Conflict and Responsible Sovereignty
The International Peace Institute, New York
May 19th, 2008
I am very privileged to be here in New York today. The launch - or the new launch - of the IPI, is a very important moment for the global organisation that covers some of the most difficult foreign policy issues that we face. I hope that there is a certain symmetry in the fact that the British Foreign Secretary is speaking today. Many of you will know that Trygve Lie spent the Second World War in London and of course the UN was launched from London after 1945 so I hope there is a certain symmetry in the fact that I am here today on this important occasion.
There are two things that I am not going to talk about today: The first, which is actually at the core of the British Government’s approach to international affairs, is a profound belief in the importance of international institutions and, perhaps more provocatively or more decisively, a profound concern that in the modern world it is actually the weakness of our international institutions, rather than their overweening strength, that is a source of instability and insecurity. But I am not going to say more about that just at the moment.
The second thing that I am not going to dwell on is the multitude of crises that do confront any of us engaged in foreign policy, any of us concerned with international affairs. Terje Roed Larsen is here and many of our thoughts will be on the situation in the Lebanon - rightly. Many people will be thinking about the situation in Sudan, about the situation in Afghanistan, about the situation in Iraq. I was talking at a meeting this morning with the New York Partnership of Businesses about the situation in Zimbabwe and its consequences for Southern Africa as a whole. I will say a word about Burma at the end. What I want to discuss is why is it a good moment for the IPI to be launching itself? And I think the answer is that we face a new context in thinking about these, and therefore thinking about all, conflicts. We face, I think, a growing consensus in the international community about three important aspects and how we respond to this new context.
But we face one very large difference of opinion as we confront the nature of conflict in the modern world. There is a sort of paradox at the heart of the creation of the International Peace Institute at the moment. And that paradox is, as many of you know better than I, there are actually fewer wars going on now than there have been over the last 30 or 40 years. Fewer countries at war, fewer countries at risk of invasion from neighbouring or other countries, but at this time when global conflict was actually reduced, the personal insecurity felt by millions of citizens has actually increased. And that, I think, is an interesting security paradox.
I can’t remember who it was who said that it is very very unlikely that in the 21st century as many people will be killed in war as in the 20th century - thank goodness for that. But it could be you: it could be you getting on an aeroplane, it could be you on the streets of your city. And I think that goes to the heart of this conundrum that there is less conflict and more and more insecurity and that’s why I think it is important to recognise that at the launch of an International Peace Institute, there are hard questions to be asked about the nature of conflict and I think that in a way there is a qualitative difference in the nature of conflict, essentially from predictable threats from strong states with armies at the front line to a situation of shifting and defused threats with civil war a greater threat than war between neighbours.
That’s not to say that there aren’t parts of the world, some of which I have already mentioned, where there is conflict between neighbours, where neighbours are backing rebel movements in each other’s countries, but I think there has been an important shift. And the UK is profoundly engaged in a number of these conflicts and events. We are engaged through our diplomatic efforts. We are engaged through our aid efforts and we are engaged also through our military. And some of those conflicts have engaged our values. I think most obviously of Sierra Leone and it is a great honour that tomorrow when I chair the Security Council for a discussion on conflict, the Foreign Minister of Sierra Leone will be there.
But in some cases it is British values that are engaged. In other areas it’s British interests that are engaged and 7,800 British troops are in Helmand province in Afghanistan. I’ll say a bit more about that but there profound British interests are engaged because the threat that we see from international terrorism has important links back to the Afghan/Pakistan border.
Now that is some sense of the context that we face in thinking about conflict. I think it is important to recognise that the global debate about how we respond has moved on significantly in three important areas where I think there is a chance of a growing global consensus about how we as an international community should respond.
The first is the old debate about whether we should believe in, and be committed to, the use of hard power or soft power and there have been times when the international community has been split between those two arguments. I think that Afghanistan gives a lie to the argument that we have to choose between hard power and soft power.
The truth is that if you want to build a decent society in Afghanistan which the leaders of that country, the democratically-elected leaders of that country, and the citizens of that country, they need all the soft power we can give them. They are the fourth poorest country in the world, number 174th in the world developed index. They desperately need aid and support. They need help with developing systems of government and political infrastructure.
