UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations

Arnold C. Harberger Lecture on Economic Development with Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University: "What Causes Economic Growth? Two Centuries of Global Evidence"

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:42:40 PDT

The UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations proudly presents the 2012-13 Arnold C. Harberger Distinguished Lecture on Economic Development featuring Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute and Professor of Sustainable Development, and of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. This event is co-sponsored by the UCLA Anderson School's Center for Global Management, the UCLA Law School's Emmett Center on Climate Change & the Environment and the Environmental Law Center.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals, having held the same position under former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He is co-founder and Chief Strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, and is director of the Millennium Villages Project. He has authored three New York Times bestsellers in the past seven years: The End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008), and The Price of Civilization(2011).

Professor Sachs is widely considered to be the world’s leading expert on economic development and the fight against poverty. His work on ending poverty, promoting economic growth, fighting hunger and disease, and promoting sustainable environmental practices, has taken him to more than 125 countries with more than 90 percent of the world’s population. For more than a quarter century he has advised dozens of heads of state and governments on economic strategy, in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

Sachs is the recipient of many awards and honors, including membership in the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Society of Fellows, and the Fellows of the World Econometric Society. He has received more than 20 honorary degrees, and many awards and honors around the world. His syndicated newspaper column appears in more than 80 countries around the world, and he is a frequent contributor to major publications such as the Financial Times of London, the International Herald Tribune, Scientific American, and Time magazine. Sachs has twice been named among Time Magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders. He was called by the New York Times, “probably the most important economist in the world,” and by Time Magazine “the world’s best known economist.” A recent survey by The Economist Magazine ranked Professor Sachs as among the world’s three most influential living economists of the past decade.

Prior to joining Columbia, Sachs spent over twenty years at Harvard University, most recently as Director of the Center for International Development and the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade. A native of Detroit, Michigan, Sachs received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard.

ABOUT THE ARNOLD C. HARBERGER DISTINGUISHED LECTURE SERIES

In sponsoring the Arnold C. Harberger Distinguished Lecture Series, the Burkle Center for International Relations celebrates Harberger as an eminent scholar and teacher. The lectures provide a special forum for outstanding students of international economics and policy to present their thoughts and research on issues like those that Harberger himself has addressed. Arnold Harberger's pioneering studies on taxation, development, cost benefit analysis, and trade policy have marked him as an economist with incredible breadth, from theory to policy, from the United States to developing countries. Past speakers in the lecture series have included Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate and professor at Columbia University, and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.

Sponsor(s): Burkle Center for International Relations, UCLA Law, Anderson Center for Global Management/CIBER

Congratulations to the 2012-13 Alice Belkin Memorial Scholarship Recipients

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:27:44 PDT

The UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2012-13 Alice Belkin Memorial Scholarship.

These scholarships are intended to reward outstanding minority UCLA graduate students in the field of International Relations who need financial assistance.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2012-13 ALICE BELKIN MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENTS:

IRENE VEGA, PhD Candidate, UCLA Department of Sociology

Irene I. Vega is a doctoral student in Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests are in international migration, political sociology, and racial/ethnic boundaries. She is particularly interested in whether and how internal immigration politics impact the United States’ foreign policy toward immigrant-sending countries, especially Latin America. She recently completed a study of the ethnic boundary making strategies of politically conservative Latinos who organize against unauthorized immigration in Arizona and California. Her dissertation will build on this study by mapping the temporal and political indicators of Latinos’ immigration attitudes and documenting how they relate to immigrants with whom they share an ethnic background and racial categorization within the U.S. hierarchy, but not a national experience. Her research has implications for U.S. immigration policy because Latinos represent a formidable force in the American electorate, especially through a powerful ethnic advocacy machine. In the future, she aims to conduct comparative research on international migration and political sociology, especially in countries that do not have a long history of immigration. Upon completion of the Ph.D., Irene will pursue an academic job at a research university with a lively program on international relations, specifically as it relates to immigration and politics.

KRISTEN KAO, PhD Candidate, UCLA Department of Political Science

Kristen Kao is a PhD Candidate in the Political Science Department at UCLA. She first traveled to the Middle East on a Fulbright grant to conduct research in Egypt in 2006. Since then, she has spent a good portion of each year living in the region, culminating in the dissertation fieldwork she is currently conducting in Jordan and Kuwait. Her research seeks to understand the effects of different types of electoral institutions on voting behavior and democratic representation in ethnically divided societies. Specifically, she collects data on electoral outcomes and the formation of voting coalitions on the basis of tribal or religious affiliation to examine voting patterns throughout history. More broadly, she studies ethnic and religious politics, comparative electoral systems, collective action, democratic theory, and politics of the Middle East. She hopes to become a professor and teach at a four-year university.

