internationally recognized and supposedly legitimate government or breached the terms of a peace accord it had concluded. We consider three cases.


Dr Jonas Savimbi’s Unita is the best known example of a contemporary rebel movement that had become a truly global deviant. Established in 1966 as a liberation movement to fight the Portuguese colonialists in Angola, Unita continued to wage war against the Marxist MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) that seized power upon the colony’s independence in 1975. Eventually, in 1991, the warring sides concluded the Bicesse Accord in Portugal and UN-supervised democratic elections were held the following year. Unita lost to the ruling MPLA but refused to accept the outcome, opting instead to resume the armed struggle. A UN-brokered peace accord of November 1994, known as the Lusaka Protocol, failed to end the hostilities for long. By early 2001 well over 500,000 people had died and more than 2 million displaced in Angola’s civil war since independence.35 The UN Security Council first acted against Unita in September 1993 with the adoption of resolution 864. Determining that the situation in Angola, due to Unita’s ongoing military actions against the MPLA government, constituted a threat to international peace and security, the Council (under Chapter 7 of the Charter) ordered all states to prevent the sale or supply to Unita of arms and related matériel, military assistance, petroleum and petroleum products. The Council also decided to establish a Sanctions Committee to monitor the implementation of these punitive measures. The next batch of sanctions followed only in 1997, when the Security Council under resolution 1127 imposed further mandatory sanctions against Unita. All states were instructed to ban senior Unita officials and their families travelling to or through their territories, close all Unita offices there, and prevent their territories being used by aircraft flying to or from Unita-held areas in Angola. In June 1998 (resolution 1173) the Council added yet more compulsory sanctions against Unita. Funds and financial resources held abroad by Unita had to be frozen, all official contacts with the Unita leadership prevented, and the import of diamonds from Angola prohibited unless bearing a certificate of origin issued by the Angolan government. The latter move was designed to stop Unita’s lucrative trade in so-called blood diamonds. Concerned about reports that the restrictive measures were being violated on a large scale, the Security Council in May 1999 (resolution 1237) established a Panel of Experts to assist the Sanctions Committee by identifying the sanctions busters and recommending measures to end the breaches and improve implementation of the sanctions. The Panel’s recommendations led the Council (resolution 1295 of April 2000) to create a Monitoring Mechanism to investigate and prevent sanctions violations. With its array of punitive measures and monitoring agencies, the UN had thus established a veritable sanctions regime against Unita. The purpose, as the Chairman of the Sanctions Committee explained in January 2001, was to ‘undermine and, over some time, eradicate Unita’s capacity to pursue


violently its political objective’.36 The US, although previously a backer of Unita, introduced its own executive measures between 1993 and 2001 to give local effect to UN sanctions against the Angolan movement.37 As regards Unita’s specific transgressions, the principal one repeatedly cited by the Security Council was the movement’s failure to honour the 1991 and 1994 peace accords by continuing its armed struggle – moreover against a government enjoying international legitimacy. As the Council reiterated in resolution 1237 (May 1999), ‘the primary cause of the present crisis in Angola’ was the refusal of Savimbi’s movement to comply with the two peace accords and related Security Council resolutions. Among Unita’s other transgressions listed by the Council (coupled with demands that the rule-breaking behaviour end forthwith) were attacks by Unita members on personnel of the UN Observer Mission in Angola (resolutions 1157 of March 1998 and 1173 of June 1998); the disappearance or downing of UN and other aircraft over territory controlled by Unita and the latter’s lack of cooperation in clarifying the circumstances of these incidents (resolutions 1219 of December 1998 and 1221 of January 1999), and ‘continued, indiscriminate attacks’ by Unita forces against the civilian population (resolution 1237 of May 1999). In addition, of course, Unita was repeatedly condemned for failing to heed Council resolutions. What was in short demanded of Unita, was that it end its military activities altogether and transform itself into an unarmed political party. Many states evidently doubted whether this could be done with Savimbi leading Unita. Both the OAU and the Southern African Development Community branded Savimbi a war criminal, while the United Kingdom in 2000 declared that the Unita leader had abrogated any right to take part in talks with the Angolan government because of obstructing the search for peace.38 The achievement of peace was brought much closer than ever through an unforeseen event in February 2002: Savimbi was killed by Angolan government forces. Unita virtually overnight seemed to lose its appetite for continuing the war and sued for peace. In April Unita and the Angolan government signed a Memorandum of Understanding Addendum to the Lusaka Protocol that formally set the peace process in motion. Welcoming the breakthrough, the UN Security Council in May 2002 (resolution1412) suspended some of the sanctions imposed against Unita. If the peace process holds and Unita converts itself into an unarmed political party, it will be on its way to international rehabilitation. Whether it could survive without Savimbi and war, is an entirely different matter. The second rebel movement that calls for our attention is the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) of Sierra Leone. Led by former Army corporal Foday Sankoh, the RUF had first taken up arms in 1991 against the one-party government of President Joseph Saidu Momoh, demanding the introduction of multiparty politics. When the armed forces next seized power, the RUF turned on the new military rulers. Not even the installation


of a democratically elected government under President Tejan Kabbah could end the RUF rebellion.39 What established the RUF’s reputation as a seriously deviant movement, was its preference for spreading terror among the civilian population through the systematic mutilation of people by hacking off their arms or legs. As we will see presently, the RUF achieved further international notoriety for engaging in large-scale diamond smuggling – and using the proceeds to sustain its extraordinarily brutal military offensive. When the UN Security Council intervened in the situation in Sierra Leone in October 1997 (resolution 1132), depicting it as a threat to peace and security in the region, the target was not the RUF but the military junta that had taken power the previous May. The Council imposed a mandatory embargo on the export of petroleum and petroleum products to that country. The purpose was to compel the military dictatorship to relinquish power and restore the ousted democratically elected government. That indeed happened in March 1998, causing the Security Council to lift sanctions (resolution 1156 of March 1998). It was only in June 1998, under resolution 1171, that the Council eventually got the RUF in its sights. The Council deplored the ‘continued resistance’ to the legitimate government of Sierra Leone and stressed ‘the urgency for all rebels to put an end to the atrocities, cease their resistance and lay down their arms’. Again acting under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, the Council imposed a compulsory ban on the export of arms and related matériel to ‘non-governmental forces’ in Sierra Leone. In addition, all states were ordered to deny entry or transit to leading members of the former junta and the RUF. The next important event to record is the conclusion of the Lomé Peace Agreement between the government of Sierra Leone and the RUF in July 1999. According to its provisions, hostilities would cease, all combatants disarmed, and a government of national unity installed. The UN later that year established the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) to help create conditions needed for the implementation of the peace accord.40 Peace remained elusive, however, causing the UN Security Council in July 2000 to clamp down on the RUF’s trade in blood diamonds. In resolution 1306 the Council voiced its concern ‘at the role played by the illicit trade in diamonds in fuelling the conflict in Sierra Leone’ and decided that a Panel of Experts be appointed to investigate the link between the illicit trade in diamonds and that in arms. Four months later the two warring sides reached another peace agreement, in Abuja, but still the hostilities continued. A major factor in the ongoing conflict was the support the RUF received from neighbouring Liberia. By so doing, the Security Council declared in March 2001 (resolution 1343), Liberia threatened regional peace and security. It demanded that Liberia immediately cease all financial and military support for the RUF and stop all imports of rough diamonds from Sierra


Leone not certified by the government in Freetown. (Liberia had long been known as the major transit used by the RUF to sell its blood diamonds abroad.) Liberia was given two months to comply, failing which a mandatory arms embargo and a ban on the import of rough diamonds from Liberia would automatically take effect. The bans duly came into force. Even so, the Security Council in December 2001 (resolution 1385) still found reason to express concern about the role of illicit diamond trading in the conflict in Sierra Leone. In 2002 things changed for the better in Sierra Leone. In January the civil war was finally declared over by the opposing sides – after more than a decade of fighting that left up to 75,000 people dead. Kabbah won a general election held in relative calm in May, and the RUF has abided by the results. A major factor for stability has been the continued presence of UNAMSIL, whose 17,500 troops constituted one of the largest UN peacekeeping operations.41 The spillover of the ongoing civil war in Liberia may, however, endanger Sierra Leone’s return to normality. Another possible source of tension could be the special war crimes court in the country. Established with UN assistance in 2002, the court will prosecute suspected war criminals. The RUF might not take kindly to having its members in the dock and subsequently in jail.42 Finally, we turn to a non-African example of a rebel movement that briefly fell foul of the world community acting through the UN, namely the Khmer Rouge. When the communist Khmer Rouge had been in power in Cambodia in the 1970s and committed genocide, the international community failed to act. Yet when the Khmer Rouge refused to honour the 1991 Paris Accords designed to bring Cambodia’s civil war to an end, the Security Council took quick (but feeble) action to bring the movement to heel. In November 1992 (resolution 792) the Council demanded inter alia that the Khmer Rouge grant the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) unimpeded access to geographic areas under the movement’s control so as to allow for voter registration. The Council even threatened the Khmer Rouge with an oil embargo (aimed at areas under its control) and the freezing of its foreign assets if it did not adhere to the peace agreements. The threatened punitive measures were never enforced – a general election was held in 1993 and a new government installed peacefully – allowing the Khmer Rouge to escape deviant status.43 The Security Council’s willingness to mete out punishment nonetheless points to an emerging rule of conduct for (previously) rebel movements: the international community expects compliance with the terms of a peace settlement, especially one reached with extensive foreign involvement.

‘Blood’ diamonds Wars in Africa in the 1990s gave a sinister new twist to the old adage that ‘diamonds are a girl’s best friend’. The precious stones became a beloved


commodity of rebel movements who used the gems – a universal symbol of love – to finance war. As we noted in Chapter 2, this happened in Angola, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The UN General Assembly (resolution 55/56 of December 2000) defined conflict diamonds as ‘rough diamonds which are used by rebel movements to finance their military activities, including attempts to undermine or overthrow legitimate Governments’. Conflict diamonds, the resolution declared, were fuelling conflicts in a number countries and had a devastating impact on the peace, safety and security of the affected societies. Accordingly, ‘the problem of conflict diamonds is of serious international concern’. To be true, conflict diamonds constituted a mere 4 per cent of the total diamond trade; some 120 million carats of rough diamonds were extracted in the world every year. Yet that small portion represented several hundred million dollars, enough for rebel movements to purchase ample weaponry to sustain their armed resistance.44 Angola’s Unita movement was synonymous with both rebellion and blood diamonds. Its large-scale involvement in trading conflict diamonds is usually traced to the period after Unita’s election defeat, for it was only in the course of the 1990s that the movement’s illicit diamond dealing began attracting international attention. A key year was 1992, when Unita forces occupied the diamond-rich Cuango valley in northern Angola. Reportedly using 100,000 virtual slave labourers, Unita over the next seven years mined diamonds worth an estimated $4 billion.45 Other guestimates of Unita’s income from illicit diamond sales in the 1990s were as high as $5 billion. What is beyond doubt, is that much of this money was used to finance Unita’s war effort.46 It may be that diamonds not merely funded the war but became one of the main reasons for continuing the fighting.47 In an effort to undercut Unita’s ability to wage war, the UN Security Council in June 1998 (resolution 1173) tried to halt the movement’s lucrative diamond trade. All states were ordered (under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter) to prohibit the direct or indirect import from Angola of all diamonds not bearing a certificate of origin issued by the Angolan government. There were, however, serious doubts about the effectiveness of the UN’s prohibition.48 More than the conflict in Angola, it was the civil war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s that really put conflict diamonds on the international agenda. In the middle of the decade Sierra Leone’s richest diamond fields came under the control of the RUF. The rebel movement, it will be recalled, was notorious for its savagery against the civilian population. At the same time the RUF was making a fortune smuggling diamonds out of Sierra Leone through neighbouring countries, especially Liberia. Once international opinion had recognized the link between Sierra Leone’s legions of amputees and the flow of illicit diamonds, the UN was galvanized into action. The conflict’s human toll went far beyond mutilation, of course: we


noted that about 75,000 people were killed, while 500,000 became refugees and several million Sierra Leoneons (out of a population of 4.5 million) were internally displaced between 1991 and 1999.49 According to one source, diamond mining in Sierra Leone, long dominated by ‘disorganized crime’, became increasingly influenced by transnational organized crime in the 1990s. A symbiotic relationship had seemingly developed between the RUF and criminal organizations with international connections. To make the story even more intriguing, a third deviant non-state actor was also in the fray. The democratically elected Kabbah government was protected against Sankoh’s rebels by a mercenary force provided by the South African-based Executive Outcomes.50 Be that is it may, the UN Security Council intervened only in July 2000 (resolution 1306) to sever the link between the RUF’s reign of terror and its diamond smuggling. A mandatory ban was placed on the direct or indirect import of rough diamonds from Sierra Leone not controlled by its government through a certificate of origin. (This prohibition was of course identical to the one imposed against Unita under Council resolution 1173 two years earlier.) The results were evidently unsatisfactory, hence the earlier mentioned resolution 1385 of December 2001 in which the Council voiced its continued concern about the role of diamond smuggling in Sierra Leone’s civil war and prolonged the diamond ban. An extension of the ban for a further six months followed in December 2002 (resolution 1446). In dealing with Sierra Leone’s blood diamonds, the UN had to pay attention to Liberia. Apart from the close personal ties between President Charles Taylor of Liberia and RUF chief Sankoh, the Liberians served as the mentors, trainers and bankers of the rebel movement. Among other things, Liberia under Taylor trafficked in weapons and diamonds on behalf of the RUF.51 We have already recorded that the Security Council in March 2001 (resolution 1343) threatened to order a ban on the import of all diamonds from Liberia (regardless of their origin) within two months if that country failed to stop supporting the RUF. In May the ban came into force, Liberia having failed to meet the stated conditions.52 The final African conflict in the 1990s and beyond in which conflict diamonds featured – albeit less directly than in Angola and Sierra Leone – was the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Although President Mobutu Sese Seko was known to have plundered his country’s natural resources for personal gain during his lengthy dictatorship, this practice acquired a new dimension after Laurent Kabila’s rebel army managed to topple Mobutu in May 1997. Kabila’s rule from the outset faced a domestic rebellion backed by Uganda and Rwanda, while Kabila received military support from Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola, Chad and Sudan. With seven neighbouring states actively involved on opposing sides, the conflict in the DRC became a truly regional war. Kabila openly promised to reward his foreign backers


with diamond mines.53 At least some of his allies made full use of the opportunity to exploit the DRC’s diamonds and other minerals. In this way diamonds may have fuelled yet another African war – courtesy, this time, of the government. The UN Security Council repeatedly denounced what it termed the ‘illegal exploitation’ of the DRC’s natural resources, demanded that the practice cease, and emphasized that these resources ‘should not be exploited to finance the conflict in that country’ (resolution 1376 of November 2001). Prospects for peace in the DRC improved after Laurent Kabila was succeeded by his son Joseph Kabila following the elder’s assassination in January 2001. By the end of 2002 all the warring parties had agreed to end the fighting and create a government of national unity. Implementation has, however, lagged far behind intention. We conclude this brief discussion by referring to the so-called Kimberley Process, which was part of the global drive to end trade in blood diamonds. Named after the South African town famous for early diamond mining and venue for the first meeting in May 2000, the Kimberley Process was initiated by African diamond producing countries. In due course many more states, the EU and the Southern African Development Community, the World Diamond Council and representatives from civil society joined the process. The UN General Assembly (resolutions 55/56 and 56/263) has given the initiative its blessing and urged all states to support efforts ‘to find ways to break the link between conflict diamonds and armed conflict’. The result of these endeavours has been the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme for Rough Diamonds, implemented in January 2003. Involving 51 countries – among them all the major diamond producing and consuming states – the scheme is designed to monitor effectively the trade in rough diamonds so as to detect and prevent trade in blood diamonds. Apart from requiring a Kimberley certificate when transferring rough diamonds, participants in the schmeme may only trade the gems with other countries involved in the Kimberley Process.54

Mercenaries The ancient profession of mercenarism has since the 19th century witnessed growing national restrictions on its activities as a new international norm of state control over non-state violence in world politics took hold.55 Mercenarism suffered a further hammering in the Cold War era, when the ‘dogs of war’ became widely discredited and loathed for their role in African civil wars. Towards the end of the century, however, the new postCold War international environment seemed to offer mercenaries – in rebranded form – a new lease on respectable life. Independent Africa witnessed mercenary involvement, typically on the side of rebels fighting incumbent governments, in conflicts ranging from the Congo in the early 1960s through Nigeria in the late 1960s to Angola


in the 1970s. It is then not surprising that both the UN General Assembly (e.g. resolutions 2395 of 1968 and 232 of 2001) and Security Council (e.g. resolutions 239 of 1967 and 74 of 1985) have since the 1960s adopted scores of resolutions condemning states that allowed the recruitment of mercenaries and provided them with facilities, all with the objective of overthrowing foreign governments and fighting national liberation movements. The OAU for its part in 1977 adopted the Convention for the Elimination of Mercenarism in Africa. The preamble set the tone by alluding to ‘the grave threat which the activities of mercenaries present to the independence, sovereignty, security, territorial integrity and harmonious development’ of member states. The Convention defined a mercenary as a person specially recruited to fight in foreign armed conflicts, motivated by the desire for private gain. He was neither a national of a party to the conflict nor a resident of the country in which he fought, and did not belong to the armed forces of any party to the conflict. The ‘crime of mercenarism’ was committed by any individual or group aiding, abetting or practising mercenarism. All parties to the Convention undertook to use all necessary means to eradicate mercenary activities in Africa. Among other actions, the offence of mercenarism was to be made punishable by the severest penalties under national law, including the death penalty.56 The UN General Assembly followed suit in 1980 (resolution 35/48) when it appointed an ad hoc committee to draft an international convention against mercenarism. Fully nine years later the Assembly (resolution 44/34) adopted the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries. Drawing on Additional Protocol I (1977) of the 1949 Geneva Convention, the UN Convention broadened the definition of a mercenary to include also a person recruited ‘for the purpose of participating in a concerted act of violence’ aimed at overthrowing a government or otherwise ‘undermining the constitutional order of a State’, or ‘undermining the territorial integrity of a State’. Parties to the Convention were obligated to prevent mercenary activities on their soil and to institute criminal or extradition proceedings against those arrested for the offence of mercenarism. The convention entered into force in October 2001, having obtained the requisite number of ratifications.57 The UN Special Rapporteur on Mercenarism added liberally to the definition of mercenarism contained in the 1989 Convention, portraying it as a low form of life reserved for the worst of society’s deviants. The mercenary ‘is an expert in war and in the illegal and criminal activities which he is hired to perform and for which he receives a large sum of money’, according to the Rapporteur. Apart from participating in armed conflict, mercenaries were most frequently recruited to ‘commit acts of sabotage against a third country’ and to ‘carry out selective assassinations of eminent persons’. Offering a character profile, the Rapporteur depicted a mercenary as someone who ‘tends to adopt extremist, radical and highly


intolerant views, but he would not perform any of his criminal acts against the most elementary rights of individuals and peoples unless he were paid’. Concerned that mercenarism might be justified in the media or misconceptions created about ‘this type of human behaviour’, the Rapporteur issued a dire warning: ‘A mercenary is not a hero nor is he the last romantic guerrilla, but a criminal whose actions are associated with the vilest crimes against life’. Because ‘a mercenary is a criminal’, it followed that he ‘must be severely punished’.58 Despite these two conventions and the exertions of the UN Special Rapporteur on Mercenarism, several governments and rebel groups, especially in Africa, continued to call on the services of mercenaries. In the late 1990s, for instance, the Special Rapporteur recorded that several hundred African and European mercenaries were being contracted by the government of President Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire to fight Laurent Kabila’s advancing rebel forces.59 Later it was reported that there were also other clients in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, as Zaire was renamed after Kabila took power) for privatized security services: the London-registered firm Defence Systems was responsible for guarding several mines and oil installations as well as various embassies in the capital of the still conflict-ridden state. (In 1998 Defence Systems was said to have more than 4,000 employees operating in some 30 countries.) In Angola both the government and Unita used mercenaries, as did foreign oil companies requiring protection for their installations.60 The British multinational Lonhro had likewise employed mercenaries to protect its assets in war-torn Mozambique in the 1980s.61 Elsewhere mercenaries had tried to depose the governments of the Maldives and the Comores in the 1980s and early 1990s. In the course of the 1990s a mercenary component had also been reported – but not always verified – in conflicts in Afghanistan, Armenia-Azerbaijan, Chad, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Sudan and Tajikistan, among others.62 In Sierra Leone the South African-based Executive Outcomes provided an armed force that successfully protected the democratically elected Kabbah government against the brutalities of the RUF.63 Apart from the already mentioned transgressions attributed to mercenarism, its practitioners have been accused of engaging in criminal activities not directly related to their primary duty of participating in armed conflict. When wars – mercenaries’ business and livelihood – came to an end or became scarce, the UN Special Rapporteur explained, some were known to engage in ‘other prohibited activities’ such as trafficking in drugs, arms and people, and terrorism. Some gangs engaging in these activities required a ‘military component’ to move merchandise, fly aircraft and if necessary fight regular state forces that might try to thwart their criminal operations.64 While the deep-seated antipathy towards mercenarism has remained solid within the UN – consider the steady flow of damning reports from the


UN Special Rapporteur on Mercenarism and the condemnatory resolutions of the Commission on Human Rights65 and the General Assembly (a recent example being resolution 56/232) – as well as in the Non-Aligned Movement,66 a new approach emerged in the West in the 1990s. Cynics might argue that mercenarism was benefiting from the same kind of change in public attitudes that has affected the world’s oldest profession in recent years: if you cannot eliminate the evil, regulate it. (To which a utilitarian would add that although the two ancient professions remain morally questionable, humankind will continue to entertain a need for their respective services.) Be that as it may, a serious debate began in security, academic and political circles about regulating the mushrooming private security industry and using its expertise in foreign tasks hitherto the preserve of national military forces. By then mercenaries had reinvented themselves as private military companies (PMCs) with corporate structures that included shareholders, chief executives and management. Like consulting firms, they sold their expertise and manpower to those requiring the services. The ongoing discussion about hired soldiers has not been a smooth one, though, for the stigma attached to the term ‘mercenary’ still ‘incites rabid emotion at the expense of good analysis’.67 A favourable cost-effectiveness ratio has been a major argument in favour of the rehabilitation of mercenaries qua private military companies. The case of Executive Outcomes (EO) in Sierra Leone was often cited. During the 19 months EO operated in Sierra Leone, it charged the government $35 million. The hired guns from South Africa effectively contained the RUF and destroyed its headquarters, forced the rebels to sign a peace agreement with the government in November 1996, and kept the peace during a subsequent election. Significantly, EO soldiers cooperated with the West African peacekeeping force ECOMOG in Sierra Leone. EO’s departure in 1997 was caused by President Kabbah’s failure to pay them, the result in turn of the IMF’s withdrawal of a loan due to the presence of the mercenaries. Less than three months later Kabbah was ousted in a coup. In 1998 Sandline was contracted to continue where EO left off, restoring Kabbah to power. Bloodshed returned to Sierra Leone when Sandline withdrew, leading to the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force. Another success attributed to a PMC, this time Southern Cross Security, was the protection of Sierra Leone’s economically vital titanium dioxide mines – at the request of the foreign owners – against rebel attack and destruction throughout the civil war. The UN mission, UNAMSIL, has evidently managed to maintain peace and order, but at the high cost of nearly $50 million per month.68 Another contention was that PMCs, which have proliferated since the Cold War, were being used extensively by governments for national and international tasks, and that this widespread practice should be given formal international sanction. There are numerous examples: the US firm Dyncorp provided members for the American contingent of monitors


deployed in Kosovo by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and it trained Colombian soldiers for anti-drug operations; Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI), another American company, gave the Bosnian army weapons training, assisted with the professionalization of Croatia’s armed forces, and taught the Kosovo Liberation Army war tactics; the US company Brown & Root provided military logistics in American foreign operations since 1992; several other American-based PMCs (including Vinnell Corporation, Booz-Allen & Hamilton and O’Gara Protective Services) have for some years provided services to Saudi Arabia ranging from security for the royal family to drilling the country’s marine corps. The US government outsourced portions of America’s current military training programmes in Africa to the above-mentioned MPRI and two other American PMCs, Logicon and DFI International. Hungary, finally, hired Cubic, also a US firm, to help restructure its defence forces to meet the standards for NATO membership. Note that most of the services concerned military training and advice – matters close to the traditional core mission of any national military establishment.69 A novel task for which mercenaries’ services were being solicited, was protecting Africa’s endangered wildlife against poachers. An American environmental activist has reportedly recruited mercenaries for deployment in the DRC and the Central African Republic, both of which were targeted by wildlife raiders from Sudan.70 A political argument in favour of official recognition of PMCs, played on a familiar dread of Western governments and publics: that of seeing their soldiers operating in dangerous foreign theatres returning home in coffins. This was a major constraint on committing troops to some peacekeeping missions. By contrast the death of PMC soldiers in combat would not cause governments the same political difficulties.71 The possibility that the international community may again fail to act in another Rwanda-type situation involving genocide, has given rise to a moral argument in support of PMCs. If a PMC operating with international authority and under international law could protect civilians in mortal danger, Shearer asked, ‘how moral is it to deny people protection just because states can’t or won’t find the forces to do it?’72 However persuasive the case for recognizing PMCs, there is no escaping the widespread concern that soldiers of fortune cannot be relied upon to comply with the same ethical standards as the forces of states that are parties to the Geneva Convention and related international agreements. The way to overcome the problem, according to those favouring a new approach to mercenarism, would be proper national and international regulation of PMCs so as to hold them to strict codes of conduct.73 One such proponent was the Centre for Defence Information in Washington, which in 1997 advocated a global register for mercenary firms and their formal compliance with international human rights treaties and the laws of war.74


The reappraisal of mercenarism occurred at government level too, at least in Britain. In early 2002 the Foreign Office released a Green Paper (a consultation document) titled Private Military Companies: Options for Regulation 2001–02. In his foreword Foreign Secretary Jack Straw referred to a postCold War world of ‘small wars and weak states’, where many countries required foreign help to maintain internal security. In developed states, he noted, the private sector was becoming increasingly involved in military and security activity. Both states and international organizations ‘are turning to the private sector as a cost effective way of procuring services which would once have been the exclusive preserve of the military’. He foresaw that states’ demand for private military services, especially training and logistics, was likely to increase. At the multilateral level the cost of employing PMCs for certain functions in UN operations (for example, demining and security and logistics support) could be considerably lower than that of national armed forces. Today’s world, Straw concluded, was far removed from the 1960s ‘when private military activity usually meant mercenaries of the rather unsavoury kind involved in post-colonial or neocolonial conflicts’. The possibility that such people may still be present in the profession was one of the resons for considering what Straw called a licensing regime: it would distinguish between ‘reputable and disreputable’ PMCs.75 At the time of writing no final official decision had been taken on these proposals, but the Green Paper certainly provoked heated debate in Britain.76 Although there are scores of new generation soldiers-for-hire outfits, based mostly in the US and Britain, the prototype private military corporation of today was the South African-based EO. Established in 1989 by veterans of South Africa’s special forces during the apartheid era, the private army first showed its mettle fighting for the Angolan government against Unita – ironically the erstwhile allies of these former South African soldiers. At the end of 1998 EO formally ceased to exist (probably due to South Africa’s drastic anti-mercenarism law promulgated in that year), but its soldiers were said to have resurfaced in at least two other PMCs active in Africa, namely Lifeguard and Southern Cross Security.77 One of the bestknown British PMCs was Sandline International, established in the early 1990s ‘to fill a vacuum in the post cold war era’. Its corporate profile provided an instructive perspective on the formal workings of a corporatized mercenary organization. Sandline’s self-defined purpose was ‘to offer governments and other legitimate organisations specialist military expertise at a time when western national desire to provide active support to friendly governments, and to support them in conflict resolution, has materially decreased, as has their capability to do so’. Its operating principles would, according to Sandline, ensure that the company only accepted projects that would ‘improve the state of security, stability and general conditions in client countries’. Accordingly, Sandline would only undertake assignments


for internationally recognized governments (with the rider ‘preferably democratically elected’), international institutions such as the UN, and ‘genuine, internationally recognised and supported liberation movements’. The projects furthermore had to be ‘legal and moral’, where possible in accord with the policies of major Western governments, and confined to the territory of the client country. Involvement with terrorist organizations, international organized crime, WMD proliferation, and human rights contraventions were formally ruled out. The company’s ‘core skills’ on offer to clients ranged from military training and mine clearance through election monitoring, disaster relief and water purification to counter-terrorism and combating organized crime.78 What emerges clearly from this marketing effort, is that Sandline – like many other PMCs – was courting international legitimacy as a supplementary if not substitute military organization for that of states, and that it could offer a great many of the military and non-military services that national and multinational military forces were being called upon to provide in foreign theatres of conflict. For a sanitized mercenary group like Sandline, actual frontline participation in armed conflict was not marketed as its principal operational capability. Equally instructive is Sandline’s reference to ‘non-conflict support to law and order’ (counter-terrorism, combating organized crime etc). It is the very antithesis of the kinds of illegal non-military activities of which the UN Special Rapporteur on Mercenarism has accused mercenaries. Evidently sensitive to charges that PMCs, like oldstyle mercenaries, lacked the political accountability of national armed forces and that these companies were not governed by international regulations, Sandline has by its own acccount adopted a ‘self-regulatory approach to the conduct of our activities’ to ensure a ‘rigid adherence’ to the principles mentioned earlier.79 The international deviant status to which mercenarism has been condemned over the past four decades or so, has been weakening in recent years as the established normative framework is being questioned in the West. The practical situation has also been in conflict with the prohibitions contained in the OAU and UN conventions against mercenarism. African states, long touted as the principal victims and supposedly the staunchest opponents of mercenarism, have all along continued to employ mercenaries when the need arose. Foreign corporations have likewise used mercenaries to protect their assets in war-torn African countries. Western powers have in turn recruited PMCs to provide certain military services at home and abroad. Even so the UN, as the chief custodian of the anti-mercenary norm, has remained steadfast in its condemnation of mercenarism. If a significant number of influential states were to support the views expounded in the British Green Paper on PMCs, the UN may be compelled to give serious attention to creating a global regulatory mechanism for a profession that shows as much staying power as its older sister.


Transnational criminal organizations Transnational crime refers to criminal offences transcending state frontiers, thus affecting more than one country.80 Economic globalization, manifested in global trading and financial systems and facilitated by advances in transport and communications technology, has created enormous new opportunities for organized crime. Present-day transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), defined as groups with corporate structures bent on obtaining money through illegal means across national boundaries, have expanded their activities way beyond such traditional criminal pursuits as drug smuggling, illegal gambling, loan sharking, extortion and prostitution; they now also engage in bank and insurance fraud, gasoline tax fraud, corruption, depletion of natural resources, environmental crime, and migrant smuggling. The latter activity, together with the trafficking of human beings for slave labour and prostitution, are among the fastest growing global crime problems today. Another recent addition to the inventory of misdemeanours, is illegal trafficking in threatened fauna and flora. Information technology has not only facilitated money laundering, but has also created the possibility of ‘cyber-theft’ and ‘cyberextortion’ (the latter meaning extorting a business corporation by threatening to destroy valuable information accessed through ‘hacking’ or ‘cracking’ their computer systems).81 The UN has identified 18 categories of transnational crime, ranging from trafficking in human body parts and narcotics smuggling to computer crime and theft of intellectual property.82 The 2000 UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the three supplementary Protocols, mentioned in Chapter 2, listed many of these offences. The major players in transnational organized crime were mafia groups from Italy, the US and Russia; Chinese triads; Japanese yukuza; Colombian cartels, and Nigerian crime groups.83 The growing links between TCOs made them a far more formidable challenge to national and international law-enforcement agencies than when criminal groups operated in isolation. Cooperation among TCOs was inspired by their shared problem of circumventing law enforcement and national regulations, the need for illegal specialized services (e.g. money laundering), access to new markets, and the need to eliminate potential competition between criminal organizations. Among the many strategic alliances between TCOs were those between Colombian cartels and Nigerian drug trafficking groups; Chinese criminal organizations and Mexican smugglers of persons, and between the Russian and Italian mafias. Although increasingly common, these were ‘essentially alliances of convenience based on strictly economic considerations rather than part of a global criminal conspiracy’.84 Perhaps the most menacing of all alliances, to which we have already alluded, was between TCOs and terrorist groups.


The impact of transnational crime on the world economy is truly staggering. The UN’s Human Development Report 1999 estimated that organized crime syndicates grossed US$1.5 trillion a year, making them a formidable economic power rivalling multinational corporations. The illegal drug trade, a major component of global crime, accounted for about 8 per cent of world trade. Worth some $400 billion annually, the trade in narcotics was greater than that in motor vehicles or in iron and steel.85 According to the UN’s World Drug Report 2000, drug trafficking affected 170 states and territories and 180 million people world-wide used illicit drugs in the late 1990s.86 It is no wonder, then, that the G8 states at their 1998 summit in Birmingham, England, referred to transnational organized crime as ‘a global threat which can undermine the democratic and economic basis of societies through the investment of illegal money by international cartels, corruption, a weakening of institutions and a loss of confidence in the rule of law’.87 To combat transnational crime, the UN has developed an extensive network of agencies. At the forefront was the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (established in 1997), consisting of the UN International Drug Control Programme and the UN Centre for International Crime Prevention. The Drug Control Programme aimed to strengthen international action against narcotics production and trafficking and drugrelated crime. The Centre for International Crime Prevention was tasked with crime prevention, criminal justice and law reform in member states, and for these purposes conducted the Global Programme against Transnational Organized Crime. In addition, the long-established Commission on Narcotic Drugs was the central UN policymaking body on drug-related issues, and the International Narcotics Control Board oversaw the implementation of UN drug conventions. Finally, the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice set policies and made recommendations in the area of crime control.88 The G8 group of major industrialized democracies has since its 1995 summit in Nova Scotia given high priority to fighting international crime. In 1996 the Lyon Group was formed by the eight powers to promote cooperation among them in fighting crime and it recommended a wide range of actions to be taken by pariticipating states. Tackling international crime was one of the three major issues – alongside matters of economic growth – that featured on the G8’s summit agenda in Birmingham in 1998.89 Turning to the ‘sharper’ end of multilateral efforts to bust transnational crime, reference should first be made to the International Criminal Police Organization, better known as Interpol. Established in 1923, Interpol is an inter-governmental organization that presently has some 180 member countries. It promotes international law-enforcement cooperation in the fight against transnational crime. Apart from its Analytical Criminal Intelligence Unit, Interpol has organized crime analysis units focusing on


South American crime groups, the Italian Mafia, Asian crime groups, and European outlaw motorcycle groups, respectively. The EU maintains its own law enforcement organization called Europol (European Police Office). Coming into full operation in 1999, Europol was designed to improve intra-EU effectiveness and cooperation in combating terrorism, drug trafficking and other serious forms of international organized crime.90

Conclusion The very raison d’être of terrorist organizations, rebel movements, smugglers of conflict diamonds, mercenaries and transnational criminal gangs places them in breach of commonly accepted codes of behaviour in world politics. The fact that the activities of all five types of non-state actors have provoked considerable international disapproval, indignation, anger and even material punishment, is a clear measure of their deviant status in the world generally. These features, incidentally, set the five deviants apart from multinational corporations that have for many social activists across the globe become the ultimate rogues among non-state entities. The international norms in contention are not equally elaborate and firmly established for all five classes of deviant actors. Anti-terrorism norms are probably the most advanced and wide-ranging, considering the existence of a dozen international conventions outlawing specific acts of terrorism. What tends to detract from this international regime in the making, is the lack of a single universally accepted definition of terrorism. The UN is presently addressing this very shortcoming as it drafts an allencompassing anti-terrorism convention. Some distance behind in terms of the number of international instruments through which it is formalized, is the anti-mercenarism norm. Unlike the rules proscribing the other four types of deviant conduct, that against the use of mercenaries might be relaxed in the foreseeable future. Not only does the need for their services remain strong across the world, but the profession’s efforts to rehabilitate itself have received some international recognition. Greater international respectability is not the kind of future awaiting transnational criminal organizations; collective endeavours to restrict and eliminate their activities are intensifying. International efforts to end the trade in conflict diamonds have likewise increased in recent years, but the norms involved are still in their infancy. Finally, rebel movements face only selective international censure and punishment; there is no general prohibition – as in the cases of terrorism and crime, for instance – against anti-government rebellion. The adverse reaction of the world community to the rebellions of Unita, the RUF and Khmer Rouge may nonetheless point to an emerging international norm proscribing armed resistance against a government enjoying international legitimacy or against structures born out of an internationally recognized domestic peace accord.