But the truth is they face an insurgency that would overwhelm the Afghan National Army, never mind the Afghan National Police, if they did not have the support of the international community, now numbering, I think, 38 countries that are giving them support in that. So I think it is possible to argue that there is a combination of hard and soft power that will be needed to respond to this.
And tomorrow when we debate this at the UN Security Council, we will be talking about how international efforts can get better leadership, certainly in the Afghan context the coordination of the international effort has been a major issue over the last six or seven years. We will be talking about increased civilian efforts because security doesn’t just come from an army. Security comes from above all police forces and the Rule of Law. And thirdly, we will be talking also about quicker and more flexible funding that is needed to support both the international effort and the country itself.
The second area where I think there is growing consensus is a debate about whether one should seek to prevent conflict or react to it. And here the obvious answer is probably both. In Kosovo in the early 1990s, then in the mid to late 1990s, military intervention was necessary and the threat of military intervention was necessary to avoid ethnic cleansing.
Look at the story in the Western Balkans now - 16,000 NATO troops are on the ground in Kosovo in a preventative capacity, 2,000 members of the European Union’s security and defence policy mission judges, police civilian infrastructure are moving on the ground as well. The UNMIK Mission operates across the country. There you have, I think, an example of preventative diplomacy. That for all the difficulties and the struggles in Northern Kosovo, 42 countries have now recognised. You actually have a situation that is more stable because of outside intervention than would have existed without it. And it seems to me that that should be a source of strength for us.
And the third area where I think there is growing consensus is the debate between state capacity and democratic structures because the truth is that you need both. Strong state structures without accountability are actually not going to deliver for their citizens. Democratic accountability and national elections without state capacity are going to lead to frustration and often despair by the local population. And I think that the situation in Pakistan which I have visited three weeks ago and had the chance to meet the two leaders of the coalition parties last week in London is an interesting structure of an example in that respect. The commitment of the new government to deepen democratic structures, notably in the federal and tribal areas which for sixty years haven’t had political parties never mind free and fair elections - an unhappy bequest of the British rule before 1948. I think that is an interesting example of how they are determined to build state capacity to deliver education, health and economic development alongside democratic structures.
But the area I just want to dwell on though is a fourth area where I think there isn’t international consensus - it is important to recognise it and be honest about it. And I hope that in the work of the Institute this is something which in the present opportunity you can think about. I hope you won’t shirk the debate about what we mean by national sovereignty in the world. I hope you won’t shirk the debate on whether and what should be limited to national sovereignty.
I hope you won’t shirk the debate about what inter-dependency means for national sovereignty.
A world where the actions of one country have implications not just for its own citizens but the citizens beyond its borders, that might be on issues like migration, or issues like climate or issues like trade or even issues like human rights. I think it is very very important that we address head-on the extent to which inter-dependence means that the world community has a legitimate interest in what goes on within the borders of a nation.
I feel very strongly that the debate of the 1970s which said that the nation state is too small for big problems and too big for the small problems was wrong.
The nation state is not withering away, the nation state remains the fundamental building block of the international system. The nation state remains an absolutely fundamental building block of people’s identity so I want to have my cards on the table about the enduring importance of nations in helping to promote stability and engage in political cooperation around the world. And the international system has to be based on the right of nations and I don’t think we should shy away from that. But in an inter-dependent world nations have to have responsibilities as well as rights. And I think the debate about the nature of those responsibilities to their own citizens and to citizens in neighbouring countries and who are far away is important. And it’s one that we should address, try to address head-on. We should do so because there is a global consciousness about human rights that didn’t exist 30 or 40 odd years ago.
It is the case that at the press of a mobile ‘phone button pictures of monks demonstrating in Rangoon can be beamed around the world, so there is a global consciousness and there is a global call to action to defend human rights. In my view, that’s a good thing. But equally there is the reality of inter-dependence, that instability in one country is contagious and therefore poses a threat to other countries. So within a country and beyond its borders, the actions of a state I think demand legitimate questions from the international community and from other states, most obviously from their neighbouring states, but also others.