SIYU CAI, PhD Candidate, UCLA Department of Geography

Siyu was born in China, and he grew up in the U.S.'s most diverse zip code—Seattle's 98118 postal code. This upbringing has led him to pursue a Ph.D. in the Department of Geography at UCLA. His research interest is geographical political economy with a regional focus on China. He has done research on China's regional development, household registration system, and internal migration. Upon graduation, Siyu plans to apply his research agenda, as well as his interest in teaching, in an academic institution. In addition to his passion for the social sciences, Siyu loves the game of basketball.

To learn more about the scholarship program click here.

Burkle Center Fellow Tony Camerino quoted in Al Jazeera article on the US and its use of torture

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:20:25 PDT

Torment, torture and terror: A report concludes that the US tortured detainees, so how will its findings affect the US counter-terrorism policy?

A non-partisan US task force concludes that it is indisputable that the United States tortured detainees; and that the country's highest officials bear responsibility.

The comprehensive 560-page study into US interrogation and detention programmes after 9/11 was produced by an eleven-member panel convened by a group called the Constitution Project.

It was led by a former Republican and member of George W Bush's cabinet; and a former Democrat congressman.

The report will make uncomfortable reading for members of both the Bush and the Obama administrations.

It concludes that "the kind of considered and detailed discussions, involving the president and his top advisors on inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in custody" were unprecedented.

Moreover, the taskforce found 'no firm or persuasive evidence' that torture produced valuable information and that the policy 'damaged the standing of the US'.

The report was undertaken after President Obama refused to support a national commission to investigate the post 9/11 counter-terrorism programmes.

Although it finds an improvement in policy under president Obama, it notes allegations of so-called "proxy" detention and the torture of suspects handed over to US allies in the last few years.

It also questions Obama's executive order that allows what the report calls 'imhumane practices' during interrogation. The commission also calls for the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guanatanamo to be addressed.

And the report raises significant legal questions - as a signatory to the international convention against torture, the US is required to promptly investigate allegations of abuse and compensate the victims.

The Constitution Project's report is billed as the most ambitious, non-partisan attempt yet to assess US detention and interrogation programmes.

It concludes that it is "indisputable" that the US engaged in torture, and that ultimate responsibility lies with the country's most senior officials.

As well as detailing numerous acts of torture, the report also found that the US violated its international legal obligations by engineering what it called "enforced disappearances" and secret detentions.

So why has the report been undertaken now and will its findings make any difference?

Inside Story Americas, with presenter Shihab Rattansi, speaks to guests: Thomas Pickering, a former US ambassador to numerous countries and the United Nations who also served as undersecretary of state for political affairs; Tony Camerino, a former senior military interrogator who conducted or supervised over 1,300 interrogations in Iraq; and Karen Greenberg, director of the Centre on National Security at Fordham University.

"We interviewed well over a 100 people, we saw thousands of pages of documents, there is nothing classified in the report. But it gave us an opportunity to look at torture, to look at rendition, to look at Guantanamo, to look at the behaviour of medical personnel in these particular set of activities, to look at legal people …"

"It gave us an opportunity - we hope to tell the American public - the truth as we found it and as we understood it. And we hope it will impel the United States to take a series of actions ... that will never allow this to happen again."

-Thomas Pickering, Constitution Project Task Force Member

"One of the findings in the report ... is the trickle-down effect, which is that when you have senior leaders in our government, who say that it's ok once in a while to break the rules, and use torture if it saves lives, that has an effect in the field ... [it] had a very catastrophic effect in many different theatres, in Iraq, Afghanistan, at Guantanamo."

- Tony Camerino, Former Senior Military Interrogator

"This is a very strongly worded report ... which starts with: 'The United States tortured'. First of all using the word torture [instead of enhanced interrogation techniques] ... is making a statement .... The report makes it clear that it's not just important to acknowledge that torture happened [but also] to acknowledge that individuals at the highest level of government were involved ... it is not just a backwards looking report, it is very much ... forward looking ... and the moral clarity, the legal clarity [in it] is actually something that we haven’t seen before."

- Karen Greenberg, Director of the Centre on National Security at Fordham University

To view the original Al Jazeera article click here.

"Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" with author Elliott Abrams

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:05:02 PDT

Please join us for a talk by Elliott Abrams, former deputy assistant and deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush, about his new book, "Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict." Comments will be provided by Prof. Steven Spiegel, Director of the UCLA Center for Middle East Development. This event is co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for Middle East Development and the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies.