Conclusion

Men Behaving badly, the title of a British television series, aptly captures the essence of deviant conduct in world politics. Our study dealt with poor behaviour and those responsible for the unbecoming conduct of states and non-state organizations have indeed been men, not women. But unlike the amusing antics of a duo of libido-obsessed men in the TV comedy show, the bad behaviour in world politics examined in this book is no laughing matter; instead, it was in many cases deadly serious. Also, the conduct we investigated was not ‘bad’ in terms of petty naughtiness, but objectionable by standards of behaviour widely accepted in the world community. Although the inquiry focused on offensive state conduct since the end of the Cold War, bad behaviour is an established feature of inter-state relations. We recorded several examples of rule-breaking conduct by countries in the 20th century, from Ottoman Turkey and Weimar Germany through the principal pariah states of the 1970s and 1980s (Israel, South Africa, Taiwan and Chile) to the rogue states of the 1990s. The Americans’ rogue state paradigm highlighted a particular brand of errant state behaviour, associated with the pursuit of WMD, international terrorism and regional aggression. Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Cuba constituted the core group of designated rogue countries. With the exception of Cuba, the norm-violating behaviour of the so-called rogues in actual fact extended beyond the three transgressions identified by US policymakers. Several states not on the American blacklist committed supposedly rogue contraventions, while scores of others violated commonly recognized rules of conduct not featured in the definition of roguedom. To allow for this wider range of transgressions and for a broader cast of delinquents that includes other states as well as non-state actors, an alternative analytical framework was used. This framework, drawing on the sociology of deviance, has four main components. The first calls for the identification of rule-breaking conduct. Sociologists see deviance in the eye of the beholder, which means that an act constituted deviance if it was so regarded by others. Add to this the 351


familiar phenomenon that none are as blind as those who will not see (as in the case of most African countries’ responses to the current political and economic crises in Zimbabwe). Notions of deviance, it would then appear, are rather elastic and erratic, depending on the whims of the beholder. However, in world politics there are certain expectations of ‘proper behaviour’ that enjoy the status of settled, universal norms. The prohibition of WMD and the observance of human rights are enshrined in several international agreements. Infringing them would, in the sociology of deviance, be called high-consensus deviance. Low-consensus deviance referred to offensive actions not universally regarded as having deviant qualities. A state’s conventional arms build-up could be a case in point if only a handful of neighbouring countries took issue with the alleged transgressor, while the rest of the world community remained unperturbed and indifferent. We added a third category, non-consensual deviance, for acts regarded as deviant by only one major state, for example the anti-Americanism of Libya or Iran that rankled in Washington but hardly in other capitals. In the case of states, our study identified eleven forms of norm-violating conduct: threatening international peace and security through WMD, international terrorism, excessive conventional arms build-up, aggressive regional actions, denial of democracy and human rights, genocide and other crimes against humanity, war crimes, the export of revolution, assertive foreign policy, anti-Westernism, and drug trafficking. Seven primary case studies were presented and six shorter secondary cases. As regards non-state actors, five different contraventions and corresponding categories of actors were distinguished: international terrorism, armed rebellion, trade in conflict diamonds, mercenarism and transnational organized crime. The following table summarizes the main findings in terms of the contraventions attributed to or actually committed by the 13 countries under consideration. Most of the charges of wrongdoing came from or were confirmed by multilateral organizations that professed to act in defence of high-consensus, settled international norms of state conduct. Note that not all the transgressions associated with a particular state were necessarily committed at the same time. The intention is to record all the major forms of rule-breaking behaviour in which each of the 13 states was at one time or another (allegedly) involved. The second major component of the analytical framework focused on the defenders or upholders of international norms. Mindful that international organizations are the primary vehicles for proclaiming and legitimizing global norms, we paid particular attention to the UN. Three of its bodies – the General Assembly, Security Council and Human Rights Commission – were especially prominent and influential in taking issue with norm violating countries and non-state actors. Iraq and Yugoslavia were among those arraigned before the three institutions. The EC/EU

X X X

X

X X X X X

X X

X

X X

X X X X

Regional threat/ aggression

X

X X X X X

Conventional military build-up

X

X X X X X

Iraq Iran Libya North Korea Cuba Myanmar Yugoslavia Nigeria Rwanda Sudan Afghanistan China Syria

Terrorism

X

Threat to peace/ WMD

Sin State

Acts of deviance at a glance

X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Human rights abuse

X

X

X X

X

War crimes

X

X

Genocide, crimes vs humanity

X X

X X X X

X

X

X X X X X

Export Anti-US/ revolution Western

X X

X X X X X

Assertive foreign policy

X

X

X

X X X

X

Drugs

353


was the most important regional organization to confront foreign states and several non-state groups – including Myanmar, Libya and Unita – guilty of deviant behaviour. Among individual states the US was the most active persecutor of perceived delinquents. Powerful actors, the sociology of deviance reminds us, are usually best able to enforce their rules against others. The US seldom shied away from forcible and nonforcible unilateral measures against those Washington wanted to coerce into abiding by its expectations of proper behaviour – which were mostly but not always consistent with wider international expectations. American targets included Libya, Cuba and al-Qaeda. Whether acting individually, through regional organizations or globally via the UN, Western states have been in the vanguard of efforts to uphold certain standards of state behaviour. It is, however, not simply a case of the West versus the Rest, of Western saints acting against non-Western sinners. In many cases rule-breakers were condemned to deviant status by far more countries than those of the West only. Consider, for instance, the UN General Assembly’s denunciation of the Abacha dictatorship in Nigeria; the Security Council’s unanimous condemnation of terrorist attacks attributed to al-Qaeda; the repeated censuring of Myanmar’s human rights record by the UN Human Rights Commission and General Assembly; and the Council’s tough resolutions on Iraq in the 1990s. The analytical framework in the third place provided for international responses to acts of deviance, i.e. the ends and means in dealing with deviant behaviour. Getting a transgressor state to conform to the required standards of conduct could involve, at a minimum, a change of policy, followed in escalating order by a change of government and thorough-going regime change. Syria under Assad senidi experienced external demands for policy changes regarding human rights and support for terrorism; the continued tenure of his government was not at issue, and least of all a change in the norms, values and authority structures prevailing at the time. During the Abacha dictatorship Nigeria faced pressure for government change, the logical consequence of the required restoration of democracy. Maximalist demands for regime change – which by definition encompassed policy and government change – were seldom stated explicitly, least of all by multilateral organizations. An exception to the rule was South Africa in the apartheid era. Even though it was rarely the declared aim of foreign parties pressuring Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, regime change is what eventually occurred in that country – much to the delight of Western powers and others too. In Iraq the Americans and British moved the goalposts from UN demands for policy change (related primarily to WMD) to wholesale regime change. External responses to deviant conduct can be a highly problematic matter. Outsiders do not always react automatically, coherently and consistently to instances of rule-breaking conduct, however egregious the

Conclusion 355

behaviour may be. The first hurdle to cross is finding common ground on the seriousness of a challenge to universal norms. Second, states have to decide whether to act and then how and when. Even if states regard a particular act as a transgression of a settled international norm, this judgment will not necessarily arouse their disapproval, anger or indignation to the point where they will resort to punitive measures against the offending country. They are not bound by the rules of domestic courts, where punishment is supposed to fit the crime, regardless of the social standing of the perpetrator. Instead, in international politics who is wrong may be an even weightier consideration than what is wrong. There is moreover an array of responses to choose from, ranging from military action through sanctions and subversion to supporting the social and economic upliftment of a deviant state. In deciding on their reactions to acts of deviance, others have to marry judgments of desirability with assessments of feasibility. The outcome may be untidy compromises unkind to consistency and to morality and to the credibility of the supposed rule-upholders themselves. Foreign responses to China’s gross violation of human rights norms illustrate these difficulties. All this is not surprising, for the sociology of deviance has warned us that rules of behaviour typically apply more to some people (or states) than to others, and powerful actors enjoy greater ‘deviant opportunity’ than the weak. Another controversial aspect of external reactions to deviance is that the supposed defenders of international norms may themselves break the rules in the process. The (second) Bush administration’s doctrine of pre-emptive attack – directed primarily against Iraq – may well fall foul of the elementary rule of non-aggression. The nature and extent of foreign responses helped us to determine whether a particular target state was a real or nominal deviant. Where a country was manifestly guilt of rule-breaking conduct but escaped serious censure and tangible punishment, we have called it a nominal deviant. China is a good example. Real or true deviant states, by contrast, were those whose refusal to ‘play the game’ by established rules prompted disapproval and punishment from outside. Iraq, Libya and Sudan are cases in point. In the class of real deviants further distinctions can be made. First-order transgressors – both states and non-state actors – were those condemned to deviant status by the world community at large, acting through the UN. Since they were typically subjected to tangible collective punishment imposed by the world body, first-order deviants truly experienced the wrath of nations, as South Africa under apartheid and Iraq in the 1990s. Deviants of the second order were seriously at odds with others in their respective regions, as Cuba had been in North and South America in the 1960s. Third-order deviants’ behaviour brought them into serious conflict with only a few states that included a major power. Their offensive conduct would typically involve


low-consensus or more likely non-consensual deviance. The ongoing USCuban conflict falls into this category. The ways in which the international community has dealt with the five different types of non-state actors leads us to class them all as first-order or global deviants. Through the UN, they have all faced severe censure at the global level and in some cases also tangible punishment. This holds true for terrorist organizations in general and al-Qaeda in particular; rebel movements such as Unita and the RUF, which were also guilty of trading in blood diamonds; mercenaries in general, also in their new guise as private military companies, and transnational criminal organizations as a whole. The very reason for the existence of most of these non-state organizations is to engage in activities that violate truly universal standards of conduct and are demonstrably harmful to states – a feature that has made a global response to their misdeeds much easier than in the case of errant states. The exception is terrorist organizations, itself a contentious designation as such actors pursue political ends by terrorist (and other) means. And because one side’s terrorist is invariably another’s freedom fighter, it has been much harder for the world community to put up a united front against this form of deviant behaviour than against the other four. Recall the UN’s ongoing difficulties in drafting a single, comprehensive antiterrorism convention. The final component of the analytical framework is the responses of deviant states to external pressures for change. Their reactions fall into the two broad categories of compliance and defiance, with capitulation the extreme form of compliance and armed resistance at the opposite end of defiance. Like the rule-defenders, the rule-breakers also have to consider a variety of factors in deciding how to respond to foreign demands for political change. Take the case of Yugoslavia, where the Milosevic government capitulated by surrendering power. While sanctions and foreign military action had no doubt weakened the government severely, its eventual demise was also due to massive internal resistance. In short, one should guard against looking for direct correlations between pressures from outside and moves from within. Likewise, the defiance of Iraq, Myanmar and Cuba can only be understood in the context of internal political dynamics. Defying an external enemy may well bolster an authoritarian government’s domestic legitimacy. Since deviance is not an unchanging or immutable condition, it was to be expected that the international fortunes of several of the 13 deviant countries considered have improved lately. Nigeria and Yugoslavia have become fully resocialized – adhering to international norms previously flouted – and rehabilitated in the world community. The basic causes of their deviant status have been eliminated. Afghanistan has made great strides towards normalizing its foreign relations in the wake of the Taliban government’s military defeat. Iran under Khatami has likewise

Conclusion 357

removed major causes of its conflict with the US and other Western powers, hence normalizing its foreign relations over a broad front. Foreign concerns about its nuclear intentions remain, though. Rwanda, Sudan, Syria and Libya have also meliorated or abandoned aspects of their offensive conduct, improving their relations with the West in particular – although clear instances of deviant behaviour remain in each case, notably with regard to human rights. Myanmar has, to a lesser extent than the latter group, managed to rebuild cordial relations with the outside world, even though it still contravenes human rights standards. Even Iraq had by the end of 2002 managed to persuade scores of states, including some major Western powers, that it was cooperating in good faith with the UN in liquidating all its WMD. (This, of course, did not spare Iraq the ultimate anti-deviant action: military invasion in pursuit of regime change – albeit undertaken without UN authorization.) Cuba has for decades been in the bad books of the US, but virtually all other countries maintain normal relations with the last communist outpost in the Western Hemisphere. China, although clearly in breach of universal human rights norms, has escaped true deviant status. This leaves only North Korea as an unrehabilitated deviant, especially since the recent resumption of its nuclear programme. The improvements in the international standing of several (formerly) deviant states have been the result not only of changes in their behaviour, but also in that of their foreign critics. It often happens that countries applying sanctions against another in due course weaken in their resolve to sustain the punishment. Among the various reasons could be that the target showed no signs of submitting to foreign demands; its civilian population was suffering severe material deprivation under sanctions, creating a moral dilemma for the sanctioners; or, alternatively, sanctions were not causing much damage to the target state’s economy due to effective sanctions busting. These were some of the reasons for the erosion of what was initially a near-universal sanctions front against Iraq. From our inventory of transgressions, it is possible to infer a set of rules of good state behaviour, adherence to which should make for a respectable, even exemplary member of the current world community. Such a state would: • subscribe to and abide by prohibitions on the acquisition of WMD or, if it is a lawful member of the nuclear club, prevent horizontal proliferation; • adopt all universal and relevant regional anti-terrorism conventions, refrain from involvement in any acts of terrorism, and actively support collective counter-terrorism initiatives; • avoid any aggressive actions vis-à-vis surrounding states, instead living in peace and amity with all neighbours;


• ensure that its level of conventional armaments is commensurate with its defence needs and that its weapons acquisitions are recorded in the UN’s register of conventional arms; • uphold universal standards of human rights enshrined in global and regional conventions, declarations and resolutions; • refrain from all crimes against humanity either at home or in foreign conflict situations, and cooperate with international efforts to bring the perpetrators of such misdeeds to justice; • not commit any war crimes while participating in an armed conflict, and again support international efforts to bring suspected offenders to book; • refrain from exporting by force and other coercive means a new revolutionary political order (something unlikely to arise in a democracy), and • give effect to anti-narcotics norms by not permitting or participating in the production of or trafficking in illegal narcotics, and cooperating with international anti-drug campaigns. The first three of these rules involve norms violated by states designated as rogues by Washington. In the US hierarchy of standards of acceptable state behaviour, they clearly enjoyed pre-eminence. The Americans were on firm ground in that all three involved settled international norms. What the US overlooked or underplayed, however, is that there were also other highconsensus norms breached by these very rogue states and indeed by several other countries too. The contravention of most of the remaining six norms has in fact provoked international anger, indignation and punishment – also from the US itself. In short, deviant conduct was not confined to rogue states and three transgressions only. Conversely, a model state in modern world politics is one that upholds not merely the first three rules listed, but all nine. They constitute the primary standards of good state behaviour. The next two rules, also derived from our catalogue of contraventions, do not carry the imprint of the world community but deal with parochial or non-settled norms. Given the prevailing distribution of power in the world, there may be unacceptable costs involved for states in not abiding by these two secondary rules: • steer clear of an overly assertive and independent foreign policy challenging Western, notably American, interests, instead opting for cooperative and even deferential relations with these powers, and • avoid an avowedly anti-Western orientation or merely a vociferous antiAmericanism, instead nurturing close ties with Western states. Powerful states may be less concerned about playing by the rules – whether primary or secondary – than weaker countries because the former are better

Conclusion 359

able to withstand foreign pressure to mend their offensive ways. Their power could even give them a form of immunity against such pressure, as in the case of China. Might, in other words, may reduce the need for doing right. Lest it be said that the principal rules of good conduct are Western constructs fit for Western states only, it should be pointed out that there are indeed non-Western countries that by and large meet all nine standards and can be regarded as respectable international citizens. Among them are Uruguay, Costa Rica, Panama, Chile, Jamaica, Japan, South Korea, Mauritius, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Ghana and Mali. Their adherence to the two secondary rules varies greatly, but none could be described as inherently anti-Western or anti-American and bent on challenging US or Western interests. Because deviant behaviour is bound to remain a fact of international life, it calls for ongoing scholarly examination. The list of transgressions could possibly be extended to include debt reneging, unilateral restrictions on free trade, infringement of intellectual property rights, the use of child labour in manufacturing industry, human trafficking, and ecologically harmful policies followed by states. Another matter that might merit consideration is that of appropriate relations between respectable states and deviant countries. When does a close association begin to compromise the former’s international good standing? Or is it invariably a case of ‘if you lie down with the dogs you stand up with the fleas’? South Africa’s close ties since 1994 with the likes of Libya, Iran and Zimbabwe could provide interesting perspectives. The behaviour of major norm defenders, notably the US, also calls for scrutiny. What standards of international (and domestic) conduct can rightfully be expected of these states? Does America live up to such expectations, or is its pre-eminence in protecting universal norms based more on might than right? If the US (and others) are found wanting in terms of rectitude, should multilateral organizations play a more forceful role in upholding universal norms of behaviour? The agenda for research is also wide open as far as non-state deviance is concerned. This study dealt with five main types of contraventions. Each merits far more detailed analysis, especially regarding the mutual ties between the five types of deviants and their relations with states. Finally, a follow-up study of deviant conduct in world politics in, say, ten years might reveal interesting shifts in the nature and standing of norms of good behaviour among states and non-state actors on the global stage. In Chapter 2, it will be recalled, we noted that norms are not cast in stone but can change relatively quickly or, alternatively, ‘wax and wane’ over time. New norms may also develop or existing ones may acquire greater influence. In this regard transnational norm entrepreneurs, mobilizing popular opinion across national borders, may become increasingly prominent. (Consider the way in which the non-aggression norm has lately been highlighted and perhaps reinforced by worldwide popular protests against


the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq.) There may also be variation over time in responses to nonconformist behaviour, sociological studies of deviance point out; a supposedly deviant act may be treated much more – or less – leniently at one time than another. How could future Iraqs and Unitas, for instance, expect to be treated by the international community of states and peoples?

Notes Chapter 1

Pariahs, Outcasts and Rogues

1. Robert Hendrickson, The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, Facts on File, New York, 1997, p. 510; The Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, Volume XI, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989. Also see J.A. Sauter, Among the Brahmins and Pariahs, Mittal Publication, New Delhi, 1986; Ramakant Prasad, The Parahiyas: A Study in Cultural Ecology and Tribal Dynamics, Acta Ethnologica et Linguistica, No. 42, Vienna, 1978; Robert Deliège, The World of the ‘Untouchables’: Paraiyars of Tamil Nadu, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1997. 2. William J.V. Neill et al., Reimaging the Pariah City: Urban Development in Belfast & Detroit, Avebury, Aldershot, 1995. 3. John D. Donoghue, Pariah Persistence in Changing Japan: A Case Study, University Press of America, Washington, DC, 1978. 4. Hannah Arendt, The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age, Grove Press, New York, 1978. 5. Robert E. Harkavy, ‘The pariah state syndrome’, Orbis, Vol. 21(3), 1977, pp. 623–49 and ‘Pariah states and nuclear proliferation’, International Organization, Vol. 35(1), Winter 1981, pp. 135–63; Richard K. Betts, ‘Paranoids, pygmies, pariahs and non-proliferation’, Foreign Policy, 26, Spring 1977, pp. 157–83; Peter Vale, ‘South Africa as a pariah international state’, International Affairs Bulletin, Vol. 1(3), 1977, pp. 121–41; Efraim Inbar, ‘The emergence of pariah states in world politics: The isolation of Israel’, The Korean Journal of International Studies, Vol. 15(1), Winter 1983/84, pp. 55–83; Sara Pienaar, ‘South Africa from paragon to pariah: Contrasts between the League of Nations and the United Nations’, International Affairs Bulletin, Vol. 9(3), 1985, pp. 5–14; Martin Sicker, The Making of a Pariah State: The Adventurist Politics of Muammar Qaddafi, Praeger, New York, 1987; Greg Mills et al., From Pariah to Participant: South Africa’s evolving Foreign Relations, 1990–1994, South African Institute of International Affairs, Johannesburg, 1994. For a retroactive application to a prewar case, see Aleksandr Nekrich, Pariahs, Partners, Predators: German–Soviet Relations, 1922–1941, Columbia University Press, New York, 1997. 6. Hilal Khashan, Partner or Pariah: Attitudes toward Peace with Israel in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, Policy Papers, No. 4, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1996. 7. Ahmed Hashim, ‘Iraq: The pariah state’, Current History, Vol. 91(561), January 1992, pp. 11–16; Geoff Simons, Iraq – Primus inter Pariahs: A Crisis Chronology, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1999. 8. Tim Niblock, ‘Pariah States’ & Sanctions in the Middle East: Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, 2001. 9. Robert Thomas, Serbia: Still Europe’s Pariah? Alliance Publishers, London, 1996. 10. D. Elsworth Blanc (ed.), North Korea – Pariah?, Novinka Books, Huntington, NY, 2001. 11. One of the most elaborate studies of errant state conduct during the Cold War years is that of Efraim Inbar, Outcast Countries in the World Community, Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver, Denver, 1985. 361

362 Notes 12. Exceptions include the present author’s book, Isolated States: A Comparative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990, and Wilfried von Bredow, Thomas Jäger & Gerhard Kümmel, ‘North Korea between isolation, dissociation and integration’, The Korean Journal of National Unification, Vol. 6, 1997, pp. 101–49. 13. See, for example, C. Howard, Splendid Isolation, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1967; George Monger, The End of Isolation: British Foreign Policy 1900–1907, Thomas Nelson & Sons, London, 1963. 14. Among the numerous books on the subject are Elliott Abrams, Security and Sacrifice: Isolation, Intervention, and American Foreign Policy, Hudson Institute, Indianapolis, 1995; Richard D. Challener, From Isolation to Containment, 1921–1952: Three Decades of American Foreign Policy from Harding to Truman, St Martin’s Press, New York, 1970; Justus D. Doenecke & John E. Wilz, From Isolation to War, 1931–1941, Harlan Davidson, New York, 1990; W. Patrick Strauss, Isolation and Involvement: An Interpretive History of American Diplomacy, Xerox College Publishers, Waltham, Mass., 1972. 15. The Oxford English Dictionary. 16. Richard Bjornson, The Picaresque Hero in European Fiction, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1977, p. 3; Robert Alter, Rogue’s Progress: Studies in the Picaresque Novel, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1964, p. viii; Claudio Guillén, The Anatomy of Roguery: A Comparative Study in the Origins and the Nature of Picaresque Literature, Garland Publishing, New York, 1987, pp. 1–4. 17. Robert Alter, p. viii. 18. Richard Bjornson, p. 4. 19. Robert Alter, pp. 3–5. 20. Gwenda Morgan, Rogues, Thieves and the Rule of Law: The Problem of Law Enforcement in North-East England, 1718–1820, UCL Press, London, 1998; Lionel Rose, Rogues and Vagabonds: Vagrant Underworld in Britain, 1815–1985, Routledge, London, 1988; Padraic O’Rarrell, Irish Rogues, Rascals, and Scoundrels, Mercier Press, Dublin, 1992; James M. Denham, ‘A Rogue’s Paradise’: Crime and Punishment in Antebellum Florida, 1821–1861, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 1997; Charles F. Adams, The Magnificent Rogues of San Francisco: A Gallery of Fakers and Frauds, Rascals and Robber Barons, Scoundrels and Scalawags, Pacific Books, Palo Alto, 1997; Walter Block, Defending the Undefendable: The Pimp, Prostitute, Scab, Slumlord, Libeler, Moneylenders, and other Scapegoats in the Rogue’s Gallery of American Society, Fleet Press, New York, 1976; David Philips & Susanne Davies (eds), A Nation of Rogues?: Crime, Law, and Punishment in Colonial Australia, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1994; Michael Kurland, A Gallery of Rogues: Portraits in True Crime, Prentice-Hall, New York, 1994; Ted R. Gurr, Rogues, Rebels, and Reformers: A Political History of Urban Crime and Conflict, Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, 1976. 21. Richard Marcinko, Rogue Warrior, Pocket Books, New York, 1992. 22. Gordon Newell’s Rogues, Buffoons & Statesmen, Hangman Press, Seattle, 1975, is a story of politics in the US state of Washington; another example is ‘Rogues’ Gallery’ & Indian Politics by Jogendra N. Sahni, Allied, New Delhi, 1982. 23. Timothy W. Stanley, ‘American strategy after the Cold War: The price of disengagement’, Comparative Strategy, Vol. 10, January–March 1991, pp. 73–82; President Ronald Reagan, quoted by Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws: America’s Search for a New Foreign Policy, Hill & Wang, New York, 1996, p. 27; Anthony Lake, ‘Confronting backlash states’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73(2), March/April 1994, p. 45.

Notes 363 24. Charles Krauthammer, ‘The unipolar moment’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 70(1), 1991, pp. 30–2; David Mutimer, The Weapons State: Proliferation and Visions of Security, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, 2000. 25. Anthony Lake, 1994, pp. 45–55. 26. Debra von Opstal and Andrew C. Goldberg, Meeting the Mavericks: Regional Challenges for the Next President, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC, 1988. Also see Guy Arnold, The Maverick State: Gaddafi and the New World Order, Cassell, London, 1996. 27. President George Bush, 1990, quoted by Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Containment after the Cold War, The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Washington DC, 2000, p. 2. Also see Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, p. 27; Stephen Chan and Andrew J. Williams, Renegade States: The Evolution of Revolutionary Foreign Policy, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1994. 28. Anthony Lake, 1994, p. 45. 29. English translations of the German ‘Schurkenstaaten’, as used by Ellen L. Frost, ‘Umgang mit “Schurkenstaaten”’, Internationale Politik, Vol. 52(4), April 1997, pp. 1–6. 30. Paul Brooker, Defiant Dictatorships: Communist and Middle-Eastern Dictatorships in a Democratic Age, Macmillan Press – now Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1997. 31. Thomas H. Henriksen, Using Power and Diplomacy to Deal with Rogue States, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University, Stanford, 1999, p. 8. 32. Additional references to ‘pariah states’ are to be found in, among others, Marc D. Millot, ‘Facing the emerging reality of regional nuclear adversaries’, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 17(3), Summer 1994, p. 42; Phil Williams and Stephen Black, ‘Transnational threats: Drug trafficking and weapons proliferation’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 15(1), April 1994, pp. 127–51. 33. Robert S. Litwak, ‘What’s in a name?: The changing foreign policy lexicon’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 54(2), Spring 2001, pp. 375, 391–2. 34. Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, pp. 16, 23–4. 35. See, for instance, Colin S. Gray, ‘Deterrence in the new strategic environment’, Comparative Strategy, Vol. 11(3), July–September 1992, pp. 247–67; Hans Binnendijk and Patrick Clawson, ‘New strategic priorities’, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 18(2), Spring 1995, pp. 109–26; Michael Mandelbaum, ‘Lessons of the next nuclear war’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 74(2), March/April 1996, pp. 33–6; Ashok Kapur, ‘Rogue states and the international nuclear order’, International Journal, Vol. 51(3), Summer 1996, pp. 420–39; Stephen Zunes, ‘The function of rogue states in U.S. Middle East policy’, Middle East Policy, Vol. 5(2), May 1997, pp. 150–67; John Bray, ‘Sanctions: Sticks to beat rogue states’, The World Today, Vol. 52(8–9), August/September 1996, pp. 206–8; Raymond Tanter, Rogue Regimes: Terrorism and Proliferation, St Martin’s Press, New York, 1998; Michael C. Hudson, ‘The United States and the Middle East’, in Michael Klare and Yogesh Chandrani (eds), World Security: Challenges for a New Century, third edition, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1998, pp. 122–32; Alexandra Kura (ed.), Rogue Countries: Background and Current Issues, Nova Science Publishers, Huntington, NY, 2001. 36. Quoted by Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 53. 37. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 52–3. 38. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 56–9, 64. 39. Alexander L. George, Bridging the Gap: Theory and Practice in Foreign Policy, US Institute of Peace Press, Washington, DC, 1993, p. 49.

364 Notes 40. Anthony Lake, pp. 45–55. 41. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 3–62, 77. 42. See Richard Falkenrath, ‘Weapons of mass reaction’, Harvard International Review, Vol. 22(2), Summer 2000, p. 52; Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, p. 132; Philip Bowring, ‘“Rogue” states are overrated’, International Herald Tribune, 6 June 2000. 43. Geoff Simons, Iraq – Primus inter Pariahs, 1999, p. 6. 44. See, for example, William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, Zed Books, London, 2002; Noam Chomsky, Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs, Pluto Press, London, 2000, pp. 2–3, 23, 55–63; Noam Chomsky, 9–11, Seven Stories Press, New York, 2001; Clyde Prestowitz, Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions, Basic Books, New York, 2003. Will Grant and Jon Farmer, ‘America, the original rogue state: a guide to its postwar adventures’, New Statesman, Vol. 130(4562), 11 May 2001, p.18. 45. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 65. 46. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 63. 47. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 48, 75–8. 48. Robert S. Litwak, ‘What’s in a name?’, p. 380. 49. Quoted in International Herald Tribune, 30 May 2000. 50. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 47, 89. 51. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 3–5, 66–8, 87. 52. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 75. 53. The President’s State of the Union Address, 29 January 2002, www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases 54. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 8–9. 55. Larry Hedrick, Rogue’s Gallery: America’s Foes from George III to Saddam Hussein, Brassey’s (US), Washington DC, 1992, p. 5. Also see Walter A. McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World since 1776, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1997. 56. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 63–4, 87. 57. Eric Herring, ‘Rogue rage: Can we prevent mass destruction?’, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 23(1), March 2000, pp. 188–212. 58. Michael Klare, ‘The new “rogue state” doctrine’, Nation, Vol. 260(18), 5 August 1995, p. 625. 59. Hazel Smith, ‘Bad, mad, sad or rational actor?: why the “securitization” paradigm makes for poor policy analysis of north Korea”, International Affairs, Vol. 76(3), July 2000, pp. 597–602. 60. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and US Foreign Policy, pp. 74, 96. 61. Geoff Simons, Iraq – Primus inter Pariahs, p. 4. 62. Robert S Litwak, Rogue States and US Foreign Policy, pp. 42, 79–81. 63. US Department of State, US National Security Strategy: Prevent Our Enemies from Threatening Us, Our Allies, and Our Friends with Weapons of Mass Destruction, 15 September 2002, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/wh/15425.htm 64. White House, Office of the Press Secretary, President delivers State of the Union Address, 29 January 2001, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/ 20020129-11.html 65. White House, Office of the Press Secretary, President’s Remarks at the United Nations General Assembly, 12 September 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/ news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html 66. President delivers State of the Union Address, 29 January 2001.

Notes 365 67. President delivers State of the Union Address, 29 January 2001. 68. White House, Office of the Press Secretary, President Bush delivers graduation speech at West Point, 1 June 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/ 2002/20020601-3.html 69. US National Security Strategy: Prevent Our Enemies From Threatening Us, Our Allies, and Our Friends with Weapons of Mass Destruction, 15 September 2002. 70. US Department of State, U.S. National Security Strategy: Strengthen Alliances to Defeat Global Terrorism and Work to Prevent Attacks Against Us and Our Friends, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/wh/15423.htm 71. White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, 20 September 2001, http://www.whitehouse.gov/ news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html 72. White House, Office of the Press Secretary, President Bush delivers graduation speech at West Point, 1 June 2002.

Chapter 2

Deviant Actors in World Politics

1. Vaughn P. Shannon, ‘Norms are what states make of them: The political psychology of norm violation’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 44(2), June 2000, p. 302. 2. David Downes and Paul Rock, Understanding Deviance: A Guide to the Sociology of Crime and Rule-Breaking, third edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998, p. 1. 3. See Alex Thio, Deviant Behavior, second edition, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1983, pp. 4–16. 4. Howard S. Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, The Free Press, New York, 1973, pp. 2, 15. 5. Howard S. Becker, pp. 1–3. 6. Howard S. Becker, pp. 8–11. 7. John Curra, The Relativity of Deviance, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, Calif., 2000, p. 16. 8. Albert Cohen, quoted by Alex Thio, p. 4. 9. David Downes and Paul Rock, p. 26. 10. Nachman Ben-Yehuda, The Politics and Morality of Deviance, State University of New York Press, New York, 1990, pp. 61–2. 11. Howard S. Becker, 1973, pp. 12–13. 12. Howard S. Becker, 1973, p. 15. 13. Talcott Parsons, quoted by Alex Thio, p. 4. 14. Alex Thio, p. 5. 15. From a discussion of deviance, www.webref.org/sociology/d/deviance.htm 16. Charles W. Kegley and Eugene R. Wittkopf, World Politics: Trend and Transformation, eighth edition, Bedford, Boston, 2001, pp. 209, 218. 17. Frederick L. Schuman, International Politics: The Western State System and the World Community, sixth edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1958, p. 280. 18. Alex Thio, pp. 24–5, 85. 19. Howard S. Becker, pp. 16–18. 20. Howard S. Becker, p. 18. 21. Nachman Ben-Yehuda, p. 47. 22. Alex Thio, p. 89.

366 Notes 23. John Curra, p. 16. 24. Mervyn Frost, ‘A turn not taken: Ethics in IR at the millennium’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 24, December 1998, p. 123. 25. Mervyn Frost, ‘A turn not taken’, p.124; Jeffrey W Legro, ‘Which norms matter? Revisiting the “failure” of internationalism’, International Organization, Vol. 51(1), Winter 1997, p. 31; Martha Finnemore, ‘Norms, culture, and world politics: Insights from sociology’s institutionalism’, International Organization, Vol. 50(2), Spring 1996, pp. 325–47; Hans-Peter Schmitz and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘International human rights’, in Walter Carlsnaes et al. (eds), Handbook of International Relations, Sage Publications, London, 2002, p. 520. 26. Robert Axelrod, ‘An evolutionary approach to norms’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 80(4), December 1986, p. 1096; Gary Goertz and Paul F. Diehl, ‘Toward a theory of international norms’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 36(4), December 1992, pp. 634–64; Jeffrey W. Legro, 1997, p. 31; Ann Florini, ‘The evolution of international norms’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 40(3), September 1996, pp. 363, 386. 27. Mervyn Frost, ‘A turn not taken’, pp. 123–5. 28. Andrew P. Cortell and James W. Davis, ‘How do international institutions matter? The domestic impact of international rules and norms’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 40(4), December 1996, pp. 452–3; Friedrich V. Kratochwil, Rules, Norms, and Decisions, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989, p. 10. 29. For a survey of definitions of norms, see Janice E Thomson, ‘Norms in international relations: A conceptual analysis’, International Journal of Group Tensions, vol. 23(1), Spring 1993, pp. 68–79. 30. Patricia N. Limerick, ‘Dancing with professors: The trouble with academic prose’, The New York Times Book Review, 31 October 1993, pp. 3, 23–4. 31. Janice E. Thomson, p. 81. 32. Robert Axelrod, pp. 1096–7; Ann Florini, p. 364. 33. Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘Introduction: Alternative perspectives on national security’, in Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, Columbia University Press, New York, 1996, p. 5; Jeffrey W. Legro, p. 33. Also see Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1996, p. 22; Audie Klotz, Norms in International Relations: The Struggle against Apartheid, Cornell University Press, 1995, p. 14; Andrew Hurrell, ‘Norms and ethics in International Relations’, in Walter Carslnaes et al. (eds), p. 143. 34. Raymond Cohen, International Politics: The Rules of the Game, Longman, London, 1982, p. 8. 35. Ann Florini, p. 364. 36. Gary Goertz and Paul F. Diehl, pp. 634–9. 37. Audi Klotz, p. 14. 38. Robert Axelrod, p. 1108. 39. Shah M. Tarzi, ‘International norms, trade, and human rights: A perspective on norm conformity’, The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, Vol. 27(2), Summer 2002, p. 192. 40. Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘The socialization of international human rights norms into domestic practices: introduction’, in Risse et al. (eds), The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999, p. 5. 41. Audi Klotz, pp. 6, 165. 42. D.W. Greig, International Law, Butterworth, London, 1970, pp. 13, 15.

Notes 367 43. Raymond Cohen, pp. 49–94; Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink, p. 8. Also see Friedrich V. Kratochwil, pp. 74–81; Shah M. Tarzi, p. 187. 44. Ann Florini, pp. 364–5. 45. Rick Fawn and Jeremy Larkins, ‘International society after the Cold War: Theoretical interpretations and practical implications’, in Fawn & Larkins (eds), International Society after the Cold War: Anarchy and Order Revisited, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1996, p. 1. 46. Luigi Bonanate, Ethics and International Politics, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995, p. 38. Also see Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1979, pp. 181–2. 47. Andrew Hurrell, ‘International politics theory and the global environment’, in Ken Booth and Steve Smith (eds), International Relations Theory Today, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995, p. 146. 48. Robert Axelrod, 1985, p. 1096. 49. Ann Florini, 1996, p. 367; Andrew Hurrell, ‘Norms and ethics in International Relations’, in Walter Carlsnaes et al. (eds), pp. 146–7. 50. T.V. Paul, ‘Nuclear taboo and war initiation in regional conflicts’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 39(4), December 1995, pp. 699–701. 51. Richard K. Herrmann and Vaughn P. Shannon, ‘Defending international norms: The role of obligation, material interest, and perception in decision making’, International Organization, Vol. 55(3), Summer 2001, p. 622. 52. Ethan A. Nadelmann, ‘Global prohibition regimes: The evolution of norms in international society’, International Organization, Vol. 44(4), Autumn 1990, pp. 479, 522–3; Richard Price, ‘Reversing the gun sights: Transnational civil society targets land mines’, International Organization, Vol. 52(3), Summer 1998, pp. 613–44; Rodger A. Payne, ‘Persuasion, frames and norm construction’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 7(1), March 2001, pp. 47–54. For other typologies of norms and regimes, see Jack Donnelly, ‘International human rights: A regime analysis’, International Organization, Vol. 40(3), Summer 1986, pp. 603–42; Newell M. Stultz, ‘Evolution of the United Nations anti-apartheid regime’, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 13(1), February 1991, pp. 1–23; Nicholas G. Onuf, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations, University of South Carolina Press, 1989, pp. 145–54. 53. Mervyn Frost, Ethics in International Relations: A Constitutive Theory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 105–11. Also see Peter Sutch, ‘Human rights and settled norms: Mervyn Frost and the limits of Hegelian human rights theory’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 26(2), April 2000, pp. 215–31. 54. Richard K. Herrmann and Vaughn P. Shannon, p. 622. 55. Shah M. Tarzi, p. 193. 56. Richard K. Herrmann and Vaugh P. Shannon, p. 650. 57. Shah M. Tarzi, pp. 189–91, 202. 58. Chris Brown, ‘Ethics, interests and foreign policy’, in Karen E. Smith and Margot Light (eds), Ethics and Foreign Policy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001, pp. 23–4. 59. Vaughn P. Shannon, pp. 311–12. 60. Daniel S. Papp, Contemporary International Relations: Frameworks for Understanding, second edition, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 1984, p. 31. Also see Louis Henkin et al., Right v. Might: International Law and the Use of Force, Council on Foreign Relations Press, New York, 1989.