Now I have tried to talk about the idea of responsible sovereignty. Because I think that it is not illegitimate to ask that in the modern world we have to qualify sovereignty with the prefix, and responsible sovereignty to me is about responsibility of nation states to their own citizens and the responsibility of nation states to citizens beyond their own borders.
And it seems to me that the hard questions are about first whether or not people are willing to accept that notion and there needs to be a prefix to the word sovereignty, whether we are willing to qualify the rights of the nations in the modern world.
And a second debate is: if nations flout their responsibilities, what are the consequences? And I do not deny for a moment that there are profoundly difficult questions about the consequences of a positive answer to the first question. It seems to me that if the International Peace Institute this time is not able to address the consequences of migration, climate change, properly to neighbouring states as well as for a state, then it is not going to be getting a tough list of issues which I would urge you to do.
Tough issues are sometimes difficult for governments to get into. But in the end as an international community we cannot carry on debating in a slightly sterile way, on the one hand a caricature of liberal interventionism, which says it’s a trigger-happy view of how one should intervene anywhere and on the other hand a caricature of non-intervention, which says that no state has any responsibilities or business with the outside and I think we need to break that sterile counter position. And we have to do so in a way that respects both the sense that the global consciousness is growing and the sense that the rights of the nation state are profoundly important and mustn’t be traded away.
I think it’s actually got important implications for institutions and one of the things that has interested me over the last year is the number of leaders from Southern Africa, leaders from ASEAN countries who wanted to talk to me about the role the European Union has to play not just in stability in the European states but whether there are lessons, whether for Southern Africa or for the ASEAN countries on the sort of role that that might play. But I think there are institutional questions and there are also policy questions.
I think it would be unforgiveable having a meeting like this not to say a word about the situation in Burma. And this is not just an issue for governments. This is an issue that demands popular concern, popular passion, because people understand that a tragic incident, an accident of weather, can cause unimaginable damage and people have seen that in Burma and they have seen it in China as well.
But what some of us say is a call to action is the notion that something could be done but it’s not being done. And I think that that is important to recognise. I have just spoken yesterday to Mark Malloch Brown who many of you will know from his time serving in the UN, and is now working in the Foreign Office as a Minister of State for international institutions for Africa, for Asia as well. He reported to me that there is an increasing amount of aid going in and there is an increasing amount of aid reaching people in parts, but there are tens of thousands of people who need aid who are not getting it.
And that’s why I think it is very very important that today we have seen publicly announced the personal leadership of the Secretary-General of the UN on this issue, his personal commitment to go to the region, his personal involvement in the Pledging Conference to be held on 25 May.
Secondly, I think it is very important that Sir John Holmes is going to Rangoon himself and that there is real assessment being done not just by the UN, but also by ASEAN, about the situation on the ground who will inform the Pledging Conference.
Thirdly, I think that some of the statements coming out of the ASEAN meeting are important, hugely important, because in the end the leadership of the ASEAN countries is going to be absolutely essential in responding to this crisis and the fact that there will be this meeting and that now there is a commitment to action is important.
I hope that in the course of this week we will see increasing amounts of aid going and reaching the people who need it. And we will also see increasing cooperation from the Burmese regime with the international community which I believe genuinely has one interest in this which is a humanitarian interest. There are all sorts of views about the politics of Burma, but actually the concern that has been expressed over the last two and a half weeks is about the humanitarian situation and I think people are dying who don’t need to die and it seems to me that it is in that spirit that Ministers are going to Rangoon so that spirit of international cooperation is being offered and I hope it is in that spirit that the Burmese authorities will respond positively.
I just want to finish up Rita, if I might, with a quotation from Samuel Beckett who wrote that “the tears of the world are in constant quantity”. And that is in a way why we have got the UN. If the world wasn’t full of tears, then the motivation and the drive that has created the UN and I think has helped create the IPI would be much less. Sad to say despite the fact that we live in a world that is richer than many people could imagine for the foundation of the UN, a world that is actually more cooperative than many people could imagine. A world that actually has a sense of solidarity and consciousness and is more profound than you could imagine. There are more tears than there need to be and I hope that the spirit of the IPI will be one which is determined to do all that it can to help the international community think through its responsibilities.
