大象传媒

If a so-called sovereign state does not act in the interests of its citizens, has it ceased to have the right to call itself the legitimate government?

After all, why do we - citizens of wherever it is we are - hire governments in the first place? Most of the time they are expensive and a bit of a nusiance, so there must be some perceived benefit or we wouldn't waste any time or money on them at all.

If you agree that the purpose of a government is to provide the services that the individual citizen cannot provide for himself - things like defence, foreign relations, education, healthcare, social security, law & order (police, courts & gaols), etc. - then if the government fails in its obligation to provide those things, they ought to be sent packing, prosecutions to follow. Even more so in cases of natural disaster, if they do not fulfil their responsibilities to their citizens, they've failed and should go... and that's before considering the case of those 'sovereign governments' which have not only failed in their own obligations but obstruct those that rally round to help.

Normally, one would expect the citizens to attend to that little matter of dismissing the failed government and deciding what to hire in its place. Sometimes they will have other more pressing concerns, as the Haitian citizens do - trying to survive.

So if an 'international community' is to have any validity as a concept, are they not obliged to help out and provide what the failed sovereign government has not?

By force if necessary.

By this logic, here is your justification.

What do Yemen, Lebanon, Pakistan, Haiti, East Timor & Burma have in common?.
1. The legacy of colonialism: artificial borders polarizing ethnic, religious or class-based divisions. Of course this creates 鈥渞evolutionary鈥� pockets, pockets that don鈥檛 want to be part of what the west has decided they will be part of. E.g. The artifical seperation of the Pashtuns in Pakistan and Afghanistan 鈥� who see themselves (rightly so) as ONE people. Pashtuns hate that Afghan/Pakistan border. These artificial borders are explosive as freedom fighters fight for the unity that the west should have set in place in the first place.

2. Imposition of governments that are western, but which local population does not support. E.g. Somalia. Somalis do not want the American supported temporary transitional government; Somalis want a loose federation that can speak to the common needs of the country, but day-to-day government that empowers local tribal traditions in the several tribal areas. Because the Horn of Africa is strategic, the US wants a tight central government that it can control. Do you wonder that Somalia has experienced so much suffering and dislocation? Do you wonder that there is so much "terrorism" against the Transitional Government?

3. Exclusion & discrimination, often caused by lack of filtration downward of resources & profit. The problems within these so-called fragile states is a huge seperation between incumbent elite groups (mostly western-backed & empowered by greed) and the poor, suffering people. E.g. Take your pick of many different African states where oil-revenue never seeps down to the public. Let me get you started: Ghana and Nigeria.

4. The worst problem: WB and IMF.
For years the IMF has talked about changing its policies. Don't be fooled. It's simple rhetoric. The last SOLIDAR Report delineated the harm to El Salvador, Ethiopia & Latvia AS A RESULT OF IMF CONDITIONS IMPOSED WHEN IT MADE EMERGENCY LOANS TO THESE COUNTRIES. IMF has agreements with about 50 countries & the bulk of these countries have experinced much more severe financial harm than good. If the IMF wanted to change, it would. So it must gain from its so-called policy 鈥渕istakes鈥�. E.g. One condition of IMF loan is always 鈥渃ut spending鈥�. There go the social programs; there goes health care, education. A second condition is always high interest rates. There go your small businesses, your independent farmers.
The key question is this: If the IMF really cares and wants to help, why is it lending money in the first place? Why isn't it providing debt relief, grants?

Surely the IMF/WB is changing, right? Nope, the G20 leaders have said they would funnel $750B new funds through the IMF to 鈥渁ssist鈥� fragile nations; in other words, burden them with high interest rates, lack of social programs, debt, hopelessness, oppression鈥�
A recent Reuter鈥檚 Report: 鈥滶xperience so far indicates that the IMF is still imposing inappropriate, pro-cyclical conditions on many borrowers. These may unnecessarily exacerbate economic downturns in a number of countries鈥�.The next step should be to eliminate harmful conditions attached to other IMF lending facilities.鈥� When? WHEN?
e.g. Romania (borrowed $20B from the IMF) was required as part of the loan term to cut spending and bring its budget into balance. The Romanian Government cut salaries, cut social program and now we have protests (much like in Greece, Hungary, Latvia and Republic of Congo), but protests never seem to squeeze compassion out of the western WB and IMF. The best think the international community could do is stop funding WB/IMF until it sees loan policies that will not so hurtfully, prolongedly wound frgaile governments.

