Tag: diplomacy

Georgia Law hosts ambassador’s talk on US Presidential election & foreign policy

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untitledIssues of foreign policy and national security remain foremost in many voters’ minds as the 2016 U.S. Presidential election has entered its final, post-Labor Day lap. We’re thus delighted to be welcoming an expert in this areas to our Athens campus next week:

Fresh from recent lectures in Oxford, Auckland, and Berlin, Ambassador Derek Shearer will deliver a public talk entitled “The Whole World Is Waching: Foreign Policy & the U.S. Presidential Election” at 12:30 p.m. this Tuesday, September 13, at the University of Georgia School of Law. Sponsoring the talk is Georgia Law’s Dean Rusk International Law Center; cosponsors are the World Affairs Council of Atlanta and the University of Georgia School of Public & International Affairs.

Shearer, whom I’ve long been privileged to call a colleague, is Chevalier Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College in Los Angeles who served as an economics official in the U.S. Department of Commerce, and then as U.S. Ambassador to Finland from 1994 to 1997. He’s the author of several books and a frequent writer on and contributor to public policy discussions;  his articles have appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and International Herald Tribune.

In addition to the talk, Shearer will speak to students in Election Law and Strategic Intelligence courses.

toigoWe’re also very pleased to welcome Sue Toigo (left), Chairman of Fitzgibbon Toigo Associates and Shearer’s wife. She’ll discuss corporate responsibility with Georgia Law Business Ethics students.

For additional details, e-mail ruskintlaw@uga.edu.

Dean Rusk and the dissent channel

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March 18, 1967. Afternoon. Secretary of State Dean Rusk conducts a briefing on Vietnam for state governors in the Fish Room of the White House.
At White House, with President Johnson in attendance, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk briefs US governors on the US-Vietnam War. The briefing took place March 18, 1967, not long before Rusk set up a “dissent channel” for State Department diplomats frustrated by US foreign policy. (photo credit)

In my current role as leader of the 38-year-old Dean Rusk International Law Center at the University of Georgia School of Law, I tend to take a close look at any reference to our Center’s namesake, Dean Rusk, who served as the only Secretary of State to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

And so it is with the US diplomatic topic du mois, the “dissent channel” at the Department of State.

This channel is much in the news these days, on account of a Page 1 New York Times story leaking a dissent-channel letter by 51 diplomats at State who want more use of force in Syria than President Barack Obama to date has authorized. (Worth-reading questions about the “leak” here.) And then there was yesterday’s Times story by Ellen Barry, about a dissent-channel “Blood Letter” that forestalled career advancement for the eponymous letter-writing diplomat.

Quite a surprise, amid all this, to read this explanation of the dissent channel, in a transcript of the June 17 Daily Press Briefing by a State Department spokesperson:

“This procedure, this vehicle has been in place since Secretary of State Dean Rusk was in office in 1971.”

Why a surprise? Because by 1971, Rusk was regaling Georgia Law students as the revered Sibley Professor of International Law.

At the briefing, an unnamed reporter took immediate issue with the spokesperson’s account:

QUESTION: And just – can we be clear about when it actually began? Because Rusk, I think, was gone by ’69 when the Nixon Administration came in. So I don’t think he was Secretary of State in 1971, but I could certainly be mistaken.

[ANSWER]: I think it was 1971 and —

QUESTION: Okay.

[ANSWER]: — my reading of the history said that Rusk had something to do with it. But I’m not going to quibble with you —

QUESTION: No, no.

[ANSWER]: — over the history of the program.

Uncharacteristic of these kind of transcripts, the spokesperson’s assertion is supported by a footnote [1]. It says only “William P. Rogers.” That’s the name of the man who became Secretary of State in 1969, after Rusk left government service for the last time. But a quick look at Rusk’s bio on the Department’s site would have confirmed the premise of the reporter’s question.

So what’s right, and wrong?