ABOUT THE BOOK

This book tells the full inside story of the Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Written by a top National Security Council officer who worked at the White House with Bush, Cheney, and Rice and attended dozens of meetings with figures like Sharon, Mubarak, the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and Palestinian leaders, it brings the reader inside the White House and the palaces of Middle Eastern officials. How did 9/11 change American policy toward Arafat and Sharon's tough efforts against the Second Intifada? What influence did the Saudis have on President Bush? Did the American approach change when Arafat died? How did Sharon decide to get out of Gaza, and why did the peace negotiations fail? In the first book by an administration official to focus on Bush and the Middle East, Elliott Abrams brings the story of Bush, the Israelis, and the Palestinians to life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elliott Abrams is senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington, D.C. He served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser in the administration of President George W. Bush, where he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East for the White House.

Mr. Abrams was educated at Harvard College, the London School of Economics, and Harvard Law School. After serving on the staffs of Sen. Henry M. Jackson and Daniel P. Moynihan, he was an assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration and received the secretary of state's Distinguished Service Award from Secretary George P. Shultz. In 2012, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy gave him its Scholar-Statesman Award.

Mr. Abrams was president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., from 1996 until joining the White House staff. He was a member of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom from 1999 to 2001 and chairman of the commission in the latter year, and in 2012 was reappointed to membership for another term. Mr. Abrams is also a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, which directs the activities of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He teaches U.S. foreign policy at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.

Mr. Abrams joined the Bush administration in June 2001 as special assistant to the president and senior director of the NSC for democracy, human rights, and international organizations. From December 2002 to February 2005, he served as special assistant to the president and senior director of the National Security Council for Near East and North African affairs. He served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy from February 2005 to January 2009, and in that capacity supervised both the Near East and North African Affairs and the democracy, human rights, and international organizations directorates of the NSC.

Sponsor(s): Burkle Center for International Relations, Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, Center for Middle East Development

"Emperor" Starring Matthew Fox and Tommy Lee Jones

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:31:25 PDT

Please join us for a special screening of the film "Emperor." A panel discussion will follow the screening with Producers Yoko Narahashi and Eugene Nomura, Professor Kal Raustiala, and Professor William Marotti.

ABOUT THE FILM

A gripping tale of love and honor forged between fierce enemies of war, Emperor unfolds the story, inspired by true events, of the bold and secret moves that won the peace in the shadows of postwar Japan. The story of Emperor is based on the resonant, real events of 1945, when General MacArthur took control of a shell-shocked Japan on behalf of the U.S and Bonner Fellers worked covertly to investigate the Emperor’s fate while the future of the nation hung in the balance. Entwined with an against-the-odds romance, the story traverses the conflicting loyalties between heart and homeland, between revenge and justice, as the world rebuilds from the ruins of war.

Matthew Fox joins with Academy Award® winner Tommy Lee Jones, newcomer Eriko Hatsune and award-winning Japanese star Toshiyuki Nishida to bring to life the American occupation of Japan in the perilous and unpredictable days just after Emperor Hirohito’s World War II surrender. As General Douglas MacArthur (Jones) suddenly finds himself the de facto ruler of a foreign nation, he assigns an expert in Japanese culture – and psychological warfare – General Bonner Fellers (Fox), to covertly investigate the looming question hanging over the country: should the Japanese Emperor, worshiped by his people but accused of war crimes, be punished or saved? Caught between the high-wire political intrigue of his urgent mission and his own impassioned search for the mysterious school teacher (Hatsune) who first drew him to Japan, Fellers can be certain only that the tricky subterfuge about to play out will forever change the history of two nations and his heart.

ABOUT THE PANELISTS

EUGENE NOMURA is a Producer of EMPEROR as well as an actor. His acting career began at the age of fourteen playing the lead in an award winning NHK television drama ‘Kizuna’ (1987). He then received an acting scholarship to the Lee Strasberg Institute and the Actors’ Studio in New York. After returning to Tokyo, Nomura worked on the award winning film ‘800 Two Lap Runners’ (1994) where he was honored with the Kinema Junpo Award and Mainichi Concours Grand Prize for Best Actor. Having worked in over 50 films and 60 major television series in Japan, he also started producing films in 2009. Nomura’s producer credits include THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN(2009), TAJOMARU (2009), SURELY SOME DAY (2010), and TOMATO NO SHIZUKU (2011).

KAL RAUSTIALA is Director of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and Associate Vice Provost of the International Institute and International Studies. A professor at UCLA Law School, he holds a joint appointment with the UCLA International Institute, where he teaches in the Program on Global Studies. Professor Raustiala has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and the University of Chicago, and was a fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. He serves on the editorial boards of International Organization and the American Journal of International Law, and is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

WILLIAM MAROTTI is an Associate Professor at UCLA and teaches modern Japanese history, with an emphasis on everyday life and cultural-historical issues. He is also Chair of the East Asian Studies M.A. Interdepartmental Degree Program. He received his doctorate in 2001 from the University of Chicago’s Department of East Asian Civilizations and Cultures, where he worked with Harry Harootunian, Tetsuo Najita, William Sibley, and Moishe Postone.

