Intrastate conflict and Terrorism: from a top down global approach to a regional bottom up approach
Julio ESPINOZA
Global Security Challenges
Introduction
The end of the Cold War was not the end of history as some authors claim but the end of an era of traditional conflicts. Most conflicts that were covered under the East-West rivalry and the authoritarian regimes that served as proxies came to the fore after the Collapse of the Soviet Union mostly in the form of intrastate conflict and trans-sovereign problems. I will address intrastate conflicts and international terrorism.
Over the 21st century the UN had been successful when addressing traditional security concerns and avoiding global war. The UN has not been efficient when dealing with non-traditional security threats and structural violence[1] because there are not multi-lateral regimes based on an integrative framework that fights back terrorism and intrastate conflict. There is not clear mandate on terrorism that grants cooperation inside the framework of international law, which allows case by case and going it alone solutions. There is no system to reduce structural violence, contain polarizing social relations, and build up statehood in weak states.
Because of the lack of a global regime on terrorism and conflict the US has taken the lead but the American approach goes from the top to the bottom of the security challenges and leaves out the grassroots of the threats. My claim is that there is need to cope with terrorism and conflicts by promoting democracy and development and by outsourcing the burden of global governance from Washington and New York to regional powers, which have the interests and the resources to maintain their neighborhoods stable and prosperous.
Today’s fragmented international security system
The international security system, based on the UNSC mandate, has been effective preventing a global war but has proved to be inefficient when preventing domestic conflicts, weak states, regional security dilemmas and proliferation of conventional and mass destruction weapons. The UNSC has failed in conflict prevention and state building so far because its approach has been basically to punish aggressors. Another problem is that the UN PKO are under an unclear mandate and lack of quick mobility and enough personnel and budget. Some developed countries had also taken a lead to stabilize some conflicts. Interventions of the developed countries have not been always effective to restore and maintain peace and sometimes bring more damage than stability like the Global War on Terror that the US launched after 9/11.
Even there were enough peace keeping forces, well trained, highly professionalized and deployable, the political game in the SC would stop any prompt action during a crisis, specially for the interests that the Americans, Chinese and Europeans could claim over their areas of influence, like Haiti, where there is no European peacekeepers or Chechnya and Xinjiang where there are no possibilities to even have a debate on peacekeeping operation.
Regional organizations have played a much more significant role than the UNSC. For example, the Organization for American States has been more active than the UN promoting democracy and stability in the Western Hemisphere. The same applies to the European Union and the ASEAN and NAFTA, which can be considered security communities, places where war is very low probable to happen. Regional powers have been effective to restore stability and governance like Europe in the Balkans, Britain in Sierra Leone, France in Ivory Coast, Australia in East Timor, the US in Haiti or Mexico in Central America for say something. But there are still security hot spots in the radar: Haiti, Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Palestine, Libya, the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan and so on. So what we have is a fragmented international security system made of a highly politicized UNSC that has been inefficient and several regional organizations and powers that have been successful.
Passing the buck to regional powers and avoiding bottle necks in the UNSC
Therefore my proposal is that regional powers and organizations take an active role in conflict prevention and resolution due to the pure fact that regional powers need to avoid the spillovers of conflict and regional organizations have proved to be effective when the UNSC is unable to act. Regional powers are real stakeholders: their citizens can easily understand and approve the need to intervene in the near abroad and their business community can take advantage of procurement and post conflict reconstruction. Also regional organizations are the most likely institutional framework to work for pacification due to their high degree of expertise, knowledge and skills in local issues.
Recent history demonstrates that regional powers intervene when they see that their near abroad is unstable and represents a threat to their national security. “Regional organizations may more closely tie passing resolutions and the stationing of peacekeeping troops to a mechanism, such as negotiations, or to an actual settlement plan… regional organizations cannot only promote conflict management but facilitate final conflict resolution as well.”[2]
It is true that humanitarian intervention and conflict resolution is not social work for intervening powers for the high toll in terms of blood and money. Therefore the high stakes at risk must translate into peace dividends so that it is appealing to intervene. Intervened countries must considered that foreign aid will come with strings and the ransom for being liberated, pacified and normalized must be requested by the intervenor. After all if the UNSC is inefficient and regional powers intervene, money, blood and reasons must come from somewhere as cruel as it seems to be. Intervention and reconstruction projects offer economic opportunities as well as political prestige for emerging countries, such contracts, new markets and leadership.
The self-defeating Global War on Terror: securitization and avoidance of the real solutions
Over the 1900’s the main security concerns of the US were organized crime (mainly the war on drugs) and regional conflicts that lead to humanitarian interventions. Over the 2000’s the US top security concerns were changed after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in 2001. In 2002 Washington reformed its National Security Strategy for dealing with failing states, WMDs and terrorism. The reforms of the National Security Strategy were intended to review the US military alliances and build up the American military to a point where there is no other power in the world that can rival American preeminence in conventional and mass destruction weapons (read China, Russia and India): “Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.” [3] From then on the US granted itself the right of launching preventive (different to legitimate and legal preemptive) attacks against states that threaten the American interest mostly against the states of the so called Axis of Evil (North Korea, Iran and Iraq) as former president George W. Bush named them in his 2002 State of the Union Speech.
Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks the US has launched three major military operations: Operation Enduring Freedom (covering Afghanistan and other smaller operations in the Muslim Belt of Eurasia), Operation Noble Eagle (providing security for US military and security facilities) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (covering the invasion of Iraq). Instead of diplomatic, economic and multilateral policies, the US opted for military operations that have eroded American legitimacy all over the world, especially in the Muslim world, and the American national account. “Based on DOD estimates and budget submissions, the cumulative total for funds appropriated from the 9/11 attacks through the FY2010 Supplemental Appropriations acts for DOD, state/USAID and VA for Medical cost for the wars in Iran, Afghanistan and enhanced security is USD 1, 121 billions, including: $761 billion for Iraq, $336 billion for Afghanistan, $29 billion for enhanced security and $6 billion unallocated.[4] The Global War on Terror has been very costly and has had an impact in the national accounts of the US, which now face a twin deficit. However the results are still pending: Osama Bin Laden is still alive and free and Afghanistan and Iraq are not fully stable leave alone democratic. Ironically the Middle East is now under a wave of democracy that started from inside, from the very grassroots, without American help.
Martha Crenshaw argues that “the 9/11 attacks generated an initial burst of international solidarity with the US… and for the first time in its history NATO invoked its collective defense provision and then engaged in a process of transforming its conception of security and its post-Cold War mission. The UN Security Council immediately adopted a resolution imposing counterterrorist obligations on its member states.”[5] However the ONU has not been able to set an up to date early warning system against terrorism to avoid happenings like the ones in Bali and Madrid and to eradicate terrorism from its very origin: structural violence. [6]
The war one terror militarizes social relationships in the weak countries that might be victims of terrorist cells, without necessarily solving the key problems of underdevelopment and oppression that force so many into terrorist discourses and attacks. The US military interventions demonstrate that war is not a viable solution for international terrorism. Not only has the US lost legitimacy but also has the UN lost credibility. The UN could not refrain the US from launching the war on terror. At most the UNSC issued a declaration that defined terrorism and called for sharing information and coordination sanctions. But there is no clear response to prevent weak states from becoming incubators for terrorist organizations. Why did not the US launch a long lasting war on authoritarianism and poverty to eradicate underdevelopment and promote the modernization of the Third World? Beyond all the conspiracy theories for launching the war on terror (legitimizing a president that was elected by a decision of the Supreme Court, recovering the US economy or asserting American hegemony by picking up a fight with a foreign enemy), it is clear that the solutions against terrorism are not beefing up military budgets and invading countries.
Combating terrorism from bottom up
Common patterns of structural violence start with differences, contradictions, polarization and ends with violence. The remedies are preventive and coercive and go from diplomacy, peacekeeping, peacemaking and peacebuling measures. We can agree on the fact that all domestic conflicts are made of the lack of political representation (oppression) and wealth distribution (marginalization) and they are resolved by means of political dialog either voluntary or imposed and economic growth with re-distributive policies.
Therefore it is important that regional powers and organizations allocate money, human resources and political will to the promotion of state building and democracy in weak states so that failing states and failed states are bailed out not to be heavens for any sort of violent radicalism. Regional organizations must work with countries like Somalia, Haiti, East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq and members of the CIS so that minorities and oppositions are empowered and represented in congress and eventually can come to power. Also it will be necessary to transfer expertise and help weak states build up their own stock of human resources. An institutional re-engineering will be helpful to fostering positive sovereignty, the true control over the socio-political actors in a state. Constitutional reforms, tax reforms and public security reforms will make the weak states grow stronger as the government reasserts its control and capacity to provide public goods. Ayoob argues that the root cause of disorder in Third World countries is the inadequacy of state authority therefore
The international community must strengthen the juridical status and bolster the political authority of Third World states… self-determination should be defined in terms of empowering those segments of the population that have been denied access to political and economic power… State making should be an indigenous process in order for the final product to be at with itself. External intervention has the distinct potential to lead to state disintegration or state failure.[7]
On the economic side of the equation it is important to help weak states to integrate into globalization and regionalization. It is true that free trade can dislocate a domestic economic system by destroying local industries and increasing the rate of unemployment, underemployment and poverty but if conducted at the same time with economic reforms and case-by case liberalization agreements, free trade can create growth and development. In that sense, regional organizations and regional powers can foster preferential trade agreements, win-win mechanisms, so that producers of weak small economies can sell their products in the bigger economies of the region at low or no tariffs. The producers of the bigger economies can take on the passive markets of smaller economies and build regional economies of scale.
Conclusion
The traditional military approach that has been in place for dealing with non traditional threats is costly and inefficient. The UN has been successful in avoiding a world war but has not been able to prevent domestic conflicts and foster state building because the concept of great power management does not address problems from bottom up but top down, which can only sustain stability and governance for short periods. The vacuum created by the UN is filled by the US hegemony but again Washington fosters governance by securitization of threats and military interventions. In the long run it will be necessary to rely less on Washington and New York given their lack of efficiency and to delegate more responsibilities to regional powers willing to maintain their neighborhoods stable and prosperous and profit from state building operations in terms of economies of scale or political leadership. Before non-traditional threats we need a multidimensional approach covering the various faces of structural violence from the grassroots and the so called emerging powers can claim for more leadership at the same time the assume an active regional role of conflict resolution.