2 Blues

Personally, I don't buy the idea that it's all 'our' fault. If you want to, and you clearly do, you can of course make it look that way.

But you overlook the problem that

a - 'we' aren't all that powerful

b - they weren't all paradises until white people turned up

c - they've got histories and cultures of their own, which feed through into their problems today.

That's why so many of them, pro- or anti-west, or non-aligned, are a mess.

We can and should help, with aid where appropriate, and certainly with free and fair trade. But beyond that, their problems are their own and of their own making, and I don't particularly care.

We should just be ensuring that this country does ok.

#3 Apple-Eater

If by 'we' you mean our governments then you are right. If you mean 'we' in terms of the businesses coming form our coutnries you are very wrong.

If you look at the middle east you can blame the problems governments have on two things:-

1. Britian carving them up in the first place and creating borders taking no consideration between ethnic values, it took a good 600 years for europeans to stop killing each other when we drew up borders and we still have problems with the IRA and ETA.

2. In modern history the cold war. Every time a country attempted to adopt socialist nationlisitc values the Americans deliberaly scuppered it with various methods i won't go in to now. The point is the US prefering fragmented islamic governments because Naserists would of allied with the soviet union. That might of been great for us but terible for them.

I have not greatly studied the histories of asian countries but by going on America and Britians track record in the middle east and south america i'd say that the vast majority of problem countries are 'our' fault.

"When Cyclone Nargis hit Burma in 2008 killing more than 130,000, the Burmese military government was accused of doing little to help the victims and there was serious discussion over whether the international community should intervene militarily to deliver humanitarian relief."

Really? By whom?
The USA and UK were already involved in two wars. India's major security concerns are with Pakistan, I doubt they'd have been seriously interested.
I very much doubt Thailand or Bangladesh would have been at all enthusiastic about taking aggressive action against a neighbouring country and that leaves China.
It's unlikely the western states would have been happy at the thought of encouraging China to invade another country - and invasion it would have had to have been or would have rapidly turned into.

"In the end, it did not happen - partly because of concerns that military intervention against the will of the sovereign government in such circumstances would set an unwelcome precedent for the future."

Exactly. From both the right (Rumsfeld's regime change) and the liberal left ('humanitarian hawks' on human-rights and development) there is a tendency to think that because it can be done it should be done.

Iraq is one result of this thinking; because Bush & Blair both thought Saddam so unpleasant and dangerous that he needed to be replaced, and had the military capability, they launched an invasion.
Despite the best efforts to install a democracy it is entirely possible that in the next decade or two another strongman will emerge in Iraq and establish another dictatorship.

Attempts to develop Haiti (above and beyond immediate humanitarian relief efforts) may also prove exceptionally difficult.
The law of unintended consequences looms large when such high risk endeavours are undertaken. Particularly when done on an ad-hoc basis.

One obvious problem with thinking that if we think it right to invade a country and replace its government is that we then have few grounds to complain if another country does it too.

Another is that we are only capable of doing it to countries militarily weaker than ourselves.

We may not like China's one-party-state or human rights record, but it would be an act of monumental folly to attempt to invade China with the aim of replacing its government. There is hypocrisy built into such thinking.

A third problem is in thinking that democracy and economic development can be imposed in countries with little or no history of them.
Our modern ideals of democracy did not suddenly emerge fully formed; they developed in Europe over many centuries - and with no little bloodshed along the way.

Both Iraq and Afghanistan may both show how difficult it is to establish viable democracies capable of existing without the support of foreign troops. Has Iraq now got a viable, growing economy?

