Sovereignty and the doctrine of pre-emption

They argue that the UN charter aimed at outlawing the use of force except in self-defence or used through a multilateral institution was written in the context of classic inter-state conflicts waged by standing armies of identifiable soldiers. It is well known that President Bush's doctrine of pre-emption has been rejected by the UN Secretary General Kofi Anan, but recognising the gravity and the unprecedented nature of the threat he called upon the UNSC to consider "early authorisation of coercive measures." Slaughter and Feinstein argue that Kofi Anan's call for authorisation opens the gate for revision or at least a reinterpretation of what constitutes a "threat to peace" under the UN charter.

The iconic moments of 9-11 terrorist attacks have generated several calls for the revision of the UN charter. While the developed countries' call for revision is for gaining authority to pre-empt not an imminent but a plausible threat, the developing countries will like a reconstitution of the UNSC and other UN organs because the UN charter when formulated reflected the ground realities of the post-Second World War era, but not the sea change which has taken place since then. The wave of decolonisation has seen the emergence of many countries joining the UN. The end of Cold War has seen fragmentation of the Soviet empire and of East Europe. And now the world is witnessing the scourge of al-Qaeda and its associates.

Historian Bernard Lewis finds several forms of Islamic extremism current at present (he recognises, though, Muslim complaints when media speak of terrorist movements and actions as "Islamic" and do not identify the Irish and Basque terrorists as "Christian" terrorism), the best known being al-Qaeda, the fundamentalism of Saudi establishment, and institutional revolution of the Iranian ruling hierarchy. While al-Qaeda needs little elaboration, the perceived threat from Saudi fundamentalism is contested. Bernard Lewis describes Wahabism, embraced by the Saudi rulers, as a "rejection of modernity in favour of a return to the sacred past" whose ire is not directed primarily against outsiders but against those who they see as betraying and degrading Islam from within. Muslim fundamentalists, Lewis believes, are those who feel that troubles of the Muslim world today is not due to insufficient modernism but due to excessive modernism.

Some analysts have made sweeping accusations against Saudi Arabia (majority of the perpetrators of the 9-11 terrorist attacks held Saudi passports) for having contributed to the radicalisation of Islam. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal addressing the American Foreign Policy Association late last month dubbed these critics as "instant experts (who) sprang from nowhere and every where, most of whom have never even visited Saudi Arabia claiming a gift of analysis denied to mere mortals." Responding to the criticism levelled by these "instant experts" Prince Saud informed the gathering that al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden had developed their ideology and methodology under the tutelage of the radicalised cult of Muslim Brotherhood. Osama was not taught his doctrine and creed in Saudi schools and mosques. "If Saudi Arabia is guilty of blame of what he has become," added Prince Saud, "the United States must surely share the blame."

Both the countries backed the mujahedeens to liberate Afghanistan from Soviet occupation, the mujahedeens were honoured, praised and even received at the White House. Prince Saud stressed that bin Laden ideology was not the teaching of the Wahabi reform movement or indeed any other school indigenous to Saudi Arabia. On the contrary, al-Qaeda ideology is quintessentially irredentist in the sense that it believes in the negation of legitimacy of the Saudi government and all other Muslim governments and in their destruction in order to re-establish the Islamic Caliphate with al-Qaeda as its vanguard. Prince Saud warned that the incendiary criticism against the policies of the Saudi government can only inflame and provide cogent proof to the indigenous ultra-conservatives within the Kingdom with whom successive Saudi governments have been waging a constant conflict so that they can not arrest the movement towards modernity.

Prince Saud's appeal to critics to desist from iconoclastic destruction of the Saudi polity without due regard to the context and lineage of their premise in their forensic investigation of Saudi "faults" finds resonance in the writing of John Esposito of Georgetown University. Esposito writes that to equate Islam and Islamic fundamentalism uncritically with extremism is to judge Islam only by those who wreak havoc a standard not applied to Christianity and Judaism. John Esposito finds the equation: "Islam = fundamentalism = terrorism" as facile.

Islamic revivalism has been caused by the failure of secular nationalism in achieving economic self-sufficiency, stem the widening gap between the rich and the poor, and almost overwhelming political and cultural hegemony of the west which often acquired a conflictual station with Islamic purists. Many among moderate Islamists find a modern bias towards the west and dependence on western models of development to be politically inadequate, socially corrosive and undermining the identity and cultural fabric of Muslim societies.

