9.4  International Agreements for Peaceful Coexistence

(This is an archived extract from the book Patterns of Power: A Rough Guide)

Contemporary international relations can be described as an uneasy balance of power between countries which see themselves as individuals.  There will be continued friction between them as long as they jostle with each other for position.  Using Self-Protection to maintain a balance of power is both costly (7.4.6) and inherently unstable (7.4.5), so any system of governance which relies on a coercive foreign policy by projection of force is unlikely to work (7.4.7).  This section examines some ideas for a rebalancing of power: to reduce the dependence on Self-Protection.

An armed conflict can be seen as the outcome of a political failure:

As Clausewitz famously wrote, “war is a mere continuation of policy by other means”.[1] 

Rupert Smith described the connection between war and politics differently: "our confrontations and conflicts must be understood as intertwined political and military events, and only in this way can they be resolved".[2] 

The only way to avoid war, or to end a war that has started, is to resolve the underlying political problem – which means having better governance. 

The UN was founded explicitly for such a role (6.6.6), but in its current mode of operation it isn’t able to guarantee peace (7.4.4).  There have been some ideas for replacing it, or bypassing it, but they are unrealistic:

It has been suggested that a 'unipolar' world,[3] in which America would act as the world's “sheriff”,[4] would be more stable – but the world won’t accept America as a monarch, as China’s defence spending clearly indicates.[5]  And the invasion of Iraq (8.7.6) made America seem much less trustworthy as a sheriff, from the rest of the world’s perspective.

A multipolar world cannot be stable either.  Carl Schmitt believed that a balance of power between strong nation-states, whereby every country has the right to make war,[6] would be sustainable – but the First World War demonstrated very effectively how rapidly a reliance on mutual fear can collapse.  In the 21^st century the major powers will be sufficiently deterred by each other's strength to avoid direct confrontations with each other, but it will not stop them from having armed conflict over other territories such as Taiwan.  Confrontations would continue (7.4.5), in the absence of a set of rules which they would all agree to comply with.

A ‘league of democracies’, as proposed by Philip Bobbitt for example, might be more decisive than the UN but would have many of the same problems and would deepen existing divisions between the West and the rest of the world.[7]

Rather than ignoring or replacing the UN, a better idea is to fix its problems so that it can provide trustworthy governance and gain more legitimacy.  There is a need for more predefined law and less dependence on politicians making decisions which are affected by commercial interests (7.4.4) and domestic political pressures (6.6.4).  The dynamic decision-making of the UN – where the Security Council acts as legislature, judge and enforcement agency – is unsound from a legal perspective, so it would be better to have a clear separation of powers (5.2.8), which might look like the concept which is illustrated here:  

The institutions would need to be strengthened for this concept to be workable, and each of the elements of this diagram needs clarification:

·      The UN Security Council could act as the executive under a separation of powers but it needs to be restructured, to make it more clearly representative of the world’s population (6.6.6).  Its legitimacy is currently undermined by being unbalanced in favour of the Western powers and a move to restructure it, by adding new members and removing the power of veto, would attract wide support – even in some of the countries which currently have that power.[8]

·      There is already enough international law to form the basis of a legal framework (5.3.6), but further legislation might be needed.  It is suggested here that the UN Security Council could make requests for legislation as and when it is able to agree upon them.  There are several possibilities:

There is scope for eventually extending the Rome Statute, by establishing agreed rights as maturity develops.  This could be a much more gradual process than was attempted when writing the UN Charter.  As Ronald Dworkin commented, it would be necessary to disentangle rights from political ideals: to establish which rights are “baseline” and should be enforced by the international community, which rights are principles or recommendations, and which rights remain aspirational.[9] 

The scope of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (5.3.7) might then be widened and given legal status (without requiring case-by-case UN Resolutions) to protect human rights in countries whose leadership has ceased to work for the benefit of their citizens or to protect their minority groups. 

·      The UN General Assembly could act as a legislature in a new legislative process, perhaps using voting rules which would allow countries’ votes to be partially weighted for population size.

·      Approved legislation would need to clarify the rules on aggression against other countries, and violations of “baseline” human rights, so that politicians know the rules before they commit crimes. 

·      A court is the appropriate body to decide whether the rules have been breached or not and agreeing whether proposed enforcement actions are appropriate.  The International Criminal Court (ICC) was formed for that purpose (5.3.6), so supporting it is a priority.  There is also scope for increased use of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for arbitration on territorial disputes (7.3.1) and on cross-border legal issues (5.3.4).