The invasion of Afghanistan was different from that of Iraq in that there was a legitimate security threat against the west operating inside it; but if the Taliban govt. had fully co-operated in allowing foreign troops in and eliminating Al Qaeda (unlikely I know) then the realpolitik is that the Taliban would still be in power; no matter how abhorrent we find their domestic policies.

Is military intervention ever justified?
There are no good wars, but are there some necessary ones?

In 1978 Vietnam launched an invasion of Cambodia that toppled the Pol Pot regime and also ended the systematic genocide being conducted by the Khmer Rouge.
A civil war inevitably followed, but the UN managed to negotiate Vietnamese withdrawal and the establishment (1993) of a monarchy and democratically elected government.
Cambodia has since made good progress at developing its economy and public services etc, though much remains to be done.

It can be argued that there should have been military intervention to put an end to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, on humanitarian grounds.

The NATO bombing campaign in 1999 against Yugoslavia in response to Serb atrocities against Kosovo Albanians could be another candidate; though the prospect of having to accommodate well over 300,000 refugees may have been an unspoken factor in persuading European states to participate.

I'll offer a question for discussion.

Is it possible to define what the grounds for a 'just war' (other than in self-defence) might be in the 21st century?

Any chance that emptying guns on school children or college people amounts to "not controlling your own territory"? Any chance that having no go ghettos and kids of eight years of age running drugs and weapons amounts to "not controlling your own territory"?

When nations, including the USA and the UK, do something about their own shortcomings then I'll believe they may have something to say about others.

Until then all life is a matter of perspective.

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Alastair:

Yes, to answer the first question in your post... Here is the simple answer but, it has had over the years, it had poor leadership in other problems within the country's that were listed that have made them fragile states in definitions...

(d)

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The world is littered with the evidence of failed civilisations. The failed state is a symptom. Our time will come; part of the process of evolution.

Its all to easy in a society to look at a specific group and say:-

"Its not our fault they behave like that they are just inherantly bad."

Thats what they said about the LA riots, the asumption was the black population was inherantly lazy and immoral, the truth however was they were living under a form of unofficial aparthied.

Its the same situation with other countries, we are all part of a community and some communities (countries) take advantage or abuse others. In fact its easier when its a different country.

We are constantly fed misinformation suggesting these countries are inherantly bad without taking the time to look at the causation of their situation. Its always reported the wrong way around.

Take Iran we are told how bad they are constantly but nobody is willing to take responsibility for the fact they are that way specifically because of the effect the sha had on their country. If Iran hadn't been abused and treated with respect they wouldn't behave the way they do now.

Take 'Palestine' they act the way they do because of occupation and aparthied, you put a load of people in a camp and humilate them you shouldn't expect them to like you or behave rationally.

Take 'Al Qaeda' these people came form the Americans support of the muhajadeen in the afghan soviet war and American betrayal of those people after they got what they wanted.

Take somalia and the piracy issue, these people are the way they are because corperations have used their waters as a toxic dumping ground taking advantage of somalias lack of a government to protest about the fact it is killing off fishing stocks.

Look at any failed/demonised state and you can see a foreign power is responsible for it.

I'd consider most Islamic countries to be 'fragile' as many of them seem to walk the fine line between dictatorship/theocracy and militancy.

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"Look at any failed/demonised state and you can see a foreign power is responsible for it".


Religion is the cause of much of the demonising of some countries, as for the rest it is normally due to corruption.

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Prevention is of course better than cure.

How not to create a failed state.

Haiti
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1. Don't support a brutal dictator who terrorises the population for decades as the US did with Papa Doc Duvalier and later his son, Baby Doc.

2. Don't force your neo-liberal economic policies on them as the US did as a condition of restoring Aristide to power in 1994. The policies led to a collapse of the economy.


East Timor
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1. Don't support a brutal dictator who terrorises the population for decades as the US/UK did with General Suharto.