On the small point of timing, the spokesperson is wrong. But on the larger point of establishing a channel for dissent, unique among the world’s diplomatic services, the account is spot on. To quote a memorial published the year that Rusk died, in the Department’s own publication, Dispatch:

Dean Rusk left his mark not only on the nation and the world, but also on the Department of State as an institution. At a time of tremendous domestic social change, he encouraged minorities and women to enter the Foreign Service. He established the Dissent Channel and the Open Forum to give members of the Department alternative ways to make their foreign policy views known.

 

(Cross-posted from our Center’s Exchange of Notes blog)

Dean Rusk on Cold War US-Cuba relations

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In his statement on easing U.S.-Cuba relations, John F. Kerry said yesterday:

‘I look forward to being the first Secretary of State in 60 years to visit Cuba.’

rusk2The comment got me thinking who might’ve been the last Secretary of State to make an official visit. Perhaps Dean Rusk (bust at right), who served from 1970 to 1984 on the Georgia Law faculty, and is the namesake of a Georgia Law building, as well as its 37-year-old Dean Rusk Center for International Law & Policy?

Well, no. Kerry’s reference to “60 years,” plus the timeline of events in Cuba–it was in February 1959 that Fidel Castro became Cuba’s Prime Minister–point to John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State during much of the Eisenhower administration.

Still, there’s much to be gained by reading Rusk on Cuba. His tenure included U.S. entrenchment of policies against Cuba, undertaken as part of a larger policy aimed at containing Soviet communism. (That larger policy led to Rusk’s subsequent, controversial role in escalation and maintenance of the U.S.-Vietnam War.)

► Rusk’s State Department succeeded in persuading the Organization of American States to expel Cuba from taking part in inter-American affairs–a 1962 exclusion that remained in place till 2009.

► Rusk was part of the Executive Committee, or ExComm, that helped President John F. Kennedy find a way out of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 (indeed, Rusk is sometimes credited with arranging the promised withdrawal of U.S. missiles in Turkey, a key component in the defusing of that crisis).

► And it was on Rusk’s watch that the United States aided exiles’ unsuccessful 1961 invasion of Castro’s Cuba. “The Bay of Pigs disaster was one hell of a way to close out my first hundred days as secretary of state,” he wrote at pages 216-17 of As I Saw It (1991), the memoir he co-authored with his son. According to the son, Richard Rusk (pp. 196-97):

‘Rusk privately opposed the abortive Bay of Pigs operation. “I knew it wouldn’t work … But I served President Kennedy very badly. … I didn’t oppose it forcefully. … I was too busy sitting on my little post of responsibility.”‘

Dean Rusk wrote of his surprise over eventual disclosures of CIA efforts to assassinate Castro. He did cite other plots, of which he was apprised (p. 216):

‘Following the Bay of Pigs, the CIA tried harassing Cuba with various dirty tricks. I vetoed some as being foolish or unproductive. For example, the CIA once proposed contaminating shipments of Cuban sugar with a chemical to render the sugar inedible by the time it reached foreign ports. I thought that was just damned nonsense.’

On other countries’ reaction to the Bay of Pigs debacle, Dean Rusk wrote (p. 216):

‘I have always marveled that the Bay of Pigs fiasco did not inflict greater damage upon the Kennedy administration than it did. We survived that episode better than we had any right to expect. The international community and the United Nations could have really nailed the United States for violating international law. But most governments were sorry that we had failed; regret, not outrage, seemed to mark their reaction.’

This instance of “violating international law” had at least one consequence, Rusk wrote: in the year following the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy administration placed a greater emphasis on constructing “[t]he legal case” supporting the U.S. response to the Cuban Missile Crisis (p. 233).

Concluding his memoir, Dean Rusk suggested that the Cold War was nearing its end, that “events now seem to be moving toward the West” (p. 616). More than 2 decades have passed since his words were published. It is only now, with President Barack Obama’s announcement on Cuba yesterday, that there appears to be movement toward the Cold War’s final thaw.

Thanks to BASIL, a remembrance of Society’s 1st African American president

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fergusonCHICAGO – Within the rich program of the just-concluded American Society of International Law Midyear Meeting was a discovery. A discovery for me, at least, regarding an important milestone in ASIL’s century-plus history.

