Protection Racket: 'Responsibility to Protect' Becomes a Doctrine

From Joshua Muravchik, at World Affairs:

The world has mostly enjoyed peace since 1945, but that owes nothing to the UN and everything to American power, exercised mostly in the form of guarantees to Japan, NATO, and other allies, rather than in shooting wars. In this era when violence within states is far more common than between them, cases of extreme abuse will sometimes cry out for outside intervention. But the traditional doctrine of humanitarian intervention, invoked by the United States and other democracies at their own discretion, is likely to offer a more usable basis for such action than the shiny new version called R2P, which places all authority in the paralytic hands of the United Nations Security Council.

It's a good piece. RTWT.



And recall David Rieff, at National Interest, "Saints Go Marching In."

'Both Gingrich and Paul have a nasty demeanor of a sort that, I think, will never make it to the White House...'

That's Althouse on the performance last night of New Gingrich and Ron Paul. And that's funny, because it's those two who I chose to blog on as well. (I've met Gingrich personally, and I've mentioned before, he's a terrible people-person. Ron Paul? I've never met him. But, well, he's just crackpot all around.)



See, "The Iowa Debate."



Previously, "Ron Paul at GOP Debate: 'There Was No Al Qaeda in Iraq'," and "Newt Gingrich at GOP Debate: 'Put Aside the Gotcha Questions'."

Ron Paul at GOP Debate: 'There Was No Al Qaeda in Iraq'

I almost fell on the floor listening to this guy. There used to be some kind of rule for excluding marginal candidates from these debates, and the organizing committees should have invoked it for Ron Paul years ago. What a disgrace:

See Sacremento Bee, "Paul and Santorum clash over US-Iran relationship."



Anyway, a big write up at NYT, "8 From G.O.P. Trade Attacks at Iowa Debate."

Taliban Shoot Down U.S. Copter in Afghanistan

At Los Angeles Times, "31 U.S. troops, 7 Afghans killed in Taliban attack on NATO helicopter."

In a rare event, Taliban insurgents shoot down a Chinook helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade near Kabul. It's the largest single-incident loss of military lives since the war's start.

And at New York Times, "31 Americans Killed as Taliban Shoot Down a Copter." (Via Memeorandum.)

U.S. Urges Citizens to Leave Syria Immediately

At Jerusalem Post:

State Department warns that given the "ongoing uncertainty and volatility" American citizens are urged to leave immediately while transportation is still available.

See also New York Times, "Broadcasting Hama Ruins, Syria Says It Has Ended Revolt."

More Than 12 Million Facing Starvation in Somalia

This just makes me sad. Forget politics and political science theory. I wish we could do something.

At Los Angeles Times, "Somalia famine spreads to 3 new regions, U.N. says":

Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa

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With hunger in the Horn of Africa dramatically worsening, the United Nations on Wednesday added three more regions of Somalia to the list of areas it says are stricken by famine.

More than 12 million people are facing starvation, with children particularly vulnerable. The U.N. last month declared that two regions of Somalia were suffering from famine, and it said Wednesday that the famine was likely to spread across most of Somalia in coming months, as well as parts of Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia.

Somalia is struggling with its worst drought in 60 years, and 3.7 million Somalis are in crisis, mainly in the south — creating Africa's most serious hunger crisis in two decades. Refugee camps in the capital, Mogadishu, are now affected as well, U.N. agencies said.

Shocking images of those suffering have resulted in an increase in aid in the last two weeks, after donors' earlier sluggish response, but violence in the south of the country has limited humanitarian agencies' access.

The U.N. is seeking to raise $1 billion to address the crisis.

I'm researching relief agencies, by the way. I'll make a contribution, but so much gets wasted on overhead and corruption I'm wary. More on that later.

Somalis Starve as Shabab Islamists Bar Escape From Famine

This really bothers me, at NYT, "Somalis Waste Away as Insurgents Block Escape From Famine." The picture here was on the cover of today's hard copy edition.

Readers know I've expressed reservations against humanitarian intervention, especially since Libya really wasn't. But I'm not reflexively opposed to the use of military power to guarantee food shipments. Almost twenty years ago President George H.W. Bush sent U.S. forces to Somalia to protect delivery of humanitarian aid. We all know how that turned out, but we didn't go in right in the first place, didn't have enough men and heavy armor on the ground, and President Bill Clinton got cold feet after we sustained casualties. If we were ever to do something like that again, we'd be best to go in without the U.N. or our NATO allies. Leave it to American forces, who've been engaged in two decades of counterinsurgency warfare since the early 1990s. The experience is cumulative. We could do a better and more effective job of relief today, and frankly, it could do some good. The Horn of Africa is right next to Pakistan and Yemen as the top location of festering Islamist war against the West.