2. Don't authorize Suharto's invasion of East Timor, as Ford and Kissenger did in their visit in 1975. At the time of the invasion the US ambassador to the UN was Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He later said "The Department of State desired that the U.N. prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success"

3. Don't continuously supply the dictator with weapons while simultaneously pretending that they are not being used on the population of East Timor. Amongst weapons sent by Britain (in full knowledge they were being used in massacres) were a number of Hawk Trainer jets which were used to devastating effect.


What failed states are we in the process of creating today?

How about Uzbekistan? Both Britain and the US have been supporting the brutal dictator, Islam Karimov for many years. We have also supplied weapons and parts to his regime despite the evidence of his atrocities. The massacre of several hundred protesters in 2005 was embarrassing to us though, so we temporarily distanced ourselves from Karimov. The EU enacted an arms embargo against Uzbekistan so no more European arms could be used against the Uzbek population.

However, David Milliband has now successfully lobbied to have the EU Arms Embargo against Uzbekistan lifted. Nothing has changed. The same dictator is in power. It's just that media interest has faded so it is safe for Britain to resume backing the dictator. Perhaps there will in the future be some violent backlash against the dictatorship and the country will be in chaos for many years, i.e. a failed state. Can we then expect a 大象传媒 article on failed states that completely airbrushes out our involvement from history? Very probably.

We're not to blame for everything of course, but we have behaved in an absolutely sickening way, and our hand in these situations should be reported.

#1 Megan - Each sovereign state thinks it's the hero on their own journey. Other countries may see it as failing their citizens but in all likelihood the government of that nation would see themselves as 'doing ok' or 'as best as possible' under their circumstances. Take the for example - if you evaluate the state of crime, corruption, murder, etc by any international standard, it could easily be argued that the government there is failing their citizens. The government in South Africa and the largely the citizens of the country though, don't see it as such. So who has the right to determine whether a country is in a 'fragile' state or not, and more importantly when an intervention is required on behalf of its citizens?

Toonman ()

The rich nations have become rich at the expense of the poor nations only .If there are no poor nations there wont be any rich nations .While helping the needy , we see colonial atttitude from the rich .This should change .

#18 Toonman: Ideally it is the citizens of a country who decide whether or not their government has failed them.

In South Africa, citizens have the vote and are able to speak freely in public about their assessment of their government, and so if they are content then it is not anyone else's place to interfere - however bad the crime rates may look from the outside.

This is not the case in Burma. Any criticism of the government's performance is supressed, the citizens do not get the opportunity to vote, and it is true that the government did little themselves to alleviate the effects of natural disaster while refusing to allow anyone else to pitch in and help. When faced with the choice of interfering or letting people die through their own government's inaction and obstructionism, what would you do?

Poverty and fragility are the main causes of insecurity. Once th e seeds of insecurity have been sown, it is extremely difficult for proper, efficient governance. When the military steps in, democracy falters.People's rights are no longer respected. Power often corrupts and democracy becomes a far cry. All attempts to restore democratic rule bear little fruit. That is the tragedy of military dictatorships. Pakistan and Sudan are reeling as terrorists try to gain the upper hand. The militants are difficult to dislodge. The war on terror is so complex and is fraught with so many imponderables. Defeating terrorists requires guile and intelligence with the tacit support of tribes and village elders!

If a government commits atrocities, or purposeful neglect, deleterious to its populace, in the name of sovereignty, is it exempt from intervention by world bodies? Burma's pathetic situation has been overlooked, validated for the wrong reasons,and set aside for too many years. If UN will not intervene to bail out victims of a natural disaster because its own government prefers to look the other way as a method of "natural cleansing," then what is the purpose of this world body? Saddam Hussein's Iraq was as sovereign government, was it not?

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Megan wrote:
"When faced with the choice of interfering or letting people die through their own government's inaction and obstructionism, what would you do?"


I'd not get involved, at least, not on a national level.
If you, or anybody else for that matter, feels strongly enough about the issue then by all means get on the first flight over there, get a gun and go stand in the line of fire and fight in the name of your cause but do not send in our nations armed forces to deal with what is an internal issue for the people of that nation.