I have written before about women who blazed trails in the Society since its founding in 1906. Among several notables is Dr. Alona Evans, the Wellesley political science professor (and mentor of then-student Hillary Rodham) who was elected ASIL’s first woman president in 1980. Evans, who died in office the same year, would be followed by other women: Georgetown Law professor Edith Brown Weiss (1994-1996) Anne-Marie Slaughter (2002-2004), now president of the New America thinktank, Freshfields partner Lucy Reed (2008-2010), and, since the spring of this year, Columbia Law Professor Lori Fisler Damrosch.

I’ve also written about Goler Teal Butcher, Howard Law professor, U.S. State Department diplomat, and Amnesty International activist. Butcher, an African American woman, was friend, mentor, and inspiration to many; indeed, the Society named its human rights medal after her. (See here and here.)

I have not written about the Society’s first (and only) African American president, however. There is a simple reason for that omission: though I have seen the full list of past ASIL presidents, I did not learn until this ASIL’s Midyear that one of them, C. Clyde Ferguson Jr., was a person of African American heritage. He is pictured at top; photo credit.

Credit for my discovery belongs to Blacks in the American Society of International Law – BASIL – a task force that held its formative session at the Chicago meeting. The first component of President Damrosch’s inclusion initiative, BASIL is designed to affirm and expand the tradition of black international lawyers, jurists and academics in the United States. It is co-chaired by ASIL Honorary President Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, whose career includes service as a judge on the U.S. District Court, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, along with Adrien K. Wing, the Bessie Dutton Murray Professor of Law at the University of Iowa. I’m honored to serve as a member of this task force, along with Elizabeth “Betsy” Andersen, Angela Banks, Bartram Brown, Donald Francis Donovan, Jeremy Levitt, Makau Mutua, Natalie Reid, Henry Richardson, and Edith Brown Weiss.

As preparation for our inaugural session, BASIL co-chairs distributed, among other things, a 1994 essay written in memory of Ferguson. Born to a pastor’s family during the Depression, he was barred from attending college in his home state on account of race. Ferguson was graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School and hired as that school’s first African American law professor – for a long time, according to the essay, he was Harvard Law’s “only full-time minority professor.” A human rights scholar, activist, and diplomat, Ferguson served inter alia as dean of Howard University School of Law and as U.S. Ambassador to Uganda. Professor Butcher and he frequently collaborated on issues related to southern Africa.

Elected ASIL’s president in 1978, Ferguson was succeeded two years later by Professor Evans. The fact that the Society chose two pathbreaking leaders in a row is noteworthy. Indeed, it calls out for a legal historian to asil_logoplumb this pivotal moment in ASIL’s history. One hopes that BASIL, alone or in conjunction with WILIG, the Society’s Women in International Law Interest Group, will answer that call.

In passing: Hans-Peter Kaul, ICC judge, German diplomat, antiwar activist

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kaulSaddened to read that Judge Hans-Peter Kaul, a pivotal member of the International Criminal Court’s founding generation, has passed away. The in memoriam notice at the ICC website reports that he died yesterday, as a result of the serious illness that earlier this month compelled his resignation after nearly a decade on the ICC bench.

That tenure continued service to the ICC which had begun in 1998, when Kaul, then a diplomat, led the German delegation at the Rome Conference. He recalled the climax of that conference in a 2012 guest post for IntLawGrrls:

After the decisive vote on the Rome Statute, our founding treaty, there is some kind of explosion, an enormous outpouring of emotions, of relief among those present, unparalleled for such a conference: screams, stamping, exultation without end, tears of joy and relief; hard-baked delegates and journalists who have frowningly watched the entire conference hug each other in a state of euphoria. And a German delegate, normally a level-headed man, jumps up and down like a rubber ball and keeps punching me in the ribs, completely breathless,

‘Herr Kaul, Herr Kaul, we’ve done it! We’re getting an international criminal court!’

Kaul was born 70 years ago this Friday, in Glashütte, near Germany’s border with what is now the Czech Republic. The year was 1943. World War II raged, and memories of his boyhood during that war and its aftermath–including the postwar trials at Nuremberg–never were far from his work on behalf of international criminal justice.