John Esposito would not be far off the mark in his assertion that the track record of Christianity and the west marked by making wars, manufacturing WMDs, and imposing imperialist designs would make their efforts to portray Islam and Muslim culture as being inherently expansionist and prone to violence rather unconvincing. Since the present day world, transatlantic quarrel notwithstanding, is effectively dominated by the West and more appropriately by the United States despite warnings by the likes of Joseph Nye of Harvard that "against the dangers of a foreign policy that combines unilateralism, arrogance and parochialism (because) throughout history coalition of countries have arisen to balance dominant powers and the search for new state challengers is already underway," attempts are afoot to put a new garb on "guiding principle" proposed by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty co-chaired by Gareth Evans and Mohammed Sahanoun.

Slaughter and Feinstein would like addition of a principle of "responsibility to protect" the international community, acting through the United Nations, depicting a collective duty to prevent nations run by rulers in closed societies lacking internal checks from acquisition of and dissemination of knowledge relating to WMD. In case where such regimes have already acquired WMD, the first responsibility is to halt these programs and to prevent regimes from transferring WMD capabilities or actual weapons to non-state actors. It is interesting to note that while Evans and Sahnoun's "guiding principle" is aimed at international response to humanitarian crisis massive violation of human rights, genocide, famine, or the human cost of anarchy; Slaughter and Feinstein's "responsibility to protect" the international community from rulers of closed societies stresses on WMD.

In a closed society, they argue, with no opposition the international community may discover a danger when it is too late and the standard diplomatic tools are simply inadequate to address the problem. Slaughter and Feinstein propose updating the UN charter governing the use of force to face a new generation of threats. Departing from the Bush unilateral doctrine of pre-emption they think the UNSC is still the preferred destination for collective actions because the legitimacy and the weight of preventive measures endorsed by the UN will make it easier to carry them out and to make them more effective. They, however, conclude that the security threats faced by individual nations and the international community in today's era of terrorism and proliferation of WMD require proactive rather than reactive set of international response.

Advocacy of a proactive policy to ensure international security inevitably brings in the ongoing debate on the concept of state sovereignty. The Treaty of Westphalia (1648) is generally taken as a historical reference point which gave several attributes to European states which had been contested in the past. Westphalia ensured sovereign independence of states; each state being motivated in its international behaviour by a consistent national interest; and the inter-state system regulated by a balance of power among the principal powers.

This was further cemented by the Peace of Utrecht (1712-1713) in which the European rulers understood each other as essentially self-determining actors, none of which was entitled to dictate to others. Westphalian model of sovereignty now has a theoretical existence both due to wilful abrogation of sovereignty by a group of countries as in the case of the European Union or through incorporation of states (e.g. Yalta agreement) or invasion (e.g. Iraq).

Currently a school of thought reasonably vocal in developed countries advocates enforcement if necessary of a universally accepted code of conduct on all states. In other words a state to retain its sovereignty has to behave properly both with its citizens and with the international community at large. Besides globalisation almost inevitably will have a corrosive effect on the purists' concept of sovereignty.

All said and done the latest assault on the sovereign state of Iraq now based on the argument of humanitarian intervention to "liberate" the Iraqis from the brutal clutches of Saddam Hussein, in the words of Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek International portrays a picture of the US waging a pre-emptive war unilaterally, spurning international co-operation, rejecting UN participation, humiliating allies, and creating a poisonous atmosphere of anti-Americanism around the globe compounded by the villainy committed at Abu Ghraib prison, does not encourage the international community to follow the lead of Charles Krauthammer's Prometheus in subjugating rogue elements. The Americans deserve better than what they have got now. So do the British whose thousand years' chronicle filled with giants like Winston Churchill and Lloyd George have now shrunk to the size of "Bush's poodle."

In sum, if the West would really want its values to be emulated by others then it must recognise the existential civilisational differences among different parts of the world and encourage emulation through "soft" power the ability to set political agenda in a way that shapes the preferences of others instead of "hard" power through military and economic means.

The author is a former Secretary and Ambassador.