YOKO NARAHASHI is a Producer of EMPEROR as well as an accomplished actor, an award winning director of stage and screen, a casting director and a lyricist. Narahashi’s feature film directorial debut THE WINDS OF GOD won her the Japan Film Critics Award for Best New Director. Narahashi has been a casting director for foreign feature film productions since she worked with Director and Producer Steven Spielberg on EMPIRE OF THE SUN in 1987. More recently, Narahashi was Associate Producer and Casting Director for THE LAST SAMURAI, Casting Director for MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA, BABEL, THE RAMEN GIRL, and most recently 47 RONIN, starring Keanu Reeves and due for release in 2012.

Sponsor(s): Burkle Center for International Relations, Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies

Are Signature Strikes Legal? Targeted Killings and International Law

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:50:14 PDT

Please join us for a talk with Kevin Heller, Associate Professor of International Criminal Law at Melbourne Law School. This event is co-sponsored with the UCLA School of Law Sanela Diana Jenkins Human Rights Project.

ABOUT THE TALK

Although the vast majority of drone attacks conducted by the United States have been signature strikes, scholars have paid almost no attention to their legality under international law. This talk attempts to fill that lacuna. It begins by explaining why a signature strike must be justified under either international humanitarian law (IHL) or international human rights law (IHRL) even if the strike was a legitimate act of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter. It then explores the legality of signature strikes under IHL, concluding that although some signature strikes clearly comply with the principle of distinction, others either violate that principle as a matter of law or require evidence concerning the target that the United States is unlikely to possess prior to the attack. Finally, the talk provides a similar analysis for IHRL, concluding that most of the signature strikes permitted by IHL would violate IHRL’s insistence that individuals cannot be arbitrarily deprived of their right to life. To read the paper that this talk is based on, please click here.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Kevin Jon Heller is currently Associate Professor & Reader at Melbourne Law School, where he teaches international criminal law and criminal law. He is also Project Director for International Criminal Law at the Asia Pacific Centre for Military Law, a joint project of Melbourne Law School and the Australian Defence Force. He holds a PhD in law from Leiden University, a JD with distinction from Stanford Law School, an MA with honours in literature from Duke University, and an MA and BA, both with honours, in sociology from the New School for Social Research.

Kevin’s book The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law was published by Oxford University Press in June 2011, and Stanford University Press published his edited book (with Markus Dubber) The Handbook of Comparative Criminal Law in February 2011. He is a permanent member of the international-law blog Opinio Juris.

On the practical side, Kevin has been involved in the International Criminal Court’s negotiations over the crime of aggression and served from December 2008 until February 2011 as one of Radovan Karadzic's formally-appointed legal associates at the ICTY. His blog post on 18 USC 1119, the foreign-murder statute, is credited with influencing the development of the Obama administration's targeted-killing policy concerning American citizens.

For more information on The UCLA School of Law Sanela Diana Jenkins Human Rights Project, please click here.

For directions and parking instructions for the UCLA Law School, please click here.

Sponsor(s): Burkle Center for International Relations, UCLA Law

U.S. drone signature strikes: An often illegal “killing machine”

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 10:06:18 PDT

Legal scholar Kevin Jon Heller examines the legal and evidentiary justifications for U.S. "signature" strikes—drone attacks that target unknown individuals based on a behavioral pattern—and finds that both frequently fail to meet the requirements of international humanitarian law.

International Institute, UCLA, April 9, 2013—The United States clearly believes that using lethal force against suspected terrorists is legal, said legal scholar Kevin Jon Heller, as long as it conforms with Article 51 of the U.N. Charter (the right of states to defend themselves against armed attack). Heller spoke at a lecture organized by the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and the Sanela Diana Jenkins Human Rights Project of the UCLA School of Law.

“Signature strikes,” explained Heller, make up the overwhelming majority of drone attacks carried out by the United States. These strikes target individuals whose identities are unknown, but who exhibit certain patterns of behavior or defining characteristics associated with terrorist activity. In contrast, “personality” strikes target specific, known individuals, such as the strike that killed American-born Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in October 2011.

“It is critically important to understand that an extra-territorial targeted killing potentially violates two different, but equally fundamental, rights under international law,” said Heller. First, it could violate the right of the affected state to territorial sovereignty, as protected under Article 24 of the U.N. Charter. Second, it could violate the targeted individual’s right to life, as protected under Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Even if a U.S. signature strike can be considered a necessary proportionate response to an armed attack, Heller insisted that this did not mean that the use of deadly force against an individual was legal—a distinction the United States does not seem to understand.