The International Peace Institute, New York
May 19th, 2008
I am very privileged to be here in New York today. The launch - or the new launch - of the IPI, is a very important moment for the global organisation that covers some of the most difficult foreign policy issues that we face. I hope that there is a certain symmetry in the fact that the British Foreign Secretary is speaking today. Many of you will know that Trygve Lie spent the Second World War in London and of course the UN was launched from London after 1945 so I hope there is a certain symmetry in the fact that I am here today on this important occasion.
There are two things that I am not going to talk about today: The first, which is actually at the core of the British Government’s approach to international affairs, is a profound belief in the importance of international institutions and, perhaps more provocatively or more decisively, a profound concern that in the modern world it is actually the weakness of our international institutions, rather than their overweening strength, that is a source of instability and insecurity. But I am not going to say more about that just at the moment.
The second thing that I am not going to dwell on is the multitude of crises that do confront any of us engaged in foreign policy, any of us concerned with international affairs. Terje Roed Larsen is here and many of our thoughts will be on the situation in the Lebanon - rightly. Many people will be thinking about the situation in Sudan, about the situation in Afghanistan, about the situation in Iraq. I was talking at a meeting this morning with the New York Partnership of Businesses about the situation in Zimbabwe and its consequences for Southern Africa as a whole. I will say a word about Burma at the end. What I want to discuss is why is it a good moment for the IPI to be launching itself? And I think the answer is that we face a new context in thinking about these, and therefore thinking about all, conflicts. We face, I think, a growing consensus in the international community about three important aspects and how we respond to this new context.
But we face one very large difference of opinion as we confront the nature of conflict in the modern world. There is a sort of paradox at the heart of the creation of the International Peace Institute at the moment. And that paradox is, as many of you know better than I, there are actually fewer wars going on now than there have been over the last 30 or 40 years. Fewer countries at war, fewer countries at risk of invasion from neighbouring or other countries, but at this time when global conflict was actually reduced, the personal insecurity felt by millions of citizens has actually increased. And that, I think, is an interesting security paradox.
I can’t remember who it was who said that it is very very unlikely that in the 21st century as many people will be killed in war as in the 20th century - thank goodness for that. But it could be you: it could be you getting on an aeroplane, it could be you on the streets of your city. And I think that goes to the heart of this conundrum that there is less conflict and more and more insecurity and that’s why I think it is important to recognise that at the launch of an International Peace Institute, there are hard questions to be asked about the nature of conflict and I think that in a way there is a qualitative difference in the nature of conflict, essentially from predictable threats from strong states with armies at the front line to a situation of shifting and defused threats with civil war a greater threat than war between neighbours.
That’s not to say that there aren’t parts of the world, some of which I have already mentioned, where there is conflict between neighbours, where neighbours are backing rebel movements in each other’s countries, but I think there has been an important shift. And the UK is profoundly engaged in a number of these conflicts and events. We are engaged through our diplomatic efforts. We are engaged through our aid efforts and we are engaged also through our military. And some of those conflicts have engaged our values. I think most obviously of Sierra Leone and it is a great honour that tomorrow when I chair the Security Council for a discussion on conflict, the Foreign Minister of Sierra Leone will be there.
But in some cases it is British values that are engaged. In other areas it’s British interests that are engaged and 7,800 British troops are in Helmand province in Afghanistan. I’ll say a bit more about that but there profound British interests are engaged because the threat that we see from international terrorism has important links back to the Afghan/Pakistan border.
Now that is some sense of the context that we face in thinking about conflict. I think it is important to recognise that the global debate about how we respond has moved on significantly in three important areas where I think there is a chance of a growing global consensus about how we as an international community should respond.
The first is the old debate about whether we should believe in, and be committed to, the use of hard power or soft power and there have been times when the international community has been split between those two arguments. I think that Afghanistan gives a lie to the argument that we have to choose between hard power and soft power.
The truth is that if you want to build a decent society in Afghanistan which the leaders of that country, the democratically-elected leaders of that country, and the citizens of that country, they need all the soft power we can give them. They are the fourth poorest country in the world, number 174th in the world developed index. They desperately need aid and support. They need help with developing systems of government and political infrastructure.