This was evident in his most significant ICC opinion, a dissent from a panel’s preliminary ruling in the Court’s ongoing case involving 2007-2008 post-election violence in Kenya. In a 19-page commentary labeled Dissenting Opinion of Judge Hans-Peter Kaul to Pre-Trial Chamber II’s “Decision on the Prosecutor’s Application for Summons to Appear for William Samoei Ruto, Henry Kipono Kosgey and Joshua Arap Sang” (15 March 2011), Kaul invoked the Nuremberg legacy to argue that only violence at a level of “state-like ‘organisation'” could constitute crimes against humanity. It is an argument that continues to generate academic debate.

Another link to Nuremberg may prove even more lasting. In recent years, Kaul was an impassioned and indefatigable advocate for make the crime of aggression punishable by the ICC. His German delegation had pushed successfully for the listing of that crime–a signature offense at Nuremberg–in Article 5 of the Rome Statute. (Prior posts here and here.) After the Assembly of States Parties adopted the 2010 Kampala amendments to activate the ICC’s crime of aggression jurisdiction, Kaul campaigned actively for ratification. Every time he and I crossed paths, at Chautauqua, The Hague, or elsewhere, Judge Kaul was quick to report on the status of that campaign–and to express particular pride when his native country and its linguistic neighbors deposited their instruments of ratification or accession.

With the ratification by Austria last Friday–the 16th anniversary of the adoption of the Rome Statute–the Kampala amendments have garnered half the 30 ratifications needed for entry into force. (Also required is another Assembly vote.) States that have joined to date are Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Botswana, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Samoa, Slovakia, Slovenia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay. Numerous other states, including many others in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, are reported to be nearing joinder.

Kaul was crystal clear about the reason he pushed for these amendments: The child of war saw activation of crime of aggression jurisdiction as an essential step toward ending war altogether. In his IntLawGrrls post as in other writings and lectures, he explained:

War–this is the ultimate threat to all human values; war is sheer nihilism. It is the total negation of hope and justice. Experience shows that war, the injustice of war in itself, begets massive war crimes and crimes against humanity. In my nine years as a Judge of the ICC, I have seen that, as in the past century, a terrible law still seems to hold true: war, the ruthless readiness to use military force, to use military power for power politics, regularly begets massive and grievous crimes of all kinds.

In Kaul’s view, the prosecution of jus in bello violations is important, yet an incomplete, a symptomatic approach, unless it is accompanied by the prosecution for jus ad bellum violations. His own pithy words are a fitting epitaph:

War crimes, they are the excrement of war.

Europe on ICC docket as Ukraine diplomatic pact announced

Published on by Diane Marie Amann1 Comment

ukrAt The Hague today, the International Criminal Court announced that Ukraine had declared partial acceptance of ICC jurisdiction – during the same hour that diplomats in Geneva announced an agreement in the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

In a statement posted at the ICC website (video here), ICC Registrar Herman von Hebel announced receipt of a declaration stating:

‘In conformity with Article 12, paragraph 3 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court, Ukraine hereby recognizes the jurisdiction of the Court for the purpose of identifying, prosecuting and judging the authors and accomplices of acts committed on the territory of Ukraine within the period 21 November 2013 – 22 February 2014.’

The initial declaration (pictured above) is dated April 9; a followup declaration dated yesterday confirmed that that the person signing had authority to do so on behalf of Ukraine.

The limitations in the declaration reflect the fact that Ukraine has signed but not ratified the ICC Statute – a situation that Ambassador Tiina Intelmann, President of the ICC Assembly of States Parties, urged Ukraine to change:

‘To ensure the full protective potential of the Rome Statute system and accountability for atrocity crimes, I hope that Ukraine will proceed with the ratification of the Rome Statute in the nearest future.’