In other words, he continued, the United States must be able to justify both the violation of a state’s right to sovereignty (e.g., citing self-defense under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter) and the denial of an individual’s right to life (either under the rules of international humanitarian law if the killing takes place in an armed conflict, or under the rules of international human rights law if it takes place outside of armed conflict).

The United States takes the position that all of its signature strikes are governed by international humanitarian law (IHL) and not international human rights law, a point disputed by Heller. Even so, he said, not all such strikes necessarily comply with IHL.

“To determine the legality of any particular strike, we must ask two interrelated questions,” said the speaker. “Was the particular signature legally sufficient to establish that the victim of the signature strike was targetable? Was the evidence sufficient to determine that the targeted individual was engaged in the signature behavior?” A signature strike is legal only when the answer to both questions is “yes,” argued Heller.

Using these requirements of legal and evidentiary adequacy, the speaker examined several of the some 14 (or more) “signatures” used to justify U.S. drone strikes on unknown individuals. In his view, two types are legally justified: strikes against unknown individuals who are transporting weapons and attacks on known Al Queda compounds.

In the first case, however, he specified that individuals cannot be attacked simply for being armed (for example, nearly all men in Yemen are armed). In the second case, he specified that a compound used primarily for civilian purposes is only legally targetable when it is being used for military purposes.

Using the same criteria, Heller found that three types of signature strikes are never legal because they blatantly violate the evidentiary requirement. These are strikes against:

military-aged males in an area of known terrorist activity (a category that Heller deemed an unfortunate remnant of the Vietnam War);
individuals who “consort” with known militants; and
groups of armed men traveling in trucks in areas currently under the control of Al Queda.

Finally, Heller claimed that one signature — “facilitating terrorist activity” — was inherently neither legally adequate or inadequate, as it depended on how the United States interpreted the conditions in question.

In his view, direct participation in hostilities, gathering military intelligence in enemy territory, acting as a guide for an organized armed group, or providing ammunition during hostilities fulfilled the requirements of legal adequacy for this signature. However, “war-sustaining activities” such as recruitment, propaganda, fighters, financing, or providing fighters food, lodging, or logistical support, did not.

With respect to the evidentiary adequacy of signature strikes, Heller identified two main challenges: lack an international standard for the level of certainty required to target unknown individuals and lack of transparency on the part of the U.S. government. The government won’t make public either the signatures or the evidence it uses to justify signature strikes (asserting that the information is “classified”), he observed, which makes it difficult to judge their legality.

Numerous documented cases of incorrect targeting and the killing of innocent civilians, however, indicate insufficient evidence of a “signature” prior to strikes, said Heller. He noted that the inability of drones to distinguish individuals in very densely populated urban areas or in areas covered with vegetation was also responsible for incorrect targeting.

Heller concluded that the United States was clearly willing to launch signature strikes on the basis of evidence that was anything but definitive. He noted that in order to confirm certain signatures (e.g., behavior indicating that an individual is a member of an armed organized group), individuals need to be tracked over time, based on analysis of communication intercepts and intelligence from human sources.

Yet, signature strikes have overwhelmingly targeted low- and middle-level militants, he continued, who are unlikely to be the object of specific, resource-intensive investigations. Moreover, added Heller, the most controversial signature strikes take place in areas highly unlikely to have signal intercepts or human sources, such as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan and areas of Yemen.

The speaker ended his talk with several key observations. “The belief of the United States that the self-defense clause of the U.N. Charter justifies depriving an individual of his right to life is simply inaccurate," he said. "In addition, the United States appears to have launched drone strikes on the basis of a number of signatures that are either per se unlawful or are only lawful if interpreted in a manner not suggested by U.S. practice. And there are significant questions about whether the United States demands evidence of targetability sufficient to rebut the presumption of civilian status under international humanitarian law.”

Kevin Jon Heller is Associate Professor & Reader at the Law School of Melbourne University, Australia. A permanent member of the international law blog “Opinio Juris,” he is also Project Director for International Criminal Law at the Asia Pacific Centre for Military Law, a joint project of Melbourne Law School and the Australian Defence Force. Click here for a copy of the “Journal of International Criminal Justice” article on which his lecture was based.

Burkle Center Director Kal Raustiala is quoted in The Guardian's article on the U.S. Constitution

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:08:10 PDT

Burkle Center Director Kal Raustiala is quoted in The Guardian's article "Charles Krauthammer's false statement about the US Constitution."