But the truth is they face an insurgency that would overwhelm the Afghan National Army, never mind the Afghan National Police, if they did not have the support of the international community, now numbering, I think, 38 countries that are giving them support in that. So I think it is possible to argue that there is a combination of hard and soft power that will be needed to respond to this.
And tomorrow when we debate this at the UN Security Council, we will be talking about how international efforts can get better leadership, certainly in the Afghan context the coordination of the international effort has been a major issue over the last six or seven years. We will be talking about increased civilian efforts because security doesn’t just come from an army. Security comes from above all police forces and the Rule of Law. And thirdly, we will be talking also about quicker and more flexible funding that is needed to support both the international effort and the country itself.
The second area where I think there is growing consensus is a debate about whether one should seek to prevent conflict or react to it. And here the obvious answer is probably both. In Kosovo in the early 1990s, then in the mid to late 1990s, military intervention was necessary and the threat of military intervention was necessary to avoid ethnic cleansing.
Look at the story in the Western Balkans now - 16,000 NATO troops are on the ground in Kosovo in a preventative capacity, 2,000 members of the European Union’s security and defence policy mission judges, police civilian infrastructure are moving on the ground as well. The UNMIK Mission operates across the country. There you have, I think, an example of preventative diplomacy. That for all the difficulties and the struggles in Northern Kosovo, 42 countries have now recognised. You actually have a situation that is more stable because of outside intervention than would have existed without it. And it seems to me that that should be a source of strength for us.
And the third area where I think there is growing consensus is the debate between state capacity and democratic structures because the truth is that you need both. Strong state structures without accountability are actually not going to deliver for their citizens. Democratic accountability and national elections without state capacity are going to lead to frustration and often despair by the local population. And I think that the situation in Pakistan which I have visited three weeks ago and had the chance to meet the two leaders of the coalition parties last week in London is an interesting structure of an example in that respect. The commitment of the new government to deepen democratic structures, notably in the federal and tribal areas which for sixty years haven’t had political parties never mind free and fair elections - an unhappy bequest of the British rule before 1948. I think that is an interesting example of how they are determined to build state capacity to deliver education, health and economic development alongside democratic structures.
But the area I just want to dwell on though is a fourth area where I think there isn’t international consensus - it is important to recognise it and be honest about it. And I hope that in the work of the Institute this is something which in the present opportunity you can think about. I hope you won’t shirk the debate about what we mean by national sovereignty in the world. I hope you won’t shirk the debate on whether and what should be limited to national sovereignty.
I hope you won’t shirk the debate about what inter-dependency means for national sovereignty.
A world where the actions of one country have implications not just for its own citizens but the citizens beyond its borders, that might be on issues like migration, or issues like climate or issues like trade or even issues like human rights. I think it is very very important that we address head-on the extent to which inter-dependence means that the world community has a legitimate interest in what goes on within the borders of a nation.
I feel very strongly that the debate of the 1970s which said that the nation state is too small for big problems and too big for the small problems was wrong.
The nation state is not withering away, the nation state remains the fundamental building block of the international system. The nation state remains an absolutely fundamental building block of people’s identity so I want to have my cards on the table about the enduring importance of nations in helping to promote stability and engage in political cooperation around the world. And the international system has to be based on the right of nations and I don’t think we should shy away from that. But in an inter-dependent world nations have to have responsibilities as well as rights. And I think the debate about the nature of those responsibilities to their own citizens and to citizens in neighbouring countries and who are far away is important. And it’s one that we should address, try to address head-on. We should do so because there is a global consciousness about human rights that didn’t exist 30 or 40 odd years ago.
It is the case that at the press of a mobile ‘phone button pictures of monks demonstrating in Rangoon can be beamed around the world, so there is a global consciousness and there is a global call to action to defend human rights. In my view, that’s a good thing. But equally there is the reality of inter-dependence, that instability in one country is contagious and therefore poses a threat to other countries. So within a country and beyond its borders, the actions of a state I think demand legitimate questions from the international community and from other states, most obviously from their neighbouring states, but also others.