Every morning, emaciated parents with emaciated children stagger into Banadir Hospital, a shell of a building with floors that stink of diesel fuel because that is all the nurses have to fight off the flies. Babies are dying because of the lack of equipment and medicine. Some get hooked up to adult-size intravenous drips — pediatric versions are hard to find — and their compromised bodies cannot handle the volume of fluid.

Most parents do not have money for medicine, so entire families sit on old-fashioned cholera beds, with basketball-size holes cut out of the middle, taking turns going to the bathroom as diarrhea streams out of them.

“This is worse than 1992,” said Dr. Lul Mohamed, Banadir’s head of pediatrics, referring to Somalia’s last famine. “Back then, at least we had some help.”

In any case, more at New York Times, "Off Media Radar, Famine Garners Few Donations," and "How to Help Victims of the East Africa Famine."

Courtney Messerschmidt Gets Results!

I'm proud to announce that my neoconservative protégée continues her rocket launch into foreign policy prominence.

Carl Prine interviews Courtney, a.k.a. GSGF, at Line of Departure, "A Woman for All Reasons."

And the interview's starting to go viral, at Daily Dish, "FoReIgN PoLicY thEOry."

Moral Revolution and the Collapse of the Soviet Union

The cover story, by Leon Aron, at the June/July Foreign Policy, "Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union Is Wrong."

I think that title is over-promising, actually. The key explanatory innovation is the role of moral ideas in overthrowing the old order. Aron writes, for example:

LIKE VIRTUALLY ALL modern revolutions, the latest Russian one was started by a hesitant liberalization "from above" -- and its rationale extended well beyond the necessity to correct the economy or make the international environment more benign. The core of Gorbachev's enterprise was undeniably idealistic: He wanted to build a more moral Soviet Union.

For though economic betterment was their banner, there is little doubt that Gorbachev and his supporters first set out to right moral, rather than economic, wrongs. Most of what they said publicly in the early days of perestroika now seems no more than an expression of their anguish over the spiritual decline and corrosive effects of the Stalinist past. It was the beginning of a desperate search for answers to the big questions with which every great revolution starts: What is a good, dignified life? What constitutes a just social and economic order? What is a decent and legitimate state? What should such a state's relationship with civil society be?

"A new moral atmosphere is taking shape in the country," Gorbachev told the Central Committee at the January 1987 meeting where he declared glasnost -- openness -- and democratization to be the foundation of his perestroika, or restructuring, of Soviet society. "A reappraisal of values and their creative rethinking is under way." Later, recalling his feeling that "we couldn't go on like that any longer, and we had to change life radically, break away from the past malpractices," he called it his "moral position."

At least from an ideational perspective, the argument is familiar. I'm reminded of the edited volume from Richard Ned Lebow and Thomas Risse-Kappen, International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War, published in 1995. Ideas are contrasted with material interests as a mobilizing factor in historical change. So Leon's argument builds on themes that have been common in international relations literature for some time. Aron's book on this is forthcoming, and looks interesting: Roads to the Temple: Truth, Memory, Ideas, and Ideals in the Making of the Russian Revolution, 1987-1991.

Keep America Safe: 'More Risk'

Via Theo Spark:

Hugo Chavez Will Go to Cuba For Chemotherapy

At Fausta's, "Chavez going to Cuba, not Brazil, for chemo VIDEO":

U.S. Recognizes Rebels in Libya

The story's at New York Times and Memeorandum.

At the video is a portion of the president's March 28th speech. "Regime change" isn't mentioned, although that was the plan all along:

I wouldn't have authorized this deployment, but if you're going in don't lie about it. That's what I hate about R2P. It's so dishonest, but amounts to virtually the same logical outcome as democracy promotion policies. But if it's launched under a Republican president the "world community" rises up in arms at the "threat" of another "Hitler." When a Democrat does it it's "humanitarian intervention."

See: "'Saints Go Marching In': David Rieff at The National Interest."

Side Note: One more thing about R2P: Samantha Power invoked the doctrine for the invasion of Israel, which is just sickening to think about. Democrats will do that.