Inn U Ottawa L-'Umvor'siu'' Ciinaiilortiiv- Mn FACULTY of GRADUATE and FACULTE DES ETUDES SUPERIEURES ET POSTOCTORALES U Ottawa POSDOCTORAL STUDIES
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inn u Ottawa l-'Umvor'siU'' ciinaiilortiiv- mn FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND FACULTE DES ETUDES SUPERIEURES ET POSTOCTORALES U Ottawa POSDOCTORAL STUDIES L'Universit6 canadienne Canada's university Cara Vamayan AUTEUR DE LA THESE / AUTHOR OF THESIS M.A. (Political Science) GRADE/DEGREE School of Political Studies "FACUITE7FC6L!7DM^ Humanitarian Intervention and the Failure to Protect: Sham Compliance and the Limitations of the Norm Life Cycle Model TITREDE LA THESE/TITLE OF THESIS Professeur Stephen Brown DIRECTEUR (DIRECTRICE) DE LA THESE / THESIS SUPERVISOR CO-DIRECTEUR (CO-DIRECTRICE) DE LA THESE / THESIS CO-SUPERVISOR EXAMINATEURS (EXAMINATRICES) DE LA THESE / THESIS EXAMINERS Professeur David Grondin Professeur Roland Paris Gary W. Slater Le Doyen de la Faculte des etudes superieures et postdoctorales / Dean of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Humanitarian Intervention and the Failure to Protect: Sham Compliance and the Limitations of the Norm Life Cycle Model Cara Vanayan Thesis Adviser: Dr. Stephen Brown Department of Political Studies University of Ottawa April 2008 Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-48515-6 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-48515-6 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada © Cara Vanayan, Ottawa, Canada, 2008 This thesis examines the norm of humanitarian intervention and argues that Finnemore and Sikkink's norm life cycle model is an insufficient explanation of the norm, due to its inability to take into account the potential for sham compliance. It demonstrates how three main instruments of codification - the UN Charter, the Genocide Convention, and the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine - have been interpreted to permit states to fake compliance. The analysis of six cases of intervention - Somalia, Bosnia pre-Srebrenica, Rwanda, Bosnia post-Srebrenica, Kosovo and Darfur - reveal that states will look for ways to interpret legal instruments to fake compliance in cases where the norm conflicts with state interests and/or when there is a high potential for casualties. A refinement of the norm life cycle model suggests the need for an intermediary stage between the stages of norm cascade and internalization in order to account for slow or partial behavioural change. 1 Table of Contents Introduction 4 Chapter 1 Understandings of Humanitarian Intervention 20 Introduction, 20 Rationalist and Constructivist Understandings of Norms, 21 The Humanitarian Intervention Debate, 28 Conclusion, 41 Chapter 2 Sham Compliance: A Desirable Option? 43 Introduction, 43 Somalia: Background of the Conflict, 44 Desirability of Sham Compliance, 47 Bosnia pre-Srebrenica: Background of the Conflict, 51 Desirability of Sham Compliance, 54 Rwanda: Background of the Conflict, 57 Desirability of Sham Compliance, 59 Bosnia post-Srebrenica: Background of the Conflict, 63 Desirability of Sham Compliance, 66 Kosovo: Background of the Conflict, 69 Desirability of Sham Compliance, 70 Darfur: Background of the Conflict, 74 Desirability of Sham Compliance, 76 Conclusion, 79 Chapter 3 Sham Compliance: Keeping Up Appearances 81 Introduction, 81 Bosnia Pre-Srebrenica and the UN Charter, 82 Rwanda and the Genocide Convention, 90 Darfur and R2P, 95 Conclusion,! 01 2 Conclusion 103 Bibliography 118 3 Introduction "Tlie heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next." - Helen Keller Up until the end of the Cold War in 1989, humanitarian intervention seemed unthinkable; today, it has become the ordre dujour in resolving international crises. The heresy of one age, as mentioned in the epigraph above, has indeed become the orthodoxy of the next. Throughout the Cold War, humanitarian intervention was prevented from being accepted as a norm by a competing and more entrenched norm, that of non intervention. The norm of non-intervention was first developed in 1648 with the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia which ended the Thirty Years War.2 By the 20th century, it had become a cornerstone of international relations and was enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations (UN). Only two exceptions permitted the violation of sovereignty. The first was Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which permitted the use of force to maintain or restore international peace and security in circumstances where threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression had been determined.3 Although Chapter VII is now used to permit humanitarian interventions, this was not the case until the end of the Cold War, as it was viewed as a violation of sovereignty and interference in domestic affairs. Humanitarian interventions were avoided to such an extent that intervening states avoided using the humanitarian rationale as a justification for intervention, even under Quote by Helen Keller, accessed at Wisdom Quotes: Change/Growth Quotes htip://\vAV\v.wisdomquotes.com/cat..chanuearowth.html (October27, 2007) * Treaty of Westphalia, Munster, October 24,1648 accessed at http://fietclier.tufts.edu multi/texts/historical/westphalia.txt (October 28, 2007); Stephen D. Krasner, (1995/96), "Compromising Westphalia," International Security, Vol. 20, No. 3, Winter, 115. 3 Charter of the United Nations. We the Peoples of the United Nations... United for a Better World, Chapter VII. 4 circumstances where there was a clear humanitarian outcome.4 This stands in stark contrast to today, where it would be unthinkable for a liberal democratic state to intervene in another state without using a humanitarian rationale.5 The second exception which permits the use of force is the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) signed following the Holocaust of the Second World War.6 However, the Convention was never once invoked throughout the 20th century. By the early 1990s, the end of the Cold War brought with it what George H. W. Bush called a 'new world order'.7 This 'new world order' signified the end of an era during which competition between the United States of America (US) and the Soviet Union, both of whom were among the five veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), prevented action in the face of mass atrocities. It was meant to usher in a new era of optimism, where members of the United Nations would come together to prevent human rights abuses. The 'new world order' signalled the erosion of the norm of non-intervention in favour of that of humanitarian intervention. For a brief moment in the early 1990s, human rights took precedence over state rights. However, it was not long before this new resolve was to be tested. The early 1990s saw conflict after conflict, first with famine and conflict in Somalia in 1991, then with ethnic cleansing in Bosnia in 1992, followed by genocide in Rwanda in 1994. The atrocities committed 4 Mohammed Ayoob, 2002. "Humanitarian Intervention and State Sovereignty," The InternationalJoumal of Human Rights, Vol. 6, Iss. 1, 86. 5 David Rieff, quoted in MacFarlane, Neil; Carolin Theilking; Thomas Weiss, (2004), "The Responsibility to Protect: is anyone interested in humanitarian intervention?" Third World Quarterly, Vol. 25, no. 25, July, 984. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, htip://ww\v.unhchr.ch/litml/menu3/b;p uenori.htm (Nov. 18, 2006). 7 Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis and the Federal Budget Deficit. September 11, 1990. 5 seemed to worsen with each conflict, with a UN response that became increasingly feeble over time. Strong intervention in Somalia was followed by feeble half-measures in a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, and a reduction in the existing peacekeeping force in Rwanda in the midst of genocide.8 Yet these successive failures