·      Any member of the UN Security Council should be able, without needing the agreement of other members, to refer cases to the Prosecutor’s Office which already exists in the ICC.[10]

·      Decisions to prosecute should be based on legal considerations rather than political bargaining.  The ICC determines whether it has to act or whether national courts can deal with an issue (5.3.6).

·      As with other courts, if the case is proven the court would decide upon an appropriate sentence – which for an international court might mean authorising the punishment of individuals or, in some cases, military intervention.

·      As at present, the UN Security Council would have to decide what enforcement resources to use – e.g. Interpol, NATO, Russia, China, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), or national forces.  It is also part of the Executive’s enforcement role to agree measures for crime prevention.

This proposal differs from the current process mainly in that decisions to proceed on breaches of security would be taken by the ICC, not by the UN Security Council.  Enforcement of ICC decisions would be guaranteed, so that would-be law-breakers cannot try and play one Security Council member off against another as Saddam Hussein was able to do for so long.[11]

This framework of international law would need increased funding, which would have to be negotiated with all the countries concerned, but this should be more than offset by savings in national defence budgets.  It might be desirable to reimburse the enforcers for the costs they incur, which would further increase the required funding but would enable costs to be shared more equitably than at present.

The main obstacle to achieving this vision is political.  De-politicisation of international law requires UN Security Council members to sign up to a reformed UN and to support the ICC, which would be greatly strengthened by their support, but there are several impediments:

·      There is a lack of shared values among Security Council members.  For example:

“China says its decisions on foreign policy questions derive from the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence: mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.” [12]

This list does not include the Western concern for the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ people from governments which abuse their power but China might be persuaded to agree to protect people from genocide, for example, if that were sufficiently tightly defined.

·      National politicians would need to relinquish some aspects of direct control, to change the subsidiarity of power (6.6.4).  Bearing in mind that a love of power is one of the factors that is likely to have propelled them into politics as a career choice, it is obvious that they may have difficulty in accepting the need to give it away.  But it is only the illusion of power that they are ceding, and their role as representatives of their countries in multilevel governance is in reality both more effective and more important than strutting on a smaller stage.

·      National politicians would have to persuade their populations that collaborative action is preferable to Self-Protection.   This should not be too difficult, as there are sound arguments to support this view (7.4.7), and there is already popular support for it.[13] 

What is described here is collaborative governance; it is not the same as world government – which has been opposed on grounds of feasibility, desirability and necessity.[14]   Collaborative governance would emerge slowly, as a succession of international agreements which would authorise collective action.  National governments would remain free to sign up to, adopt, or withdraw from, the agreements reached and they would need to adapt their legal systems to be complementary to the framework of international law (5.3.7).  National governments would empower the necessary institutions and control their composition, budgets and terms of reference. 

There are many political advantages in enforcing international law instead of unilateral intervention: 

·      Sensitive law enforcement avoids losing the moral high ground. 

·      It would be able to avoid involving ex-colonial powers, whose presence can be a complication.

·      Resisting a properly constituted law-enforcement intervention is not the same as resisting an unauthorised military threat from another country.  Whereas the latter has the effect of uniting the country to combat the threat (6.3.6), an authorised law-enforcement action is likely to be popular with at least some of the population. 

·      De-politicised published rules would be seen to be fairer than the current political ‘horse-trading’. 

·      Each successful enforcement of the law strengthens its deterrent effect. 

·      A country which had been formally appointed to act as a "sheriff" for an issue would be acting on behalf of all the countries in the world and would not be significantly damaged politically; it would be less likely to be the target of adverse propaganda (7.4.3).

·      Countries would still be able to pursue unilateral agendas, but they would have to use persuasion rather than force.  They would find this to be much more successful: what has been referred to as “exemplarism” is a much better strategy than exceptionalism and coercion.[15]  

·      A reduction in defence spending enables a country to have a more powerful economy, which enables it to be more influential than an economically weak but militarily strong country like North Korea.

Countries which supported an international rule of law would be trading an imagined autonomy for real security with dignity.  A report by the National Defense University made “the core recommendation for the United States to offer a framework of concepts and terms for integrated mutual restraint”;[16] a model of strengthened international law would comply with this thinking.

Some of the foundations for collaborative international governance are already in place, but it will take a long time for the framework of law to become robust.  Although such a framework would deal with almost all security threats, it is very difficult to envisage the countries with nuclear weapons either completely disarming or handing control of their weapons to the UN.  These countries need a new treaty, which might contain incentives towards disarmament for some of them and might offer defence guarantees to non-nuclear powers.  This would be much less risky than the present tendency towards nuclear proliferation (7.4.2), but it would fall short of complete nuclear disarmament – at least for the foreseeable future. 

© PatternsofPower.org, 2013