Charles Krauthammer's false statement about the US Constitution

By Glenn Greenwald

Charles Krauthammer's Washington Post column this morning, which calls on Congress to enact new legislation authorizing and regulating Obama's drone attacks, is actually worth reading. That's because it highlights the central fact about the Obama legacy when it comes to US militarism, war, and civil liberties. Referencing the monumental shift in how Democrats think about such matters now as compared to the Bush years, he writes:

"Such hypocrisy is the homage Democrats pay to Republicans when the former take office, confront national security reality, feel the weight of their duty to protect the nation — and end up doing almost everything they had denounced their predecessors for doing. The beauty of such hypocrisy, however, is that the rotation of power creates a natural bipartisan consensus on the proper conduct of this war . . .

"Necessity having led the Bush and Obama administrations to the use of near-identical weapons and tactics, a national consensus has been forged. Let's make it open."

That Obama has ushered in a "bipartisan consensus" for these policies - transforming them from the divisive symbols of right-wing extremism into the unchallenged framework of both parties' establishments - is indisputable, one of the most consequential aspects of his presidency.

But Krauthammer's real purpose with this column is to mock and excoriate Rand Paul's anti-drone filibuster. As the New York Times describes today, there is an increasingly acrimonious split in the GOP about the policies of militarism and civil liberties enacted in the 9/11 era, and neocons like Krauthammer are petrified that the (relative) anti-war and pro-due-process stances articulated by Paul will gain traction. Krauthammer notes that, contrary to the claims of many progressives, Paul's opposition was not merely to killing Americans on US soil, but was broader: it was about assassinating citizens without due process anywhere they may be found. Referencing a Washington Post Op-Ed in which Paul declared that "no American should be killed by a drone without first being charged with a crime," Krauthammer writes: "note the absence of the restrictive clause: 'on American soil'". Here's how Krauthammer describes Paul's real purpose in launching the filibuster:

"Paul's unease applies to non-American drone targets as well. His quarrel is with the very notion of the war on terror, though he is normally too smart to say that openly and unequivocally. Unlike his father, who implied that 9/11 was payback for our sins, Paul the Younger more gingerly expresses general skepticism about not just the efficacy but the legality of the entire war."

That Paul became the first US Senator on the Senate floor to utter the name "Abdulrahaman Awlaki" - the 16-year-old US-born citizen killed by a US drone in Yemen - bolsters Krauthammer's claim that the Paul filibuster was about more than just the use of force on US soil, but rather posed a challenge to the War on Terror premises generally. That is precisely why Krauthammer - along with all other neocons and, notably, many Democratic Party Obama-supporters - are desperate to discredit the Paul filibuster and the sentiments it stoked: regardless of Paul's motives, the filibuster called into question both the wisdom and legality of the entire Endless War approach to Terrorism.

But to discredit this, Krauthammer makes a claim about the US Constitution that is so patently false as to be retraction-worthy. He writes (emphasis added):

"Now we're talking about a larger, more controversial issue: the killing-by-drone in Yemen of al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki. Outside American soil, the Constitution does not rule, no matter how much Paul would like it to."

That italicizied claim from Krauthammer - that "outside American soil, the Constitution does not rule" - is a very common assertion and thus widely believed. But it is factually false. And there can be no reasonable dispute about this.

To begin with, think about what it would mean if Krauthammer's claim were true: does anyone think it would be constitutionally permissible under the First Amendment for the US government to wait until an American critic of the Pentagon travels on vacation to London and then kill him, or to bomb a bureau of the New York Times located in Paris in retaliation for a news article it disliked, or to indefinitely detain with no trial an American who travels to Beijing or Lima or Oslo and who is suspected of committing a crime? Anyone who believes what Charles Krauthammer said this morning - "Outside American soil, the Constitution does not rule" - would have to take the patently ludicrous position that such acts would be perfectly constitutional.

But to see how false is Krauthammer's claim, it's unnecessary to engage in that kind of reasoning. The law is crystal clear on this matter. In 1957, the US Supreme Court decided the case of Reid v. Covert in which this exact question was conclusively decided: does the Bill of Rights restrict what the US Government does to US citizens on foreign soil? The Court answered the question as decisively and unambiguously as the English language permits (emphasis added):

"At the beginning, we reject the idea that, when the United States acts against citizens abroad, it can do so free of the Bill of Rights. The United States is entirely a creature of the Constitution. Its power and authority have no other source. It can only act in accordance with all the limitations imposed by the Constitution. When the Government reaches out to punish a citizen who is abroad, the shield which the Bill of Rights and other parts of the Constitution provide to protect his life and liberty should not be stripped away just because he happens to be in another land."

How can any Washington Post editor read what the Supreme Court said and not compel a retraction of Krauthammer's claim?

The Court then cited both the biblical Paul's right to demand as a Roman citizen that his foreign trial be conducted in accordance with Roman law, as well the observations of an English historian that British subjects of the Crown who went to live in settled colonies "take with them all the rights and liberties of British Subjects; all the rights and liberties as against the Prerogative of the Crown, which they would enjoy in this country". About the fact that the US Constitution restricts what the US government can do to citizens on foreign soil, the Court thus explained: "This is not a novel concept. To the contrary, it is as old as government."