Today’s developments mean that incidents in 2 European countries are before the court. In 2008, the Office of the Prosecutor opened a preliminary examination into incidents in the Republic of Georgia. On that, the ICC website states that prosecutors are

‘seeking clarification as to whether the respective national investigations have halted; whether any additional information remains to be provided to the Office; and whether the lack of cooperation identified as an obstacle both by the Russian and Georgian authorities may be overcome through enhanced mutual legal assistance between the two States.’

Today’s developments occurred, moreover, against the backdrop of movement in the diplomatic standoff on Ukraine; that is, the release of the following joint statement on behalf of the United States, the European Union, Russia and Ukraine:

‘The Geneva meeting on the situation in Ukraine agreed on initial concrete steps to de-escalate tensions and restore security for all citizens.

‘All sides must refrain from any violence, intimidation or provocative actions. The participants strongly condemned and rejected all expressions of extremism, racism and religious intolerance, including anti-Semitism.

‘All illegal armed groups must be disarmed; all illegally seized buildings must be returned to legitimate owners; all illegally occupied streets, squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities and towns must be vacated.

‘Amnesty will be granted to protesters and to those who have left buildings and other public places and surrendered weapons, with the exception of those found guilty of capital crimes.

‘It was agreed that the O.S.C.E. Special Monitoring Mission should play a leading role in assisting Ukrainian authorities and local communities in the immediate implementation of these de-escalation measures wherever they are needed most, beginning in the coming days. The U.S., E.U. and Russia commit to support this mission, including by providing monitors.

‘The announced constitutional process will be inclusive, transparent and accountable. It will include the immediate establishment of a broad national dialogue, with outreach to all of Ukraine’s regions and political constituencies, and allow for the consideration of public comments and proposed amendments.

‘The participants underlined the importance of economic and financial stability in Ukraine and would be ready to discuss additional support as the above steps are implemented.’

How all these developments interact remains to be seen.

Ma’am in the middle of Iran nuclear deal

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maamThe wee hours in Geneva today brought news of an agreement to regulate Iranian nuclear development, blocking nuclear weaponry and easing global sanctions. The agreement’s a victory for what, back in 2007, I dubbed the talking cure – a welcome turn of events after decades in which tensions escalated even as telephone lines remained silent. (It is just 8 weeks since the leaders of Iran and the United States talked for the 1st time in 34 years; just 5 days since the leaders of Iran and Britain talked for the 1st time in a decade.) The European Union-Iran statement on the agreement is here, text of Joint Plan of Action here, and a White House fact sheet is here.

The guy getting credit for all this is a woman. She’s Catherine Ashton, the coal miner’s daughter and onetime activist in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament who’s served since 2009 as the European Union’s 1st-ever High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Ashton’s early days in that post were rocky, but she persevered. She’s been in the trenches negotiating with Iran for years. The Guardian‘s Julian Borger reports that during this week’s diplomatic marathon at Geneva, while other delegates nicked out for pilaf or pizza, “Lady Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief steering the talks, often just made do with bar snacks.” And so today the media are painting Ashton as a hero – “from ‘zero’ to hero,” as the Telegraph of London rather snarkily put it.

Pivotal is the quality that an unnamed Brussels diplomat assigned to Ashton: “emotional intelligence.” There will be need for much of that as leaders work to win approval of the deal in their own states.  Most notably the United States, where some same-day reactions indicate more fondness for the hostile old status quo than for a chance to edge toward a calmer international future.

(credit for above photo of today’s Geneva announcement, depicting a chestnut-suited Ashton flanked by, from left, British Foreign Secretary William Hague, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius)

Flashback to a moment of U.S.-Syria thaw

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Flag-Pins-USA-SyriaNot so long ago, the United States was looking to mend fences with Syria, as a 2008 Los Angeles Times interview with my colleague Derek Shearer, Occidental College diplomacy professor and former U.S. Ambassador to Finland, serves to remind.

Shearer had been interviewed on his return from a State Department-sponsored visit to Damascus, where he met with media and artists and gave SRO public lectures. He told the Times he was “excited … to see a country that has such great potential for doing well in this era of globalization,” and in that election year he looked forward to U.S. engagement with Syria if Barack Obama became President.