Now I have tried to talk about the idea of responsible sovereignty. Because I think that it is not illegitimate to ask that in the modern world we have to qualify sovereignty with the prefix, and responsible sovereignty to me is about responsibility of nation states to their own citizens and the responsibility of nation states to citizens beyond their own borders.
And it seems to me that the hard questions are about first whether or not people are willing to accept that notion and there needs to be a prefix to the word sovereignty, whether we are willing to qualify the rights of the nations in the modern world.
And a second debate is: if nations flout their responsibilities, what are the consequences? And I do not deny for a moment that there are profoundly difficult questions about the consequences of a positive answer to the first question. It seems to me that if the International Peace Institute this time is not able to address the consequences of migration, climate change, properly to neighbouring states as well as for a state, then it is not going to be getting a tough list of issues which I would urge you to do.
Tough issues are sometimes difficult for governments to get into. But in the end as an international community we cannot carry on debating in a slightly sterile way, on the one hand a caricature of liberal interventionism, which says it’s a trigger-happy view of how one should intervene anywhere and on the other hand a caricature of non-intervention, which says that no state has any responsibilities or business with the outside and I think we need to break that sterile counter position. And we have to do so in a way that respects both the sense that the global consciousness is growing and the sense that the rights of the nation state are profoundly important and mustn’t be traded away.
I think it’s actually got important implications for institutions and one of the things that has interested me over the last year is the number of leaders from Southern Africa, leaders from ASEAN countries who wanted to talk to me about the role the European Union has to play not just in stability in the European states but whether there are lessons, whether for Southern Africa or for the ASEAN countries on the sort of role that that might play. But I think there are institutional questions and there are also policy questions.
I think it would be unforgiveable having a meeting like this not to say a word about the situation in Burma. And this is not just an issue for governments. This is an issue that demands popular concern, popular passion, because people understand that a tragic incident, an accident of weather, can cause unimaginable damage and people have seen that in Burma and they have seen it in China as well.
But what some of us say is a call to action is the notion that something could be done but it’s not being done. And I think that that is important to recognise. I have just spoken yesterday to Mark Malloch Brown who many of you will know from his time serving in the UN, and is now working in the Foreign Office as a Minister of State for international institutions for Africa, for Asia as well. He reported to me that there is an increasing amount of aid going in and there is an increasing amount of aid reaching people in parts, but there are tens of thousands of people who need aid who are not getting it.
And that’s why I think it is very very important that today we have seen publicly announced the personal leadership of the Secretary-General of the UN on this issue, his personal commitment to go to the region, his personal involvement in the Pledging Conference to be held on 25 May.
Secondly, I think it is very important that Sir John Holmes is going to Rangoon himself and that there is real assessment being done not just by the UN, but also by ASEAN, about the situation on the ground who will inform the Pledging Conference.
Thirdly, I think that some of the statements coming out of the ASEAN meeting are important, hugely important, because in the end the leadership of the ASEAN countries is going to be absolutely essential in responding to this crisis and the fact that there will be this meeting and that now there is a commitment to action is important.
I hope that in the course of this week we will see increasing amounts of aid going and reaching the people who need it. And we will also see increasing cooperation from the Burmese regime with the international community which I believe genuinely has one interest in this which is a humanitarian interest. There are all sorts of views about the politics of Burma, but actually the concern that has been expressed over the last two and a half weeks is about the humanitarian situation and I think people are dying who don’t need to die and it seems to me that it is in that spirit that Ministers are going to Rangoon so that spirit of international cooperation is being offered and I hope it is in that spirit that the Burmese authorities will respond positively.
I just want to finish up Rita, if I might, with a quotation from Samuel Beckett who wrote that “the tears of the world are in constant quantity”. And that is in a way why we have got the UN. If the world wasn’t full of tears, then the motivation and the drive that has created the UN and I think has helped create the IPI would be much less. Sad to say despite the fact that we live in a world that is richer than many people could imagine for the foundation of the UN, a world that is actually more cooperative than many people could imagine. A world that actually has a sense of solidarity and consciousness and is more profound than you could imagine. There are more tears than there need to be and I hope that the spirit of the IPI will be one which is determined to do all that it can to help the international community think through its responsibilities.
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