368 Notes 61. Puchala and Hopkins, 1983, quoted by Charles W. Kegley and Gregory A. Raymond, A Multipolar Peace? Great-Power Politics in the Twenty-first Century, St Martin’s Press, New York, 1994, p. 122. 62. Charles W. Kegley and Gregory A. Raymond, p. 122. 63. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, fifth edition, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1973, p. 231. 64. Michael Howard, ‘Ethics and power in international policy’, International Affairs, Vol. 53(3), July 1977, p. 374. 65. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics, quoted by Michael Howard, p. 375. 66. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1996, p. 184. 67. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser 1977–1981, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, New York, 1985, p. 547. Also see Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1994, pp. 832–3. 68. See Richard N. Haass, Intervention: The Use of American Military Force in the PostCold War World, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, 1994, pp. 62–3. 69. Raymond Cohen, p.7. Also see Robert W. Cox, ‘Towards a post-hegemonic conceptualization of world order’, in James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel (eds), Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992, p. 137. 70. Ian Clark, The Hierarchy of States: Reform and Resistance in the International Order, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993, p. 18. On different types of international order, see John A. Hall, International Orders, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1996. 71. Brian Hocking and Michael Smith, World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations, Harvester Wheatsheaf, New York, 1990, pp. 275–81. 72. Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations, Wheatsheaf Books, Brighton, 1983, pp. 181–4; Brian Hocking and Michael Smith, pp. 283, 293. Also see Janna Thompson, Justice and World Order: A Philosophical Inquiry, Routledge, London, 1992. 73. Seyom Brown, International Relations in a Changing Global System: Toward a Theory of the World Polity, second edition, Westview Press, Boulder, 1996, p. 126 74. Ian Clark, p. 40. 75. James N. Rosenau, ‘Governance, order, and change in world politics’, in James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel (eds), pp. 9–11; Stanley Hoffmann, Duties Beyond Borders: On the Limits and Possibilities of Ethical International Relations, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 1981, p. 496; Chris Brown, International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches, Harvester Wheatsheaf, New York, 1992, pp. 182–7. 76. See Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, pp. 18–24; Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 54–6; Barry R. Schneider, ‘Nuclear proliferation and counter-proliferation: Policy issues and debates’, Mershon International Studies Review, Vol. 38(2), October 1994, pp. 210–25; Hans Kristensen, ‘Targets of opportunity’, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 53(5), September/October 1997, pp. 27–8; John M. Deutch, ‘The new nuclear threat’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 71, Fall 1992, pp. 120–34; Kathleen C. Bailey, Doomsday Weapons in the Hands of Many – the Arms Control Challenge of the ‘90s, Illinois University Press, Urbana. 1991; Joachim Krause, ‘Proliferation risks and their strategic relevance: what role for NATO?’

Notes 369

77. 78. 79. 80.

81. 82.

83. 84. 85. 86.

87.

88.

89.

90. 91. 92. 93.

Survival, Vol. 37(2), Summer 1995, pp. 135–48; Richard Kokoski, Technology and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995, pp. 1–4; Sten Lundbo, ‘Non-proliferation: Expansion of export control mechanisms’, Aussenpolitik, Vol. 48(2), 1997, pp. 137–47; Raymond Tanter, pp. ix–x; Brad Roberts, ‘Proliferation and non-proliferation in the 1990s: looking for the right lessons’, The Nonproliferation Review, Fall 1999, pp. 70–82; Paul Bracken, Fire in the East: The Rise of Asian Military Power and the Second Nuclear Age, Harper Collins, New York, 1999; ‘The nuke pipeline’, Time, 17 December 2001 Charles Krauthammer, pp. 23–33. John M. Deutch, pp. 120–34; Joachim Krause, pp. 135–48. Time, 24 June 2002. Brian Solomon (ed.), Chemical and Biological Warfare, H.W. Wilson Co., New York, 1999; Judith Miller et al., Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War, Touchstone Books, Old Tappan, NJ, 2002; Jonathan B Tucker, ‘Chemical and biological terrorism: how real a threat?’ Current History, Vol. 99(636), April 2000, p. 147. Gavin Cameron, ‘Nuclear terrorism reconsidered’, Current History, Vol. 99(636), April 2000, pp. 155–7; Time, 29 October 2001, 12 November 2001. Michael Klare, ‘Itching for a fight’, Progressive, Vol. 60(9), September 1996, p. 32; Thomas H. Henriksen, ‘The rise and decline of rogue states’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 54(2), Spring 2001, p. 358. Quoted by Richard Falkenrath, ‘Weapons of mass reaction’, Harvard International Review, Vol. 22(2), Summer 2000, p. 52. The President’s State of the Union Address, 29 January 2002, www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html 2003 G8 Summit, Non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction: A G8 declaration, http://www.g8.fr/evian/english… Treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, 1968, www.state.gov/ www/global/arms/treaties/npt1.html; Charles W. Kegley and Eugene R. Wittkopf, pp. 578–9. Charles W. Kegley and Eugene R. Wittkopf, pp. 477, 576; Michael Barletta, ‘Cynics are naïve about international norms’, Discussion paper presented for the conference ‘Nuclear, biological, chemical, and missile (NBC/M) control regimes: Prospects for the twenty-first century’, Monterey, CA, 23–24 April 2001, cns.miis.edu/cns/staff/mbarlett/naivete.pdf. Kananaskis Summit, Statement by G8 leaders: The G8 Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, 27 June 2002, http://www.library.utoronto.cd/g7/summit/2002kananaskis/arms.html Raymond Tanter, pp. ix–x; Joachim Krause, pp. 135–48; Stephen Zunes, pp. 150–67; Oliver Thraenert, ‘Biological weapons and the problems of nonproliferation’, Aussenpolitik, Vol. 48(2), 1997, pp. 150–1; Stephen R. Bowers and Kimberly R. Keys, ‘Technology and terrorism: the new threat for the millennium’, Conflict Studies, No. 309, May 1998, pp. 1–17, Brad Roberts, p. 71; Jonathan B. Tucker, pp. 149–51; Mark Juergensmeyer, ‘Understanding the new terrorism’, Current History, Vol. 99(636), April 2000, p. 158. Quoted by Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, p. 27. US State Department, Patterns of Global Terrorism 1999, www.state.gov/www/ global/terrorism/1999report/1999index.html Quoted by Jonathan B. Tucker, p. 147. Kananaskis Summit, Statement by G8 leaders.

370 Notes 94. Susan Koch in U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda, 1998: 27–8, ‘The nuke pipeline’, Time, 17 December 2001. 95. ‘Clinton urges world action on terror’, The New York Times, 22 September 1998. 96. US State Department, Patterns of Global Terrorism, reports for 2000, 2001 and 2003, at www.state.gov/s/c/rls/pgtrpt2000, www.state.gov/s/c/rls/pgtrpt2001 and www.state.gov/documents/organization/20109.pdf 97. Stephen R. Bowers and Kimberly R. Keys, pp. 5–7. 98. Quoted by Brian Solomon, p. 130. 99. John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt and Michele Zanini, ‘Information-age terrorism’, Current History, Vol. 99(636), April 2000, pp. 179–84. 100. See Ellen L. Frost, pp. 1–4; C. Gearty, The Future of Terrorism, Phoenix, London, 1997; Adrian Guelke, The Age of Terrorism and the International Political System, I.B. Tauris, New York, 1995. 101. Theunis J. Kruger, Internasionale en Transnasionale Terrorisme – n Volkeregtelike Perspektief (International and Transnational Terrorism – An International Law Perspective) unpublished LLM dissertation, Potchefstroom University, Potchefstroom, 2001, pp. 40–1; UN Press Release Note 5679, UN Treaties against International Terrorism, 19 September 2001, www.un.org/news/press/ docs/2001/note5679.doc.htm; Rich Mkhondo, ‘Terrorism’, in Roy Gutman and David Rieff (eds), Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know, W.W. Norton, New York, 1999, pp. 349–50. 102. US State Department, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001; G8 Evian Summit 2003, Building International Political Will and Capacity to Combat Terrorism: A G8 Action Plan, http://www.g8.fr/evian/english/navigation/2003 103. Michael Littlejohns, ‘A definition failure by UN duck hunters’, Earth Times News Service, 5 February 2002, www.earthtimes.org/littlejohnsbio.htm; Michael Jordan, ‘Terrorism’s slippery definition eludes UN diplomats’, Christian Science Monitor, 3 February 2002. 104. US State Department, Washington File, ‘UN called to action against terrorism’, 1 October 2001, http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/01100117.htm 105. See Timothy W. Stanley, ‘American strategy after the Cold War: the price of disengagement’, Comparative Strategy, Vol. 10, January/March 1991, pp. 73–82; Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, p. 16. 106. Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, 1996, pp. 16–24; Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 75. 107. Quoted by Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 2. 108. Joseph Nye, ‘What New World Order?’, in William C. Olson and James R. Lee (eds), The Theory and Practice of International Relations, 9th edition, PrenticeHall, Englewood Cliffs, 1994, p. 80. 109. Keith B. Payne, ‘The case for National Missile Defense’, Orbis, Vol. 44(2), Spring 2000, p. 193. 110. Richard Falkenrath, ‘Weapons of mass reaction’, Harvard International Review, Vol. 22(2), Summer 2000, p. 54. 111. Richard Falkenrath, p. 52. 112. Richard K. Herrmann and Vaughn P. Shannon, p. 622. 113. Steven R. Ratner, ‘Aggression’, in Roy Gutman and David Rieff (eds), p. 25. 114. Charles Krauthammer, pp. 23–33; Ellen L. Frost, pp. 1–4; Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, p. 26; Anthony Lake, pp. 45–55; Raymond Tanter, p. ix. 115. David Weissbrodt, quoted by Lowell Dittmer, ‘Chinese human rights and American foreign policy: A realist approach’, The Review of Politics, Vol. 63(3), Summer 2001, p. 424.

Notes 371 116. Quoted by Robert F. Drinan, The Mobilization of Shame: A World View of Human Rights, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2001, pp. x, xi, 198. 117. For Commission resolutions, consult www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridocda.nsf 118. Thomas M. Franck, ‘The emerging right of democratic governance’, The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 86(1), January 1992, pp. 46–91. 119. Freedom in the World 2000, cited by Beeld, 28 December 2000. Also see Chapter 12. 120. On UN instruments, see www.uncjin.org; on others, see OECD Observer, 25 April 2001, www.oecdobserver.org/news/categoryfront.php/id/49/corruption.html 121. Roger Cohen, ‘Ethnic cleansing’, in Roy Gutman and David Rieff (eds), pp. 136–8. 122. Quoted by Roger Cohen, p. 138. 123. Roger Cohen, p. 138. 124. Diane F. Orentlicher, ‘Genocide’, in Roy Gutman and David Rieff (eds), pp. 153–7; Colette Braeckman, ‘Incitement to genocide’, in Roy Gutman and David Rieff (eds), pp. 192–4; Kenneth J. Campbell, Genocide and the Global Village, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2001, p. 21. 125. Mark Huband, ‘Rwanda – The Genocide’, in Roy Gutman and David Rieff (eds), pp. 312–15; Kenneth J. Campbell, p. 34. 126. M. Cherif Bassiouni, ‘Crimes against humanity’, in Roy Gutman and David Rieff (eds), pp. 107–8; William Shawcross, ‘Persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds’, in Roy Gutman and David Rieff (eds), pp. 272–5; Maud S. Beelman, ‘Internal displacement’, in Roy Gutman and David Rieff (eds), p. 199, Spyros Economides, ‘The international criminal court’, in Karen E. Smith and Margot Light (eds), pp. 112–28. 127. Steven R. Ratner, ‘Categories of war crimes’, in Roy Gutman and David Rieff (eds), pp. 374–5. 128. Frank Smythe, ‘Gulf War’, in Roy Gutman and David Rieff (eds), pp. 166–7; Caryle Murphy, ‘Occupation of territory’, in Roy Gutman and David Rieff (eds), pp. 263–4. 129. Quoted in UN Monthly Chronicle, Vol. 14(1), January 1977, p. 103. 130. Mark Penny and Ed Miles, ‘Environmental warfare’, in Roy Gutman and David Rieff (eds), pp. 132–3; Robert Block, ‘Kuwaiti oil wells’, in Roy Gutman and David Rieff (eds), pp. 134–5; Frank Smyth, p. 167. 131. Morton H. Halperin and Kristen Lomasney, ‘Toward a global “guarantee clause”’, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 4(3), July 1993, p. 67; Gareth Porter and Janet W. Brown, Global Environmental Politics, Westview Press, Boulder, 1991, pp. 20–2. 132. Stephen Chan and Andrew J. Williams; Anthony Lake, pp. 45–55; Robert S. Snyder, ‘The U.S. and Third World revolutionary states: understanding the breakdown in relations’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 43(2), June 1999, pp. 265–90. 133. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S Foreign Policy, p. 97; Houman A. Sadri, Revolutionary States, Leaders, and Foreign Relations: A Comparative Study of China, Cuba, and Iran, Praeger, Westport, 1997, pp. 12–13. 134. Charles Krauthammer, pp. 23–33; Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, p. 24; Michael Mandelbaum, p. 34. 135. Daniel Pipes, ‘Attempts by rogue states to influence U.S. policy’, Hearing before the Subcommittee on International Relations, House of Representatives, March 19, 1996, US Government Printing Office, Washington 1996, pp. 49–52. 136. See Noam Chomsky, Rogue States, p. 30. 137. Phil Williams and Stephen Black, pp. 127–51.

372 Notes 138. E.J. Osmanczyk, The Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements, Taylor & Francis, London, 1990, pp. 589–96. Also see Frank Pearce and Michael Woodiwiss (eds), Global Crime Connections: Dynamics and Control, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1993; Alison Jamieson, ‘Global drug trafficking’, Conflict Studies, No. 234, September 1990, pp. 1–41. 139. Daniel Pipes, ‘Attempts by rogue regimes to influence U.S. policy’, Hearing before the Subcommittee on International Relations, House of Representatives, March 19, 1996, US Government Printing Office, Washington, 1996, p. 49. 140. See Jakkie Cilliers and Christian Dietrich (eds), Angola’s War Economy: The Role of Oil and Diamonds, Institute for Security Studies, Pretoria, 2000; Sagaren Naidoo, ‘Natural resources in conflict’, Conflict Trends, No. 4, 2000, pp. 28–33. 141. Elizabeth Rubin, ‘Mercenaries’, in Roy Gutman and David Rieff (eds), p. 249. 142. See Jakkie Cilliers and Peggy Mason (eds), Peace, Profit or Plunder?: The Privatisation of Security in War-torn African Societies, Institute for Security Studies, Halfway House, 1999. 143. Elizabeth Rubin, p. 249. 144. Yearbook of the United Nations 1989, Vol. 43, UN, New York, 1990, pp. 824–7. 145. XII Summit Conference of Heads of State or Government of the Non-aligned Movement, Durban 1998, Basic Documents, Department of Foreign Affairs, Pretoria, 1998, pp. 43–4. 146. Charles W. Kegley and Eugene R. Wittkopf, pp. 222–5; Phil Williams, ‘Transnational criminal organizations and international security’, in Michael Klare and Yogesh Chandrani (eds), pp. 249–69. 147. Phil Williams, ‘Transnational criminal organizations and international security’, p. 268. 148. Daniel Pipes, p. 53. 149. For UN documents, see www.odccp.org 150. Walter A. McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World since 1776, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1997, p. 5. 151. Charles W. Maynes, ‘The perils of (and for) an imperial America’, Foreign Policy, No. 111, Summer 1998, p. 44; Leon T. Hadar, ‘Burma: US foreign policy as a morality play’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 54(2), Spring 2001, p. 412; Richard N Haass, ‘Sanctioning madness’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76(6), November/December 1997, pp. 74–85; Gary C. Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott and Kimberly A. Elliott, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered: History and Current Policy, second edition, Institute for International Economics, Washington, 1990, pp. 5–9. 152. John Bray, 1996, pp. 206–8; Brigitte Stern, ‘Einseitige Wirtschaftssanktionen’, Internationale Politik, Vol. 52(4), April 1997, pp. 7–12. 153. Quoted by Noam Chomsky, Rogue States, p. 4. 154. USIS interview with Stuart Eizenstat, Under-Secretary of State for Economics, Business, and Agricultural Affairs, September 1997, text courtesy of USIS, Johannesburg. 155. A term used by Alexander L George, p. 45. 156. Alexander L. George, p. 51. 157. Daniel Byman, Roger Cliff and Phillip Saunders, ‘US policy options toward an emerging China’, The Pacific Review, Vol. 12(3), 1999, p. 422; Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 74. 158. Remarks by Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright on US sanctions against Burma, 22 April 1997, transcript courtesy of USIA, Johannesburg. 159. Time, 1 July 2002.

Notes 373 160. Time, 30 September 2002. 161. Gerald Segal, ‘Does China matter?’, Foreign Affairs, Volume 78(5), September/ October 1999, p. 30. 162. Quoted by Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 41. 163. Quoted by Keith B. Payne, ‘The case for National Missile Defense’, Orbis, Vol. 44(2), Spring 2000, p. 187. 164. Time, 11 September 2000; Financial Times, 9–10 September 2000; Financial Times, 8–9 April 2000. 165. Space Daily, 5 February 2001, www.spacedaily.com/news 166. Brad Roberts, pp. 71–5; Barry R. Schneider, p. 225; Lynn Davis, US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, ‘Combating nuclear smuggling’, U.S. Department of State Dispatch, Vol. 6(48), 27 November 1995, p. 872. 167. See Michael J. Mazarr, ‘The problem of a rising power: Sino-American relations in the 21st century’, The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Vol. 7(2), Winter 1995, p. 33; Stephen C. Pelletiere, Landpower and Dual Containment: Rethinking America’s Policy in the Gulf, Strategic Studies Institute, Carlisle, 1999, pp. 1–2. 168. See Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink, p. 15; Alan M. Wachman, ‘Does the diplomacy of shame promote human rights in China?’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 22(2), April 2001, pp. 257–81; Robert F. Drinian (whose book on human rights bears the title The Mobilization of Shame). 169. Daniel Byman, Roger Cliff and Phillip Saunders, p. 426. 170. Michael J. Mazarr, p. 33. 171. For example, Kenneth Lieberthal, ‘A new China strategy’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 74(6), November–December 1995, pp. 47–9. 172. Michael J. Mazarr, p. 38; Gerald Segal, ‘East Asia and the “constrainment” of China’, International Security, Vol. 20(4), Spring 1996, pp. 107–35; Audrey K. Cronin and Patrick M. Cronin, ‘The realistic engagement of China’, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 19(1), Winter 1996, p. 142; James Shinn, ‘Conditional engagement with China’, in Shinn (ed), Weaving the Net: Conditional Engagement with China, Council on Foreign Relations Press, New York, 1996, pp. 4–9. 173. Alexander L. George, pp. 50–1. 174. Meghan L. O’Sullivan, ‘Sanctioning “rogue states”’, Harvard International Review, Vol. 22(2), Summer 2000, p. 56. 175. Aryeh Neier, ‘The new double standard’, Foreign Policy, No. 105, Winter 1996–97, p. 95. 176. Gerald Segal, p. 34. 177. Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, p. 151; Gerald Segal, ‘Does China matter?’, pp. 29–31, 35; David M. Lampton, ‘China’, Foreign Policy, No. 110, Spring 1998, p. 13; the collection of articles in the ‘China threat’ debate in Issues & Studies, Vol. 36(1), January/February 2000. Also see James V. Feinerman, ‘Chinese participation in the international legal order: Rogue elephant or team player?’, China Quarterly, No. 141, 1995, pp. 186–210. 178. See Aryeh Neier, pp. 95–100; Audrey K. Cronin and Patrick M. Cronin, p. 164. 179. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 90; Thomas H. Henriksen, Using Power and Diplomacy to Deal with Rogue States, pp. 18–19. 180. Time, 25 October 1999. 181. US Department of State, Washington File, 28 September 2001, Fact Sheet: Sanctions on India and Pakistan, http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/ 01092807.htm

374 Notes 182. Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink, pp. 25–6. On the conditions that could encourage compliance, see Darren G. Hawkins, ‘Domestic responses to international pressure: Human rights in authoritarian Chile’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 3(4), December 1997, pp. 407–9. 183. Vaughn P. Shannon, p. 304. 184. Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink, pp. 22–4. 185. Thomas H. Henriksen, ‘The rise and decline of rogue states’, pp. 368–70. 186. Paul Brooker, p. 4.

Chapter 3

From Turkey to Rhodesia

1. Thomas H. Henriksen, ‘The rise and decline of rogue states’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 54(2), Spring 2001, pp. 350–2. 2. Wayne S. Cole, An Interpretive History of American Foreign Relations, The Dorsey Press, Homewood, Ill., 1968, pp. 65, 83–4, 186; Thomas H. Henriksen, Using Power and Diplomacy to Deal with Rogue States, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, 1999, p. 3; ‘Barbary wars’, FAS Military Analysis Network, http://www.fas.org; “Barbary coast”, Encarta Reference, http://encarta.msn.com 3. Quoted by F.H. Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace: Theory and Practice in the History of Relations between States, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1967, pp. 19, 31–2, 46. 4. AER Boak, Albert Hyma & Preston Slosson, The Growth of Western Civilization, fourth edition, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1951, p. 691. 5. René Albrecht-Carrié, A Diplomatic History of Europe since the Congress of Vienna, Methuen, London, 1967, pp. 40–2. 6. Quoted by Robert E. Harkavy, ‘The pariah state syndrome’, Orbis, Vol. 21(3), 1977, p. 625. 7. René Albrecht-Carrié, p. 93; F.H. Hinsley, p. 235. 8. Quoted by F.S. Northedge and M.J. Grieve, A Hundred Years of International Relations, Duckworth, London, 1971, p. 107. 9. Quoted by Yves Beigbeder, Judging War Criminals: The Politics of International Justice, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1999, p. 81. 10. Yves Beigbeder, pp. 82–4. 11. Robert G. Wesson, Soviet Foreign Policy in Perspective, The Dorsey Press, Homewood, III.,1969, pp. 38–9; George F. Kennan, Soviet Foreign Policy 1917–1941, D. van Nostrand, New York, 1960, pp. 14–17. 12. George F. Kennan, pp. 19–29. 13. Edward Hallett Carr, A History of Soviet Russia: The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–1923, vol. 3, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1966, pp. 109, 114. 14. René Albrecht-Carrié, pp. 335–7, 349. 15. See George F. Kennan, pp. 10ff; Robert G. Wesson, pp. 37ff; Edward Hallett Carr’s series, A History of Soviet Russia: The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–1923, pp. 59ff, The Interregnum 1923–1924, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1965, pp. 243–53, and Socialism in One Country 1924–1926, vol. 3, part 1, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1964, pp. 3ff; Louis Fischer, The Soviets in World Affairs: A History of the Relations between the Soviet Union and the Rest of the World 1917–1929, Vintage Books, New York, 1960, pp. 10ff; Chris Osakwe, The Participation of the Soviet Union in Universal International Organizations, A.W. Sijthoff, Leiden, 1972, pp. 1–5; B. Ponomaryov, A. Gromyko

Notes 375

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48.

and V. Khvostov (eds), History of Soviet Foreign Policy 1917–1945, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 13ff. Edward Hallett Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, p. 427. Quoted by Edward Hallett Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, p. 279. Quoted by John Lewis Gaddis, Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States: An Interpretive History, second edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1990, pp. 94–5, 106. Quoted by Edward Hallett Carr, The Interregnum, p. 247. Edward Hallett Carr, The Interregnum, p. 253. Chris Osakwe, p. 1; Robert G. Wesson, p. 111. Yves Beigbeder, pp. 87–92. Louis L. Snyder, The Weimar Republic: A History of Germany from Ebert to Hitler, D. Van Nostrand, Princeton, 1966, pp. 14, 23, 98. Quoted by Louis L. Snyder, pp. 14, 37. Hagen Schulze, Weimar: Deutschland 1917–1933, Siedler Verlag, 1982, p. 29 (quotation translated from the German). Robert G. Wesson, p. 87; Edward Hallett Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, p. 149. Louis L. Snyder, p. 48; George F. Kennan, p. 47. Erich Eyck, A History of the Weimar Republic, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1967, pp. 303–13. Louis L. Snyder, pp. 72–4; Hagen Schulze, p. 279 (translated from the German). George F. Kennan, p. 60; Erich Eyck, p. 319; Louis L. Snyder, p. 79; Hagen Schulze, p. 29. Louis L. Snyder, pp. 87, 97. Robin Renwick, Economic Sanctions, Harvard University Center for International Affairs, Cambridge, Mass., 1981, pp. 11–12; Mervyn Frost, ‘Collective sanctions in international relations: An historical overview of the theory and practice’, in David Willers and Sonja Begg (eds), South Africa and Sanctions: Genesis and Prospects, SAIIR/SAIIA, Johannesburg, 1979, pp. 8–11. Quoted by Robin Renwick, pp. 17–18. Mervyn Frost, ‘Collective sanctions’, pp. 11–13; Robin Renwick, pp. 17–23. Harry Browne, Spain’s Civil War, Longman, Harlow, 1983, pp. 35–8, 60–5. Eugene K. Keefe et al., Area Handbook for Spain, Foreign Area Studies of the American University, Washington DC, 1976, pp. 263–5. Quoted by Eugene K. Keefe et al., pp. 265–6. Eugene K. Keefe et al., pp. 266–8. Quoted by Eugene K. Keefe et al., p. 269. Quoted by Eugene K Keefe et al., p. 270. Quoted by Max Gallo, Spain under Franco: A History, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1973, p. 173. Robert Graham, Spain: Change of a Nation, Michael Joseph, London, 1984, p. 37; Harry Browne, p. 75; Eugene K. Keefe et al., pp. 257–271. Max Gallo, pp. 181–5. Eugene K. Keefe et al., pp. 274–5; Max Gallo, pp. 188–9. Eugene K. Keefe et al., pp. 276–288; Max Gallo, pp. 196, 203–18. Eugene K. Keefe et al., pp. 277–82; Raymond Carr and Juan Pablo Fusi Aizpurua, Spain: Dictatorship to Democracy, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1981, p. 58; Max Gallo, p. 225. Eugene K. Keefe et al., pp. 257–9, 288; Harry Browne, p. 75. Tom Gallagher, Portugal: A Twentieth-Century Interpretation, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1983, pp. 85–97.

376 Notes 49. Tom Gallagher, pp. 87, 95: R.A.H. Robinson, Contemporary Portugal: A History, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1979, p. 91. 50. R.A.H. Robinson, pp. 92–3; Hugh Kay, Salazar and Modern Portugal, Hawthorn Books, New York, 1970, pp. 182–3. 51. Hugh Kay, p. 190; R.A.H. Robinson, p. 151. 52. Tom Gallagher, p. 151. 53. See Hugh Kay, p. 290; Tom Gallagher, p. 185. 54. Hugh Kay, p. 290. 55. Hugh Kay, p. 438; Tom Gallagher, p. 232. 56. Greg O’Leiry, The Shaping of Chinese Foreign Policy, Croom Helm, London, 1980, p. 29; King C. Chen (ed.), China and the Three Worlds: A Foreign Policy Reader, M.E. Sharpe, White Plains, NY, 1979, pp. 8–9; C.P. Fitzgerald, The Chinese View of Their Place in the World, Oxford University Press, London, 1964, pp. 51–7; Donald P. Whitaker and Rinn-Sup Shinn et al., Area Handbook for the People’s Republic of China, Foreign Area Studies of the American University, Washington DC, 1972, pp. 335, 342; Wolfgang Bartke, Der Diplomatische Dienst der Volksrepublik China nach der Kulturrevolution, Institut für Asienkunde, Hamburg, 1972, p. 5. 57. Quoted by Joseph Camilleri, Chinese Foreign Policy: The Maoist Era and Its Aftermath, Martin Robertson, Oxford, 1980, p. 27. Also see Forster Rhea Dulles, American Policy Toward Communist China 1949–1969, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York, 1972, pp. 6–21. 58. C.P. Fitzgerald, p. 51. 59. Quoted by M. Schaller, The United States and China in the Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press, New York, 1979, p. 139. 60. Donald P. Whitaker and Rinn-Sup Shinn et al., p. 309. 61. Joseph Camilleri, pp. 28, 40; Peter Harris, Political China Observed: A Western Perspective, Croom Helm, London, 1980, p. 151; Donald P. Whitaker and RinnSup Shinn et al., p. 343. 62. Quoted by Joseph Camilleri, p. 41. 63. King C. Chen (ed.), pp. 15–18; Donald P. Whitaker & Rinn-Sup Shinn et al., pp. 337–43. 64. Robert C. North, The Foreign Relations of China, third edition, Duxbury Press, North Scituate, Mass., 1978, p. 9; Michael B. Yahuda, Towards the End of Isolationism, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan , London, 1983, pp. 7, 181. 65. Miao Wang, Impact of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution on Communist China’s Foreign Policy, PhD dissertation, University of Oklahoma, Norman, 1977, pp. 190–1. 66. Miao Wang, pp. 192, 196; Ishwer C. Ojha, Chinese Foreign Policy in an Age of Transition: The Diplomacy of Cultural Despair, Beacon Press, Boston, 1971, pp. 236–55; Kuang-Sheng Liao, Antiforeignism and Modernization in China 1860–1980, Chinese University Press, Hong Kong, 1986, p. 232; Robert G. Sutter, Chinese Foreign Policy After the Cultural Revolution, 1966–1977, Westview Press, Boulder, 1978, p. 7; Shen-yu Dai, China, the Superpowers and the Third World, Chinese University Press, Hong Kong, 1974, p. 7. 67. Yves Beigbeder, p. 94. Also see R.J. Rummell, China’s Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900, Transaction Publishers, Somerset, NJ, 1991. 68. Quoted by David Childs, The GDR: Moscow’s German Ally, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1983, p. 299. 69. David Childs, pp. 299–300; Hanns-Dieter Jacobsen, ‘Strategy and focal points of GDR foreign trade relations’, in Eberhard Schultz et al., (eds), GDR Foreign Policy, M.E. Sharpe, New York, 1982, p. 138. 70. David Childs, pp. 86–7, 307.

Notes 377 71. Hanns-Dieter Jacobsen in Eberhard Schultz et al., (eds), p. 127; David Childs, pp. 301, 311–12. 72. Harry R. Strack, Sanctions: The Case of Rhodesia, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 1978, pp. 8–9. 73. Annette Seegers, Revolution in Africa: The Case of Zimbabwe (1965–1980), PhD dissertation, Loyola University, Chicago, 1984, p. 286. 74. Robert C. Good, UDI: The International Politics of the Rhodesian Rebellion, Faber & Faber, London, 1973, pp. 65–73. Also see R. Kent Rasmussen, Historical Dictionary of Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, The Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ, 1979, p. 286; Elaine Windrich, Britain and the Politics of Rhodesian Independence, Croom Helm, London, 1978, pp. 63–79; Martin Meredith, The Past is Another Country: Rhodesia 1890–1979, Andre Deutsch, London, 1979, p. 56. 75. Quoted by Harry R. Strack, p. 17. 76. Robert C. Good, p. 203. 77. Harry R. Strack, p. 47. 78. Martin Meredith, p. 59. 79. Harry R. Strack, pp. 47–8, 83–4; Robert C. Good, p. 250.

Chapter 4 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

Principal Pariahs of the Cold War Era

Unless otherwise indicated, the factual information in this chapter is taken from the present author’s book, Isolated States: A Comparative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990. Information courtesy of the Taipei Liaison Office, Johannesburg. The Republic of China Yearbook: Taiwan 2001, Government Information Office, Taipei, 2001, pp. 103–9, 154–6, 533–6. Charles Kwarteng, ‘The Arabs, Israel and Black Africa: The politics of courtship’, The Round Table, No. 322, April 1992, pp. 167–81. Robert O. Freedman, ‘Israeli–Russian relations since the collapse of the Soviet Union’, Middle East Journal, Vol. 49(2), Spring 1995, p. 234. William Korey, ‘The UN anti-Israel campaign’, Midstream, Vol. 29(1), January 1983, p. 9. The annual Middle East Contemporary Survey, Europa Publications, London, provides a good record of international responses to Israel’s occupation of Arab territories and its other instances of rule-breaking behaviour. Among the numerous sources for texts of UN resolutions, are http://www/usisrael.org/jsource/UN/unga and www/us-israel.org/jsource/ UN/unga Quoted by Deon Geldenhuys, Isolated States, p. 103. Norman Podhoretz, ‘The abandonment of Israel’, Commentary, Vol. 62(1), July 1976, pp. 23–31; Bernard Lewis, ‘The anti-Zionist resolution’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 55(1), October 1976, pp. 54–64; Irving Louis Horowitz, ‘From pariah people to pariah nation: Jews, Israelis and the Third World’, in Michael Curtis and Susan A. Gitelson (eds), Israel in the Third World, Transaction Books, New Brunswick, 1976, p. 389. The Europa World Yearbook 2001, Europa Publications, London, 2001, pp. 2082–91. United Nations Department of Public Information, Press Release SC/7733, 16 April 2003, http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF See Carlos Portales, ‘External factors and the authoritarian regime’, in Paul W. Drake and Iván Jaksic (eds), The Struggle for Democracy in Chile, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1995, pp. 251–73.

378 Notes 12. 13.

14.

15. 16. 17.

18.

19.

Federico Gil, The Political System of Chile, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1966; Alan Angell, ‘Counterrevolution in Chile’, Current History, 66, January 1974, pp. 6–9. See Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela, A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet, W.W. Norton, London, 1993; Hugh O’Shaughnessy, Pinochet: The Politics of Torture, Latin America Bureau, London. Peter Kornbluh, ‘Declassifying U.S. intervention in Chile’, NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol. 32(6), May/June 1999, pp. 36–42; Gil Merom, ‘Democracy, dependency, and destabilization: The shaking of Allende’s regime’, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 105(1), 1990, pp. 75–95. Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, 14 March 1980, p. 30139. Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, March 1987, p. 34988. Paul W. Drake and Iván Jaksic, ‘Introduction’, in Drake and Jaksic (eds), pp. 13–14; Brian Lovemore, ‘The transition to civilian government in Chile, 1990–1994’, in Drake and Jaksic (eds), pp. 305–33. Sara Pienaar, ‘South Africa from paragon to pariah: Contrasts between the League of Nations and the United Nations’, International Affairs Bulletin, Vol. 9(3), 1985, pp. 5–14. The subject is treated more fully in Pienaar’s book, South Africa and International Relations Between the Two World Wars: The League of Nations Dimension, Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg, 1987. See Greg Mills (ed.), From Pariah to Participant: South Africa’s Evolving Foreign Relations, 1990–1994, SA Institute of International Affairs, Johannesburg, 1994.

Chapter 5

Iraq

1. The Europa World Year Book 1996, Europa Publications, London, 1996, p. 1623; Christine M. Helms, Iraq: Eastern Flank of the Arab World, Brookings Institution, Washington DC, 1984, pp. 21–4. 2. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1623. 3. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1623; Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Containment after the Cold War, Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Washington DC, 2000, p. 141. 4. Ahmed Hashim, ‘Iraq, the pariah state’, Current History, Vol. 91(561), January 1992, p. 12. 5. Christine Gosden, ‘Why I went, what I saw’, Washington Post, 11 March 1998. Gosden, a British medical geneticist, visited Halabja ten years after the chemical attack to examine the long-term genetic damage caused. 6. The Europa World Year Book 1996, pp. 1623–4; Christine M. Helms, pp. 30–4; Ewan W. Anderson and Khalil H. Rashidian, Iraq and the Continuing Middle East Crisis, Pinter Publishers, London, 1991, pp. 26–31; Anthony H. Cordesman, Iran and Iraq: The Threat from the Northern Gulf, Westview Press, Boulder, 1994, pp. 127–41. 7. Thomas Koszinowski, ‘Iraq as a regional power’, in Derek Hopwood et al. (eds), Iraq: Power and Society, Ithaca Press, Reading, 1993, p. 284; Ahmed Hashim, ‘Iraq, the pariah state’, p. 15; Anthony H. Cordesman, Iran and Iraq, pp. 141–9. 8. Thomas Koszinowski, pp. 283–6; Geoff Simons, The Scourging of Iraq: Sanctions, Law and Natural Justice, second edition, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1998, p. 1. 9. Amatzia Baram and Barry Rubin, ‘Introduction’, in Baram and Rubin (eds), Iraq’s Road to War, Macmillan, – now Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1994, p. x.

Notes 379 10. Phebe Marr, ‘Iraq’s uncertain future’, Current History, Vol. 90 (552), January 1991, p. 3. 11. Thomas Koszinowski, pp. 286–7; Amatzia Baram, ‘The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait: Decision-making in Baghdad’, in Baram and Rubin (eds), Iraq’s Road to War, p. 26. 12. Phebe Marr, p. 4. 13. Thomas Koszinowski, p. 287. 14. Amatzia Baram and Barry Rubin, ‘Introduction’, p. xii; Helen C. Metz (ed.), Iraq: A Country Study, Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC, 1990, p. 200; Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1624. 15. Thomas Koszinowski, pp. 291–3; Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, Iraq since 1958, I.B. Tauris & Co., London, 1990, pp. 270–1. 16. Thomas Koszinowski, p. 292. 17. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1624; Amatzia Baram, ‘The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait’, pp. 15–16; Helen C. Metz (ed.), Iraq: A Country Study, p. xxviii. 18. Alan Dowty, ‘Sanctioning Iraq: The limits of the new world order’, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 17(3), Summer 1994, p. 179. 19. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 140; Ahmed Hashim, p. 12; The Europa World Year Book 1996, pp. 1625–6. 20. Bruce W. Jentleson, With Friends like These: Reagan, Bush, and Saddam, W.W. Norton, New York, 1994, pp. 218–9. 21. Quoted by Geoff Simons, Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1994, pp. 35, 327. 22. For example, Robert Fisk in The Independent, 30 December 2000; Bruce Riedel, a staff member of Clinton’s National Security Council, quoted by George S Hishmeh, ‘Lifting sanctions on Iraq seen unlikely by top Clinton aide’, 3 June 1997, article courtesy of USIA, Johannesburg; Eric Pooley, ‘Facing down a despot’, Time, 24 November 1997, pp. 22–8; Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi, Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography, Brassey’s London, 1991. 23. Dawid van Lill, ‘Politiek maak mens siek!’ Insig, December 1998, p. 33; James Gow, ‘Introduction’, in Gow (ed.), Iraq, the Gulf Conflict and the World Community, Brassey’s (UK), London, 1993, p. 2; others simply depicted Saddam as ‘mad’ (quoted by Geoff Simons, The Scourging of Iraq, p. 97). 24. Larry Hedrick, Rogue’s Gallery: America’s Foes from George III to Saddam Hussein, Brassey’s (US), Washington DC, 1992. 25. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, President Delivers State of the Union Address, 29 January 2002. 26. White House, Office of the Press Secretary, President’s Radio Address, 22 March 2003, and President’s Radio Address, 5 April 2003, both on the White House website. 27. 10 Downing Street, Prime Minister’s Address to the Nation, 22 March 2003, and Blair and Bush: Messages to the Iraqi People, 10 April 2003, both on the 10 Downing Street website. 28. Human Rights Watch Middle East, Iraq’s Crime of Genocide: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1995, p. xvii. 29. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1626. 30. Bruce W. Jentleson, p. 76. 31. Thomas Koszinowski, pp. 292–3; Time, 24 November 1997. 32. Quoted by Amatzia Baram, ‘The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait’, p. 11. 33. Commission of the European Communities, XXVth General Report of the Activities of the European Communities 1991, Office for Official Publications of

380 Notes

34.