In an apparent easing of relations, in 2011, the 1st U.S. Ambassador to Damascus in years took office. But that thaw is a diplomatic casualty of more recent events.

Jordanian diplomat on Arab world & international justice & accountability

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zeidCHAUTAUQUA, New York – Without the emergence of a genuine, contemporary Arab philosophy, a top Jordanian diplomat predicted today, stops and starts likely will remain the present and near future in the Middle East. To be precise, the diplomat, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein, Jordan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, told participants in the 7th International Humanitarian Law Dialogs here in upstate New York:

‘When we look at the Arab world, there is no authentic Arab liberal philosophy, and no authentic Arab liberal philosopher, at this moment.’

Citing developments in Iraq since 1968, Zeid said that an earlier such philosophy, the Baath movement, “a strong socialist Arab tradition,” fell apart. The “absence of a genuine drive to articulate something from within” has left a void:

‘If you don’t have an authentic Arab liberal philosophy … what you have in default is the Islamic ideologies which are authentic to the region.’

A new tradition rooted in Arab tradition is essential to “escape” from “mimicking” Western liberal philosophy, he said, noting that citations to documents like Rousseau’s Social Contract invite “the charge that these are important Western ideas. And so he urged liberals to “start writing,” to theorize liberal traditions “in Arab terms” and “grammar.” Until that happens, he predicted:

‘For a long time we are going to see this rather jerky movement backward and forward. … That will be the narrative for sometime to come.’

Zeid’s comments formed the opening lecture for a conference ostensibly devoted to accountability; after all, the centerpiece of the Dialogs is the coming-together of chief prosecutors from each of the international criminal tribunals and courts. Yet Zeid – who helped draft founding documents of the International Criminal Court and served as the 1st President of the ICC Assembly of States Parties – stopped far short of recommending a rush to judgment. Citing history in post-World War II Germany as his example, Zeid called for creating post-conflict “space” within which fighters might come to terms with the conflict, before the onset and investigation of trials. Having spoken of events in Syria, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, he said:

‘Many of us have been very passionate supporters of inserting courts into events where a tremendous amount of blood has been spilled. I really think we have to revisit this – not reduce support for the ICC, but we need to develop a more nuanced field.’

Given Zeid’s role in the establishment of the ICC, the comments seem to herald a new moment in the field accountability and transitional justice. Should that be, one hopes for a comprehensive, effective, and well-resourced mix of responses – not confusion that amounts to a retreat from the field.

Georgia shoutout & more @ Power hearing

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Samantha_Power_White_House_PhotoSurprised to read, in testimony prepared for a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing yesterday, that the nominee to become the United States’ Permanent Representative to the United Nations claims Georgia as her home – so much so that the state’s 2 Senators, both Republicans, were tapped to present her nomination to their colleagues. Samantha Power said:

‘I would also like to thank Senator Chambliss and Senator Isakson for their generous introductions. Growing up as an Irish immigrant in Atlanta, Georgia, I cannot say that the United Nations was a popular topic with my classmates at Lakeside High School. But it was in Georgia, while working at a local television station, that I witnessed footage of the horrible massacres in Tiananmen Square and resolved that I would do what I could the rest of my life to stand up for American values and to stand up for freedom. My Georgia friends supported me every step of the way, and I am now very proud to count these two great public servants among them.’

Power’s testimony then moved to her views on the significance of the United Nations in today’s world. Not long ago, I predicted that 5 principles, articulated in her most recent book and detailed in my prior post, would inform the approach of Power (above) to U.N. matters. (photo credit) Her prepared testimony provided a partial confirmation of that. Aspects of those principles were evident in the “three key priorities” she cited in her testimony. To be precise: consistent with the previously mentioned principles, 2 priorities focused on:

  • Efficiency and effectiveness as markers of legitimacy
  • Dignity, defined in part by promoting human security

Prefacing these was another priority, one of:

  • U.N. fairness

Notably this priority, stated 1st in yesterday’s testimony, dwelt mostly on what Power characterized as a practice by which the United Nations’ “General Assembly and Human Rights Council continue to pass one-sided resolutions condemning Israel above all others.”