Notably, while noting that this principle applies equally to all Constitutional guarantees when the US government acts against a citizen on foreign soil, the Court made clear that of all the rights, the guarantee of a fair trial before the state can punish or kill a citizen is the most central (emphasis added):

"This Court and other federal courts have held or asserted that various constitutional limitations apply to the Government when it acts outside the continental United States. While it has been suggested that only those constitutional rights which are 'fundamental' protect Americans abroad, we can find no warrant, in logic or otherwise, for picking and choosing among the remarkable collection of 'Thou shalt nots' which were explicitly fastened on all departments and agencies of the Federal Government by the Constitution and its Amendments. Moreover, in view of our heritage and the history of the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, it seems peculiarly anomalous to say that trial before a civilian judge and by an independent jury picked from the common citizenry is not a fundamental right. . . . Trial by jury in a court of law and in accordance with traditional modes of procedure after an indictment by grand jury has served and remains one of our most vital barriers to governmental arbitrariness. These elemental procedural safeguards were embedded in our Constitution to secure their inviolateness and sanctity against the passing demands of expediency or convenience."

One can debate if one is inclined whether this applies to specific cases such as Awlaki. But Krauthammer's general claim about the law - that "outside American soil, the Constitution does not rule" - is grounded in total ignorance. Writing in 2007 in the Los Angeles Times about Reid v. Covert and the War on Terror specifically, UCLA law professor Kal Raustiala explained: "The shield of the Constitution, the justices stated in reversing a centuries-old legacy, cannot be ignored by the executive branch simply because the accused happens to be abroad."

Aside from the fact that the Washington Post should not be publishing clear factual falsehoods about the state of the law, the reason this matters so much is that distorting the Constitution is the key tactic for inducing public acquiescence to its violations. As I've documented before, many of the War on Terror abuses have been justified with the equally false claim that the US Constitution applies only to US citizens and not to foreign nationals on US soil and US-controlled territory (such as at Guantanamo).

The War on Terror has been and continues to be, above all, a war on the most basic liberties and political safeguards that we're all taught are what distinguishes the US and keeps it free. One major reason that has happened is because patently false claims about those rights have been systematically propagated. Having the Washington Post publish Krauthammer's false claim that "outside American soil, the Constitution does not rule" is a particularly egregious example of that behavior.

Erasing the Jose Padilla case from history

Like so many people who defend Obama's War on Terror policies and mock Paul's filibuster, Krauthammer suggests that the very idea that the US government could treat a US citizen on US soil as an enemy combatant and thus punish them without due process is so absurd as to be paranoid to even raise the question. Does anyone remember the Jose Padilla case: in which the Bush administration, in 2002, detained this US citizen, on US soil; declared him to be an "enemy combatant"; and then proceeded to imprison him for the next 3 1/2 years without charges or trial - all with little public resistance and, ultimately, endorsement from a right-wing court? Was Charles Krauthammer objecting to any of that? Were all of the people now claiming that it's paranoia to think that the US government would use war power theories against a US citizen on US soil marching in the streets in protest over this? The answer is: no.

The US government has already asserted the very theory that many now mock Paul for asking about, and did so with very little resistance, including from the courts. It's true that they did not kill Padilla, but the theory used to imprison him for years without charges - the president is empowered to declare anyone he wants to be an "enemy combatant" without charges and trial and then punish him as such: including US citizens found on US soil - is precisely the theory that would justify targeting US citizens on US soil for an Awlaki-type strike. Indeed, that is the theory invoked to justify the killing of Awlaki, and there is no cogent way to exclude US soil: since the entire globe is a battlefield, the president has the unilateral power to detain or kill anyone he wants, including citizens, without charges. To pretend that this is so beyond the pale of what US political culture would tolerate is to exhibit serious naïveté and/or ignorance of recent history.

To view the original article on The Guardian click here

Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture with Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush - MULTIMEDIA COVERAGE NOW AVAILABLE

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 09:26:47 PDT

The UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, the Daniel Pearl Foundation and the Yitzhak Rabin Hillel Center for Jewish Life at UCLA proudly present the 2012-13 Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture featuring Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

5:00 PM

Korn Convocation Hall, UCLA Anderson School of Management

Los Angeles, CA 90095

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

From January 2005-2009, Rice served as the 66th Secretary of State of the United States, the second woman and first African American woman to hold the post. Rice also served as President George W. Bush’s Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (National Security Advisor) from January 2001-2005, the first woman to hold the position.

Condoleezza Rice is currently a professor of Political Economy in the Graduate School of Business; the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution; and a professor of Political Science at Stanford University. She is also a founding partner of RiceHadleyGates, an international business consultancy. As a professor of Political Science, Rice has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the highest teaching honors – the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.