35.

36. 37.

38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47.

48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56.

the European Communities, Brussels, 1992, p. 342. (Israel did not participate in the war against Iraq either before or after the missile strikes.) Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, Iraq since 1958, pp. 274–5; Bruce W. Jentleson, pp. 221–6; Geoff Simons, Iraq from Sumer to Saddam, pp. 284–95; Anthony H. Cordesman, Iran and Iraq, pp. 179, 232; William Lowther, Iraq and the Supergun: Gerald Bull – The True Story of Saddam Hussein’s Dr. Doom, Pan Books, London, 1991. Time, 22 October 2001, 16 September 2002, 30 September 2002; US Government White Paper 3050, Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, 18 February 1998, text courtesy of USIS, Johannesburg. Time, 22 October 2001, 16 September 2002 and 30 September 2002; US Government White Paper 3050, Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. Press statement, 9 September 2002, on the publication of an IISS Strategic Dossier,Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Net Assessment, http://www.iiss. org/news-more.php?itemID-88 British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government, September 2002, www.fco.gov.uk/ Files/Kfile/iraqdossier.pdf Time, 22 October 2001, 16 September 2002, 23 September 2002 and 30 September 2002 Anthony H. Cordesman, Iran and Iraq, p. 179. From the IISS Military Balance 1990–1991, cited by Thomas Koszinowski, p. 292. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1606. Ewan W. Anderson and Khalil H. Rashidian, Iraq and the Continuing Middle East Crisis, Pinter Publishers, London, 1991, pp. 114–5. The allies’ war aims are discussed more fully under foreign action against Iraq. Commission of the European Communities, XXIVth General Report on the Activities of the European Communities 1990, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Brussels, 1991, pp. 344–6. Commission of the European Communities, XXVth General Report on the Activities of the European Communities 1991, p. 342. Commission of the European Communities, XXIVth General Report on the Activities of the European Communities 1990, pp. 344–6; David J. Scheffer, ‘Use of force after the Cold War: Panama, Iraq, and the new world order’, in Louis Henkin et al., Right v. Might: International Law and the Use of Force, second edition, Council on Foreign Relations Press, New York, 1991, pp. 141–2. Thomas Koszinowski, pp. 297–8. Thomas Koszinowski, p. 299; Amatzia Baram, ‘The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait’, p. 25. Quoted by Geoff Simons, Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam, p. 38 Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iraq: Sanctions and Beyond, pp. 183–9. Thomas Koszinowski, p. 293. Human Rights Watch Middle East, Iraq’s Crime of Genocide, pp. xv–xvii. See Iraq: Evidence of Torture, Amnesty International, London, 1981; Walid Al-Hilli, Iraq: Facts and Future Outlook, Mustafa Association, London, 1992; Fran Hazelton (ed.), Iraq since the Gulf War: Prospects for Democracy, Zed Books, London, 1994. Quoted by Geoff Simons, Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam, p. 303. Ahmed Hashim, ‘Iraq: Fin de regime?’, Current History, Vol. 95(597), January 1996, p. 13.

Notes 381 57. Bulletin of the European Communities, Vol. 25(3), 1992, p. 85 and Vol. 25(6), 1992, p. 95. 58. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1626; Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 143. 59. Quoted by Geoff Simons, Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam, p. 302. 60. Ahmed Hashim, ‘Iraq: Fin de regime?’, p. 15. 61. Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, p. 281. 62. Quoted by Bruce W. Jentleson, p. 219. 63. Ann Clwyd, ‘The abuse of human rights in Iraq’, in Iraq: Sancions and Human Rights, War on Want, London, ca. 1996, p. 8; Geoff Simons, Iraq – Primus Inter Pariahs: A Crisis Chronology, 1997–98, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1999, p. 50. 64. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1623. 65. Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, p. 279; Ahmed Hashim, ‘Iraq, the pariah state’, p. 16. 66. Geoff Simons, Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam, p. 287. 67. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1626. 68. Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iraq: Sanctions and Beyond, pp. 193, 286–9. 69. Barry Rubin, ‘The United States and Iraq: From appeasement to war’, in Baram and Rubin (eds), Iraq’s Road to War, p. 256. 70. Barry Rubin, ‘The United States and Iraq’, p. 260. 71. Amatzia Baram, ‘The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait’, p. 10. 72. Ahmed Hashim, ‘Iraq, the pariah state’, p. 16. 73. Commission of the European Communities, XXIVth General Report on the Activities of the European Communities 1990, Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1624. 74. See Security Council resolutions 707 (15 August 1991), 712 (19 September 1991), 715 (11 October 1991), 949 (15 October 1994), 1060 (12 June 1996), 1115 (21 June 1997), 1134 (23 October 1997), 1194 (9 September 1998), and 1205 (5 November 1998. 75. Hans Blix, ‘Iraq will benefit from weapons inspection’, Address to the Washington Institute’s Policy Forum, 11 January 2002, http://metimes.com/ 2K2/issue2002-4/reg/iraq_will_benefit.htm 76. Time, 23 September 2002 and 30 September 2002. 77. 10 Downing Street, Blair and Bush: Messages to the Iraqi People, 10 April 2003. 78. Anthony H. Cordesman, Iraq and the War of Sanctions: Conventional Threats and Weapons of Mass Destruction, Praeger, Westport, 1999, p. xvii. 79. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1626; Bulletin of the European Union, 10, 1994, p. 58. 80. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1626. 81. Bulletin of the European Union, 10, 1994, p. 58. 82. Geoff Simons, The Scourging of Iraq, p. 56. 83. Quoted by Geoff Simons, Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam, pp. 14–15. 84. Quoted by Geoff Simons, Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam, p. 24. 85. ‘Undoing Saddam Hussein’, editorial, Washington Post, 31 March 1997. 86. White House, Office of the Press Secretary, President’s remarks at the United Nations General Assembly, 12 September 2002, http:///www.whitehouse.gov/ news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html 87. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, President’s Radio Address, 22 March 2003.

382 Notes 88. David J. Scheffer, ‘Use of force after the Cold War’, pp. 145–6. 89. Quoted by Geoff Simons, The Scourging of Iraq, p. 59. 90. Rick Francona, Ally to Adversary: An Eyewitness Account of Iraq’s Fall from Grace, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1999. 91. Geoff Simons, Iraq – Primus inter Pariahs, p. 46. 92. Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, p. 37; Helmut Hubel, ‘Western Europe and Iraq: The cases of France and West Germany’, in Amatzia Baram and Barry Rubin (eds), Iraq’s Road to War, pp. 273–83; Helen C. Metz (ed.), Iraq: A Country Study, pp. 202–6; Bruce W. Jentleson, p. 15. 93. Quoted by Jo-Anne Hart, ‘American objectives in the crisis’, in James Gow (ed.), Iraq, the Gulf Conflict and the World Community, p. 34 and by Bruce W. Jentleson, p. 139. 94. See Barry Rubin, ‘The United States and Iraq’, pp. 255–63; Geoff Simons, Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam, p. 291; Bruce W. Jentleson, pp. 15–21, 94–6. 95. Bruce W. Jentleson, p. 105. 96. Andrew P. Cortell and James W. Davis, ‘How do international institutions matter? The domestic impact of international rules and norms’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 40(4), December 1996, pp. 464–72 97. Anthony H. Cordesman, Iran and Iraq, p. 150; Geoff Simons, The Scourging of Iraq, pp. 4–15, 201–4. 98. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1626. 99. Time, 28 December 1998–4 January 1999. 100. Time, 1 July 2002. 101. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, President’s Radio Address, 5 April 2003. 102. 10 Downing Street, Coalition Victory is Certain, 24 March 2003, 10 Downing Street website; 10 Downing Street, Blair & Bush: Messages to the Iraqi People, 10 April 2003. 103. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, President’s Radio Address, 22 March 2003; 10 Downing Street, Blair & Bush: Messages to the Iraqi People, 10 April 2003. 104. Martin Shaw, ‘Sanctions in perspective’, in Iraq: Sanctions and Human Rights, War on Want, London, ca. 1996, p. 4. 105. Commission of the European Communities, XXIVth General Report on the Activities of the European Communities 1990, pp. 290–1. 106. Jo-Anne Hart, pp. 44–5. 107. Alan Dowty, p. 190; United Nations Security Council, Report of the SecretaryGeneral pursuant to paragraph 5 of resolution 1302 (2000), UN, New York, 29 November 2000, p. 21; George S. Hishmeh, ‘Lifting sanctions on Iraq seen unlikely by top Clinton aide’, 3 June 1997, article courtesy of USIA, Johannesburg. 108. Geoff Simons, Iraq – Primus inter Pariahs, p. 57; Geoff Simons, The Scourging of Iraq, pp. 214–42. 109. Quoted by Geoff Simons, The Scourging of Iraq, p. 105. 110. Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to paragraph 5 of resolution 1302 (2000), p. 21. 111. George A. Lopez, ‘Economic sanctions and failed states: Too little too late and sometimes too much?’ A paper prepared for the Purdue conference on failed states, 8–11 April 1999, www.ippu.purdue.edu/conference; Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iraq: Sanctions and Beyond, pp. 124–60; Ahmed Hashim, ‘Iraq, the pariah state’, p. 16; Geoff Simons, Iraq – Primus inter Pariahs, pp. 55–60.

Notes 383 112. Quoted in Keesing’s Record of World Events, March 2000, p. 43491. 113. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1626; Anthony H. Cordesman & Ahmed S. Hashim, Iraq: Sanctions and Beyond, pp. 2–3; Geoff Simons, The Scourging of Iraq, pp. 67–70. 114. Gary C. Gambill, ‘Syria’s foreign relations: Iraq’, Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, Vol. 3(3), March 2001, pp. 1–3; ‘Saddam breaks oil blockade with Iran’s help’, 4 July 2000, http://www.smh.com.au/news/0007/04/world/world11.html 115. Time, 2 and 30 October 2000. 116. Time, 21 August 2000. 117. Alan Dowty, p. 180; Campaign against Sanctions on Iraq, UN Security Council resolutions relating to Iraq, www.cam.ac.uk; David J. Scheffer, ‘Use of force after the Cold War’, p. 147. 118. Alan Dowty, p. 180 119. Quoted in Washington Times, 2 May 1997. 120. Anthony H. Cordesman, Iraq and the War of Sanctions, pp. 175–220; Geoff Simons, The Scourging of Iraq, pp. 77–98; Time, 18 January 1999. The UN Chronicle carried regular reports on the activities of UNSCOM and IAEA inspectors in Iraq. 121. Campaign against sanctions on Iraq, UN Security Council resolutions relating to Iraq, www.cam.ac.uk./societies; Anthony H. Cordesman, Iraq and the War of Sanctions, p. 3; Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 146; US Department of State, Background Note: Iraq, December 2001, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/ bgn/6804.htm 122. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1626; Geoff Simons, Iraq – From Sumer to Saddam, p. 46. 123. See resolutions 1111 (4 June 1997), 1143 (4 December 1997), 1153 (20 February 1998), 1210 (24 November 1998), 1242 (21 May 1999), 1281 (10 December 1999), 1302 (8 June 2000), 1330 (4 December 2000); Report of the SecretaryGeneral pursuant to paragraph 5 of resolution 1302 (2000), p. 22; Time, 19 June 2000. 124. UN Chronicle, June 1995, pp. 31–2; Introductory Statement by Benon V. Sevan, Executive Director of the Iraq Programme, at the Informal Consultations of the Security Council, UN Office of the Iraq Programme, 6 June 2000, www.globalpolicy.org/ security/sanction/iraq1; US Department of State, Background Note: Iraq, December 2001. 125. UN Office of the Iraq Programme Oil-for-Food, 21 May 2003, http://222.un.org/ Depts/oip/ 126. The annual General Report on the Activities of the European Communities/Union, published by the European Commission, provides details of EC/EU humanitarian aid to Iraq. 127. Alain Gresh, ‘Oil for food: The true story’, Le Monde Diplomatique, October 2000, www.globalpolicy.org/security 128. Quoted by Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 101. 129. Quoted by Geoff Simons, Iraq – From Sumer to Saddam, p. 35. 130. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 126; Geoff Simons, Iraq – From Sumer to Saddam, pp. 35–8. Also see George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, ‘Why we didn’t remove Saddam’, Time, 2 March 1998. 131. Anthony H. Cordesman, Iraq and the War of Sanctions, pp. xvii–xviii; Johanna McGeary, ‘Taking out Saddam’, Time, 30 November 1998. 132. Time, 2 December 2002. 133. Anthony H. Cordesman, Iraq and the War of Sanctions, p. xxiii.

384 Notes 134. James Gow, ‘Introduction’, p. 1. 135. Quoted by Geoff Simons, Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam, p. 25. Also see ‘Undoing Saddam Hussein’, editorial, Washington Post, 31/3/1997, and David J. Scheffer, pp. 143–4. 136. Human Rights Watch Middle East, Iraq’s Crime of Genocide, p. xviii. 137. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, President discusses Iraqi Freedom Progress in Radio Address, 29 March 2003, the White House website; President’s Radio Address, 5 April 2003. 138. Quoted by Anthony H. Cordesman, Iraq and the War of Sanctions, p. xix. 139. Quoted by Anthony H. Cordesman, Iraq and the War of Sanctions, p. xix. 140. Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iraq: Sanctions and Beyond, pp. 183, 204. 141. Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iraq: Sanctions and Beyond, pp. 205–8. 142. Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iraq: Sanctions and Beyond, pp.153–5; The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1626; Christine M. Helms, pp. 21–4.

Chapter 6

Iran

1. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Iran: A Country Study, Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC, 1989, p. xxv; Shireen T. Hunter, Iran and the World: Continuity in a Revolutionary Decade, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1990, p. 1; The Europa World Year Book 1996, Europa Publications, London, 1996, p. 1604; John L. Esposito, ‘The Iranian revolution: a ten-year perspective’, in Esposito (ed.), The Iranian Revolution: Its Global Impact, Florida International University Press, Miami, 1990, p. 17. 2. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Iran, p. xxvi; The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1604; Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Containment after the Cold War, Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Washington DC, 2000, p. 160. 3. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1604. 4. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1604. 5. Zachary Karabell, ‘Iran and human rights’, in David P. Forsythe (ed.), Human Rights and Comparative Foreign Policy, United Nations University Press, Tokyo, 2000, pp. 206–7. 6. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Iran, p. 221. 7. Shireen T. Hunter, pp. 51–2; R.K. Ramazani, ‘Iran’s foreign policy: Contending orientations’, in Ramazani (ed.), Iran’s Revolution: The Search for Consensus, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1990, p. 49; R.K. Ramazani, ‘Iran’s export of the revolution: Politics, ends, and means’, in John L. Esposito (ed.), The Iranian Revolution, p. 41; Mark J. Gasiorowski, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah: Building a Client State in Iran, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1991; Moshe Efrat and Jacob Bercovitch (eds), Superpowers and Client States in the Middle East, Routledge, London, 1991. 8. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1604; Helen C. Metz (ed.), Iran, pp. 146–7. 9. R.K. Ramazani, ‘Iran’s foreign policy’, p. 49. 10. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1604; Helen C. Metz (ed.), Iran, pp. xxvii, 197, 329. 11. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1604; Shireen T. Hunter, pp. 57–9. 12. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1604; Shireen T. Hunter, p. 1.

Notes 385 13. US journalist Robin Wright, quoted by David Menashri, Revolution at a Crossroads: Iran’s Domestic Politics and Regional Ambitions, Policy Paper No. 43, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Washington DC, 1997, p. 84. Also see Mehran Kamrava, The Political History of Modern Iran: From Tribalism to Theocracy, Praeger, Westport, 1992. 14. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Iran, p. 295; Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1604; James A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American–Iranian Relations, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1988, pp. 270–3. 15. Shireen T. Hunter, pp. 1–2. 16. Jahangir Amuzegar, Iran’s Economy under the Islamic Republic, I.B. Tauris & Co, London, 1993, pp. 310–16. 17. Eliyahu Kanovsky, Iran’s Economic Morass, Policy Paper No. 44, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Washington DC, 1997, p. ix. 18. R.K. Ramazani, ‘Iran’s foreign policy’, in Ramazani (ed.), Iran’s Revolution, p. 52; David Menashri, Iran: A Decade of War and Revolution, Holmes & Meier, New York, 1990, p. 98. 19. Shireen T. Hunter, pp. 37, 46. 20. Quoted by R.K. Ramazani, ‘Iran’s export of the revolution’, p. 48. 21. Quoted by R.K. Ramazani, ‘Iran’s foreign policy’, p. 55. 22. Roger M. Savory, ‘Religious dogma and the economic and political imperatives of Iranian foreign policy’, in Miron Rezun (ed.), Iran at the Crossroads: Global Relations in a Turbulent Decade, Westview Press, Boulder, 1990, p. 55. 23. Quoted by David Menashri, Iran: A Decade of War and Revolution, p. 247. 24. Quoted by John L. Esposito, ‘The Iranian revolution: A ten-year perspective’, p. 31. 25. Quoted by R.K. Ramazani, ‘Iran’s foreign policy’, p. 55. 26. Quoted by David Menashri, Iran: A Decade of War and Revolution, p. 203. 27. Quoted by John L. Esposito, ‘The Iranian revolution: A ten-year perspective’, p. 35. 28. Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1605; Helen C. Metz (ed.), Iran, p. xxxi (quoting Khomeini), 226. 29. Europa World Year Book 1996, pp. 1606–7. 30. Quoted by John Calabrese, Revolutionary Horizons: Regional Foreign Policy in PostKhomeini Iran, St. Martin’s, New York, 1994, p. 145. 31. Shireen T. Hunter, pp. 40–5. 32. Anoushiravan Ehteshami, After Khomeini: The Iranian Second Republic, Routledge, London, 1995, pp. 145–7. 33. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1607. 34. Shaul Bakhash, ‘Iran’s remarkable election’, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 9(1), January 1998, p. 80. 35. Quoted by Stephen C. Fairbanks, ‘Iran: No easy answers’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 54(2), Spring 2001, p. 457. 36. Human Rights Watch, Briefing to the 59th Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, 27 February 2003, http://www.hrw.org/un/chr59/iran.htm 37. Quoted by Ali Massoud Ansari, ‘They shall still drink Coke: In defence of critical dialogue’, The World Today, Vol. 52(8&9), August/September 1996, p. 210. 38. Quoted by Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: The Dilemmas of Dual Containment, Westview Press, Boulder, 1997, p. 13. 39. Quoted by Ali Massoud Ansari, p. 210. 40. Anthony Lake, ‘Confronting backlash states’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73(2), March–April 1994, pp. 45–55. 41. Yehezkel Dror, Crazy States: A Counterconventional Strategic Problem, Heath Lexington Books, Lexington, MA, 1971.

386 Notes 42. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Iran, p. 232. 43. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p.1607; David Menashri, Revolution at a Crossroads, p. 81. 44. See, for instance, European Commission, General Report on the Activities of the European Union 1995, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Brussels, 1996, p. 337. 45. Eric Hooglund, ‘The United States and Iran, 1981–9’, in Anoushiravan Ehteshami and Manshour Varasteh (eds), Iran and the International Community, Routledge, London, 1991, p. 36. 46. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1608; Ahmed Hashim, The Crisis of the Iranian State, Adelphi Paper 296, IISS, London 1995, p. 45. 47. Quoted by Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, p. 126. 48. Shireen T. Hunter, pp. 40–5. 49. R.K. Ramazani, ‘Iran’s foreign policy’, p. 49. 50. R.K. Ramazani, ‘Iran’s foreign policy’, p. 57. 51. Quoted by Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, p. 125. 52. Jamal S. al-Suwaidi, ‘The Gulf security dilemma: The Arab Gulf states, the United States, and Iran’, in Jamal S al-Sawaidi (ed.), Iran and the Gulf: A Search for Stability, The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies Research, Abu Dhabi, 1996, pp. 327–9. 53. Quoted by Shahram Chubin, Iran’s National Security Policy: Capabilities, Intentions & Impact, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, 1994, p. 52. 54. Ahmed Hashim, The Crisis of the Iranian State, 1995, p. 69; Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 171; Time, 3 August 1998. 55. Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, pp. 281–305 and p. 266 for the direct quotation; Shahram Chubin, p. 47; Mohammad Mohadessin, Islamic Fundamentalism: The New Global Threat, Seven Locks Press, Washington DC, 1993, pp. 129–39; Stephen C. Fairbanks, p. 455. 56. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, President Delivers State of the Union Address, Washington DC, 29 January 2002. 57. The U.S.: Iran working on nuclear weapons, CNN.com/world, 13 December 2002,http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/12/13/iran.nuclear/index.html 58. Time, 17 March 2003; Beeld, 15 May 2003. U.S. 59. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1607; Patrick Clawson, Iran’s Challenge to the West: How, When, and Why, Policy Paper No. 33, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Washington DC, 1993, p. xii. 60. Bulletin of the European Communities, Vol. 25(12), 1992, p. 37. 61. Ellen Laipson, ‘Symposium: U.S. policy toward Iran: From containment to relentless pursuit?’, Middle East Policy, Vol. 4(1&2), September 1995, p. 1. 62. R.K. Ramazani, ‘Iran’s foreign policy’, p. 49. 63. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Iran, p. xxx; Shireen T. Hunter, pp. 115, 174–6; Edgar O’Ballance, Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism, 1979–95: The Iranian Connection, New York University Press, New York, 1997; Mohammad Mohaddessin, pp. 113–24. 64. Stephen C. Fairbanks, p. 447. 65. Quoted by David Menashri, Iran: A Decade of War and Revolution, p. 204. 66. Shireen T. Hunter, pp. 62–3. 67. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1607; Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, p. 147; Gary C. Hufbauer et al.,

Notes 387

68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

88. 89. 90. 91. 92.

93.

94.

95. 96.

Economic Sanctions Reconsidered: Supplemental Case Studies, second edition, Institute for International Economics, Washington DC, 1990, p. 583. Thomas Sancton, ‘Iran’s state of terror’, Time, 11 November 1996. Quoted by Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, p. 13. Zachary Karabell, p. 207. Time, 29 June 1998. Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, pp. 147–8; Time, 29 June 1998. Iran: State of Terror: An Account of Terrorist Assassinations by Iranian Agents, Parliamentary Human Rights Group, London, June 1996, p. 2. Iran: State of Terror, pp. 3, 6–7. Declaration by the Presidency on behalf of the European Union on Iran, April 10, 1997, www.eurunion.org/news/press/1997 The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1607. Quoted in Time, 8 October 2001. International Herald Tribune, 26 September 2001. David H. Saltiel and Jason S. Purcell, ‘Moving past dual containment: Iran, Iraq, and the future of U.S. policy in the Gulf’, Bulletin of the Atlantic Council of the United States, Vol. 33(1), January 2002, p. 1; International Herald Tribune, 26 September 2001. Quoted in Time, 8 October 2001. See, for instance, CIA Director George Tenet, cited in Time, 21 February 2000. www.state.gov/documents/organization/20109.pdf The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, President Delivers State of the Union Address, 29 January 2002. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Iran, p. 222. Quoted by Mohammad Mohadessin, p. 37. Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, p. 121. Quoted by Barry Rubin, ‘The state of U.S.–Iran relations’, in Barry M. Rosen (ed.), Iran Since the Revolution: Internal Dynamics, Regional Conflict, and the Superpowers, Columbia University Press, New York, 1985, p. 108. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Iran, pp. xxx, 222–9, 233; John L. Esposito, ‘The Iranian revolution: A ten-year perspective’, pp. 33, 53. Antony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, pp. 148–51. R.K. Ramazani, ‘Iran’s foreign policy’, p. 58; Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1608. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1604. See, for example, Iran: Violations of Human Rights 1987–1990, Amnesty International Publications, London, 1990, and annual reports on Iran available at www.amnesty.org/ailib/aireport European Commission, General Report on the Activities of the European Union 1997, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Brussels, 1998, p. 256. Miron Rezun, ‘The internal struggle, the Rushdie affair, and the prospects for the future’, in Rezun (ed.), Iran at the Crossroads, pp. 213–15; Keesing’s Record of World Events, January 2000, p. 43386. Quoted in Amnesty International Annual Report 1998: Iran, www.amnesty.org.ailib/ aireport/ar98 Quoted in Amnesty International Annual Report 2000: Iran, www.web.amnesty. org/web.ar2000web.nsf Also see US Department of State, Iran Country Report on

388 Notes

97. 98.

99.

100. 101. 102.

103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124.

Human Rights Practices for 1998, www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/1998; Human Rights Watch World Report 1999: Iran, www.humanrightswatch.com/hrw/ worldreport99 Amnesty International Report 2001: Iran, www.web.amnesty.org.web.ar2001; Stephen C. Fairbanks, p. 461. Report on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, prepared by the Special Representative of the Commission on Human Rights, Mr. Maurice Danby Copithorne, pursuant to Commission resolution 2000/28, UN Economic and Social Council, 16 January 2001, p. 3. Amnesty International, Media Briefing, 2 May 2002, http://web.amnesty.org/ library/Index/engIOR410152002?Open?Open; The Charlotte Observer, 27 February 2003, http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/2003/02/27/news/5272512.htm; Human Rights Watch, UN: Setback on human rights votes, 16 April 2003, http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/04/unchr041603.htm The Charlotte Observer, 27 February 2003. Human Rights Watch, Briefing to the 59th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, 27 February 2003. The Soviet Union also featured in Tehran’s den of demons, variously designated the ‘Red, ‘Second’ and ‘Lesser Satan’. See Helen C. Metz (ed.), Iran, pp. xxx, 225; David Menashri, Iran: A Decade of War and Revolution, p. 287; Roger M. Savory, p. 52. Quoted by Anthony Parsons, ‘Iran and Western Europe’, in R.K. Ramazani (ed.), Iran’s Revolution, p. 71. Quoted by Barry Rubin, ‘The state of U.S.–Iran relations’, p. 99. Quoted by David Menashri, Iran: A Decade of War and Revolution, p. 205. Shireen T. Hunter, pp. 46, 59; David Menashri, A Decade of War and Revolution, p. 245 (for the quote on Israel). Shireen T. Hunter, pp. 70–1. Ahmed Hashim, The Crisis of the Iranian State, p. 46. Quoted by Anthony H. Cordesman, Iran’s Military Forces in Transition: Conventional Threats and Weapons of Mass Destruction, Praeger, Westport, 1999, p. 5. Shireen T. Hunter, pp. 59, 62. Time, 19 January 1998. Quoted by Anthony H. Cordesman, Iran’s Military Forces in Transition, p. 5. Time, 29 June 1998. Time, 29 June 1998. Stephen C. Fairbanks, pp. 459–61. Shireen T. Hunter, pp. 54, 140. Quoted by James A. Bill, p. 275. Robin Wright, ‘Dateline Tehran: A revolution implodes’, Foreign Policy, No. 103, Summer 1996, p. 161. Ahmed Hashim, The Crisis of the Iranian State, p. 47. The annual reports are available on the US State Department website, http://www.state.gov/www/global/narcotics_law US Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report 2002, March 2003, http://www.state.gov/g/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2002/html/17950.htm Quoted by Gary C. Hufbauer et al., Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, p. 579. Quoted by Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, p. 3. Associated Press, Washington DC, 23 June 1998, courtesy of USIS, Johannesburg.

Notes 389 125. Quoted by Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, p. 13. 126. Time, 22 October 2001. 127. Quoted by Gary Sick, ‘Iran: The adolescent revolution’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 49(1), Summer 1995, p. 151. 128. Quoted by Gary Sick, ‘Symposium: U.S. policy toward Iran’, Middle East Policy, Vol. 4(1&2), September 1995, p. 6. 129. Both quoted by Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 173, 177, respectively. 130. Bulletin of the European Communities, Vol. 25(12), 1992, p. 37. 131. See, for example, Commission of the European Communities, XXVIIth General Report on the Activities of the European Communities 1993, p. 270; European Commission, General Report on the Activities of the European Union 1994, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Brussels, 1995, p. 305; General Report on the Activities of the European Union 1995, p. 337; General Report on the Activities of the European Union 1996, p. 326. 132. European Union Declaration on Iran, 29 April 1997, www.eurunion.org/news/ press/1997 133. EU External Relations, ‘The Iranian choice’ – an opportunity to embrace the family of nations, speech by Chris Patten, Teheran, 5 February 2003, http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/news/patten/sp03_56.htm 134. Quoted in Iran: State of Terror, pp. 1–2. 135. Published by the UN Economic and Social Council and available on the Internet at www.unhcr.ch/huridocda.nsf) 136. Amnesty International Report 1997: Iran, www.amnesty.org/ailib/aireport/ar97) 137. Quoted in Iran: State of Terror, p. 1. 138. Martin Wright, Iran: The Khomeini Revolution, Longman, Harlow, 1989, pp. 61–2. 139. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Pelletreau in March 1995, quoted by Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, p. 13. 140. Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, p. 9. 141. Shireen T. Hunter, p. 63. 142. Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmned S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, p. 9; Shireen T. Hunter, p. 64. 143. Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, pp. 9–10; Patrick Clawson, Iran’s Challenge to the West: How, When, and Why, Policy Paper No. 33, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Washington DC, 1993, p. 89 (the latter source containing the direct citation from the Act); Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 171–2. 144. Arms Control Association, Washington levies sanctions for WMD-related transfers to Iran, June 2002, http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2002_06/wmdjune02.asp 145. European Union Declaration on Iran, www.eurunion.org/news/press/1997 146. The Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1607; Iran: State of Terror, p. 4; Shireen T. Hunter, p. 143. 147. Anoushiravan Ehteshami, ‘Iran and the European Community’, in Ehteshami and Manshour Varasteh (eds), Iran and the International Community, p. 71. 148. Patrick Clawson, p. 95. 149. Declaration by the Presidency on behalf of the European Union on Iran, April 10, 1997, and European Union Declaration on Iran, both at www.eurunion.org/ news/press/1997

390 Notes 150. ‘Iran: EU set to open high-level dialogue with Teheran’, Radio Free Europe, 10 June 1998, www.rfel.org/nca/features/1998; Iran news editorial, 20 May 1999, www.salamiran.org/Media/IranNews; EU External Relations, ‘The Iranian choice’. 151. Los Angeles Times, 10 December 1997. 152. Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, p. 9; Martin Wright, p. 55. 153. Martin Wright, p. 56. 154. Christian Science Monitor, 10 February 1997. 155. Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Containment, pp. 9–11, 15–16; Martin Wright, p. 54; Robin Wright, p. 173; ‘EU reacts to Iran/Libya legislation’, The European Union Press Releases, 23 July 1996, www.eurunion.org/news/press/1996; ‘Brittan reacts to signature of Total contract in Iran’, The European Union Press Releases, 30 September 1997, www.eurunion.org/news/press/1997; European Commission, General Report on the Activities of the European Union 1996, p. 338. 156. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 177. 157. Keesing’s Record of World Events, May 2000, p. 43599 & June 2000, p. 43650. 158. Stephen C. Fairbanks, p. 449. 159. Iran: State of Terror, pp. 89–90. 160. US Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2002. 161. James A. Bill, p. 314. 162. Martin Wright, p. 56. 163. Anthony Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, pp. 3–4. 164. Anthony Lake, pp. 45–55. 165. Anthony H. Cordesman & Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, pp. 16–22; Patrick Clawson, pp. 87–8. 166. www.un.int/iran/press 167. Stephen C. Fairbanks, p. 452. 168. www.un.int/iran/press 169. Stephen C. Fairbanks, p. 452. 170. Zachary Karabell, p. 219; David Menashri, Revolution at a Crossroads, 1997, p. 82. 171. Stephen C. Fairbanks, p. 453. 172. Quoted by Adam Tarock, Iran’s Foreign Policy since 1990: Pragmatism Supersedes Islamic Ideology, Nova Science Publishers, Commack, NY, 1999, p. 47. 173. Europa World Year Book 1996, p. 1608. 174. Zachary Karabell, pp. 210, 214. 175. Zachary Karabell, p. 218. 176. Quoted by David Menashri, Iran: A Decade of War and Revolution, p. 98. 177. Stephen C. Fairbanks, p. 455; K.L. Afrasiabi, After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran’s Foreign Policy, Westview Press, Boulder, 1994, pp. 176–7. 178. Martin Wright, p. 62. 179. New York Times, 22 January 1998.

Chapter 7

Libya

1. Geoff Simons, Libya: The Struggle for Survival, second edition, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1996, pp. 314–15. 2. John Paxton (ed.), The Statesman’s Year-Book 1987–88, Macmillan Press – now Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1987, p. 799; EGH Joffe, ‘Libya – regional history, regional and national borders’, in J.A. Allan et al. (eds), Libya: State & Region:

Notes 391

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

A Study of Regional Evolution, SOAS Centre of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, London, 1989, p. 1. Martin Sicker, The Making of a Pariah State: The Adventurist Politics of Muammar Qaddafi, Praeger, New York, 1987, pp. 7–8. Martin Sicker, pp. 13–16. The Europa World Yearbook 2000, p. 2287. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC, 1989, pp. 38–40. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, p. 40; Ronald B. St John, Qaddafi’s World Design: Libyan Foreign Policy, 1969–1987, Saqi Books, London, 1987, p. 16. Martin Sicker, pp. 23–4, 101; Ronald B. St John, pp. 12–13. Martin Sicker, p. 17; Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, pp. 42–3. Ronald B. St John, pp. 17–21, 26. Also see I. William Zartman and A.G. Kluge, ‘The sources and goals of Qaddafi’s foreign policy’, American–Arab Affairs, No. 6, Fall 1983, pp. 63–4. Martin Sicker, pp. 17, 33. David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, Qaddafi and the Libyan Revolution, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1987, p. 64. Dirk Vandewalle (ed.), ‘Chronology of a revolution’, in Qadhafi’s Libya, 1969–1994, St Martin’s Press, New York, 1995, p. xxvii. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, pp. 47–8; The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2287. Keesing’s Record of World Events, March 2000, p. 43493. Quoted in Europa World Year Book, p. 2287. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, p. 48. Martin Sicker, p. 33. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, p. 47; Guy Arnold, The Maverick State: Gaddafi and the New World Order, Cassell, London, 1996, pp. 12–22. Martin Sicker, p. 32; The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 2287–8; John Wright, Libya: A Modern History, Croom Helm, London, 1982, pp. 137–40. The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 2287–8. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, pp. 49–50. The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 2287–8. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, pp. 50–1. Martin Sicker, pp. 24–33; Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, p. 49; Dirk Vanderwalle, ‘The Libyan Jamahiriyya since 1969’, in Vandewalle (ed.), p. 28. Guy Arnold, pp. 5,23–30. François Burgat, ‘Qadhafi’s ideological framework’, in Dirk Vandewalle (ed.), pp. 55–8; Geoff Simons, Libya, p. 306. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, p. 44. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, p. 51; John K. Cooley, Libyan Sandstorm, Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1983, pp. 59–79; Judith Gurney, Libya: The Political Economy of Energy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996, pp. 5–6. Geoff Simons, Libya, p. 304; J.A. Allan, Libya: The Experience of Oil, Croom Helm, London, 1981. Martin Sicker; Lillian G. Harris, Libya: Qadhafi’s Revolution and the Modern State, Westview Press, Boulder, 1986, p. 83. Guy Arnold. Anthony Lake, ‘Confronting backlash states’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73(2), March/ April 1994, pp. 45–6. I. William Zartman and A.G. Kluge, p. 69.

392 Notes 35. Roger W. Fontaine, Terrorism: The Cuban Connection, Crane, Russak & Company, New York, 1988. 36. Quoted by René Lemarchand, ‘Introduction: Beyond the mad dog syndrome’, in Lemarchand (ed.), The Green and the Black: Qadhafi’s Policies in Africa, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1988, p. 1. 37. Dawid van Lill, ‘Politiek maak mens siek!’, Insig, December 1998, p. 33. 38. Quoted by John Wright, Libya: A Modern History, Croom Helm, London, 1982, p. 162 and by Oye Ogunbadejo, ‘Qaddafi and Africa’s international relations’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 24(1), 1986, p. 35. 39. Quoted by Oye Ogunbadejo, p. 35. 40. Quoted by David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, p. 184. 41. Quoted by Guy Arnold, p. 66. 42. Quoted by David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, p. 70. 43. Quoted by Geoff Simons, Libya, p. 336. 44. Quoted by Aftab K. Pasha, Libya and the United States: Qadhafi’s Response to Reagan’s Challenge, Détente Publishers, New Delhi, 1984, p. 2. 45. Quoted by Aftab K. Pasha, p. 3. 46. Quoted by René Lemarchand, ‘Introduction’, p. 1. 47. Ronald B. St John, pp. 81–82; René Lemarchand, ‘Introduction’, p. 2. 48. Guy Arnold, p. 133. 49. Quoted by Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, p. 281. 50. Ronald B. St John, p. 45; William Gutteridge, ‘Libya: Still a threat to Western interests?’, Conflict Studies, No. 160, 1984, pp. 22–4. 51. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, p. 281. 52. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2290. 53. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, p. 228. 54. David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, p. 5. 55. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, p. 254; Time, 26 November 2001. 56. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2289. 57. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2291; Time, 12 February 2001. 58. BBC News, Country Profile: Libya, http://news.bbc.co.uk 59. The News, 1 May 2003, http://jang.com.pk/thenews/may2003-daily/01-052003/world/w4.htm 60. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, p. 281. 61. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2289 62. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, p. 282. 63. Lillian G. Harris, p. 89; Geoff Simons, Libya, pp. 281–3. 64. John Wright, Libya: A Modern History, p. 162. 65. Geoff Simons, Libya, pp. 48, 281; Time, 12 February 2001. 66. Quoted in Time, 13 December 1999. 67. Quoted in Time, 27 March 2000. 68. CNN.com, ‘Gadhafi says America has the right to retaliate’, 23 October 2001, http://cnn.worldnews; Time, 5 November 2001. 69. BBC News, CIA seeks rogue state co-operation, 30 October 2001, http://news. bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1627000/1627988.stm 70. BBC News, 18 May 2003, http://news.bloc.uk/2/hi/africa/3028407.stm 71. The News, 1 May 2003. 72. http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2001/html/10220.htm; www.state.gov/documents/organization/20109.pdf 73. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2289; Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, pp. 281–2; David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, p. 181; John Wright, Libya, Chad and the Central Sahara, Hurst & Co., London, 1989.