The armed forces should only ever be used to defend our nation, its interests and our allies; it should not be used as some sort of world鈥檚 policeman.

You may feel that sending in the armed forces will solve another nations problems but who are you to decide what problems should be solved and how they should be solved ?

Look up the Prime Directive from Star Trek (it can be found here: , this is the sort of rule we should abide by when dealing with other nations, especially if they're undeveloped nations.

A lowering of the World Population would solve many problems such as: Unemployment--Global pollution--The operations of the UN--Lack of infrastructure--Loss of the World's Forest--Loss of the World's Flora and Fauna and hundreds of other problems.

What right has the Human race to destroy the World just for GDP to please Business and Politicians.

In many developed Countries removed Child Welfare after two children per couple. Then bring in STERILISATION after two Children.

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#20

I am sorry Megan but there is a touch of naivety about your responses.

People are fighting in many countries, including Burma, for freedom from unrepresentative governments and it is not the role of the USA or anyone else to pick and choose where they will fight. There needs to be International law and a global organisation that will stamp its authority on any country that steps out of line without being a stooge to anyone one nation or anything else. It must have muscle; does the UN have muscle?

As I said before; check the trash in your own yard before you attack others.

This was simply too good an opportunity to miss for Uncle Sam! Something right on their doorstep that they could barge in and 'sort out', even if it did mean pushing the UN out of the way to get there first. It's not like anyone could have stopped them scrambling to grab the moral high ground. They then claim to be the good guys, boss everyone around, take the kudos and claim that they were 'only trying to help' when anyone complains. The same as they were 'only trying to help' in Iraq by removing Saddam (once it was proved there were no WMDs). Likewise, now Al Qaeeda has vanished who knows where, they are 'trying to help' Afghanistan by getting rid of the Taliban (whose activities they were quite prepared to overlook prior to 9/11) and installing democracy overnight.

Maybe their involvement in Haiti was solely humanitarian, but Uncle Sam has a habit of making people very annoyed, or very dead, or both, when he's 'trying to help'.

I would prefer to be naive than ignore those who are opressed.

Anyway, in cases where humanitarian aid is required it is that which needs to be sent, not an invasion force. If, however, that aid needs to be escorted in by armed guards, dropped from aircraft which 'trespass' into the country's airspace, etc., that is preferable to it not getting there at all.

Im sorry for going Off topic but I would like to use my 大象传媒 ID for the Have Your Say section which I know you are doing soon but can you not change mine now?

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#29

"I would prefer to be naive than ignore those who are oppressed."

Very laudable Megan. So be concerned for all those in your own yard who are oppressed and perhaps, in time, there will not be any more silly invasions....

If you look at the middle east you can blame the problems governments have on two things:-

1. Britian carving them up in the first place and creating borders taking no consideration between ethnic values, it took a good 600 years for europeans to stop killing each other when we drew up borders and we still have problems with the IRA and ETA.
----------

You're half right. Creating borders did create tensions, but as you pointed out so did the natural creation of thse borders in Europe, in fact far more tension because the borders were allowed to happen through conflict. Before we got there there was already constant warring between ethnic groups, how long would it have taken them to work out borders themselves? Because without borders there can be no peace.

Did you not consider that perhaps the creation of artificial (but official) borders might have actually avoided several centuries of bloodshed that it would have undoubtedly taken to get to that stage without intervention? Because to my mind those countries are making a far better job of stabilising themselves than most European kingdoms did during our time of adolescence as a continent.

#33

I presume you are ignoring the artificial borders set up as a result of WW1 and WW2, many of which are the very reason why we have unrest in the Middle East.

