Gallant Delusions

"International community" is a dangerous reference point for the naive. Its connotation of sociability and commitment invites unwise reliance by those who must ultimately fend for themselves. Its diffusion of responsibility excuses countries that have no intention of lending a hand. The concept amounts to a moral hazard, inspiring imprudent behavior by leaders who expect that someone else will pull their fat out of the fire.

Some illustrations: Start with Bosnia in the years of Yugoslavia’s collapse. Sarajevo was urged to refrain from any precipitous move toward independence. Negotiations for a looser form of Yugoslav federation remained possible, and the Bosnian Serbs made clear that, push come to shove, they would cast their lot with Serbia, even boycotting Sarajevo’s national referendum on independence. A close advisor asked Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic how he would control the thousands of Yugoslav troops stationed within Bosnia, still loyal to Belgrade. Izetbegovic replied, "I will order them out" — wistfully supposing that the international community would back him up with military might. The 42-month Serb bombardment of Sarajevo began soon after. International peacekeepers delivered food to civilians and (de facto) to combatants, but this thin gruel did not prevent 200,000 civilian deaths or shorten the war. Even after the fighting began, Izetbegovic rejected more than one peace plan, still betting that the West would enter with guns blazing. The United Nations issued dozens of resolutions, but Security Council rhetoric did not intimidate armed militias. NATO’s belated involvement finally separated the parties, but today Bosnia remains in tatters.

Or consider Cambodia in 1992–93, scene of a massive U.N. peacekeeping operation designed to organize democratic elections. The Khmer Rouge leadership wouldn’t play, opting to exclude thousands of lightly armed blue berets and election organizers from the Khmer territorial redoubt. Vietnam’s protégé and former Khmer Rouge leader Hun Sen was defeated at the polls, but he ignored the ballot box and successfully demanded a joint prime ministership. An election notch on its belt, the United Nations promptly withdrew from Cambodia, leaving behind only a few human rights workers. Hun Sen later forced out co-ruler Prince Norodom Ranariddh and rebuffed a prolonged attempt to organize a joint war crimes tribunal. Hun Sen is now opening luxury hotels near Angkor Wat and running a corrupt economy.

Next is East Timor in 1999. This extraordinary period featured the U.N.-brokered plan for a national referendum on independence — a plan pushed by Portugal and accepted by Indonesia’s remarkable President B.J. Habibie. Aware that Jakarta-backed militias in East Timor were planning retaliatory violence, the U.N. secretariat still felt unable to make any plans to summon deterrent military commitments, fearful of deriding the word of a sovereign state that pledged to maintain order. The anti-independence militia ran amok, razing the infrastructure of an already poor country. No one was available for peacekeeping until after the damage was done.

International organizations accomplish many fine things. The United Nations writes treaties, monitors human rights, and delivers development assistance. It helps form customary international law and provides a discreet place for negotiations without preliminaries on the shape of a table. But the United Nations, almost as a temperamental matter, has eschewed the use of robust force. It provides a multilateral aegis to states willing to contribute to collective security, but it cannot offer help on its own authority.

So, too, an innocent account of the "international community" can invite giddiness in international lawmaking. Some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) seem eager to speed up history and bury Westphalia, announcing that the legal bedrock of state consent is but a distraction in international norm setting. Europe has joined this bandwagon, embracing a "human security" agenda and supposing that delegating sovereign functions to supranational institutions looks the same worldwide as in Europe. Much as 16th-century Protestant theologian John Calvin preached the election of saints, some multilateral treaty conferences have become all-or-nothing showdowns, where ngos and "like-minded" negotiators oppose any concessions that accommodate individual national problems or any exceptions to holistic treaty texts. One either joins the accelerating pace of world spirit or must be content to live as a rogue.

The United States frequently encounters this view in multilateral settings. In the land mines debate, for instance, NGOs successfully urged some states to refuse even a temporary allowance for the use of mapped boundary land mines on the Korean peninsula. Europeans and others were uninterested in the bellicose behavior of North Korea, even while U.S. soldiers faced Pyongyang’s divisions on the 38th parallel.

In a similar spirit, the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee has debated whether to claim the authority to disregard national legislatures’ reservations to human rights treaties — even when those reservations are rooted in a national constitution, such as in norms of free speech. The committee stepped into even more contentious territory by issuing an interpretive "general comment" claiming the right to measure state conduct against the unaccepted parts of a treaty, ignoring reservations and holding a country bound regardless of its consent. Some human rights lawyers and NGOs argue that such treaty exceptions are self-serving and that there is no harm in holding each country’s feet to the fire. Gradualism, it appears, is for sissies. But the result is that the nays may win after all. In the eight years that have passed since the Human Rights Committee’s comment, the U.S. Senate has declined to take up any major human rights treaty.

International law isn’t a Sunday morning sermon. Treaty and customary law need teeth supplied by states committed to enforcement. NGOs have served gallantly as relief agencies in hazardous settings. They monitor human rights abuses and give voice to overlooked local groups. With the media, NGOs help focus the world’s attention. But contrary to the prediction of U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Louis Fréchette, ngos are not the world’s new superpower. Only states can uproot a rogue regime that threatens nuclear terrorism. Only states can exercise the police authority necessary to dig out al Qaeda. Only states can provide protection in a border refugee camp otherwise misused by an armed militia as a base to mount cross-border attacks. Only states can rescue a threatened population from genocide.

Laws are not self-enforcing. The world’s truly heedless regimes don’t care what others think of them. The lawless scoff at an international community whose words have no supporting cannon fire.