Notes 393 74. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, p. 282; I. William Zartman and A.G. Kluge, p. 65; René Lemarchand, ‘Introduction’ pp. 9–10. 75. Ronald B. St John, pp. 35–48. 76. Quoted by Martin Sicker, p. 59. 77. Ronald B. St John, pp. 35–48; Khafed Hanafi Ali, ‘Libya and the U.S.A.: blossoming friendship?’, The International Politics Journal, April 2003, http://www. siyassa.org.eg/esiyassa/ahram/2003/4/1REP04/HTM 78. Quoted by John Wright, Libya: A Modern History, p. 172. 79. Dirk Vandewalle (ed.), ‘Chronology of a revolution’, p. xxxi. 80. Quoted by Ronald B. St John, p. 69; Dirk Vandewalle, ‘The Libyan Jamahiriyya since 1969’, in Vandewalle (ed.), p. 3. 81. Ronald B. St John, pp. 28–34. 82. Ronald B. St John, pp. 28–38, 47; Hanspeter Mattes, ‘The rise and fall of the revolutionary committees’, in Dirk Vandewalle (ed.), p. 100. 83. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, p. 217. 84. Nathan Alexander, ‘The foreign policy of Libya: Inflexibility amid change’, Orbis, Vol. 24(4), Winter 1981, p. 838. 85. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2289. 86. Martin Sicker, pp. 89–91; Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, pp. 55–6. 87. I. William Zartman and A.G. Kluge, p. 65. 88. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, pp. 217–18; Martin Sicker, p. 127. 89. Martin Sicker, pp. 128–9. 90. John Wright, Libya: A Modern History, pp. 206–7. 91. Quoted By Lillian G. Harris, p. 105. 92. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, p. 282; Martin Sicker, pp. 119, 124. 93. Quoted by René Lemarchand, ‘Introduction’, p. 13. 94. Quoted by Oye Ogunbadejo, p. 51. 95. Guy Arnold, p. 89. 96. Ronald B. St John, p. 149. 97. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2291. 98. Ronald B. St John, pp. 35, 72, 143; Nathan Alexander, p. 840. 99. Lillian G. Harris, p. 84. 100. Ronald B. St John, pp. 143–4. 101. Quoted by Ronald B. St John, p. 69. 102. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, pp. 234, 279; John K. Cooley, pp. 229–33. 103. Geoff Simons, Libya, p. 48. 104. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2289. 105. Libya: News and Views, 24 May 2003, http://www.libya1.com; ‘Libya denies it is seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction’, Spacedaily, 8 January 2003, http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/ 030108211633.mw780wuq. html 106. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, p. 279; John K. Cooley, pp. 234–6; John K. Cooley, p. 241. 107. Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws: America’s Search for a New Foreign Policy, Hill & Wang, New York, 1996 108. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2291. 109. René Lemarchand, ‘Introduction’, p. 11; Guy Arnold, p. 95. 110. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, p. 230. 111. John Wright, Libya: A Modern History, pp. 202–3. 112. Geoff Simons, Libya, p. 285. 113. Guy Arnold, p. 39.

394 Notes 114. Amnesty International Press Release, ‘Libya: The release of prisoners a positive step’, 3 September 2002, http://web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/Index/MDE190032002? OpenDoument&of=Countries\Libya. 115. Human Rights Watch Press Release, ‘Libya should not chair U.N. Commission, 9 August 2002, http://hrw.org/press/2002/08/libya080902.htm 116. Arabic News.com, 14 August 2002, http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/ Day/020814/2002081410.html 117. US State Department Briefing, 22 January 2003, http://www.usis.it/ file2003_01/ alia/a3012205.htm 118. Quoted by Ronald B. St John, p. 71 119. Nathan Alexander, p. 827. 120. Ronald B. St John, pp. 76, 79. 121. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, pp. 230–1, 273–6. 122. Martin Sicker, p. 123. 123. Quoted by David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, p. 19. 124. Quoted by Aftab K. Pasha, p. 55. 125. Quoted by Martin Sicker, p. 127. 126. Ronald B. St John, p. 69. 127. Quoted by Oye Ogunbadejo, p. 34. 128. Quoted by Martin Sicker, p. 113. 129. Quoted by Martin Sicker, p. 122. 130. Martin Sicker, pp. 113–17. 131. Nathan Alexander, p. 829. 132. Martin Sicker, p. 114. 133. Quoted by John K. Cooley, p. 83. 134. Raymond Tanter, Rogue Regimes: Terrorism and Proliferation, St Martin’s, New York, p. 132, 1998, 135. Quoted by Geoff Simons, Libya, p. 307. 136. Quoted by Geoff Simons, Libya, p. 307. 137. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S Foreign Policy: Containment after the Cold War, Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Washington DC, 2000, p. 107. 138. US State Department, US trade sanctions on Libya renewed, 3 January 2003, http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/03010303.htm 139. Bulletin of the European Communities, Vol. 24(12), 1991, p. 118. 140. Geoff Simons, Libya, p. 307. 141. Quoted by Geoff Simons, Libya, p. 307. 142. Bulletin of the European Union, 9.1995, p. 47. 143. Quoted by Dirk Vandewalle (ed.), ‘Chronology of a revolution’, p. xxix. 144. Bulletin of the European Communities, Vol. 24(12), 1991, p. 118. 145. See, for instance, Commission of the European Communities, XXVIth General Report on the Activities of the European Communities 1992, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Brussels, 1993, p. 355. 146. Bulletin of the European Union, 9.1995, p. 47. 147. Ronald B. St John, pp. 82–3; EU External Relations, ‘The EU’s relations with Libya’, April 2000, p1, http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/lybia/ intro/index.htm 148. Ronald B. St John, pp. 83, 87. 149. Bulletin of the European Communities, Vol. 26(11), 1993, p. 73. 150. See Bulletin of the European Union, 4.1996, p. 79 and 7/8, 1996, p. 94. 151. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2290; Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S Foreign Policy, pp. 65, 84.

Notes 395 152. New York Times, 4 October 1997. 153. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2289; ‘Libya: Security Council arms and air embargo stays in place’, UN Chronicle, Vol. 31(4), December 1994, p. 33. 154. Quoted in ‘Libya: Security Council arms and air embargo stays in place’, UN Chronicle, Vol. 31(4), December 1994, p. 33; The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2290. 155. Beeld, 28 July 1999. 156. ClariNews, 11 April 2003, http://quickstart.clari.net/qs_se/webnews/wed/cb/Qeulibya-sanctions.RI_3_DAB.html 157. BBC 4 Radio News, 8 August 2002, 6.30 a.m., http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news; The News, 1 May 2003. 158. US Department of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Background Note: Libya, January 2002, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5425.htm 159. US Department of State, US trade sanctions on Libya renewed, 3 January 2003. 160. BBC News, 19 May 2003. 161. Newsday.com, 22 May 2003, http://www.new…/sns-ap-us-libya 162. Ronald B. St John, p. 82; David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, p. 190. 163. Ronald B. St John, p. 86. 164. Geoff Simons, Libya, pp. 66, 363. 165. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2289. 166. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2290–1. 167. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2292; Raymond Tanter, p. 158. For an official Libyan account of the ‘enormous physical, material and financial damage’ caused by international sanctions, see ‘Sixth comprehensive report on damage caused by the implementation of Security Council resolutions 748 (1992) and 883 (1993) during the period from 15 April 1992 to 31 December 1995’, transmitted to the UN Secretary General by the Libyan Mission to the UN, September 1996, courtesy of the Libyan Embassy, Pretoria. 168. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2292; Beeld, 28 July 1999. 169. David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, p. 190; Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, pp. 277. 170. Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, pp. 273–8. 171. EU External Relations, ‘The EU’s relations with Libya, April 2000, p. 2. 172. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2289; Helen C. Metz (ed.), Libya: A Country Study, p. 254. 173. Aftab K. Pasha, p. 7; Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 105. 174. Ronald B. St John, p. 82; Aftab K. Pasha, p. 7; Geoff Simons, Libya, pp. 325–31; The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2289. 175. David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, p. 15. 176. Quoted by Aftab K. Pasha, p. 53. 177. Newsday.com, 22 May 2003. 178. Arabic News.com, 14 August 2002. 179. Quoted by Aftab K. Pasha, pp. 147–8. 180. Rapport, 16 August 1998. 181. Quoted by Aftab K. Pasha, pp. 65–6, 144. 182. Quoted by Aftab K. Pasha, p. 65. 183. Quoted by Aftab K. Pasha, p. 48. 184. Aftab K. Pasha, pp. 56–7; Paul Brooker, Defiant Dictatorships: Communist and Middle-Eastern Dictatorships in a Democratic Age, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1997, p. 16.

396 Notes 185. Quoted by Martin Sicker, p. 121. 186. Quoted by Aftab K. Pasha, p. 57. 187. Quoted by David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, p. 14.

Chapter 8

North Korea

1. The Europa World Year Book 2000, Europa Publications, London, 2000, p. 2129; D.S. Lewis, Korea: Enduring Division? A Keesing’s Special Report, Longman, Harlow, 1988, p. 130. 2. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2129. 3. D.S. Lewis, p. 131 (for direct quote); Hazel Smith, ‘The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and its foreign policy in the 1990s: More realist than revolutionary?’ in Stephen Chan and Andrew J. Williams (eds), Renegade States: The Evolution of Revolutionary Foreign Policy, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1994, p. 97. 4. Geoff Simons, Korea: The Search for Sovereignty, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1995, p. 52. 5. The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 2129–30; Freedom House, North Korea 1998, www.freedomhouse.org/reports/worst98 6. B.C. Koh, ‘Ideology and North Korean foreign policy’, and Sang-Woo Rhee, ‘Chuch’e ideology as North Korea’s foreign policy guide’, both in Robert A. Scalapino and Hongkoo Lee (eds), North Korea in a Regional and Global Context, Korea Research Monograph 11, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1986, pp. 21–3, 34, 39–42, respectively. 7. Bruce Cummings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1997, p. 419. 8. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2129. 9. Adrian Buzo, The Guerilla Dynasty: Politics and Leadership in North Korea, Westview Press, Boulder, 1999, p. 188; Samuel S. Kim, ‘The two Koreas and world order’, in Young Whan Kihl (ed.), Korea and the World: Beyond the Cold War, Westview Press, Boulder, 1994, p. 53; Chong Bong-uk, North Korea: Uneasy, Shaky Kim Jong-il Regime, Naewoo Press, Seoul, 1997, p. 159. 10. The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 2130–5; Adrian Buzo, p. 206. 11. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2135; Bruce Cummings, p. 426; Adrian Buzo, pp. 216–7. 12. Young Whan Kihl, ‘Korea after the Cold War: An introduction’, in Kihl (ed.), p. 9. 13. On the Games, see Adrian Buzo, pp. 186–7. 14. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2130. 15. Adrian Buzo, p. 229; The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2130. 16. Michael J. Mazarr, North Korea and the Bomb, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1995, pp. 88–9. 17. The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 2130–1. 18. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2131. 19. The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 2131–2. 20. Choong Nam Kim, ‘Pyongyang’s dilemma of reform and opening’, Korea and World Affairs, Vol. 24(2), Summer 2000, p. 247; Andrew O’Neil, ‘The 2000 inter-Korean summit: The road to reconciliation?’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 55(1), April 2001, pp. 55,59; Jongchul Park, ‘InterKorean relations after the summit meeting’, Korea and World Affairs, Vol. 25(2), Summer 2001, pp. 190–2. 21. Time, 14 May 2001 and 28 May 2001.

Notes 397 22. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2134; Adrian Buzo, p. 193; Samuel S. Kim, pp. 32–3; Jongchul Park, pp. 204–5. 23. Choong Nam Kim, ‘Pyongyang’s dilemma of reform and opening’, Korea and World Affairs, Vol. 24(2), Summer 2000, pp. 250–1. 24. Leon V. Sigal, Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1998, pp. 11–12. 25. British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, quoted by Geoff Simons, Korea, p. 46. 26. Quoted by Geoff Simons, Korea, pp. 48, 52. 27. The Sunday Telegraph, quoted by Geoff Simons, Korea, p. 53. 28. Time, 25 December 2000–1 January 2001. 29. Time, 6 November 2000. 30. Quoted by Geoff Simons, Korea, pp. xx–xxi. 31. Quoted by Geoff Simons, Korea, p. 47. 32. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign PolicyI: Containment after the Cold War, Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Washington DC, 2000, p. 81. 33. Time, 26 June 2000. 34. Quoted by Time, 7 August 2000. 35. Joel S. Wit, ‘North Korea: The leader of the pack’, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 24(1), Winter 2001, p. 77. 36. Kongdan Oh and Ralph C. Hassig, ‘North Korea’s nuclear program’, in Young Whan Kihl (ed.), p. 234. 37. Adrian Buzo, p. 194; Kongdan Oh and Ralph C. Hassig, pp. 234–5; Michael Ertman, ‘North Korean arms capabilities and implications’, Korea and World Affairs, Vol. 17(4), Winter 1993, p. 610. 38. Jin-Hyun Paik, ‘Nuclear conundrum’, Korea and World Affairs, Vol. 17(4), Winter 1993, p. 628; Bruce Cummings, p. 466. 39. Alexandre Y. Mansourov, ‘The origins, evolution and future of the North Korean nuclear program’, Korea and World Affairs, Vol. 19(1), Spring 1995, pp. 46–50, 66; Denny Roy, ‘The security–human rights nexus in North Korea’, The Journal of East Asian Affairs, Vol. 11(1), Winter–Spring 1997, pp. 4–5; Jin-Hyun Paik, pp. 636–7; Michael J. Mazarr, ‘Going just a little nuclear: Nonproliferation lessons from North Korea’, International Security, Vol. 20(2), Fall 1995, p. 100. 40. Andrea M. Savada, North Korea: A Country Study, Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC, 1994, p. 254. 41. Quoted by Michael J. Mazarr, North Korea and the Bomb, p. 154. 42. Quoted by Michael J. Mazarr, North Korea and the Bomb, p. 2. 43. Kongdan Oh and Ralph C. Hassig, p. 243. 44. Paul Bracken, ‘Nuclear weapons and state survival in North Korea’, Survival, Vol. 35(3), Autumn 1993, pp. 137, 141. 45. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2132; Adrian Buzo, pp. 220–5; Kongdan Oh and Ralph C. Hassig, pp. 235–42; Geoff Simons, Korea, p. 33. 46. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2132; Adrian Buzo, p. 225; Michael Ertman, p. 610; Michael J. Mazarr, North Korea and the Bomb, pp. 101–21; Geoff Simons, Korea, pp. 9, 16. 47. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2132; Andrea M. Savada, p. xxix. 48. Andrea M. Savada, p. xxxi; Bong-uk Chong, North Korea: The Land that Never Changes, Naewoo Press, Seoul, 1995, pp. 116–17; Michael Ertman, p. 611; ‘Northeast Asia’, www.defenselink.mil/pubs/prolift97 49. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2132; Adrian Buzo, pp. 228–9; Leon V. Sigal, p. 9; Michael J. Mazarr, ‘Going just a little nuclear’, pp. 97–8; Alexandre Y. Mansourov, pp. 57–8.

398 Notes 50. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2133. This status was confirmed in a second American inspection in May 2000 – Keesing’s Record of World Events, May 2000, p. 43572. 51. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, President Delivers State of the Union Address, 29 January 2002. 52. CNN.com/WORLD, 19 April 2003, http://edition.cnn.com/2003/W… 53. CNN.com/WORLD, 10 January 2003, http://www.cnn.com/2003WO… 54. US Department of State, Press Statement, North Korean Nuclear Programme, 16 October 2002, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2002/14432.htm, Time, 28 October 2002; CNN.com./WORLD, 19 April 2003. 55. CNN.com./WORLD, 19 April 2003; CNN.com./WORLD, 10 January 2003; Guardian Unlimited, 12 February 2003, http://www.guardian.co.uk/korea.article. 0,2763,894215,00.html; MSNBC News, 11 May 2003, http://stacks,msnbc.com/ news/…; CentreDaily.com, 24 April 2003, http://www.cenredaily.com/m… 56. Guardian Unlimited, 12 February 2003; Ohio.com, 9 April 2003, http://www. ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/breaking_news/5590876.htm 57. Michael Ertman, pp. 615–20; Paul Bracken, p. 140. 58. The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 2132–3; Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws: America’s Search for a New Foreign Policy, Hill & Wang, New York, 1996, p. 141; Joel S. Wit, ‘North Korea: The leader of the pack’, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 24(1), Winter 2001, p. 78; Bhubhindar Singh, ‘The 1998 North Korean missile launch and the “normalization” of Japanese statehood’, Issues & Studies, Vol. 37(#), May/June 2001, pp. 142–62; FAS World Space Guide, www.fas.org/spp/guide/dprk; Time, 14 September 1998. 59. Joel S. Wit, pp. 79, 87; Jongchul Park, pp. 197, 204–5; Time, 14 May 2001. The DPRK is not a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime – Northeast Asia, www.defenselink.mil/pubs/prolif97. 60. Michael Ertman, pp. 615–20; Time, 14 September 1998; Financial Times, 4–5 November 2000. 61. Adrian Buzo, pp. 196–7; Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, p. 141; Time, 14 September 1998; FAS, North Korea Special Weapons Guide, http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide… 62. Time, 3 December 2001. 63. Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, pp. 138, 141; Michael Ertman, pp. 612–5; Andrea M. Savada, p. 203; Northeast Asia. 64. Chae-Jin Lee, ‘The United States and Korea’, in Young Whan Kihl (ed.), p. 78; Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, p. 137; Robert Dujarric, ‘North Korea: Risks and rewards of engagement’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 54(2), Spring 2001, pp. 469–70; Choong Nam Kim, p. 249. 65. Chae-Jin Lee, p. 80. 66. Joel S. Wit, p. 79; Michael Ertman, p. 620; Denny Roy, ‘The myth of North Korean “irrationality”’, The Korean Journal of International Studies, Vol. 25(2), Summer 1994, p. 144. 67. Quoted by Geoff Simons, Korea, p. 32. 68. Walter Slocombe, Principal Deputy Under-Secretary of Defence, quoted by Geoff Simons, Korea, p. 25. 69. Bulletin of the European Union, 3, 1994, p. 61. 70. Quoted by Hyung-Kook Kim, ‘U.S. policy toward North Korea: From positive engagement to constructive containment’, The Journal of East Asian Affairs, Vol. 13(1), Spring/Summer 1999, pp. 116–17. 71. Quoted by Hyung-Kook Kim, p. 118.

Notes 399 72. Adrian Buzo, pp. 176–7; The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2133; Geoff Simons, Korea, p. xx; Andrea M. Savada, p. 262; US Department of State, Washington File, 6 October 2000, www.usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror 73. US Department of State, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Background Note: North Korea, October 2000, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2792.htm 74. US Department of State, Washington File, 6 October 2000; Michael Millett, ‘North Korea steps up pressure for respectability’, 9 October 2000, www.smh.com.au/ news; Background Note: North Korea, October 2000 75. International Herald Tribune, 26 September 2001. 76. Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001, http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2001/ html/10249.htam; Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001, www.state.gov/documents/ organization/20109.pdf 77. www.state.gov/documents/organization/20109.pdf 78. B.C. Koh, pp. 28–31. 79. Quoted by Chong Bong-uk, North Korea: Uneasy, Shaky Kim Jong-il Regime, pp. 219–20. 80. US Department of Defense, 1996–1997 Defense White Paper, www.pipeline.com/ psywarrior/korea 81. Quoted by Dae-Ho Byun, North Korea’s Foreign Policy, Korean Unification Studies Series 13, Research Center for Peace and Unification of Korea, Seoul, 1991, pp. 46–7. 82. Dae-Ho Byun, pp. 96–113. 83. Andrea M. Savada, pp. 258–61. 84. Hazel Smith, p. 112. 85. Quoted by Jhe Seong-ho, ‘North Korean human rights: A premise of unification’, Korea Focus, Vol. 3(1), January–February 1995, pp. 63–4; Robert Dujarric, p. 470; Freedom House, North Korea 1998, www.freedomhouse.org/ reports/worst98 86. Chae-Jin Lee, p. 72; Denny Roy, ‘The security–human rights nexus in North Korea’, pp. 8–9; The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2129. 87. Jhe Seong-ho, ‘North Korean human rights: a premise of unification’, Korea Focus, Vol. 3(1), January–February 1995, pp. 66–8. 88. Park Heung Soon, ‘Role of NGOs in improving human rights in North Korea’, Korea Focus, Vol. 7(6), November–December 1999, pp. 34–45. 89. Amnesty International Report, 2003, http://web.amnesty.org/report2003/Prksummary-eng; Human Rights Watch World Report 2003, Asia Overview, http://www.hrw.org.wr2k3/asia.html 90. Sang-Woo Rhee, p. 37. 91. Andrea M. Savada, pp. 258–61. 92. D.S. Lewis, p. 131. 93. Hazel Smith, p. 103. 94. Quoted by B.C. Koh, p. 27. 95. Quoted by Chong Bong-uk, North Korea: Uneasy, Shaky Kim Jong-il Regime, p. 21. 96. Andrea M. Savada, p. 204. 97. Both quoted by B.C. Koh, p. 33. 98. Bruce Cummings, p. 464; Chae-Jin Lee, p. 72. 99. Joel S. Wit, pp. 79, 87; Jongchul Park, pp. 197, 204–5. 100. Jongchul Park, p. 196. 101. Joel S. Wit, p. 77; ‘A rogue state? The charges’, www.megastories.com/nkorea; US Department of State, International Information Programs, 21 May 2003, http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/global/drugs/03052105.htm; Guardian Unlimited, 20 January 2003, http://www.guardian.co.uk/korea/article/0,2763,878118,00.html.

400 Notes 102. Quoted by Michael J. Mazarr, ‘Going just a little nuclear’, p. 102. Also see Michael J. Mazarr, North Korea and the Bomb, pp. 133, 156. 103. Yahoo!News, 23 May 2003, http://story.news.yahoo.com/n… 104. Yahoo!News, 13, 26 May 2003, http://story.news.yahoo.com/n…; The Delegation of the European Commission to the Republic of Korea, 11 February 2002, http://www.delkor.cec.eu.int/e…; The Danish EU Presidency, 28 May 2003, http://www.eu2002.dk/news/n…; EU Declaration on North Korea, 11 January 2003, http://www.eu2003.gr/en/articl… 105. The words of Arnold Kanter, Under-secretary of State for Political Affairs, 1992, quoted by Chae-Jin Lee, p. 72. 106. Chae-Jin Lee, p. 72; The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2133; Andrea M. Savada, p. 205. 107. US Department of State, Press Statement, North Korean nuclear program. 108. Quoted by Adrian Buzo, pp. 225–6. 109. Adrian Buzo, pp. 227–8; Andrea M. Savada, p. xxxii; Chong Bong-uk, North Korea: The Land that Never Changes, p. 114. 110. See, for instance, decisions of the European Parliament, 22 April 1993, and of the EU presidency, 31 March 1994, as reflected in the respective years’ General Report on the Activities of the European Communities/Union, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Brussels. 111. The Danish EU Presidency, 28 May 2003; EU Declaration on North Korea, 11 January 2003; The EU’s relations with the DPRK, 14 April 2003, http://europa. eu.int/comm/exte…; Presidency Conclusions, Brussels European Council, 20–21 March 2003. 112. Los Angeles Times, 11 January 2003, http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/ world/la-fg-norkor/1jan11.story 113. News from the United Nations Information Centre Washington, DC, 17 April 2003, http://www.unicwash./org/unnews2003/unnews%20-%2004-17-2003.htm 114. Declaration by the Presidency on behalf of the European Union on the situation on the Korean Peninsula, 17 October 1996, www.irlgov.ie/iveagh/eu/ press; The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2131 115. Diane Manifold, ‘United States eases sanctions on North Korea’, International Economic Review, February/March 2000, p. 3; Chae-Jin Lee, p. 73; Michael J. Mazarr, North Korea and the Bomb, p. 161; Vladimir N. Pregelj, ‘Normalizing U.S. commercial relations with North Korea’, in D. Ellsworth Blanc (ed.), North Korea – Pariah?, Novinka Books, Huntington, NY, 2001, pp. 65–77. 116. Chong Bong-uk, North Korea: Uneasy, Shaky Kim Jong-il Regime, p. 158. 117. Diane Manifold, pp. 3–4. 118. Diane Manifold, pp. 3–4. 119. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2133. 120. Michael J. Mazarr, North Korea and the Bomb, p. 160. 121. Adrian Buzo, pp. 176–7; The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2133. 122. Chae-Jin Lee, p. 78. 123. Chae-Jin Lee, p. 71; Joel S. Wit, p. 78. 124. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 110; Hyung-Kook Kim, pp. 115–17. 125. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 5; Michael J. Mazarr, ‘Going just a little nuclear’, p. 110. 126. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 81. 127. Jongchul Park, p. 204. 128. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 81.

Notes 401 129. Keesing’s Record of World Events, November 2000, p. 43861; Financial Times, 4–5 November 2000. 130. US Department of State, Press Statement, North Korean nuclear program. 131. Beeld, 18 October 2002. 132. Ohio.com, Breaking News, 9 April 2003; CentreDaily.com, 24 April 2003; Yahoo!News, 23 May 2003. 133. Andrew O’Neil, p. 56; Robert Dujarric, p. 472; Jongchul Park, pp. 189–207. 134. Robert Dujarric, pp. 474–5. 135. EU External Relations, The EU’s relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, 7 December 2001, http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/ north_korea/intro/index.htm; EU External Relations, The EU’s relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, 7 December 2001; Delegation of the European Commission in the Republic of Korea, Press Release, 16 May 2003; The EU relations with the DPRK, Country Strategy Paper 2001–2004, http://europa.eu.int/comm/exte… 136. CentreDaily.com, 24 April 2003; Yahoo!News, 23 May 2003; Bruce Cummings, ‘North Korea: The sequel’, Current History, Vol. 102, No. 663, April 2003, pp. 147–51. 137. Presidency Conclusions, Brussels European Council, 20–21 March 2003. 138. Denny Roy, ‘The security–human rights nexus in North Korea’, p. 7. 139. ‘North Korea says it meets rights standards’, 13 February 2001, Associated Press. 140. Quoted by Adrian Buzo, pp. 225–6. 141. CBS.NEWS.com, 3 March 2003, http://www.cbsnews.com/stori… 142. Quoted by Geoff Simons, Korea, p. 27. 143. Chae-Jin Lee, p. 72; Jin-Hyun Paik, p. 638. 144. Ronald F. Lehman, ‘A North Korean nuclear-weapons program: International implications’, Security Dialogue, Vol. 24(3), September 1993, p. 258; Michael Millett, ‘North Korea steps up pressure for respectability’, 9 October 2000, www.smh.com.au/news 145. Quoted by Adrian Buzo, p. 226. 146. Adrian Buzo, p. 226. 147. Quoted by Alexandre Y. Mansourov, p. 65. 148. Adrian Buzo, p. 226. 149. Quoted by Kongdan Oh and Ralph C. Hassig, p. 240. 150. Quoted by Michael J. Mazarr, North Korea and the Bomb, p. 160. 151. Quoted by Michael J. Mazarr, North Korea and the Bomb, p. 155; Chong Bonguk, North Korea: The Land that Never Changes, p. 121. 152. Adrian Buzo, p. 228; Denny Roy, ‘The myth of North Korean “irrationality”’, p. 142. 153. Yahoo!News, 26 May 2003. 154. Ohio.com, 9 April 2003. 155. MSNBC News, 11 May 2003. 156. EU External Relations, The EU’s relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, 7 December 2001.

Chapter 9

Cuba

1. Jorge I. Domínguez, To Make a World Safe for Revolution: Cuba’s Foreign Policy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1989, p. 8; Louis A. Pérez, Cuba under the Platt Amendment 1902–1934, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1986.

402 Notes 2. Jorge I. Domínguez, pp. 8–9. 3. Mary Murray, Cruel & Unusual Punishment: The U.S. Blockade against Cuba, Ocean Press, Melbourne, 1993, p. 8; Jan K. Black et al., Area Handbook for Cuba, second edition, Foreign Area Studies of the American University, Washington DC, 1976, pp. 343–4. 4. James D. Rudolph (ed.), Cuba: A Country Study, American University, Washington DC, 1987, pp. 24–38; The Europa World Year Book 2000, Europa Publications, London, 2000, p. 1161. 5. Statement by Carlos Martinez Salsamendi, President of the Chamber of Commerce of Cuba, Havana, 8 April 1996. 6. Quoted by Maurice Halperin, The Taming of Fidel Castro, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1981, p. 7. 7. The Europa World Yearbook 2000, p. 1161. 8. Quoted by Maurice Halperin, pp. 8–10. 9. Jorge I. Domínguez, p. 3. 10. Jorge I. Domínguez, p. 4. 11. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 1161. 12. Quoted by Jan K. Black et al., p. 345. 13. Quoted by Jan K. Black et al., p. 348. 14. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 1161; Julie M. Feinsilver, ‘Cuba’s current integration into the international and hemispheric systems’, in Archibald R.M. Ritter and John M. Kirk (eds), Cuba in the International System: Normalization and Integration, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, 1995, p. 74. 15. The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 1161–2. 16. Maria C. Werlau, ‘Foreign investment in Cuba: The limits of commercial engagement’, World Affairs, Vol. 160(2), Fall 1997, p. 55. 17. Country Profile: Cuba 1998–99, The Economist Intelligence Unit, London, 1998, pp. 10–12; Susan Eckstein, ‘The limits of socialism in a capitalist world economy: Cuba since the collapse of the Soviet bloc’, in Miguel A. Centeno and Mauricio Font (eds), Toward a New Cuba? Legacies of a Revolution, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, 1997, p. 136; Donna R. Kaplowitz, Anatomy of a Failed Embargo: U.S. Sanctions against Cuba, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, 1998, p. 171. 18. Quoted by Edward Gonzalez and David Ronfeldt, Storm Warnings for Cuba, RAND National Defense Research Institute, Santa Monica, Calif., 1994, p. 16. 19. Quoted by Edward Gonzalez and David Ronfeldt, p. 32. 20. The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 1162–3. 21. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 1163; Mauricio Font, ‘Crisis and reform in Cuba’, in Miguel A. Centeno and Mauricio Font (eds), pp. 121–6; Maria C. Werlau, pp. 51–69. 22. Edward Gonzalez and David Ronfeldt, pp. 42–3. 23. Country Profile: Cuba 1998–99, p. 12; Donna R. Kaplowitz, Anatomy of a Failed Embargo, p. 171. 24. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 1163. 25. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 1163. 26. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 1164; Country Profile: Cuba 1998–99, p. 8. 27. Human Rights Watch World Report 2003 – Cuba, http://64.21.33.164/ ref/dis/04030301.htm; EU official visits Cuba and opens new embassy, Economic Report, 12 March 2003, http://www.radiohc.cu/ingles/economy/ economy/5mar.htm 28. Washington File, 29 April 2003, http://www.usembassy.it/file2003_04/alia/ a3042906.htm

Notes 403 29. CBSNEWS.com, 19 March 2003; http://www.cbsnes.com/stories/2003/03/19/ world/main544555.shtml; Human Rights Watch World Report 2003. 30. Quoted by Larry Hedrick, Rogue’s Gallery: America’s Foes from George III to Saddam Hussein, Brassey’s (US), Washington DC, 1992, p. 161. 31. Quoted by Larry Hedrick, p. 163. 32. Jutta Weldes and Diana Saco, ‘Making state action possible: The United States and the discursive construction of the “Cuban problem”, 1960–1994’, Millennium, Vol. 25(2), 1996, p. 386. 33. Quoted by Juan M. del Aguila, Cuba: Dilemmas of a Revolution, third edition, Westview Press, Boulder, 1994, p. 127. 34. Quoted by Juan M. del Aguila, pp. 135–6; H. Michael Erisman, Cuba’s International Relations: The Anatomy of a Nationalistic Foreign Policy, Westview Press, Boulder, 1985, p. 149. Among the numerous biographies of Castro are Peter Bourne, Castro: A Biography of Fidel Castro, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1986; Tad Szulc, Fidel: A Critical Portrait, Hutchinson, London, 1986; Robert E. Quirk, Fidel Castro, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1993. 35. U.S. Department of State, Transcript: President Bush urges Cuba to hold free elections, allow dissent, 20 May 2002, http://usembassy.state.gov/havana/ wwwhbuse.html 36. Pamela S. Falk, Cuban Foreign Policy: Caribbean Tempest, Lexington Books, Lexington, 1986, p. 4; Jiri Valenta, ‘Cuba in the Soviet alliance system’, in Georges Fauriol and Eva Loser (eds), Cuba: The International Dimension, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 1990, p. 3. 37. Quoted by Jutta Weldes and Diana Saco, p. 361. 38. Quoted by Jutta Weldes and Diana Saco, p. 380. 39. Quoted by Jutta Weldes and Diana Saco, p. 381. 40. Quoted by Juan M. del Aguila, p. 125. 41. David Thomas, ‘Foreword’, in Alistair Hennesey and George Lambie (eds), The Fractured Blockade: West-European–Cuban Relations during the Revolution, Macmillan, London, 1993, p. xiv. 42. Gillian Gunn Clissold, ‘Cuban–U.S relations and the process of transition’, in Miguel A. Centeno and Maurice Font (eds), p. 85. 43. Quoted by H. Michael Erisman, p. 20; Juan M. del Aguila, p. 111; Pamela S. Falk, p. 4. 44. Quoted by Juan M. del Aguila, p. 134. 45. Jorge I. Domínguez, p. 3. 46. Juan M. del Aguila, p. 109. 47. Jorge I. Domínguez, pp. 3, 6–7 48. Roger W. Fontaine, Terrorism: The Cuban Connection, Crane, Russak & Co., New York, 1988, pp. 5–10; Irving Louis Horowitz, ‘Epilogue: Castro and the end of ideology’, in Horowitz (ed.), Cuban Communism, 1959–1995, eighth edition, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 1995, p. 862. 49. David Thomas, p. xiv; Jorge I. Domínguez, p. 1. 50. Roger W. Fontaine, pp. 5–10; Irving Louis Horowitz, p. 862; Donna R. Kaplowitz, Anatomy of a Failed Embargo, p. 126; Juan M. del Aguila, p. 112. 51. John M. Kirk and Peter McKenna, Canada–Cuba Relations: The Other Good Neighbor Policy, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 1997, p. 177. 52. Donna R. Kaplowitz, ‘Cuba’s foreign policy: Old goals, new strategies’, in Kaplowitz (ed.), Cuba’s Ties to a Changing World, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, 1993, p. 1.

404 Notes 53. Roger W. Fontaine, pp. 2–3. 54. www.state.gov/documents/organization/20109.pdf 55. Mortimer J. Stamm, ‘Human rights in the Cuban revolution’, in Rowan H. Ireland and Stephen R. Niblo (eds), Cuba: Thirty Years of Revolution, Institute of Latin American Studies, La Trobe University, 1990, pp. 58–9. 56. Maria C. Werlau, p. 58. 57. Amnesty International Report 2003: Cuba, http://web.amnesty.org/report2003/ Cub-summary-eng 58. http://64.21.33.164/ref/dis/01160302.htm 59. Juan M. del Aguila, pp. 199–202. 60. Both quoted by Jutta Weldes and Diana Saco, p. 390. 61. Quoted by Jutta Weldes and Diana Saco, p. 390. 62. Edward Gonzalez, Cuba: Clearing Perilous Waters?, RAND National Defense Research Institute, Santa Monica, Calif., 1990, pp. viii–ix. 63 http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/enforcement/otac/legal/statutes/libertad.pdf 64. Quoted by John M. Kirk and Peter McKenna, pp. 179, 181. 65. John M. Kirk and Peter McKenna, pp. 177–9. 66. United Nations, Press Release, Commission on Human Rights, 57th session, 18 April 2001, www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf 67. Mortimer J. Stamm, ‘Human rights in the Cuban revolution’, in Rowan H. Ireland and Stephen R. Niblo (eds), Cuba: Thirty Years of Revolution, Institute of Latin American Studies, La Trobe University, 1990, pp. 58–9. 68. David Thomas, p. xiv. 69. Quoted by Juan M. del Aguila, p. 128. 70. Paul Brooker, Defiant Dictatorships: Communist and Middle-Eastern Dictatorships in a Democratic Age, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1997, p. 22. 71. Quoted by David Thomas, p. xiv. 72. David Thomas, p. xiv. 73. Quoted by Jutta Weldes and Diana Saco, p. 384. 74. Larry Hedrick, p. 170; Jutta Weldes and Diana Saco, p. 384. 75. Quoted by Juan M. del Aguila, p. 128. 76. Jorge I. Domínguez, pp. 1, 7. 77. H. Michael Erisman, p. 26. 78. Quoted by Houman A. Sadri, Revolutionary States, Leaders, and Foreign Relations: A Comparative Study of China, Cuba, and Iran, Praeger, Westport, 1997, p. 65. 79. Jorge I. Domínguez, p. 7. 80. Juan M. del Aguila, p. 144. 81. David C. Jordan, Revolutionary Cuba and the End of the Cold War, University Press of America, Lanham, 1993, pp. 194–202; The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 1162; Constantine Menges, ‘Castro: Nearly thirty years of revolutionary warfare’, in Georges Fauriol and Eva Loser (eds), p. 299; Larry Hedrick, p. 170. 82. US Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, March 2003, http://usembassy.state.gov/havana/wwwhncsr.html 83. Country Profile: Cuba 1998–99, p. 7; Mary Murray, pp. 9–10; Maria C. Werlau, p. 56. 84. Donna R. Kaplowitz, Anatomy of a Failed Embargo, pp. 6–7. 85. Donna R. Kaplowitz, Anatomy of a Failed Embargo, pp. 7–8. 86. Donna R. Kaplowitz, Anatomy of a Failed Embargo, p. 96; H. Michael Erisman, p. 150. 87. Quoted by Donna R. Kaplowitz, Anatomy of a Failed Embargo, pp. 8–9.