Having visited all but two (East Timor & Burma) of the countries listed above, I frankly find it misleading and just simplistic to include Lebanon in the list; and here is why.
For a start, the country is clearly not underdeveloped. Besides the obvious "visit and you will see for yourself" there is also the fact that it scored a 0.83 on the United Nations HDI (Human Development index), which puts it in the "High human development" category.
It is clearly not poor! Ok There might be flagrant disparities of income and wages between the upper class and the lower one, but the abject poverty seen in Pakistan, Yemen and Haiti (for example) is clearly nowhere to be found! In fact the GDP/capita of Lebanon is 4000$ higher than the highest GDP/capita of the cited countries.
In addition, there is no "insurgency" in the country! If Hezbollah is considered insurgency, then it should be concretely proven that they are trying to take over the country, which they are clearly not doing... (Unlike the Talibans, the Houthis, etc. who are waging guerilla wars) Now is the presence of Hezbollah's arms optimal and welcome? Hell no... Just like was the case with the IRA, ETA, etc....
I usually like your editorials and reporting, but including a country out of the blue on a topic that clearly has nothing to do with it is just bad journalism let alone bad publicity; for a place that was cited by your colleagues at the New York Times as the number one destination not to miss!!!

Regards

If people would only watch Zeitgeist addendum and then research the Resource based economy idea, they would start to understand what causes all the problems like these in this world and see how it could actually be fixed. I have been questioning the Zeitgeist movement ideas for quite a while now and I can't really find any fault with them. We really could have a much better world than this one, it isn't impossible at all, it's actually quite easy.

So it's all the fault of the West that these failed states can't run themselves ?? Haiti has had 200 years of independence and it still can't provide basics like security and education. As for Somalia, the Yemen, Pakistan....is there any Muslim state that is successful, democratic and provides freedom and security for its citizens ?thought not. Repression is the name of the game in a large part of the world which is still living in the Middle Ages eg witchcraft in Africa, stoning women to death in Iran.Let's be grateful we live in the West where we have the freedom to criticise our own governments and complain about the developed world not being perfect. It's time that failed states took responsibility for themselves instead of blaming colonialism eg Mugabe has been using this as a stick to beat the West while reducing the life expectancy of his people. And the West's bleeding heart liberals lap it up.

#33 hackerjack

I disagree, i actually think the drawing of borders is the crux of most of the tension in the world. Nationalism breeds racism and a false sense of peoples own importance taking credit for things they themselves never achieved.

Another hypocrisy of the USA government as for spending tax dollars at 300 million dollars per year budgeted toward an educational program known as ABORTION/family planning clinics. The correct way to describe these clinics is, (mass genocide turnstiles.) No matter what you name it,the idea the obvious premise here is Mass genocidal killings, take place each day by the thousands across the U.S.A.. And also capitalizing off this government supported entity. How can the U.S.A. have anything to say regarding passing judgement on past and present genocides occurring presently around us each day.
The fear and terror agenda and the truth of 9/11 can be seen in these links:

1. www.shuva.net
2. www.nogw.com
3. www.Zzzoney.blogspot.com

I am proud to be American but, am ashamed of the government,and the corupt administrations about the "PARTY", and NOT the "PEOPLE"!!!
I will make sure all USA debt holders get the facts and truth,just for the sake of transparency and fairness. Also, because I'm being denied my disability benefits (ssdi) here in the USA,after contributing 26 years to the system,and now medically disabled and being run around in red tape denials.

Respectfully, your; caped crusader for freedom and liberty by character and actions for you.

Dave Holland

[Personal details removed by Moderator] USA

Underdeveloped countries can only develop if helped by powerful countries and good internal management. Singapore is my favorite example.

[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]Paul

Population Control should be the 1st step .. One of the biggest problem in these fragile states is the ratio of Resources Available TO the Population (per capita). Although there is no doubt that in countries like Burma, the bigger problem is communism, yet the root problem in most of these countries is poverty, lack of education, corruption and social unrest, which I feel are directly related to a higher population which creates a void of resources and people try to do anything to survive. Native population is most developed western countries has stabilized (or increasing at sustainable levels) and therefore they can better support their citizens. Governments in these underdeveloped (or developing) nations should educate their people to progress by having only 1 or 2 kids per couple and not 5 or 6.

Without that countries like Haiti, India, Pakistan, Haiti, Middle East will eventually sink under the ever increasing population. Western nations like UK, USA can possibly provide a limited aid for such programs.
- GF - [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]

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