Notes 405 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104.

105. 106. 107. 108.

109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118.

119.

Quoted by Mary Murray, p. 32. Donna R. Kaplowitz, Anatomy of a Failed Embargo, p. 96. Quoted by Donna R. Kaplowitz, Anatomy of a Failed Embargo, p. 148. Quoted by Jutta Weldes and Diana Scao, p. 390; Edward Gonzalez, p. 69. Quoted by Jutta Weldes and Diana Saco, p. 363. Donna R. Kaplowitz, Anatomy of a Failed Embargo, pp. 3–4; Jutta Weldes and Diana Saco, p. 363. Quoted by Jutta Weldes and Diana Saco, p. 392. Quoted by Juan M. del Aguila, p. 139. Quoted in Strengthening of the economic blockade against Cuba by the Republican Party: Political madness or desperation? Embassy of Cuba, Pretoria, undated.. US Department of State, Transcript: President Bush urges Cuba…20 May 2002. Donna R. Kaplowitz, Anatomy of a Failed Embargo, 1998, p. 4. Quoted by Juan M. del Aguila, pp. 124–5. A 1995 document of the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, quoted by John M. Kirk and Peter McKenna, p. 180. www.sigloxxi.org/arcos-i.htm U.N. Human Rights Commission denounces Cuba, http://www.newhumanist.com/ rights.html Bulletin of the European Union, 12, 1996, p. 19. EU, Declaration by the Presidency on behalf of the European Union concerning the arrest of opposition members in Cuba, 26 March 2003, http://ue.eu.int/ Newsroom www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf Financial Times, 22 April 1998; The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 1164. CBSNEWS.com, 24 April 2003, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/24/ world/main551000.shtml Amnesty International Report 1998: Cuba, www.amnesty.org/ailib.aireport/ar98; cubafacts, Human rights in Cuba since the papal visit, www.cubafacts.com/ Humanrights www.sigloxxi.org/arcos-i.htm; Human Rights Watch World Report 1998: Cuba, www.hrw.org/worldreport/Americas Bulletin of the European Union, 6.1997, p. 120 and 12.1997, p. 122. EU, Declaration by the Presidency…, 26 March 2003. Bulletin of the European Union, 6.1997, p. 120 and 12.1997, p. 122. Mary Murray, pp. 9–12; Donna R. Kaplowitz, Anatomy of a Failed Embargo, pp. 63–5. Quoted by H. Michael Erisman, p. 24. Jorge I. Domínguez, p. 2. Mary Murray, p. 13; Donna R. Kaplowitz, Anatomy of a Failed Embargo, pp. 59–73; Gary C. Hufbauer et al., p. 194. Donna R. Kaplowitz, Anatomy of a Failed Embargo, pp. 1–3,123–7,153–8; Jutta Weldes and Diana Saco, p. 391. Gillian Gunn Clissold, pp. 79–80; Donna R. Kaplowitz, Anatomy of a Failed Embargo, pp. 177, 184–5. EU, Delegation of the European Commission to the United States, Time to encourage reform together in Cuba, 7 November 1996, www.eurunion.org/news/press. Also see Brigitte Stern, ‘Einseitige Wirtschaftssanktionen’, Internationale Politik, Vol. 52(4), April 1997, pp. 7–12. Common Dreams News Center, U.N.: Opposition grows to U.S. blockade of Cuba, 14 November 2002, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1114-06.htm;

406 Notes

120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127.

128. 129.

130. 131.

132. 133. 134.

135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143.

144. 145.

Archibald R.M. Ritter and John M. Kirk, ‘Introduction’, in Ritter and Kirk (eds), p. 1. Human Rights Watch World Report 1998: Cuba. United Nations Press Release, Fifty-fifth General Assembly Plenary, 9 November 2000, www.unhcr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf Julie M. Feinsilver, pp. 73–7. Republic of Cuba, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Relaciones diplomaticas de Cuba con 164 paises, 23 December 1997. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2002: Cuba. Jutta Weldes and Diana Saco, p. 382; Donna R. Kaplowitz, Anatomy of a Failed Embargo, p. 5. John M. Kirk and Peter McKenna, p. 177. Bulletin of the European Union, 12, 1996, p. 19; European Commission, General Report on the Activities of the European Union 1996, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Brussels, 1997, p. 354; EU, Delegation of the European Commission to the United States, Time to encourage reform together in Cuba, November 7, 1996, www.eurunion.org/news/press EU, Delegation of the European Commission to the United States, European Union spells out Cuba policy, 3 December 1996, www.eurunion.org/news/press. European Commission, General Report on the Activities of the European Union 1995, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Brussels, 1996, p. 314. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2002: Cuba. Remarks by Stuart Eizenstat, Under-Secretary for Economic, Agricultural, and Business Affairs, US Department of State, Presented at a conference sponsored by the North American Committee of the National Policy Association, National Press Club, Washington DC, 7 January 1998, courtesy of USIS, Johannesburg. On the Arcos Principles, see www.sigloxxi.org/arcos-i.htm Edward Gonzalez, pp. 66–8; James B. Cunningham, US Deputy Representative to the UN, USUN Press Release, No.165, November 9, 2000, www.un.int/usa Time, 16 August 1999. Donald E. Schulz, ‘The United States and Cuba: From a strategy of conflict to constructive engagement’, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 35(2), Summer 1993, p. 84. Quoted by Larry Hedrick, p. 163; Donna R. Kaplowitz, Anatomy of a Failed Embargo, pp. 60–1. Fidel Castro, Before, we were fighting for our country; today we are fighting for the world, Speech in Santiago de Cuba, July 26, 1998. Editora Politica, Havana, 1998, p. 31. Quoted by Donna R. Kaplowitz, Anatomy of a Failed Embargo, p. 178. Quoted in The Economist, 17 January 1998. Donald E. Schulz, p. 81. The Economist, 17 January 1998. Republic of Cuba, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Is there U.S. property in Cuba?, Embassy of Cuba, Pretoria, undated. Quoted by Mary Murray, pp. 24–34. Republic of Cuba, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Speech delivered by the Cuban Minister of Foreign Relations, Roberto Robaina, at the World Conference on Human Rights, in Vienna, the 16th of June 1993, undated. BBCNews, 9 November 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk Republic of Cuba, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Some legal aspects violated by the ‘Hemls (sic)-Burton’ Act, undated.

Notes 407 146. Anonymous, Basic Facts on the ‘Helms-Burton’ Act, Havana, undated. 147. Republic of Cuba, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Speech delivered by Mr. Roberto Robaina Gonzalez, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba to the 52nd session of the Commission on Human Rights Geneva, April 10, 1996, undated. 148. Embassy of Cuba, Pretoria, On the alleged violations of human rights in Cuba, undated. 149. Republic of Cuba, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Why is there no justification for a resolution nor the existence of a special rapporteur for Cuba?, 1995. 150. Embassy of Cuba, Pretoria, On the alleged violations of human rights in Cuba. 151. Fidel Castro, Welcoming and farewell speeches on the occasion of John Paul II’s visit, Editora Política, Havana, 1998, p. 9. 152. Gillian Gunn Clissold, pp. 77, 80. 153. Quoted by Juan M. del Aguila, p. 130. 154. Quoted by Juan M. del Aguila, p. 135. 155. Quoted in Strengthening of the economic blockade against Cuba by the Republican Party. 156. Jorge I. Domínguez, To Make a World Safe for Revolution, 1989, p. 5; Alistair Hennesey and George Lambie (eds). 157. Amnesty International Report 1999: Cuba, www.amnesty.org/ailib/aireport/ar99; cubafacts.com; Human rights in Cuba since the papal visit, www.cubafacts.com/ Humanrights

Chapter 10

Myanmar

1. Robert H. Taylor, ‘Myanmar: Military politics and the prospects for democratisation’, Asian Affairs, Vol. 29(1), February 1998, p. 3. 2. Jan Donkers and Minka Nijhuis, Burma Behind the Mask, Burma Centrum Nederland, Amsterdam, 1996, pp. 119–20. 3. Josef Silverstein, ‘Historical introduction: Burma 1945–1992’, in Marc Weller (ed.), Democracy and Politics in Burma: A Collection of Documents, Government Printing Office, National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, Manerplaw, 1993, pp. 1–2, 366; The Europa World Year Book 2000, Europa Publications, London, 2000, p. 2591; Stefan Collignon, The Burmese Economy and the Withdrawal of European Trade Preferences, European Institute for Asian Studies, Brussels, 1997, p. 1; Peter Carey, ‘Introduction’, in Carey (ed.), Burma: The Challenge of Change in a Divided Society, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1997, p. 2; Frederica M. Bunge (ed.), Burma: A Country Study, Foreign Area Studies, American University, Washington, DC, 1983, pp. xxi, 47; Michael Fredholm, Burma: Ethnicity and Insurgency, Praeger Publishers, Westport, 1993, pp. 4–6; David I. Steinberg, ‘The Burmese political economy: Opportunities and tensions’, in Myanmar towards the 21st Century: Dynamics of Continuity and Change, Institute of Security and International Studies, Chulalongkorn University and the Asia Foundation, Chiang Rai, 1995, p. 12. 4. Josef Silverstein, ‘Historical introduction: Burma 1945–1992’, p. 3. 5. Josef Silverstein, ‘Historical introduction: Burma 1945–1992’, pp. 3–4; Peter Carey, ‘Introduction’, p. 1,17; Rolf C. Carriere, ‘Responding to Myanmar’s silent emergency’, in Peter Carey (ed.), p. 210; Frederic M. Bunge (ed.), pp. xx, 51, 58–63; Bertil Lintner, Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency since 1948, Westview Press, Boulder, 1994, p. vii; Jan Donkers and Minka Nijhuis, p. 88.

408 Notes 6. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2591; Country Profile: Myanmar (Burma), The Economist Intelligence Unit, London, 1997, p. 7; Martin Smith, Paradise Lost? The Suppression of Environmental Rights and Freedom of Expression in Burma, Article 19, London, 1994, p. 2. 7. Josef Silverstein, ‘Historical introduction: Burma 1945–1992’, pp. 4–5; The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2591. 8. Quoted by Martin Smith, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity, Zed Books, London, 1991, p. 16. 9. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2592; Peter Carey, ‘Introduction’, p. 5; Martin Smith, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity, p. 16. Also see Bertil Lintner, Outrage: Burma’s Struggle for Democracy, White Lotus, London, 1990. 10. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2592. 11. Michael Fredholm, p. 4; John Bray, ‘Burma: Resisting the international community’, The Pacific Review, Vol. 5(3), 1992, pp. 291–2. 12. Martin Smith, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity, p. 9. 13. Quoted by Alan Clements and Leslie Kean, Burma’s Revolution of the Spirit: The Struggle for Democratic Freedom and Dignity, Aperture Foundation, New York, 1994, p. 57. 14. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2592; Country Profile: Myanmar (Burma), p. 4. 15. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2592. 16. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2592; John Bray, ‘Burma: Resisting the international community’, p. 292. 17. The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 2593–4, 2598; Country Profile: Myanmar (Burma), p. 8; Janelle M. Diller, The National Convention in Burma (Myanmar): An Impediment to the Restoration of Democracy, International League of Human Rights, New York, 1996, pp. 2–3; EU External Relations, The EU’s relations with Myanmar/Burma, November 2002, europa.eu.int/comm./external_relations/ Myanmar/intro/.) 18. The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 2593–4, 2598; Country Profile: Myanmar (Burma), p. 9. 19. The EU’s relations with Myanmar/Burma, November 2002. 20. The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 2593–5. 21. Josef Silverstein, ‘The 1994 United Nations resolution: What can the Secretary General do?’, in Regime Change and Regime Maintenance in Asia and the Pacific, Discussion Paper No. 17, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, 1996, pp. 4–6. 22. David I. Steinberg, ‘Priorities for Burma’s development: The role of international aid’, in Peter Carey (ed.), p. 174; Peter J. Perry, ‘Military rule in Burma: A geographical analysis’, Crime, Law and Social Change, Vol. 19(1), January 1993, p. 26. 23. Bertil Lintner, Burma in Revolt, p. vii; John Bray, ‘Burma: Prospects for regional integration’, in Ian G. Cook et al., Fragmented Asia: Regional Integration and National Disintegration in Pacific Asia, Avebury, Aldershot, 1996, p. 181; Jan Donkers and Minka Nijhuis, p. 85; The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 2595–6; European Commission, The EU’s relations with Myanmar/Burma, November 2002, http:www.europa.eu.int/com… 24. The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 2596–7. 25. Frederica M. Bunge (ed.), p. xxi. 26. Peter Carey, ‘Introduction’, p. 1; Frederica M. Bunge (ed.), pp. 65–6. 27. Frederica M. Bunge (ed.), p. 209.

Notes 409 28. Frederica M. Bunge (ed.), pp. 207–14; Chi-shad Liang, Burma’s Foreign Relations Neutralism in Theory and Practice, Greenwood Press, Westport, 1990, pp. 166–8. 29. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2599. 30. David I. Steinberg, The Burmese political economy, p. 2. 31. The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 2597–8; Kanbawza Win, Constructive Engagement in the Burmese Context, CPDSK Publishers, Bangkok, 1995, p. i. 32. Asia Pacific News Digest, http://www.soros.org/burma/rifkind.html,1997 33. Quoted in State of Fear: Censorship in Burma (Myanmar), Article 19 Country Report, London, 1991, p. 74. 34. Quoted by John Bray, ‘Burma: Resisting the international community’, p. 292. 35. Quoted by Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S Foreign Policy: Containment after the Cold War, The Woodrow Wilson Press Center, Washington, DC, 2000, p. 78. 36. Resolution 2003/12, http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf 37. Quoted by Marc Weller (ed.), p. 404; UN Human Rights Commission resolution 2003/12. 38. Martin Smith, Censorship Prevails: Political Deadlock and Economic Transition in Burma, Article 19, London, 1995, p. 5. 39. Burma: General Assembly Report of the Special Rapporteur, http://www.hri.ca/ fortherecord1999 40. UN Human Rights Commission, Press Release HR/CN/862, 20 April 1998, http://srchl.un.org/plweb-cgi 41. Amnesty International Report 2003, Myanmar, http://web.amnesty.org/ report2003/mmr-summary-eng 42. Resolution 2002/67, http://www.hri.ca/fortherecord2002/vol3/myanmarchr.htm 43. Human Rights Commission resolution 2003/12. 44. Human Rights Watch, Documents on Burma, 3 June 2003, file://C:\ DOCUME-1\LOCALS-1\Temp\TM8CAND4.htm 45. The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 2593, 2595; Burma: The Alternative Guide, second edition, Burma Action Group, London, 1996, p. 10; Keesing’s Record of World Events, November 2000, p. 43855. 46. Keesing’s Record of World Events, June 2000, p. 43627. 47. Burma: General Assembly Report of the Special Rapporteur, 1999, http://www.hri.ca/fortherecord1999 48. ILO Press Release, 7 November 2001, http://www.ilo.org/public/english/ bureau/inf/pr/2001/48.htm; Letter by Glenys Kinnock, MEP, to the WTO, 9 April 2002, www.burmainfo.org/eu/Kinnock20020409.pdf 49. Human Rights Watch World Report 2002: Children’s Rights, 16 October 2002, http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/10/burma-1016.htm; Macon.com, Politics, 19 October 2002, http://www.macon.com/mld/m… 50. Burma: The Alternative Guide, p. 10. 51. Kanbawza Win, A Burmese Appeal to the UN and the US, CPDSK Publishers, Bangkok, 1994, p. 12; Amnesty International, Extrajudicial Execution and Torture of Members of Ethnic Minorities, Amnesty International Publications, London, 1988; Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar, prepared by the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights, February 1993, reproduced in Marc Weller (ed), p. 400. 52. Keesing’s Record of World Events, October 2000, p. 43802. 53. Country Profile: Myanmar (Burma), pp. 10–11. 54. Marc Weller (ed.), pp. 368, 399, 401. 55. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2597.

410 Notes 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

74.

75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

80. 81.

82. 83. 84.

Jan Donkers and Minka Nijhuis, pp. 74, 121. See Alan Clements, Burma: The next Killing Fields? Odonian Press, Berkeley, 1992. Martin Smith, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity, pp. 21–2. Jan Donkers and Minka Nijhuis, p. 74. For example Bulletin of the European Communities, Vol. 23(5), 1990, p. 89. UN Commission of Human Rights, Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, 1997, http://www.hri.ca/fortherecord1997 Marc Weller (ed.), p. 303. Marc Weller (ed.), p. 398. Marc Weller (ed.), p. 437. This warning was echoed the following year by the EC – Bulletin of the European Communities, Vol. 25(3), 1992, p. 102. Quoted by Marc Weller (ed.), p. 403. Kanbawza Win, A Burmese Appeal to the UN and the US, p. 7. Martin Smith, Paradise Lost? p. 6. State of Fear, pp. 12–13. Alan Clements and Leslie Kean, p. 95. Quoted by Alan Clements and Leslie Kean, p. 95. Martin Smith, Paradise Lost?, p. 1. Bertil Lintner, Burma in Revolt, p. vii. Peter Carey, ‘Introduction’, p. 15; Country Profile: Myanmar (Burma), p. 36; David I. Steinberg, ‘Background’, in Steinberg (ed.), Burma: Prospects for Political and Economic Reconstruction, World Peace Foundation, WPF Reports, No. 15, Cambridge, Mass., 1997, pp. 29–30; Alan Clements and Leslie Kean, p. 89. International Narcotics Control Board, Annual Report for 2002, http://www. incb.org/e/ind_ar.htm; UNDCP report on the drug situation in Myanmar, 2001, cited in Myanmar Times, 26 February – 4 March 2001, http://www3.itu.int/MISSIONS/Myanmar/int01/mt0330502.htm; US Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, March 2002: Burma, http://usinfo.state.gov/ regional/ea/burma/narc2002.htm Peter Carey, ‘Introduction’, p. 15. South China Morning Post, 2 September 1997. Concurrent resolution, reproduced by Marc Weller (ed.), p. 436. Quoted by Alan Clements and Leslie Kean, p. 89. John Bray, Burma: The Politics of Constructive Engagement, Discussion Paper 58, RIIA, London, 1995, p. 25; David I. Steinberg, ‘Background’, in Steinberg (ed.), Burma: Prospects for Political and Economic Reconstruction, p. 30; Ronald D. Renard, The Burmese Connection: Illegal Drugs and the Making of the Golden Triangle, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder, 1996, p. 106; Bertil Lintner, ‘Drugs, insurgency and counterinsurgency in Burma’, in Myanmar towards the 21st Century: Dynamics of Continuity and Change, pp. 21, 32–5; Jan Donkers and Minka Nijhuis, pp. 78–9. Myanmar Times, 26 February – 4 March 2001; Keesing’s Record of World Events, January 2000, p. 43360. ‘Impact of Myanmar’s membership into ASEAN’, Presentation by His Excellency U Ohn Gyaw, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Union of Myanmar at the Asia Society, New York, 30th September 1997, published by the Permanent Mission of the Union of Myanmar to the UN, New York, 1997, p. 2; Ronald D. Renard, pp. 2, 106. Myanmar Times, 26 February – 4 March 2001. Quoted by Marc Weller (ed.), p. 428. Quoted by John Bray, ‘Burma: Resisting the international community’, p. 292.

Notes 411 85. Quoted by Marc Weller (ed.), p. 428. 86. Alan Clements and Leslie Kean, p. 63. 87. All General Assembly resolutions can be found on the UN website, http://www.un.org/ga… 88. Quoted by Marc Weller (ed.), p. 304. 89. Marc Weller (ed.), pp. 426–8. 90. Resolution 2002/67, http://www.hri.ca/fortherecord2002/vol3/myanmarchr.htm 91. Marc Weller (ed.), pp. 402–3. 92. UN Commission on Human Rights, resolution 1992/58, 3 March 1992, quoted by Marc Weller (ed.), pp. 304–5; subsequent resolutions can be found at http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda 93. Resolution 2003/12. Earlier Commission resolutions can be found at http:// www.unhchr.ch/huridocda, among other websites. 94. See the Bulletin of the European Communities/European Union from 1992 onwards. 95. Quoted by Marc Weller (ed.), p. 440. 96. John Bray, Burma: The Politics of Constructive Engagement, p. 55; Martin Smith, Censorship Prevails, p. 5. 97. http://europa.eu.int/abc/doc/off/bull/en/200210p106018.htm 98. Marc Weller (ed.), p. 440; Jan Donkers and Miska Nijhuis, p. 112. 99. Marc Weller (ed.), p. 434. 100. Quoted by Marc Weller (ed.), p. 428. 101. John Bray, ‘Burma: Resisting the international community’, p. 292. 102. Jan Donkers and Minka Nijhuis, p. 97. Also see Barbara Victor, The Lady: Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Laureate and Burma’s Prisoner, Faber & Faber, Boston, 1998. 103. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2594. 104. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2598. 105. Quoted in Burma: The Alternative Guide, pp. 2–3, 33. 106. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2598. 107. Quoted by Peter Carey, ‘Introduction’, p. 13. 108. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2595. 109. John Bray, ‘Burma: Resisting the international community”, p. 292; Kanbawza Win, A Burmese Appeal to the UN and the US, p. 6. 110. Alan Clements and Leslie Kean, p. 69. 111. Quoted by Marc Weller (ed.), p. 304. 112. Resolution 1995/72, ‘Situation of human rights in Myanmar’, http://www. unhchr.ch/huridocda 113. Quoted in Time, 15 November 1999, p. 38. 114. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2598. 115. Financial Times, 18–19 November 2000; The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2598; The EU’s relations with Myanmar/Burma, November 2002; Human Rights Watch World Report 2002: Burma. 116. Bulletin of the European Communities, Vol. 24(1/2), 1991, p. 100. 117. Marc Weller (ed.), p. 426. 118. European Commission, Burma/Myanmar – Council conclusions, 9 April 2001, http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/10/burma-1016.htm 119. See, for instance, Amnesty International, Burma: Extrajudicial Execution and Torture of Members of Ethnic Minorities, Amnesty International Publications, London, May 1988. 120. See, for example, K.S. Venkateswaran, Burma: Beyond the Law, Article 19, The International Centre against Censorship, London, 1996. 121. Concurrent resolution, 1992, quoted by Marc Weller (ed.), p. 436.

412 Notes 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127.

128. 129. 130. 131.

132.

133. 134.

135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140.

141. 142. 143. 148. 149.

150. 151. 152. 153. 154.

155.

The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2598. John Bray, ‘Burma: Resisting the international community’, pp. 292–4. Rolf C. Carriere, pp. 210, 223. Marc Weller (ed.), p. 437; Country Profile: Myanmar (Burma), p. 11. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2598; Leon T. Hadar, ‘Burma: US foreign policy as a morality play’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 54(2), Spring 2001, p. 416. US State Department, Conditions in Burma and US policy toward Burma, 28 March 2001 – 27 September 2001, http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/ea/ burma/burma209.htm Country Profile: Myanmar (Burma), p. 40. David I. Steinberg, ‘Priorities for Burma’s development’, p. 176. Keesing’s Record of World Events, June 2000, p. 43627. Robert H. Taylor, ‘Myanmar: Military politics and the prospects for democratisation’, Asian Affairs, Vol. 29(1), February 1998, p. 10; John Bray, Burma: The Politics of Constructive Engagement, p. 34. David I. Steinberg, ‘The Burmese political economy: Opportunities and tensions’, p. 9; Jan Donkers and Minka Nijhuis, p. 92; ICFTU Online, 31 October 2002, http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?Index=991216646&Language=EN Bulletin of the European Communities, Vol. 24(1/2), 1991, p. 100. European Commission, General Report on the Activities of the European Union 1997, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Brussels, 1998, p. 340; Country Profile: Myanmar (Burma), p. 11. Keesing’s Record of World Events, April 2000, p. 43519; The EU’s relations with Myanmar/Burma, November 2002. www.mfsa.com.mt/mfsa/sanctions/burma%20council%20common% 20position.pdf Country Profile: Myanmar (Burma), p. 37. John Bray, ‘Burma: Resisting the international community’, p. 292. Country Profile: Myanmar (Burma), p. 38. David I. Steinberg, ‘Priorities for Burma’s development’, p. 177; The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2598; Country Profile: Myanmar (Burma), p. 11; John Bray, ‘Myanmar: Resisting the international community’, p. 293; John Bray, Burma: The Politics of Constructive Engagement, p. 53; Jan Donkers and Miska Nijhuis, p. 101; Keesing’s Record of World Events, May 2001, p. 44156. Rolf C. Carriere, p. 210. Bulletin of the European Union, 10, 1996, p. 85. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2598. Jan Donkers and Minka Nijhuis, p. 95. Bulletin of the European Communities, Vol. 24(1/2), 1991, p. 100; Bulletin of the European Communities, 10, 1996, p. 85; The EU’s relations with Myanmar/Burma, November 2002. Marc Weller (ed.), p. 453. Country Profile: Myanmar (Burma), p. 28; Burma: The Alternative Guide, p. 1. Leon T. Hadar, p. 413. Time, 18 September 2000. Josef Silverstein, ‘The 1994 United Nations resolution’, p. 3; The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 2593–8; Report of the Secretary-General, 16 October 2002, http://www.ibiblio.org/obl/show.php?cat=806 Marc Weller (ed.), pp. 304, 365; UN Commission on Human Rights, Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, 1997, http://www.hri.ca/ fortherecord1997

Notes 413 156. ILO Press Release, 4 September 2002, http://www.ilo.org/public/english/ bureau/inf/pr/2002/40.htm; ILO, Press release 14 May 2003, http://www. ilo.org/public/engl… 157. John Bray, ‘Burma: Prospects for regional integration’, p. 195. 158. Quoted by John Bray, Burma: The Politics of Constructive Engagement, p. 58. 159. European Commission, The EU’s relations with Myanmar/Burma, November 2002. 160. Conditions in Burma and US policy toward Burma for the period 28 March 2001 – 27 September 2001. 161. Leon T. Hadar, p. 415; Josef Silverstein, ‘The 1994 United Nations resolution’, p. 3. 162. Quoted by Kanbawza Win, Constructive Engagement in the Burmese Context, p. 15. 163. Leon T. Hadar, p. 420. 164. John Bray, ‘Burma: Prospects for regional integration’, p. 190. 165. Country Profile: Myanmar (Burma), p. 11. 166. John Bray, Burma: The Politics of Constructive Engagement, p. 43; Human Rights Watch World Report 2002: Burma; Keesing’s Record of World Events, May 2001, p. 44155. 167. John Bray, Burma: The Politics of Constructive Engagement, pp. 45–6. 168. Human Rights Watch World Report 2002: Burma. UN General Assembly resolution 56/231 of 24 December 2001 alluded to the establishment of a national human rights committee. 169. Peter Carey, ‘Introduction’, p. 15. 170. Peter Carey, ‘Introduction’, p. 16; John Bray, ‘Burma: Prospects for regional integration’, pp. 191–4. 171. Quoted by Leon T. Hadar, pp. 421–2. 172. John Bray, Burma: The Politics of Constructive Engagement, p. 56. 173. John Bray, Burma: The Politics of Constructive Engagement, pp. 56–7; US State Department, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, March 2002: Burma. 174. Bertil Lintner, ‘Drugs, insurgency and counterinsurgency in Burma’, p. 34; US Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, March 1997, http://www.usemb.se/drugs/Southeastasia 175. Peter Carey, ‘Introduction’, pp. 15–16. 176. Stefan Collignon, p. 11. 177. Quoted by John Bray, ‘Burma: Resisting the international community’, p. 293. 178. Quoted by Josef Silverstein, ‘The 1994 United Nations resolution’, p. 3. 179. Quoted by Josef Silverstein, ‘The 1994 United Nations resolution’, p. 5. 180. UN Commission on Human Rights, Press Release HR/CN/862, 20 April 1998, http://srchl.un.org/plweb-cgi 181. South China Morning Post, 2 September 1997. 182. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2595. 183. ‘Impact of Myanmar’s membership into ASEAN’, p. 2. 184. Quoted in State of Fear, p. 76. 185. John Bray, Burma: The Politics of Constructive Engagement, p. 46. 186. Quoted in State of Fear, p. 71. 187. Quoted in State of Fear, p. 71. 188. Quoted by John Bray, Burma: The Politics of Constructive Engagement, p. 54. 189. Quoted by Marc Weller (ed.), p. 441. 190. David I Steinberg, ‘Priorities for Burma’s development’, pp. 175–6. 191. Martin Smith, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity, p. 18; State of Fear, p. 72.

414 Notes 192. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2595. 193. Keesing’s Record of World Events, November 2000, p. 43855; KS Venkateswaran, pp. 71–2; Marc Weller (ed.), p. 398. 194. Leon T. Hadar, p. 419; Robert H. Taylor, p. 11. 195. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2593; Country Profile: Myanmar (Burma), pp. 5–6. 196. Time, 30 October 2000 and 30 July 2001; Financial Times, 27–28 January 2001; Keesing’s Record of World Events, October 2000, p. 43801. 197. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2593. 198. Financial Times, 18–19 November 2000. 199. Conditions in Burma and US policy toward Burma for the period 28 March 2001 – 27 September 2001; Human Rights Watch World Report 2002: Burma; The EU’s relations with Myanmar/Burma, November 2002.

Chapter 11

Yugoslavia

1. Carole Rogel, The Breakup of Yugoslavia and the War in Bosnia, Greenwood Press, Westport, 1998, p. 57; The Europa World Yearbook 2000, Europa Publications, London, 2000, p. 4065. 2. The Europa World Yearbook 2000, p. 4065. 3. The Europa World Yearbook 2000, p. 4065; Mirko Ostojic, ‘Foreign factor in the breaking up of Yugoslavia’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 43(1001), 5 November 1992, pp. 5–6. 4. The Europa World Yearbook 2000, pp. 4065–6; Milos Dromnjak, ‘Crisis in Yugoslavia’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 42(995–7), 5 October – 5 November 1991, p. 1; James Ridgeway and Jasminka Udovicki, ‘Introduction’, in Udovicki and Ridgeway (eds), Yugoslavia’s Ethnic Nightmare: The Inside Story of Europe’s Unfolding Ordeal, Lawrence Hill Books, New York, 1995, p. 6. 5. The Europa World Yearbook 2000, pp. 4066–7. For detailed analyses of the breakup of Yugoslavia, see Lenard J. Cohen, Broken Bonds: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia, Westview, Boulder, 1993; Laslo Sekelj, Yugoslavia: The Process of Disintegration, Columbia University Press, New York, 1993; Branka Magas, The Destruction of Yugoslavia: Tracking the Break-up 1980–92, Verso, London, 1993; Christopher Bennett, Yugoslavia’s Bloody Collapse: Causes, Course and Consequences, Hurst & Co., London, 1995; Alex N. Dragnich, Yugoslavia’s Disintegration and the Struggle for Truth, Columbia University Press, New York, 1995; Bogdan Denitch, Ethnic Nationalism: The Tragic Death of Yugoslavia, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1996; John M. Lampe, Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996; Jasminka Udovicki and James Ridgeway (eds), Burn this House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia, Duke University Press, Durham, 1997; Aleksandar Pavkovic, The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia: Nationalism in a Multinational State, St Martin’s New York, 1997. 6. Predrag Simic, ‘Dynamics of the Yugoslav crisis’, Security Dialogue, Vol. 26(2), June 1995, p. 169. 7. Predrag Simic, ‘Dynamics of the Yugoslav crisis’, p. 168. 8. Country Profile: Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) Macedonia 1997–98, The Economist Intelligence Unit, London, 1997, p. 25; additional information from various state and non-state sources on the Internet.

Notes 415 9. Yves Beigbeder, Judging War Criminals: The Politics of International Justice, Macmillan, Houndmills, 1999, p. 149. 10. See Yugoslavia: Crisis in Kosovo, Helsinki Watch and the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, no place of publication, 1990; Yugoslavia: Human Rights Abuses in Kosovo 1990–1992, Human Rights Watch, New York, 1992. 11. The Independent International Commission on Kosovo, The Kosovo Report: Conflict, International Response, Lessons Learned, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000, pp. 39–59. 12. The Kosovo Report, pp. 2–3. 13. The Kosovo Report, p. 141; Time, 9 July 2001. 14. Lenard J. Cohen, ‘Post-Milosevic Serbia’, Current History, Vol. 100(644), pp. 102–3; EU External Relations, The EU’s relations with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, June 2001, http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/ sec/fry/montenegro/index/htm; Country Report: Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro), second quarter 1998, The Economist Intelligence Unit, London, 1998, p. 8. 15. Country Report: Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro), p. 8; Lenard J. Cohen, ‘PostMilosevic Serbia’, p. 99. 16. Lenard J. Cohen, ‘Post-Milosevic Serbia’, pp. 99–103. 17. Lenard J. Cohen, ‘Post-Milosevic Serbia’, pp. 101–2. 18. Keesing’s Record of World Events, October 2000, p. 43807 and November 2000, p. 43874; Financial Times (London), 25–26 November 2000; Eric D. Gordy, ‘Building a “normal, boring” country: Kostunica’s Yugoslavia’, Current History, Vol. 100(644), March 2001, pp. 109–113. 19. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Indictment against Slobodan Milosevic et al., May 1999, http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/mil-ii990524e.htm 20. Quoted by Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), Yugoslavia through Documents: From Its Creation to Its Dissolution, Martinus Nijhoff, Dordrecht, 1994, p. 625. 21. Patrick Moore of the Open Media Research Institute, quoted by Thomas Cushman and Stjepan G. Mestrovic, ‘Introduction’, in Cushman and Mestrovic (eds), This Time We Knew: Western Responses to Genocide in Bosnia, New York University Press, New York, 1996, p. 17. 22. Quoted by Lenard J. Cohen, Broken Bonds, p. 279. 23. Quoted by Miguel R. Rodrigues, “NATO as an instrument of imperialistic geopolitics of the USA’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 51(1091-3), April–June 2000, p. 22. 24. Sabrina P. Ramet, Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to Ethnic War, second edition, Westview, Boulder, 1996, p. 300. 25. Julie Mertus, ‘Serbia: Reimagining Europe’s outlaw nation’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 54(2), Spring 2001, p. 489. 26. James Ridgeway and Jasminka Udovicki, ‘Introduction’, in Udovicki and Ridgeway (eds), Yugoslavia’s Ethnic Nightmare, p. 12. 27. The Kosovo Report, p. 163. 28. Michael Libal, Limits of Persuasion: Germany and the Yugoslav Crisis, 1991–1992, Praeger, Westport, 1997, p. 141. 29. Predrag Simic, ‘Dynamics of the Yugoslav crisis’, p. 157. Also see James Ridgeway and Jasminka Udovicki, ‘Introduction’, in Udovicki and Ridgeway (eds), Yugoslavia’s Ethnic Nightmare, 1995, p. 12; James Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will: International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War, Columbia University Press, New York, 1997, pp. 42–4. 30. Quoted by Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), p. 691.

416 Notes 31. Michael Libal, p. 141. 32. Yves Beigbeder, pp. 142–9. For the findings of the CSCE, UN, US Congress, US State Department, CIA, International Red Cross and Helsinki Watch, see Thomas Cushman and Stjepan G. Mestrovic, ‘Introduction’, in Cushman and Mestrovic (eds), p. 15. 33. The United Nations and the Situation in the Former Yugoslavia, Reference Paper, 15 March 1994, UN Department of Public Information, New York, p. 43. 34. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Indictment. 35. Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), pp. 654ff. 36. See, for example, UN Security Council resolution 942 of September 1994. 37. Robert Thomas, Serbia: Still Europe’s Pariah? European Security Study No. 24, Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies, London, 1996, pp. 25–30. 38. See, for instance, Security Council resolutions 970 of January 1995 and 1015 of September 1995. 39. See resolutions 998, 1004, 1010 and 1019 of 1995. 40. See, for example, resolution 1034 of 21 December 1995. 41. The Kosovo Report, pp. 141–2. 42. The Europa World Yearbook 2000, p. 4073. For countervailing Yugoslav views of the Kosovo conflict and NATO involvement, see the collection of articles in the Belgrade-based Review of International Affairs, Vol. 51(1091–3), April–June 2000. 43. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Indictment. 44. These transgressions were well documented in the annual reports of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. 45. Review of International Affairs, Vol. 42(995–7), 5 October–5 November 1991, p. 17. 46. Quoted by Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), p. 680. 47. United Nations Press Release, Commission on Human Rights adopts resolutions on the situation of human rights in …the former Yugoslavia…, 18 April 2000, http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf 48. Zivadin Jovanovic, ‘Intensifying the comprehensive international cooperation of Yugoslavia’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 51(1096), August 2000, p. 30. 49. Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), p. 310. 50. Quoted by Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), pp. 342, 348 and 380. 51. EC declarations on Yugoslavia, 26 March 1991, 8 May 1991 and 5 July 1991, in Review of International Affairs, Vol. 42(995–7), 5 October–5 November 1991, p. 19. 52. Quoted by Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), p. 576. 53. See Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), pp. 382ff. 54. For example, resolution 47/147 of 18 December 1992. 55. See resolution 713 of September 1991. 56. Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), pp. 684–6. 57. For example, its declaration of September 1991. 58. As in a declaration of March 1992. 59. In a declaration of October 1991. 60. Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), pp. 349 and 356, 618–21, 644, 769; Review of International Affairs, Vol. XLIII(1003), 1 April 1992, p. 17. 61. Quoted by Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), p. 368. 62. EC statement of 11 April 1992, quoted by Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), pp. 524–5. 63. CSCE Declaration of 15 April 1992, quoted by Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), p. 528. 64. For example, resolution 752 of May 1992.

Notes 417 65. Quoted by Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), pp. 884–904. 66. Quoted by Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), p. 134. 67. The Kosovo Report, pp. 140–2; Country Report: Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro) , p. 13. 68. Council conclusions on the principle of conditionality… Bulletin of the European Union, 4-1997, p. 134. 69. Message of the European Union, Brussels, 10 November 1997, in Review of International Affairs, Vol. 49(1065), 15 February 1998, p. 12. 70. Branislava Alendar, ‘Conditions for the normalization of relations between FR Yugoslavia and the European Union’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 49(1070–71), 15 July–15 August 1998, p. 9; Ranko Petkovic, ‘Elections and sanctions’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 47(1049–50), 15 October– 15 November 1996, p. 7. 71. Quoted by Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), pp. 782, 878. 72. Keesing’s Record of World Events, March 2000, p. 43477. 73. Time, 12 July 1999. 74. Keesing’s Record of World Events, September 2000, p. 43766. 75. Keesing’s Record of World Events, September 2000: p. 43766. 76. On the staggering toll in death and destruction wrought by the bombardment, see Dragan Jovasevic, ‘NATO genocide in the FR of Yugoslavia’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 51(1091–3), April–June 2000, pp. 62–7. 77. Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), p. 311. 78. Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), p. 379. 79. Snezana Trifunovsla (ed.), p. 426. 80. Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), p. 644. 81. Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), pp. 350, 762. 82. Oskar Kovac, ‘Reintegration of Yugoslavia into the international financial system’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 50–1(1087–8), December 1999–January 2000, p. 35. 83. See Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), pp. 626, 644, 721, on the views of the European Council, Group of Seven and UN Security Council. 84. The United Nations and the Situation in the Former Yugoslavia, pp. 49–50. 85. Snezana Trifunovska (ed.), p. 923. 86. Lenard J. Cohen, Broken Bonds, p. 270. For a Yugoslav view, see Miodrag Mitic, ‘International law and the status of the FR of Yugoslavia in the United Nations’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 49(1072), 15 September 1998, pp. 27–44. 87. See Security Council resolution 1074 of October 1996. 88. Country Profile: Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) Macedonia 1997–98, p. 16; Predrag Simic, ‘Ambassadors return to Belgrade’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 47(1044), 15 May 1996, pp. 4–8; Predrag Simic, ‘The Bosnian endgame’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 47(1048), 15 September 1996, p. 3. 89. Dragana M. Djuric, ‘How to get out of the vicious circle?’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 47(1052), 15 January 1997, p. 9; Dejan Jovovic, ‘Yugoslavia and the International Monetary Fund’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 47(1044), 15 May 1996, p. 12; Ranko Petkovic, p. 7. 90. Country Profile: Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) Macedonia 1997–98, p. 7; The Kosovo Report, p. 140; The Europa World Yearbook 2000, p. 4072; Country Report: Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro), p. 13; Milutin Janjevic, ‘The Euro and Yugoslavia’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 50(1076), 15 January 1999,

418 Notes

91. 92. 93. 94. 95.

96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105.

106. 107. 108. 109. 110.

111.

112. 113. 114.

115. 116.

pp. 4–5; Domenico Gallo, ‘A collateral aspect of NATO aggression: European Union sanctions’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 51(1091–3), April–June 2000, p. 41. Keesing’s Record of World Events, February 2000, p. 43432. CNN.com, U.S. lifts oil, travel sanctions against Yugoslavia, 12 October 2000, http://europe.cnn.com/2000/US/10/12/us.yugoslavia.02/ CNN.com, Clinton lifts sanctions against Yugoslavia, 19 January 2001, http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/01/19/clinton.yugoslavia/ The Kosovo Report, pp. 7, 99–129; The Europa World Yearbook 2000, p. 4074. The Kosovo Report, p. 100; Richard J Goldstone, Kosovo: An Assessment in the Context of International Law, Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, New York, 2000, p. 13; Lenard J Cohen, ‘Kosovo: “Nobody’s country”’, Current History, Vol. 99(635), March 2000, pp. 117–23. Time, 13 December 1999; The Europa World Yearbook 2000, p. 4074. The United Nations and the Situation in the Former Yugoslavia, pp. 2–3. ‘The NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina’, NATO Basic Fact Sheet, No. 11, April 1997, http://www.nato.int/docu/facts/sfor.htm Yves Beigbeder, pp. 146–52. Yves Beigbeder, p. 160. Time, 7 June 1999, 6 September 1999, 16 October 1999, 27 March 2000, 9 July 2001. Time, 9 July 2001. See resolution 1207 of 1998. Time, 9 July 2001. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Indictment; BBC News, The charges against Milosevic, 8 February 2002, http://news.bbc. co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1402790.stm Time, 17 April 2000 and 5 February 2001; Keesing’s Record of World Events, November 2000, p. 43874; Beeld, 3 August 2001; Time, 10 September 2001. Yves Beigbeder, p. 160. Federal Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic in Review of International Affairs, Vol. 51(1096), August 2000, p. 30. Time, 12 July 1999. EU External Relations, The EU’s relations with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, June 2001, http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/sec/fry/ compos_184_96.htm Zivadin Jovanovic, ‘Intensifying the comprehensive international cooperation of Yugoslavia’, p. 30; Zivadin Jovanovic, ‘The heart of freedom beats in Yugoslavia’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 51(1091–3), April–June 2000: 7–9. Zivadin Jovanovic, ‘The heart of freedom beats in Yugoslavia’, p. 8. Zivadin Jovanovic, ‘The heart of freedom beats in Yugoslavia’, p. 6. The Kosovo Report, pp. 4–5,19,141; Michael Mandelbaum, ‘A perfect failure: NATO’s war against Yugoslavia’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 78(5), September–October 1999, pp. 2–8; Ivo H. Daalder and Michael E. O’Hanlon, ‘Unlearning the lessons of Kosovo’, Foreign Policy, Fall 1999, pp. 128–39. Zivadin Jovanovic: ‘The heart of freedom beats in Yugoslavia’, p. 6. Zivadin Jovanovic, ‘The heart of freedom beats in Yugoslavia’, p. 8. Also see David Binder, ‘Whose ethnic cleansing?’ in the same edition of the Review, p. 33; Dragan Jovasevic, ‘Terrorism in Kosovo and Metohija: Criminal–legal aspects’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 50(1085–6), October–November 1999, pp. 19–22.

Notes 419 117. Zivadin Jovanovic, ‘The heart of freedom beats in Yugoslavia’, p. 8. 118. Radoje Kontic, ‘Yugoslavia and Russia’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 49(1063–4), 15 December 1997, pp. 1–3; ‘Common Declaration of Friendly Relations and Cooperation between FR Yugoslavia and PR China’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 49(1063–4), 15 December 1997, p. 2; ‘Joint declaration signed in Moscow by President Yeltsin and President Milosevic’, Review of International Affairs, Vol. 49(1068–69), 15 May–15 June 1998, p. 1. 119. Keesing’s Record of World Events, June 2000, p. 43641.

Chapter 12

Additional African States

1. http://www.worldaudit.org/publisher.htm 2. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Containment after the Cold War, Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Washington, DC, 2000, pp. 77–8. 3. Robert B. Shepard, Nigeria, Africa, and the United States, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1991, p. 4. 4. Robert B. Shepard, p. 6. 5. Robert B. Shepard, p. 157; Tunde Babawale, ‘Nigeria’s foreign policy’, in Said Adejumobi and Abubakar Momoh (eds), The Political Economy of Nigeria under Military Rule (1984–1993), Sapes Books, Harare, 1995, pp. 114, 121. 6. Cece Modupé Fadopé, ‘Nigeria’, Vol. 2(12), January 1997, http://www.foreign policy-infocus.org; Salih Booker et al., ‘Nigeria’s Transition: From End to Beginning’, Council on Foreign Relations, 1998–99, http://www.cfr.org/public/ pubs/nigeriaconf98.html; Abubakar Momoh, ‘The military and human rights’, in Said Adejumobi and Abubakar Momoh (eds), pp. 312–37. Also see Larry Diamond et al. (eds), Transition without End: Nigerian Politics and Civil Society under Babangida, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder, 1997. 7. Cece Modupé Fadopé. 8. Evan H. Potter, ‘Nigeria and the Commonwealth: Explaining Canada’s hard-line approach to sanctions, 1995–1996’, Round Table, April 1997, http://ehostvgw6.epnet.com 9. http://projects.sipri.se/expcon/euframe/eu_nigeria.htm 10. Cece Modupé Fadopé; Salih Booker et al.; Adonis Hoffman, ‘Nigeria: The policy conundrum’, Foreign Policy, No. 101, Winter 1995–96, p. 151. 11. Cece Modupé Fadopé. 12. Adonis Hoffman, p. 152. 13. Cece Modupé Fadopé. 14. Sola Akinrinade, ‘Nigeria and the Commonwealth: Towards an understanding of a foreign policy crisis’, Round Table, April 1997, http://ehostvgw6.epnet.com 15. Sola Akinrinade. 16. Evan H. Potter. 17. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/204720.stm 18. Evan H. Potter. 19. Evan H. Potter. Also see Morton H Halperin & Kristen Lomasney, ‘Guaranteeing democracy: A review of the record’, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 9(2), April 1998, p. 145. 20. Cece Modupé Fadopé. 21. Adonis Hoffman, p. 146. 22. Evan H. Potter. 23. The Europa World Year Book 2000, Europa Publications, London, 2000, p. 2763.

420 Notes 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57.

Time, 7 February 2000. Robert B. Shepard, p. 157. Cece Modupé Fadopé; Adonis Hoffman, p. 150. Robert B. Shepard, p. 2; Helen C. Metz (ed.), Nigeria: A Country Study, Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC, 1992, pp. 245–50; Adonis Hoffman, pp. 149, 157; Cece Modupé Fadopé; Sola Akinrinade. Susan E. Rice, ‘Prospects for democracy in Nigeria’, US Department of State Dispatch, July 1998, http://ehostvgw6.epnet.com Evan H. Potter. Adonis Hoffman, p. 158. Salih Booker et al. Time, 7 February 2000. New York Times, 10 February 1997. Salih Booker et al. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 2763; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/ africa/204720.stm Derek Ingram, ‘Commonwealth update’, Round Table, October 1999, http://ehostvgw6.epnet.com. The EU rewarded Nigeria by lifting all remaining sanctions – http://www.dti.gov.uk/export.control/notices/1999/notice5.htm The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993–1996, Department of Public Information, United Nations, New York, 1996, pp. 8–9. The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993–1996, pp. 9–10; Peter Uvin, ‘Ethnicity and power in Burundi and Rwanda: Different paths to mass violence’, Comparative Politics, Vol. 31(3), April 1999, p. 256. The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993–1996, pp. 10–11. The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993–1996, p. 11. Peter Uvin, pp. 257–8. The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993–1996, p. 12. Peter Uvin, pp. 257–8. Peter Uvin, p. 260; Christopher Clapham, ‘Rwanda: The perils of peacemaking’, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 35(2), March 1998, pp. 200–2. Peter Uvin, p. 260. Jean-Paul Chretien, quoted by Larry Minear and Philippe Guillot, Soldiers to the Rescue: Humanitarian Lessons from Rwanda, Development Centre of the OECD, Paris, 1996, p. 57. Peter Uvin, p. 260; The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993–1996, pp. 12,15; Larry Minear and Philippe Guillot, p. 57; Christopher Clapham, p. 205. The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993–1996, pp. 16–17. Quoted by Peter Uvin, p. 261. Quoted in The United Nations and Rwanda 1993–1996, pp. 21–2. The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993–1996, pp. 23–8. The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993–1996, pp. 28–36. Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 1954–1994: History of a Genocide, Hurst & Co., London, 1995, pp. 206–12. The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993–1996, pp. 37–8, 40, 57; Larry Minear and Philippe Guillot, p. 58; Christopher Clapham, p. 207; Shaharyar M. Khan, The Shallow Graves of Rwanda, I.B. Tauris, London, 2000. The United Nations and Rwanda, 199–1996, p. 37. Alex de Waal and Rakiya Omaar, ‘The genocide in Rwanda and the international response’, Current History, Vol. 94(591), April 1995, p. 156. Gerard Prunier, pp. 264–5.

Notes 421 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

77.

78. 79. 80.

81. 82.

83. 84. 85.

Gerard Prunier, pp. 37, 51. The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993–1996, pp. 62–3. Quoted in The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993–1996, pp. 63–4. The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993–1996, pp. 44, 61. For an even more graphic account of the horrors, see Gerard Prunier, pp. 253–7. The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993–1996, pp. 62–4. Quoted by Larry Minear and Philippe Guillot: 58. For a detailed report on who organized and executed the genocide, see Gerard Prunier, pp. 239–48. Gerard Prunier, pp. 209–11. Quoted in The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993–1996, p. 51. The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993–1996, pp. 48, 50, 58; Alex de Waal and Rakiya Omar, p. 157. Larry Minear and Philippe Guillot, p. 70. The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993–1996, pp. 54–6; Gerard Prunier, pp. 234–5; Larry Minear and Philippe Guillot, p. 58. Alex de Waal and Rakiya Omar, p. 158. Quoted by Gerard Prunier, p. 274. Gerard Prunier, pp. 274–5. The United Nations and Rwanda 1993–1996, p. 59. The United Nations and Rwanda 1993–1996, p. 48; Gerard Prunier, pp. 275–6. The United Nations and Rwanda 1993–1996, p. 57. Alex de Waal and Rikiya Omar, p. 159; Larry Minear and Philippe Guillot, pp. 62–7. The United Nations and Rwanda, 1993–1996, pp. 64–6, 103; Nina Huygen ‘Towards a Permanent International Criminal Court’, Verfassung und Recht in Uebersee, Vol. 29(3), 1996, pp. 298–9; Human Rights Watch, World Report 2003: Rwanda, http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/africa9.html; Time, 10 September 2001; CNEWS, Convictions in Rwanda genocide, 19 February 2003, http://cnews. canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/02/19/28713-ap. html Human Rights Watch, World Report 2003: Rwanda; Amnesty International, Report 2003: Rwanda, http://web.amnesty.org/report2003/Rwa-summary-eng; allAfrica.com, Rwandans say ‘yes’ in vote, 2 June 2003, http://allafrica.com/ stories/200306040403.html; allAfrica.com, New constitution becomes effective, 5 June 2003, http://allafrica.com/stories200306050223.html Human Rights Watch, World Report 2003: Rwanda. W.J. Hartogh, ‘The conflict in Sudan: A failed state’, Forum, No 4, South African Defence College Studies in National Security, ca. 2000, p. 94. Cecil Eprile, War and Peace in the Sudan 1955–1972, David & Charles, London, 1974, p. 49; John O. Voll and Sarah P. Voll, The Sudan: Unity and Diversity in a Multicultural State, Westview, 1985, pp. 10, 49–61. The Europa World Year Book 2001, Europa Publications, London, 2001, pp. 3678. Mohammed B. Hamid, ‘Devolution and national integration in the Southern Sudan’, in Muddathir Abd Al-Rahim et al. (eds), Sudan since Independence: Studies of the Political Development since 1956, Gower, Aldershot, 1986, p. 131; The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 3678; Abel Alier, Southern Sudan: Too Many Agreements Dishonoured, Ithaca Press, Reading, 1991, p. 256. Douglas H. Johnson, ‘North–south issues’, in Peter Woodward (ed.), Sudan after Nimeiri, Routledge, London, 1991, p. 120. The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 3678; Douglas H. Johnson, p. 120; W.J. Hartogh, p. 97; Abel Alier, p. 268. The Europa World Year Book 2001, pp. 3678–9, 3684; Kamal O. Salih, ‘The Sudan, 1985–9: The fading democracy’, in Peter Woodward (ed.), pp. 51–71.

422 Notes 86. The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 3679. 87. Amnesty International, ‘The Tears of Orphans’: No Future without Human Rights, Amnesty International Publications, London, 1995, p. 1. 88. Bulletin of the European Communities, Vol. 25(10), 1992, p. 92. 89. John O. Voll and Sarah P. Voll, pp. 81–7; Muhammad B. Hamid, ‘Aspects of Sudanese foreign policy’, in Muddathir Abd Al-Rahim et al. (eds), pp. 170–1; Peter Woodward, ‘Sudan: Threats to Stability’, Conflict Studies, No 173, Institute for the Study of Conflict, London, 1985, p. 20. 90. UN Press Release, Commission on Human Rights adopts resolutions on human rights in Iran, Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo, 20 April 2001, http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane.nsf 91. European Commission, Bulletin of the European Union, Sudan, 19 May 2003, http://europa.eu.int/abc/doc/off/bull/en/200301/p106031.htm 92. African Rights, Sudan’s Invisible Citizens: The Policy of Abuse against Displaced People in the North, African Rights, London, 1995, p. 2. 93. George E. Moose, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Senate testimony on US policy towards Sudan, 15 May 1997, text courtesy of USIS, Johannesburg. 94. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 3685. 95. Time, 25 June 2001. 96. The Europa World Year Book 2001, pp. 3681–3. 97. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2003: Sudan. 98. Gary C. Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott and Kimberly A. Elliott, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered: Supplemental Case Histories, second edition, Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC, 1990, p. 633. 99. Time, 21 May 2001;Human Rights Watch, Human Rights News, 16 April 2003, http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/04/unchr.041603.htm; Amnesty International, News Release, 1 April 2003, http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/ 2003/sudan04012003.html 100. Quoted by Jim Fisher-Thompson, ‘Eritrean President chides Sudanese regime for stalling peace talks’, US Information Agency briefing, 18 September 1997, courtesy of USIS, Johannesburg. 101. Louis Depree, quoted in Washington Times, 3 June 1997. 102. Amnesty International, ‘The Tears of Orphans’, p. 4. 103. The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 3683. 104. See, for example, Human Rights Watch’s submission to the UN Commission on Human Rights 58th session, http://www.hrw.org/un/unchr58.htm 105. Jim Fisher-Thompson. 106. Shannon Field, The Civil War in Sudan: The Role of the Oil Industry, Occasional Paper 23, The Institute for Global Dialogue, Braamfontein, 2000, p. 9. 107. Remarks by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Sudan, 4 November 1997, text courtesy of USIS, Johannesburg. 108. Gare Smith, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, US State Department, remarks to the Senate Foreign Relations Africa subcommittee, 25 September 1997, text courtesy of USIS, Johannesburg. 109. Commission of the European Communities, XXVth General Report on the Activities of the European Communities 1991, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Brussels, 1992: 350. 110. W.J. Hartogh, p. 103; Shannon Field, p. 2. 111. Abel Alier, p. 236; Shannon Field, pp. 5–7, 28. Also see Amnesty International’s report, Sudan: The Human Price of Oil, May 2000, cited in Africa Confidential, Vol. 41(13), 23 June 2000, p. 4.

Notes 423 112. Africa Confidential, Vol. 38(15), 18 July 1997: 1; Ann M Lesch, ‘Osama bin Laden’s “business” in Sudan’, Current History, Vol. 101(655), May 2002, pp. 203, 209. 113. The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 3685. 114. Christian Science Monitor, 6 May 1997. 115. The Europa World Year Book 2001, pp. 3681, 3685; Ann M. Lesch, pp. 207–8. 116. The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 3685; Africa Confidential, Vol. 38(15), 18 July 1997, p. 3. 117. Kenneth R. McKune, Acting Coordinator for Counter-terrorism, in testimony to the US Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee for African Affairs, 15 May 1997, text courtesy of USIS, Johannesburg; Tim Niblock, ‘Pariah States’ and Sanctions in the Middle East: Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, 1991, pp. 200–1. 118. Gare Smith. 119. George E. Moose, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 15 May 1997, text courtesy of USIS, Johannesburg; Kenneth R. McKune. 120. George E. Moose. 121. Remarks by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Sudan. 122. Shannon Field, pp. 8–10. 123. Remarks by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Sudan; Tim Niblock, p. 208. 124. The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 3685. 125. The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 3685. 126. Kenneth R. McKune; Ann M. Lesch, p. 208. 127. George E. Moose. 128. Patterns of Global Terrorism 2002, www.state.gov/documents/organization/ 20109.pdf 129. Patterns of Global Terrorism 2002. 130. Mohammed B. Hamid, ‘Devolution and national integration in the Southern Sudan’, p. 129; W.J. Hartogh, pp. 101–4; Christian Science Monitor, 6 May 1997; Ann M. Lesch, p. 4. 131. John O. Voll and Sarah P. Voll, p. 124. 132. Shannon Field, p. 4. 133. Clinton in September 1997, quoted by Jim Fisher-Thompson. 134. George E. Moose. 135. Christian Science Monitor, 6 May 1997. 136. US Department of State, International Information Programs, ‘U.S. goal: Keep weapons of mass destruction out of terrorists’ hands’, 12 March 2002, http://usembassy-australia.state.gov/hype/2002/0312/epf206htm 137 Monterey Institute of International Studies, Weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East: Sudan, http://cns.miis.edu/research/wmdme/sudan.htm 138 AFP, ‘Sudan denies possessing weapons of mass destruction’, 10 January 2003, http://sudan.net/news/posted/6406.html 139 Ann M. Lesch, pp. 203–4. 140 The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 3685; W.J. Hartogh, p. 101. 141. Africa Confidential, Vol. 38(15), 18 July 1997, p. 1. 142. Gary C. Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott and Kimberly A. Elliott, p. 634. 143. Africa Confidential, Vol. 41(13), 23 June 2000, pp. 3–4. 144. Africa Confidential, Vol. 41(13), 23 June 2000, pp. 3–4. 145. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, cited by Tim Niblock, p. 208. 146. The Europa World Year Book 2001, pp. 3681, 3685. 147. Time, 25 June 2001.

424 Notes 148. Keesing’s, September 2001: 44331; Africa Confidential, Vol. 43(15), 26 July 2002, p. 1; Human Rights Watch, World Report 2003: Sudan; Time, 5 August 2002. 149. US Department of State, Fact Sheet, 21 October 2002, Sudan Peace Act, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2002/14531.htm; Human Rights Watch, World Report 2003: Sudan; ReliefWeb, Sudan:Government hails Bush remarks on peace process, 24 April 2003, http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwbinsf… 150. ‘Security Council lifts sanctions against Sudan’, http://srchl.un.org 151. Africa Confidential, Vol. 43(4), 22 February 2002, p. 4. 152. Africa Confidential, Vol. 43(4), 22 February 2002, p. 4. 153. George E. Moose.

Chapter 13

Some Other Deviant States

1. The Europa World Year Book 2001, Europa Publications, London, 2001, p. 365; William Maley, The Foreign Policy of the Taliban, Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 2000, www.cfr.org/public/ForeignPolicy_Taliban 2. The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 365. 3. The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 366. 4. The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 365. 5. The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 366–8, 371. 6. Quoted by Time, 1 October 2001. 7. William Maley; The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 368; Ahmed Rashid, ‘Afghanistan: Ending the policy quagmire’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 54(2), Spring 2001, pp. 398–9; Time, 1 October 2001. 8. Ahmed Rashid, p. 397; The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 368. 9. The Europa World Year Book 2001, pp. 368–9. 10. The Europa World Year Book 2001, pp. 368–9. 11. The Europa World Year Book 2001, pp. 370–1; William Maley. 12. CIA, The World Factbook: Afghanistan, www.odci.gov.cia/publications/factbook 13. Ahmed Rashid, p. 406. 14. The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 369. 15. William Maley. 16. The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 369; UN Press Release, Commission on Human Rights adopts resolutions on situation of human rights in seven countries, 18 April 2000, http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane.nsf 17. The Europa World Year Book 2001, pp. 369–70; William Maley. 18. UN Press Release, Commission on Human Rights adopts resolutions on situation of human rights in seven countries, 18 April 2000. 19. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2001: Afghanistan, www.hrw.org/wr2k2/ asia1.html 20. William Maley; Human Rights Watch, World Report 2002: Afghanistan, www.hrw.org/wr2k2/asia1.html 21. Amnesty International, Annual Report 1999: Afghanistan, www.amnesty.org/ ailib/aireport/ ar99/asa11.htm 22. Human Rights Watch, World Report 1999: Asia Overview, www.hrw.org/ wr2k.Asia.htm; Time, 4 June 2001; William Maley. 23. See the annual reports of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch on Afghanistan. 24. Patterns of Global Terrorism 2000, http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea/sasia/ afghan/2000pot.htm

Notes 425 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55.

The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 370; William Maley. The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 371; William Maley. Ahmed Rashid, pp. 400–1. See, for example, the US State Department’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 1993, http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu?ERC?law/INC/1993/04.html Ahmed Rashid, p. 404; The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 372; William Maley; US State Department, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 1997, www.state.gov/www/global/narcotics-law1997; Beeld, 1 October 2001. Ahmed Rashid, pp. 402–3. William Maley; Human Rights Watch, World Report 2002: Afghanistan. Quoted by William Maley. William Maley. Quoted by William Maley. Financial Times (London), 14 September 2001. The Europa World Year Book 2001, pp. 360–71. William Maley; The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 370; International Herald Tribune, 26 September 2001. The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 371; International Herald Tribune, 26 September 2001; Time, 1 October 2001. Ahmed Rashid, p. 395. US Department of State, Bureau of South Asian Affairs, Background Note: Afghanistan, June 2002, www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5380.htm Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001, http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2001/ html/10220.htm Andrew J. Nathan, ‘Human rights in Chinese foreign policy’, The China Quarterly, No. 139, September 1994: 631. John F. Copper, ‘Peking’s post-Tienanmen foreign policy: The human rights factor’, Issues & Studies, Vol. 30(10), October 1994, p. 50. Hung-yi Jan, ‘Interaction between Mainland China and the UN human rights regime’, Issues & Studies, Vol. 34(11/12), November/December 1998, p. 69; James D. Seymour, ‘Human rights in China’ Current History, Vol. 93(584), September 1994, p. 259; Denny Roy, ‘Human rights as a national security threat: The case of the PRC’, Issues & Studies, Vol. 32(2), February 1996, p. 75. Hung-yi Jan, pp. 70–1; Andrew J. Nathan, p. 631. John F. Copper, p. 50. The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 1029. Hung-yi Jan, p. 75; James D. Seymour, ‘Human rights and the world response to the 1989 crackdown in China’, China Information (Leiden), Vol. 4(4), Spring 1990, pp. 6–9. Quoted by Hung-yi Jan, p. 76. Andrew J. Nathan, p. 636. James D. Seymour, ‘Human rights and the world response to the 1989 crackdown in China’, p. 1; Lowell Dittmer, ‘Chinese human rights and American foreign policy: A realist approach’, The Review of Politics, Vol. 63(3), Summer 2001, pp. 446–9; Andrew J. Nathan, ‘Human rights in Chinese foreign policy’, pp. 636–7. Jing-dong Yuan, ‘Sanctions, domestic politics, and U.S. China policy’, Issues & Studies, Vol. 33(10), October 1997: 95. Jing-dong Yuan, p. 98. Hung-yi Jan, pp. 82–4. Quoted by Lowell Dittmer, p. 445.

426 Notes 56. Andrew J. Nathan, ‘China: Getting human rights right’, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 20(2), Spring 1997, p. 135. 57. Andrew J. Nathan, ‘China: Getting human rights right’, pp. 136–7. 58. Andrew J. Nathan, ‘China: Getting human rights right’, pp. 136–7. 59. Lowell Dittmer, p. 446. 60. Michael Barry, ‘China reaches a WTO agreement with the United States’, International Economic Review, US International Trade Commission, February– March 2000, p. 7. 61. James Shinn, ‘Introduction’ and ‘The principles of engagement’, in Shinn (ed.), Weaving the Net: Conditional Engagement with China, Council on Foreign Relations Press, New York, 1996, pp. 5, 25–6. 62. James D. Seymour, ‘Human rights and the world response to the 1989 crackdown in China’, pp. 12–13. 63. Alan M. Wachman, ‘Does the diplomacy of shame promote human rights in China?’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 22(2), April 2001, p. 257. 64. Lowell Dittmer, p. 447. 65. The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 1032. 66. Quoted by Hung-yi Jan, p. 88. 67. Colin Mackerras, The New Cambridge Handbook of Contemporary China, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001, p. 175; The Europa World Year Book 2001, p. 1031; Time, 9 August 1999. 68. Andrew J. Nathan, ‘China: Getting human rights right’, pp. 138–40; Kenneth Christie and Denny Roy, The Politics of Human Rights in East Asia, Pluto Press, London, 2001, pp. 225–6. 69. Andrew J. Nathan, ‘Human rights in Chinese foreign policy’, pp. 636–7; Time, 29 November 1999. 70. Hung-yi Jan, p. 57; Time, 13 March 2000; Amnesty International, Report 2003: China, http://www.web.amnesty.org/report2003/Chn-summary-eng 71. European Commission, External Relations, EU-China dialogue on human rights, 22–23 January 2001, http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/externalrelations/ human-rights/news/gac_jan_01.htm 72. Andrew J. Nathan, ‘China: Getting human rights right’, p. 138. 73. Hung-yi Jan, pp. 56, 72, 73, 88; Andrew J. Nathan, ‘Getting human rights right’, p. 137; Time, 11 January 1999. 74. http://www,state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2002/18239.htm 75. Amnesty International, Report 2003: China; Human Rights Watch, World Report 2003: China and Tibet, http://www,hrw.org/wr2k3/asia4.html 76. Daniel Byman, Roger Cliff and Phillip Saunders, ‘US policy options toward an emerging China’, The Pacific Review, Vol. 12(3), 1999, pp. 422–4; Lowell Dittmer, p. 441; Gerald Segal, ‘East Asia and the “constrainment” of China’, International Security, Vol. 20(4), Spring 1996, pp. 116–32; Kenneth Lieberthal, ‘A new China strategy’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 74(6), November– December 1995, p. 35; Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws: America’s Search for a new Foreign Policy, Hill & Wang, New York, 1996, p. 151; Audrey Kurth Cronin and Patrick M. Cronin, ‘The realistic engagement of China’, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 19(1), Winter 1996, pp. 147–58; Jing-dong Yuan, pp. 102–6; Soong-Bum Ahn, ‘China as number one’, Current History, Vol. 100(647), September 2001, p. 251; Colin Mackerras, pp. 175–6; Time, 7 June 1999; David Shambaugh, ‘Sino-American relations since September 11: Can the new stability last?’, Current History, Vol. 101(656), September 2002, pp. 247–9.

Notes 427 77. Der Spiegel, 12 March 2001; ClariNews, 11 April 2003, http://quickstart. clari.net/qs_se/webnews…; Lowell Dittmer, p. 446. Jing-dong Yuan, pp. 110–20. 78. Jing-dong Yuan, p. 107. 79. Time, 29 October 2001; US State Department, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001. 80. Jing-dong Yuan, pp. 96–7; Denny Roy, p. 80. 81. Financial Times (London), 7–8 July and 14–15 July 2001. 82. ClariNews, 11 April 2003. 83. Alasdair Drysdale and Raymond Hinnebusch, Syria and the Middle East Peace Process, Council on Foreign Relations Press, New York, 1991, p. 13. 84. Middle East Watch, Syria Unmasked: The Suppression of Human Rights by the Asad Regime, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1991, pp. 6–7. 85. Middle East Watch, Syria Unmasked, pp. 14–21; Thomas Collelo (ed.), Syria: A Country Study, Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1988, p. xx. 86. Ivor Lucas, ‘The paradox of Syria’, Asian Affairs, Vol. 25(1), February 1994, p. 7. 87. The EU’s relations with Syria: Political and Economic Situation, http://europa. eu.int/comm/external-relations/syria; The Middle East and North Africa 2002, Europa Publications, London, 2002, pp. 969–70. 88. BBCNEWS, Syria gets UN security seat, 9 October 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/ hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1587000/1587862.stm 89. Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Containment after the Cold War, Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Washington, DC, 2000, p. 76; Raymond Tanter, Rogue Regimes: Terrorism and Proliferation, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1998, p. 187; Time, 19 June 2000. 90. Alasdair Drysdale and Raymond Hinnebusch, pp. 192–5; Middle East Watch, Syria Unmasked, p. 152. 91. Middle East Watch, Syria Unmasked, pp. 14–21; Pedro Ramet, The Soviet–Syrian Relationship since 1955: A Troubled Alliance, Westview, Boulder, 1990, p. 129. 92. Thomas Collelo (ed.), p. 272. 93. www.state.gov/documents/organization/20109.pdf 94. Patrick Clawson, in ‘Syria: Peace partner or rogue regime?’ Hearing before the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, 25 July 1996, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1996, p. 38. 95. BBCNEWS, Blair seeks Mid-East support, 1 November 2001, http://news.bbc. co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1631000/1631476.stm 96. US Embassy, Tel Aviv, Transcript: Powell says U.S. watching Syria’s anti-terrorist actions, 4 May 2003, http://www.usembassy-israel.org.il… 97. Human Rights Watch World Report 2003: Syria, http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/ mideast7.html 98. ABC News Online, 14 April 2003, http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/ s831313.htm 99. Middle East Watch, Syria Unmasked, pp. 141–3. 100. Robert S. Litwak, p. 76; Middle East Watch, Syria Unmasked, pp. ix–x; Pedro Ramet, pp. 6–8 Thomas Collelo (ed.), pp. 222–3; Nicholas Blandford, ‘Lebanon: Ready to go it alone?’, Middle East, No. 313, June 2001, p. 316; The Middle East and North Africa 2002, pp. 966, 971. 101. Ambassador Philip C. Wilcox, Coordinator for Counterterrorism, in ‘Syria: Peace partner or rogue regime?’ Hearing before the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, 25 July 1996, p. 35. 102. Alasdair Drysdale and Raymond Hinnebusch, p. 3; Patrick Clawson, pp. 36–7.

428 Notes 103. The Middle East and North Africa 2002, pp. 966–7. Two years later the two states concluded an anti-terrorism agreement, which Damascus has reportedly honoured – Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001. 104. Alasdair Drysdale and Raymond Hinnebusch, p. 5; Thomas Collelo (ed.), pp. xxiii, 221. 105. Thomas Collelo (ed.), pp. 220, 224, 272; Robert S. Litwak, p. 76. 106. Alasdair Drysdale and Raymond Hinnebusch, pp. 198–9; Moshe Ma’oz, Syria and Israel: From War to Peacemaking, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995: 203. 107. Moshe Ma’oz, Syria and Israel, p. 215. 108. Moshe Ma’oz, Syria and Israel, p. 216–18, 242; The Middle East and North Africa 2002, p. 961. 109. Quoted by Moshe Ma’oz, Syria and Israel, p. 243. 110. US Information Service, Boucher says Syria taking U.S. concerns seriously, 21 April 2003, http://www.usis.it/file2003_04/alia/A3041805.htm 111. Alasdair Drysdale and Raymond Hinnebusch, pp. 175–6. 112. Michael Klare, p. 132. 113. Pedro Ramet, pp. 1–3. 114. Thomas Colello (ed.), pp. 227–8. 115. Alasdair Drysdale and Raymond Hinnebusch, p. 1. 116. Middle East Watch, Syria Unmasked, pp. ix, 145; Michael Klare, p. 90; Alasdair Drysdale and Raymond Hinnebusch, p. 1. 117. Alasdair Drysdale and Raymond Hinnebusch, pp. 4, 55; Moshe Ma’oz, Syria and Israel: From War to Peacemaking, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995, p. 183. 118. Alasdair Drysdale and Raymond Hinnebusch, p. 3; Thomas Colello (ed.), p. xxii. 119. Middle East Watch, Syria Unmasked, pp. 22–9. Also see the regular reports of Amnesty International on Syria. 120. Middle East Watch, Syria Unmasked, pp. x, 146. 121. The Europa World Year Book 2000, p. 3490. 122. Alasdair Drysdale and Raymond Hinnebusch, p. 11. 123. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2002: Syria, http://hrw.org/wrzkz/ mena8.htm 124. Human Rights Watch News, ‘EU must not forget imprisoned Syrian democrats’, 30 August 2002, http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/08/syria0830.htm 125. Human Rights Watch, ‘Syria: Long prison terms for democracy activists’, 2 August 2002, http://hrw.org/press/2002/08/syria080102.htm 126. Human Rights Watch, ‘Syria: Clampdown on free expression’, 12 February 2002, http://hrw.org/press/2002/02/syria0211.htm 127. http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2002/18289.htm. The State Department’s findings were confirmed in Amnesty International, Report 2003: Syria, http://web.amnesty.org/report2003/Syr-summary-eng and Human Rights Watch, World Report 2003: Syria, http://www/state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2002/ 18289.htm 128. Middle East Watch, Syria Unmasked, pp. 163–5. 129. Raymond Tanter, pp. 185, 189; Patrick Clawson, p. 42; The Middle East and North Africa 2002, p. 965. 130. Middle East Watch, Syria Unmasked, pp. 142–3. 131. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2003: Syria. 132. Gary C. Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott and Kimberly A. Elliott, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered: Supplemental Case Histories, second edition, Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC, 1990, p. 585. 133. Middle East Watch, Syria Unmasked, pp. 142–3.

Notes 429 134. 135. 136. 137. 138.

Gary C. Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott and Kimberly A. Elliott, p. 586. Gary C. Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott and Kimberly A. Elliott, p. 587. Raymond Tanter, p. 188. Robert S. Litwak, p. 48; The Europa World Year Book 2000, pp. 3487–8. Alasdair Drysdale and Raymond Hinnebusch, pp. 2–3.

Chapter 14

Non-State Deviants

1. Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001, www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2001 2. Theunis J. Kruger, Internasionale en Transnasionale Terrorisme – ‘n Volkeregtelike Perspektief (International and Transnational Terrorism – An International Law Perspective), Unpublished LLM dissertation, Potchefstroom University, Potchefstroom, 2001, pp. 10–11. 3. US Department of State, Office of Counterterrorism, Foreign Terrorist Organizations, 30 January 2003, http://www.state/gov/s/ct/rls/fs/2003/17067.htm; Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001. 4. Time, 8 October 2001; Countering the Changing Threat of International Terrorism, www.fas.org/irp/threat/commission.htm 5. US State Department, Patterns of Global Terrorism 1999, Washington, DC, 2000, www.state.gov/www/global/terrorism/1999report/mideast.html; Marshall Brain, ‘Osama bin Laden’, http://people.howstuffworks.com/bin-laden.htm; ‘Fact sheet: Usama bin Ladin’, USIS Washington File, 22 August 1998, www.usembassy-australia.state.gov/hyper/wf980820/epf404.htm; Time, 9 December 2002. Several books on bin Laden and al-Qaeda have been published in the wake of 11 September 2001. Among them are Peter L. Bergen, Holy War Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2001; Roland Jacquard and Samia Serageldin (eds), In the Name of Osama bin Laden: Global Terrorism and the bin Laden Brotherhood, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2002; Simon Reeve, The new Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism, Carlton Books, London, 2001; Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden, The Man Who Declared War on America, Prima Publishing, Roseville, CA, 2001; Elaine Landau, Osama bin Laden: A War against the West, Twenty-first Century Books, Brookfield, Conn., 2002; As’ad AbuKhalil, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban: Consequences of US Foreign Policy, Seven Stories Press, New York, 2002, and Luis SR Vas, Osama bin Laden – King of Terror or Saviour of Islam?, Pustak Mahal, New Delhi, 2001. 6. David Plotz, ‘What does Osama bin Laden want?’, 13 September 2001, http://slate.msn.com/id/115404 7. Michael Dobbs, ‘Inside the mind of Osama bin Laden’, The Washington Post Online, 20 September 2001, www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/ladninsd.htm; ‘Fact sheet: Usama bin Ladin’, USIS Washington File, 22 August 1998. 8. Time, 1 October 2001. 9. Michael Dobbs. 10. Patterns of Global Terrorism 1999. 11. ‘Saudi Arabia: Bin Laden, others sign fatwa to “kill Americans”’, Al-Quds al’Arabic (London), 23 February 1998, www.emergency.com/bladen98.htm 12. Michael Dobbs. 13. Time, 19 February 2001. 14. Patterns of Global Terrorism 1999; Ann M. Lesch, ‘Osama bin Laden’s “business” in Sudan’, Current History, Vol. 101(655), May 2002, p. 205.

430 Notes 15. William Maley, The Foreign Policy of the Taliban, Council on Foreign Relations, www.cfr.org/public/ForeignPolicy_Taliban_Paper.html; Time, 5 November 2001. 16. Time, 10 December 2001. 17. Marshall Brain; David Plotz. 18. Patterns of Global Terrorism 1999; Ann M. Lesch, p. 206. 19. Patterns of Global Terrorism 1999. 20. David Plotz. 21. Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001; Beeld, 12 November 2001, citing a report in London’s Sunday Telegraph, 11 November 2001; Time, 24 December 2001. 22. Time, 9 December 2002. 23. Time, 26 May 2003. 24. Time, 12 November 2001; The Straits Times, 28 September 2001. 25. Beeld, 12 November 2001, citing a report in London’s Sunday Telegraph, 11 November 2001. 26. The Straits Times, 28 September 2001. 27. Revealed by CNN, reported in Beeld, 20 August 2002. 28. Financial Times, 15–16 September 2001. 29. Ann M. Lesch, p. 208; FBI ten most wanted fugitives, www.fbi.gov/mostwant/ topten/fugitives/laden.htm; International Herald Tribune, 26 September 2001. 30. Quoted in Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001. 31. Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001. 32. Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001. 33. US Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report 2002, http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/global/drugs/03030109.htm; The Straits Times, 28 September 2001. 34. Diamonds.Net, NGO reports Al Qaeda diamond links – press release, 18 April 2003, http://www.diamonds.net/news/newsitem.asp. .. 35. Tom Fennell and Stefan Lovgren, ‘The diamond war’, Maclean’s, 22 March 1999, http://ehostvgwl8.epnet.com; Permanent Mission of Ireland to the UN, Angola (Unita) Sanctions Committee, 22 February 2001, www.un.int/ireland/ angola; ‚’The war of oil and diamonds’, Earth Island Journal, Vol. 15(1), Spring 2000, www.earthisland.org/eijournal/spr2000/ fe_spr2000oilwar.html; FAS Intelligence Resource Program, UNITA, FALA, CEDA, www.fas.org/irp/world/ para/unita.htm 36. Irish UN Ambassador Richard Ryan, Permanent Mission of Ireland to the UN, Angola (Unita) Sanctions Committee, 22 February 2001, www.un.int/ ireland/angola 37. US Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control, Foreign assets control Regs UNITA (Angola), www.tradeport.org/ts/ntdb/exprest/faci/unita.html; International Law Update, Vol. 7, October 2001, http://ehostvgwl8.epnet.com 38. ‘Angola’, UN Chronicle, Vol. 37(1), 2000, p. 15. 39. ‘The Sierra Leone civil war’, free.freespeech.org. 40. UN, ‘Conflict diamonds: Sanctions and war’, www.un.org/peace/africa/ Diamond.html 41. Christian Science Monitor, 16 May 2002. 42. New York Times, 21 March 2002. 43. Deon Geldenhuys, Foreign Political Engagement: Remaking States in the Post-Cold War World, Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1998, p. 191. 44. ‘U.N. bans conflict diamonds’, CBS News, 5 July 2000, www.cbsnews.com/ stories/ 2000/06/30/world/main211475.shtml; Andrew Cockburn, ‘Diamonds: The real story’, National Geographic, March 2002, p. 13.

Notes 431 45. Andrew Cockburn, p. 23. 46. Tom Fennell and Stefan Lovgren; Peter Hawthorne and Edward Barnes, ‘Diamonds in the rough’, Time, 6 December 1999, www.time.com/time/magazine/articles/0,3266,35061,06.html 47. ‘The war of oil and diamonds’. 48. Tom Fennell and Stefan Lovgren; Peter Hawthorne and Edward Barnes. 49. Ian Smillie et al., ‘The heart of the matter: Sierra Leone, diamonds and human security’, Partnership Africa Canada, January 2000, www.africaaction.org/ docsoo/sl001.htm 50. Ian Smillie et al. 51. ‘U.N. bans conflict diamonds’, CBS News, 5 July 2000, www.cbsnews.com/stories; Ian Smillie et al.; ‘UN debates Liberia sanctions’, BBC News, 25 January 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1136987.stm 52. ‘New UN sanctions on Liberia automatically in force’, World News, 8 May 2002, www.oneworld.org/ips2 53. ‘U.N bans conflict diamonds’, CBS News, 5 July 2000, www.cbsnews.com/ stories 54. Kimberley Process Interlaken Declaration of 5 November 2002, http://www.kimberleyprocess.com/BulletinDisplay.asp?Key=37; Physicians for Human Rights, The campaign to eliminate conflict diamonds, January 2003 update, http://www. phrusa.org/campa; The Kimberley Process, Final communique, Kimberley Process plenary meeting, Johannesburg, 28–30 April 2003, http://www.kimberleyprocess. com/news/documents.asp?Id=51 55. Matthew F. Trundle, ‘Identity and community among Greek mercenaries in the classical world: 700-322 BCE’, The Ancient History Bulletin, Vol. 13(1), 1999, pp. 28–38; Janice E. Thomson, ‘State practices, international norms, and the decline of mercenarism’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 34(1), March 1990, pp. 23–47. 56. University of Minnesota Human Rights Library, www1.umn.edu/humanrts/ instree/1977ehtm 57. Thalif Deen, ‘U.N. Convention against mercenaries gathers dust’, 19 October 1998, www.hartford-hwp. com/archives/27a/062.html; International Service for Human Rights, Self-determination, http://www:ishr.ch/About… 58. UN Commission on Human Rights, ‘The right of peoples to self-determination … ‘, Report of the Special Rapporteur on Mercenaries, 21 December 1994, www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/e-cn4-1995-29.htm 59. Report on mercenaries presented to Human Rights Commission, UN press release HR/CN/764, 14 March 1997, www.hartford-hwp. com/archives/27a/003.html 60. UN Commission on Human Rights, ‘The right of peoples to self-determination…’, Sean Cleary, ‘Angola – a case study of private military involvement’, in Jakkie Cilliers and Peggy Mason (eds), Peace, Profit or Plunder?: The Privatisation of Security in War-Torn African Societies, Institute for Security Studies, Halfway House, 1999, pp. 141–50; Beeld, 23 September 1997. 61. Sebastian Mallaby, ‘New role for mercenaries’, Los Angeles Times, 3 August 2001, www.globalpolicy.org/security/peacekpg/reform/2001/mercenaries.htm 62. Thalif Deen, UN Commission on Human Rights, ‘The right of peoples to selfdetermination…’; Simon Sheppard, ‘Foot soldiers of the New World Order: The rise of the corporate military’, New Left Review, March/April 1998, www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/sheppard.htm 63. Ian Smillie et al.; Ian Douglas, ‘Fighting for diamonds – Private military companies in Sierra Leone’, in Jakkie Cilliers and Peggy Mason (eds), pp. 175–200.

432 Notes 64. UN Commission on Human Rights, ‘The right of peoples to self-determination…’. 65. See, for instance, UN Commission on Human Rights, ‘The right of peoples to selfdetermination…’ and resolution 2003/2 of 17 April 2003, http://www.unhchr.ch/ Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf… 66. XIII Conference of heads of state or government of the Non-Aligned Movement, Kuala Lumpur, 20–25 February 2003, final document, http://www.un.int/ malaysia/NAM/finaldoc.html 67. David Shearer, ‘Privatising protection’, The World Today, September 2001, www.globalpolicy.org/security/peacekpg/reform/2001/private.htm; Sean Creehan, ‘Soldiers of Fortune 500 international mercenaries’, Harvard International Review, Winter 2002, www.globalpolicy.org/security/peacekpg/ reform/pmc.htm 68. David Shearer; Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl, ‘Should we privatize the peacekeeping?’, Washington Post, 12 May 2000, www.globalpolicy.org/security/peacekpg/ reform/private.htm; Sean Creehan; Sebastian Mallaby; Simon Sheppard, ‘Soldiers for hire’, Contemporary Review, August 1999, www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/ m2242/1603_275/55683933/p1/articles.jhtml; Ian Douglas, ‘Fighting for diamonds – Private military companies in Sierra Leone’, in Jakkie Cilliers and Peggy Mason (eds), pp. 175–200. 69. David Shearer; Sean Creehan; Simon Sheppard, ‘Foot soldiers of the New World Order: The rise of the corporate military’; Simon Sheppard, ‘Soldiers for hire’; Deborah D. Avant, ‘Privatizing military training’, June 2000, www.fpif.org/ briefs/vol5/v5nl/7mil_body.html; Los Angeles Times, 14 April 2002. 70. Der Spiegel, cited in Beeld, 20 July 2002. 71. Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl. 72. David Shearer. 73. Sean Creehan. 74. Thalif Deen. 75. Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 12 February 2002, www.globalpolicy.org/ security/peacekpg/general/2002/pmc.htm 76. ‘Mad Mike comes in from the cold’, The Economist, 16 February 2002; The Independent, 14 February 2002. 77. Simon Sheppard, ‘Soldiers for hire’; David Shearer, ‘Privatising protection’. 78. Sandline International, Corporate Overview, www.sandline.com/site/index.html 79. Sandline International, Corporate Overview. 80. Gerhard O.W. Mueller, ‘Transnational crime: Definitions and concepts’, in Phil Williams and Dimitri Vlassis (eds), Combating Transnational Crime: Concepts, Activities and Responses, Frank Cass, London, 2001, pp. 13–14. 81. Transnational Criminal Activity, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, November 1998, www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/law/orcrime.htm; Phil Williams, ‘Transnational criminal organizations: Strategic alliances’, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 18(1), Winter 1995, pp. 57–72; UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, www.odccp. org/crime; Beeld, 20 July 2002 82. Gerhard O.W. Mueller, pp. 14–20. 83. Transnational Criminal Activity, Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Among the numerous works of substance published on transnational organized crime are H. Richard Friman and Peter Andreas (eds), The Illicit Global Economy and State Power, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, MD, 1999; Patrick J. Ryan and George E. Rush (eds), Understanding Organized Crime in Global Perspective, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 1997. 84. Phil Williams, ‘Transnational criminal organizations’, pp. 57–72. 85. Published by the UN Development Programme, New York, 1999, pp. 41–2.

Notes 433 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, www.odccp. org Summit final communique, http://birmingham.g8summit.gov.uk UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention. Summit final communique, http://birmingham..g8summit.gov.uk Interpol website, www.interpol.int; www.cjmsu.edu

Index Abacha, Sani 281–4, 354 Abiola, Moshood 280–1 Abubakar, Abdulslami 284 Afghanistan 5, 37–8, 43, 102, 124, 128, 303–11, 327, 330–4, 343, 353, 356 African Union (AU) 156. See also Organization of African Unity Aggression/threat of aggression 4, 30–1, 73–4, 81–2, 94, 100, 111, 119–21, 130, 140, 150, 183, 189, 206, 261, 264, 276, 278, 299, 321, 353, 357 Al-Assad, Bashar 319–27 Al-Assad, Hafez 319–27, 354 Al-Bashir, Omar Hassan Ahmad 293–5, 299, 301 Al-Qaeda ix, 27, 37–8, 47, 306–7, 330–4, 354, 356 Alarcon, Ricardo 222 Albright, Madeleine 42, 100–1, 128–9, 131, 175, 193, 244, 267, 300, 316 Algeria 150–1 Allende, Salvador 77 Amin, Hafizullah 304 Amnesty International 33, 125, 156, 187, 194, 209, 235, 243, 275, 295–6, 312, 315, 324 Angola 39, 46, 335–6, 339 Annan, Kofi 30, 104, 316 Anti-Americanism/-Westernism 36–7, 98, 111, 126–8, 130, 132, 141, 157, 158, 167, 187–8, 197, 211, 264, 300, 323, 353, 358–9 Anti-colonial norm 60, 66, 80 Apartheid 79–83 Arab Cooperation Council 95 Arab League 99, 120, 133, 143, 161 Arafat, Yasser 37, 147 Armenian massacre 52 Aronson, Bernard 214 Assertiveness (in foreign policy) 36–7, 98, 111, 128, 141, 152–3, 167, 187, 197, 201, 211–12, 216, 264, 277, 353, 358 434

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) 174, 232–3, 242, 246, 248, 262, 275 Atatürk, Kemal 53 Aum Shinrikyo 25, 330 Australia 249 Axis of evil 8–11, 25, 91, 122, 168, 175, 180, 188 Aylwin, Patricio 79 Aziz, Tariq, 110 Babangida, Ibrahim 280–1 Baker, James 234 Ball, George 62 Ballistic missiles see Weapons of mass destruction Bangladesh 237, 244 Bani-Sadr, Abolhassan 114–15 Barbary states 51, 142 Batista, Fulgencio 200 Bazargan, Mehdi 114 Bazoft, Farzad 96 Bin Laden, Osama ix, 27, 37, 43, 297, 299, 304, 306, 308, 330–4 Biological weapons see Weapons of mass destruction Blair, Tony 110, 321 Blix, Hans 106, 155 Blood diamonds 39, 335, 337–41, 350, 356 Angola 339 Democratic Republic of Congo 340–1 Kimberley Process 341 Sierra Leone 339–40 Bosnia-Herzegovina 45, 256–9, 261–3, 266–7, 269–70, 274, 278, 332 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros 237 Brinkmanship 49, 174, 179, 196, 222 Brittan, Leon 219 Burma see Myanmar Bush, George (senior) 90, 97, 100, 130, 147, 202, 209, 322 Bush, George (junior) 8–11, 25, 43, 91, 99–101, 103, 121, 130, 175, 180, 193, 205, 215, 292, 294, 321

Index 435 Butler, Richard

106

Cambodia 38, 338 Canada 8, 135, 190, 215, 220, 244, 280, 282 Carter, Jimmy 158, 175, 202, 214 Castro, Fidel 8, 31, 147, 165, 200–25 Castro, Raúl 200, 215, 221 Chad 150, 152, 343 Chamberlain, Neville 57 Chávez, Hugo 105 Chemical weapons see Weapons of mass destruction Chile 2, 76–9, 83–4, 351, 359 China (People’s Republic, PRC) 7, 32, 45–6, 61–3, 66–7, 104, 110, 169–70, 174, 177, 181, 238, 245, 247–50, 277, 304, 310–27, 353, 355, 357–8 Christopher, Warren 119, 130, 193, 214 Chun Doo Hwan 183 Clinton, Bill 11, 27, 30, 41, 43, 128, 130, 135, 189, 193, 204, 214, 221, 274, 296, 299, 314, 322 Cohen, William 43 Colby, Bainbridge 54 Colombia 5, 37 Commonwealth 41, 281–2, 284, 302 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, later OSCE) 259, 262–3, 265–7, 269, 272, 275 Conflict diamonds see Blood diamonds Containment 4, 9, 42–3, 108, 137, 164, 192, 220, 274, 301, 326 Conventional military build-up 30, 111, 121–2, 140, 156, 167, 182, 353, 358 Cook, Robin 238, 251 Coolidge, Calvin 54 Council of Europe 260, 262 Crimes against humanity 33–5, 261, 264, 273–4, 276, 278, 353, 358. See also Genocide Croatia 256–7, 261–3, 269–70, 274 See also Yugoslavia Crocker, Chester 153, 164 Cuba 4–7,27, 32, 36–7, 45–6, 195, 199–225, 351, 353–7 demonization 205, 224 foreign demands 213–16 history 199–205 international reactions 216–21

responses to pressure 222–4 transgressions 206–13, 353 D’Alema, Massimo 150, 163 Danforth, John 301 Dayton Peace Agreement 258, 263, 267, 272, 277. See also Yugoslavia De Klerk, FW 82–3 Del Ponte, Carla 273 Democracy 31–3, 78, 96–7, 100, 111, 125, 140, 143–4, 165, 186, 198, 209–10, 214–16, 221, 225, 229–34, 237, 239–42, 251, 253, 258, 265–7, 271, 280–3, 285, 302, 313, 319, 354. See also Human rights Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) 39, 340–1, 343 Deng Xiaoping 312–13 Destabilization 80–2, 130, 139, 151, 159, 299, 301 Deterrence 47, 177, 333 Deviance/deviants 13–50, 351–7. See also International norms anti-deviant actions 41–5 norms 17–22 order 22–3; see also revisionism responses to foreign pressure 47–9 theories 13–16 transgressions (of deviant states): anti-Westernism 36; assertiveness 36–7; conventional armaments 30; crimes against humanity 33–5; democracy and human rights 31–3; drug trafficking 37; export of revolution 36; regional aggression 30–1; threats to peace 24–7; war crimes 35–6; terrorism 27–30 transgressions (of non-state deviants): armed rebellion 38–9; organized crime 40; trading blood diamonds 39; mercenarism 39–40; terrorism 37–8 typology 46–7 Divide-and-survive 49, 110, 140, 224, 278 Djindjic, Zoran 273 Drug trafficking 37, 129, 132, 140, 188–9, 212–13, 232, 238–9, 241, 244, 248–50, 253, 277, 283, 306, 309, 325, 327, 353, 358

436 Index Dulles, John Foster

61

Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) 280 Egypt 71, 94, 119, 158, 161, 181, 332 Eisenhower, Dwight 205–6 Ekeus, Rolf 106 Engagement 45, 164, 179, 192–4, 220–1, 247–50, 275, 314, 326 Environmental warfare/degradation 35, 95, 237 Ethnic cleansing 33–4, 236, 253, 261–2, 265, 272–3, 295. See also Crimes against humanity European Community/Union 40, 53, 61, 352, 354 China 316 Cuba 204, 217–18, 220 Iran 123–4, 131, 134–5, 140–1 Iraq 83, 92, 99–100, 104 Libya 159–60 Myanmar 236, 239–41, 243, 245–6, 248, 253 Nigeria 280–2, 284 Non-state deviants 341 North Korea 173, 183, 189–91, 194, 197 Rwanda 289 Sudan 293, 301 Syria 322, 325–6 Yugoslavia 256, 259, 262, 265–70, 272, 275 Executive Outcomes 39, 340, 343, 346

Gorbachev, Mikhail 202, 304, 322 Gore, Al 214 Group of Eight (G8, previously G7) 7, 26–7, 173, 189, 265, 275 Guevara, Ernesto (Ché) 207 Gulf Cooperation Council 99, 120, 262, 275 Gulf War 4, 35, 43, 90, 92, 102, 105, 127, 322

Ford, Gerald 202, 205 France 104, 110, 123, 136, 138, 159, 162, 266, 271 Franco, Francisco 57–9 Freedom House 33, 209, 312, 315

Habré, Hissène 147, 150 Habyarimana, Juvenal 285–90 Haig, Alexander 147 Hallstein Doctrine 63 Helms, Jesse 214 Human rights 2, 6–7, 10, 31–3, 48, 60, 64, 66, 286, 352–5, 357–8. See also United Nations Commission on Human Rights Afghanistan 306–11, 327 Chile 78–9 China 62–3, 312–17, 327 Cuba 206ff international regime 32 Iran 113ff Iraq 96ff Libya 145ff Myanmar 229ff Nigeria 280–4, 302 North Korea 186ff South Africa 79–84 Sudan 292–6, 302 Syria 319, 324–5, 327 Yugoslavia 256ff Human Rights Watch 33, 96, 125–6, 156, 187, 209, 235, 307, 315, 324 Hurd, Douglas 239, 248 Hussein, Saddam 8, 31, 49, 85–111, 117, 125, 233

Garang, John 293, 301 Genocide 34–5, 95–6, 111, 261, 263–4, 274, 276, 278, 285–91, 302, 353. See also Crimes against humanity Germany (East, German Democratic Republic) 63–4, 66–7 Germany (Imperial) 23 Germany (reunified Federal Republic) 123, 138, 148, 266, 268, 271 Germany (Weimar) 55–6, 66, 351 Gladstone, William 52

Independent International Commission on Kosovo 258, 261, 276 India 47, 306 Indonesia 6, 29, 249 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 92–3, 99, 105, 155, 176, 178–80, 189–91, 194–7 International Criminal Court 6, 35, 44 International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia 260–3, 267, 272–4

Index 437 International Labour Organization (ILO) 217, 235, 242–3, 248, 252–3 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 174, 219, 223, 244, 269–71, 283 International norms 17–22, 352 change 19 contemporary norms 24–40, 352 contestation 19 definition 17–18 emergence 18 expression 18–19 observance 20 power 21–2 settled norms 20 strength 19–20 International prosecution 44, 109, 161, 274, 291, 338 International supervision 44, 105–8, 274 Iran 4, 5, 8, 9, 23, 25–7, 36–7, 49, 88–9, 92, 94, 102, 181–2, 195, 300, 307, 310, 353, 356, 359 demonization 118–19, 129, 139, 351 external responses 132–8 foreign demands 129–32 history 112–18 reactions to foreign pressure 138–40 transgressions 119–29, 353 International Tribunal for Rwanda 291 Intifada 73, 76 Iraq 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 25, 35, 43, 49, 73, 85–111, 116–17, 133, 195, 300, 331, 351–3, 355–7 demonization 90–1 external punishment 101–9 foreign demands 98–101 history 85–90 responses to foreign pressure 109–10 transgressions 91–8, 353 Islamic Conference Organization 262, 275, 305 Isolation 2, 9, 44, 53–8, 60–6, 68–76, 79–83, 133, 162, 172, 192, 219, 225–6, 232–3, 244, 247, 250–3, 259, 269, 274, 305, 311, 313. See also sanctions. Israel 2, 31, 70–6, 83–4, 88, 92, 94, 97, 119, 138–9, 149, 155, 158, 167, 319, 321–4, 331, 351 Italy 56–7, 266, 271

Japan 8, 23, 25, 88, 135, 138, 162, 174, 177, 179, 181, 183, 190, 193, 195, 227, 245–7, 250, 252, 359 Jiang Zemin 277, 314–15 John Paul II, 204, 223–4 Jovanovic, Zivadin 264, 274, 276–7 Kabbah, Tejan 337–8, 343 Kabila, Joseph 341 Kabila, Laurent 340–1 Kagame, Paul 291–2 Karmal, Babrak 304 Karzai, Hamid 311 Kayibanda, Gregoire 285 Kennedy, John 206, 214, 220 Kennedy, Robert 205, 221 Kenya 43 Khamenei, Hojatoleslam Ali 115, 117–18, 123–4, 127 Khan, Mohammad Daud 303 Khatami, Mohammad 118ff, 356 Khmer Rouge see Rebel movements Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah 31, 113ff Kim Dae-jung 173, 193 Kim Il Sung 31, 86, 169ff Kim Jong Il 9, 86, 169ff Kimberley Process 341 Kissinger, Henry 147, 202, 212 Kohl, Helmut 316 Korean War 61, 169 Kosovo 256–7, 270–4, 276–8. See also Yugoslavia Kostunica, Vojislav 259, 268, 271, 273 Kurds (in Iran) 115 Kurds (in Iraq) 88–96 Kurds (in Turkey) 322 Kuwait 4, 36, 43, 85ff, 122, 124 Kyoto Protocol 6 Lake, Anthony 5 League of Nations 52, 55–7, 85 Lebanon 321–2, 325 Liberia 337–40 Li Peng 278 Libya 4, 7, 9, 23, 25, 27, 40, 142–67, 182, 195, 332, 351, 353–5, 357, 359 demonization 147, 157, 165–6 foreign demands 158–9 history 142–7

438 Index international pressure 159–64 responses to foreign pressure 164–6 transgressions 148–59, 353 Lloyd George, David 54 Macedonia 256–7, 270. See also Yugoslavia Major, John 100 Malaysia 249 Mandela, Nelson 83, 233, 241, 284 Mao Tse-tung 61, 96, 315 Maung Maung 228–9 Menem, Carlos 215 Mercenaries 39–40, 341–7, 350, 356 anti-mercenarism norm 342–3, 347, 350 crime links 343 operations 341–7 Organization of African Unity 342 private military companies 344–7 United Nations 342–4, 347 Military action 42, 47, 90–1, 99–3, 163, 173, 256–9, 263, 268, 274, 276–8, 308, 311, 327, 333–4, 356–7. See also Pre-emptive attack Military build-up (conventional) 30, 94 Milosevic, Slobodan 44, 49, 233, 256–78, 356 Mladic, Ratko 258 Momoh, Joseph 336 Montenegro see Yugoslavia Mubarak, Hosni 149, 151, 297 Museveni, Yoweri 299 Musharraf, Pervez ix, 47, 249, 310 Mussadeq, Mohammad 113 Myanmar 5, 7, 37, 226–53, 343, 353–4, 356–7 demonization 233–4 history 226–33 international pressure 241–50 transgressions 234–9, 353 Najibullah, Ahmadzai 304–5 Namibia 79–83 Nasser, Gamal Abdel 143–4, 152 Ne Win 226–8, 232 Nicaragua 4, 27, 208 Nidal, Abu 150 Niger 150, 161 Nigeria 161, 279–84, 302, 353–4, 356. See also Human rights, Sanctions

Nimeiry, Gaafar 147, 149, 292–3, 295 Non-Aligned Movement 40, 83, 202, 219, 232 Non-state deviance 37–40, 328–50, 351, 359 armed rebellion 38–9, 334–8, 350 mercenarism 39–40, 341–7, 350 terrorism 37–8, 328–34, 350 trade in blood diamonds 39, 338–41, 350 transnational crime 40, 348–50 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 60, 258, 263, 268, 271–2, 275–8 North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, DPRK) 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 25–7, 48, 168–98, 318, 351, 353 demonization 174–5, 188, 195 external actions 190–4 foreign demands 189 history 168–74 responses to pressure 194–7 transgressions 175–89, 353, 357 Nuclear weapons see Weapons of mass destruction Obasanjo, Olusegun 279–84 Oil 89, 95, 101, 105, 108, 113, 116, 135, 146–7, 160, 164, 233, 245, 281–3, 297, 300, 322 Omar, Mohammad 305, 334 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe see Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe Organization of African Unity (OAU) 83, 154, 161, 280, 282, 286. See also African Union Organization of American States (OAS), 7, 79, 201, 216, 218–19, 225 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) 146–7 Ottoman Empire see Turkey Outcast states 1–2, 5, 11, 51–67, 70 Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza 112ff Pahlavi, Reza Shah 112 Pakistan x, 47, 129, 247, 304–5, 310–11, 332

Index 439 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) 37, 71, 119, 149, 151, 158 Pariah states 1–3, 5, 11, 68–84 Park Chung Hee 183 Patten, Chris 131 Pelletreau, Robert 130 Pinochet, Augusto 77–9, 233 Portugal 59–61, 66–7 Powell, Colin 321 Pre-emptive attack 10, 11, 42–3, 355 Proliferation of weapons see Weapons of mass destruction Putin, Vladimir 174 Qaddafi, Muammar

31, 144–67

Rabbani, Burhanuddin 305 Rafsanjani, Ali Akbar Hashemi 118, 121–2, 127, 134, 136, 139 Reagan, Ronald 4, 27, 118–19, 147, 149, 166, 175, 188, 205, 214 Rebel movements 38–9, 334–8, 350 Khmer Rouge 38, 338, 350 Revolutionary United Front (RUF) 336–40, 343, 350, 356 Unita 38, 40, 43, 45–6, 335–6, 339, 350, 354, 356 United Nations 335ff Regional hegemony 95, 111, 119–21, 139. See also Aggression Revisionism 23, 154, 317, 323, 332 Revolution, export of 36, 117, 120, 124, 140, 151–3, 166–7, 184–6, 201, 207–8, 216, 224, 299, 308–9, 327, 353, 358 Revolutionary United Front see Rebel movements Rhodesia 64–7 Rifkind, Malcolm 233 Robaina, Roberto 222–3 Robinson, Mary 316 Rogue states ix, 1–3, 9, 168, 188, 193, 300, 351, 358 doctrine/policy/strategy 5–9, 11 meaning of term 3–4 rise of rogues 4–6 Roosevelt, Franklin 58 Roosevelt, Theodore 211 Rumsfeld Commission 25 Rushdie, Salman 126, 131–2, 134 Rusk, Dean 206

Russia (Bolshevik) 53–5, 66 Russia (Federation) 29, 104, 110, 125, 136, 190, 266, 268, 277, 306, 310, 333 Rwanda 33–5, 284–92, 302, 353, 357 Sadat, Anwar 147, 149, 151 Salazar, Antonio de Oliveira 59–60 Sánchez, Ilich Ramírez (‘The Jackal’) 37, 297, 299 Sanctions 38, 41–3, 56–9, 61, 65–6, 79, 290–2, 298, 300–1, 308, 311, 313–14, 318, 326–7, 356–7 Cuba 199, 201–4, 209, 213–14, 217–19, 222, 224–5 Iraq 90, 100, 103–5, 110, 331 Iran 128, 133–7 Libya 159–64 Myanmar 226, 241–7, 252 Nigeria 280–4 non-state deviants 333, 335–8 North Korea 190–2, 196 South Africa 81–3 Yugoslavia 256, 259, 263, 267–71 Sankoh, Foday 336, 340 Saro-Wiwa, Ken 281 Saudi Arabia x, 46, 95, 105, 139, 161, 305, 310, 331 Savimbi, Jonas, 38, 335–6 Saw Maung 229, 233, 251 Serbia see Yugoslavia Sese Seko, Mobuto 150, 340, 343 Shagari, Shehu 280 Shanghai Communiqué 62 Sierra Leone x, 38, 39, 336–40, 343 Singapore 247, 249–50 Slovenia 256–8, 261, 263, 269–70 See also Yugoslavia Smith, Ian 65 Somalia 150, 332 South Africa 2, 44–5, 47, 79–84, 282, 284, 351, 354–5, 359. See also Sanctions South Korea (Republic of Korea) 168ff, 359 Soviet Union 4, 23, 55, 67, 71, 88, 102, 114, 116–17, 125, 157, 165, 168, 170, 173, 177, 187, 201, 206, 213, 247, 265, 303, 323. See also Russia (Bolshevik) Spain 57–9, 66–7

440 Index State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC/State Peace and Development Council, SPDC) 229–53 States of concern 4, 9 Steadfastness and Confrontation Front 151 Straw, Jack 346 Subversion 44, 108–9, 137, 164, 166–7, 171, 199, 207, 221, 274 Sudan 5, 6, 43, 150, 292–302, 332, 343, 353, 357 Suu Kyi, Aung San 229–31, 233, 235, 240–2, 244, 251–2 Syria 5, 87, 105, 151, 182, 300, 319–27, 353, 357

Thatcher, Margaret 166 Tibet 312, 314–15 Tito, Josip Broz 256 Transgressions see Deviance/deviants Transnational criminal organizations 40, 340, 348–50, 356 criminal groups 348–50 Europol 350 G8 349 Interpol 349–50 United Nations 348–9 Truman, Harry 59 Turkey 2, 5, 46, 52–3, 85, 94, 136, 139, 142, 351 Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus 2

Taiwan (Republic of China, ROC) 2, 61, 68–70, 84, 183, 317, 351 Taliban 38, 124, 305–11, 320, 332, 334 Tanzania 43 Taraki, Nur Mohammad 303 Tarnoff, Peter 130–1 Taylor, Charles 340 Terrorism ix, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 25, 27–9, 37–8, 42–3, 76, 82, 277, 297–9, 301–2, 307–9, 318, 326–34, 350, 353, 356 anti-terrorism norm 28–9, 38, 329, 350, 356–7 criminal gangs 334 Cuba 207–9 cyber-terrorism 28, 330 definition 328–9 netwar 28 non-state deviance 37–8, 328–34 Iran 122–4, 127–8, 130–1, 134, 136–7, 140–1 Iraq 97–8 Libya 146–50, 158–67 North Korea 172, 174–5, 183–4, 189, 191, 195, 197 Syria 320–2 terrorist attacks 122–3, 148–50, 183–4, 208–9, 297–8, 320, 329–34 terrorist groups 37–8, 97, 149, 297–8, 320, 329–34 United Nations 329, 333–4 WMD 330, 333–4 Than Shwe 230–1, 246

U Nu 227, 229 Unita see Rebel movements United Arab Emirates 89, 120, 124, 305, 311 United Kingdom 85–6, 89, 105, 123, 127, 143, 148, 150, 158–60, 166, 220, 227, 251, 266, 268, 271, 282–3, 304, 336, 354 United Nations 8, 28–34, 37–40, 43–6, 58–9, 61, 65–6, 282–3, 293–6, 300, 305–13, 320, 322, 352, 356–7 Cuba 202ff Iran 125ff Iraq 89ff Israel 71–6 Libya 143ff Myanmar 228ff non-state deviants 329ff North Korea 169ff Rwanda 285–92 South Africa 79–83 Taiwan 69–70 Yugoslavia 258ff United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) 287, 289–90 United Nations Commission on Human Rights 96–7, 125–6, 131, 133, 156–7, 159, 187, 202, 204, 210, 216–17, 234–7, 239–43, 246–7, 250, 253, 262, 264–5, 275, 282, 287–9, 293–5, 306–7, 313–14, 318, 352, 354 United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) 337–8

Index 441 United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) 93, 99, 106 United Nations Special Commission on Iraqi Disarmament (UNSCOM) 92, 99, 103, 106 United States of America ix–x, 3–5, 25, 30, 36–7, 41, 44, 47, 51, 58, 60, 64, 280, 283, 290, 294, 296, 298–301, 351, 354, 358–9 Afghanistan 304–6, 308, 311 as rogue state 5–6 axis of evil 9–11 China 61–2, 312–18 Chile 77–9 Cuba 199ff Iran 113ff, 357 Iraq 88ff Libya 142ff Myanmar 226ff non-state deviants 328ff North Korea 168ff rogue state policy 5–9, 11 Syria 320–3, 325–7 terrorism 330–4 United Nations 329, 333 Yugoslavia 265–8, 271, 276 Van der Stoel, Max 97 Vedrine, Hubert 7 War crimes 35–6, 94–5, 111, 260–1, 263–4, 267, 274, 276, 278, 296, 302, 307, 338, 353, 358 Weapons of mass destruction (WMD) 4, 6, 7, 10, 30, 43, 111, 121, 130, 132, 134, 136, 138, 140, 155, 159,

166–7, 174, 180, 189, 193, 197, 327, 330, 351, 352–4, 357 ballistic missiles 25, 48, 91–3, 99, 105, 121, 155–6, 180–3, 189, 191, 193–7, 201, 206, 317, 321 biological weapons 25, 91–3, 99, 105, 121, 181–2, 321 chemical weapons 25, 87ff, 121, 155, 181–2, 299–300, 321, 326, 333 non-proliferation regimes 26–7, 91, 121, 131, 138, 155, 178–80, 181, 183, 189–90, 196 nuclear weapons 2, 25, 47, 73–4, 99, 105, 121–2, 141, 155, 172, 176–80, 189–98, 201, 206, 300, 317, 333, 357 Weinberger, Caspar 130 Western European Union 269, 275 World Bank 136, 174, 191, 219, 223, 244, 247, 269–71, 283 World Trade Organization (WTO) 223, 270, 315 Yeltsin, Boris 277 Yugoslavia 5, 33–5, 44–5, 48–9, 254–78, 352–4, 356 demonization 260–1, 277 external demands 265–8 history 254–60 international measures 268–75 responses to pressure 275–8 transgressions 261–5, 353 Zimbabwe x, 352, 359 Zionism 74–5, 88, 98, 151, 154, 157, 164, 324 Zoellick, Robert 233–4

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