She has authored and co-authored numerous books, including two bestsellers, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (2011) and Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family (2010); Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (1995) with Philip Zelikow; The Gorbachev Era (1986) with Alexander Dallin; Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984)

ABOUT THE DANIEL PEARL MEMORIAL LECTURE SERIES

In sponsoring the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture Series, the Burkle Center for International Relations celebrates the memory of Daniel Pearl as a prominent journalist who dedicated his life to bringing joy and understanding to the world. Past presenters have included David Remnick of The New Yorker, Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic, Christopher Hitchens, CNN's Anderson Cooper, David Brooks and Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, ABC’s Ted Koppel, CBS’s Jeff Greenfield, Daniel Schorr of NPR, and CNN's Larry King.

Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture with Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush

Fri, 8 Mar 2013 08:18:42 PDT

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

She has authored and co-authored numerous books, including two bestsellers, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (2011) and Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family (2010); Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (1995) with Philip Zelikow; The Gorbachev Era (1986) with Alexander Dallin; Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984)

ADMISSION/REGISTRATION

Admission for this event is free, however registration is required.

PARKING AND DIRECTIONS
Parking will be available in Lots 4 and 5 (disabled only). Enter on Westwood Plaza from Sunset Boulevard. Pay-by-Space parking spaces are available and all day parking passes for $ 11, cash or credit. For a parking and venue map, please click here.

GUIDELINES FOR ALL GUESTS

Arrive early, doors open at 4:30 pm
Parking is available in Lots 4 and 5 (disabled only), $11.
Admission will be handled on a first available basis
No bulky video equipment or flash photography permitted
No food or beverages permitted inside Korn Convocation Hall
All vacant seats will be filled at 4:50 pm
Details for this event are subject to change.
Please check our website for last minute details prior to the event.

ABOUT THE DANIEL PEARL MEMORIAL LECTURE SERIES

In sponsoring the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture Series, the Burkle Center for International Relations celebrates the memory of Daniel Pearl as a prominent journalist who dedicated his life to bringing joy and understanding to the world. Past presenters have included David Remnick of The New Yorker, Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic, Christopher Hitchens, CNN's Anderson Cooper, David Brooks and Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, ABC’s Ted Koppel, CBS’s Jeff Greenfield, Daniel Schorr of NPR, and CNN's Larry King.

Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century with Authors Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels

Fri, 8 Mar 2013 11:38:03 PDT

Please join us for a panel discussion with Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels, authors of the book "Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century: A Middle Way between West and East." This event is co-sponsored by UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and will be moderated by Burkle Center Director Kal Raustiala.

ABOUT THE BOOK

From Winston Churchill at the end of World War II to Francis Fukuyama at the end of the Cold War, liberal democracy has been extolled as the best system of governance to have emerged out of the long experience of history. Today, such a confident assertion is far from self-evident. It is time, the authors argue, to take another look at democracy as we know it not just because of the sustained success of non-Western modernity, but because the West itself has changed.

In the West today we no longer live in “industrial democracies,” but in “consumer democracies “where all the feedback signals – politics, the media and the market – are short term, geared to immediate gratification, passions of the moment and special interests instead of the common good.

In contrast, the long-term focus of the decisive leadership of nominally Communist – but in reality neo-Confucian – China is boldly moving that nation into the future. But China too, say the authors, faces challenges arising from its very success. Its burgeoning middle class will increasingly demand more participation, accountability of government, curbing corruption and the rule of law.

As the 21^st Century unfolds, both of these core systems of the global order must contend with the same reality: a genuinely multi-polar world where no single power dominates and in which societies themselves are becoming increasingly diverse. To cope, the authors argue that both East and West can benefit by adapting each other’s best practices.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

NICOLAS BERGGRUEN founded the Nicholas Berggruen Institute in 2010.Through the Nicolas Berggruen Institute, an independent, non-partisan think tank, he encourages the study and design of systems of good governance suited for the 21st century.

The Berggruen Institute is dedicated to the design and implementation of new ideas of good governance -- drawing from practices in both East and West -- that can be brought to bear on the common challenges of globalization in the 21st century. The Institute is an independent, non-partisan “think and action tank” that engages cutting edge entrepreneurs, global thinkers and political leaders from around the world as key participants in our projects.

Mr. Berggruen is also the Chairman of Berggruen Holdings, a private company, which is the direct investment vehicle of the Nicolas Berggruen Charitable Trust. Berggruen Holdings has operations in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, as well as real estate and financial investments globally. The firm and related entities have made well over 100 direct investments during the last 20 years by committing entirely its own capital across diverse industries, both public and private and focusing on building long-term value. Investments are often socially and culturally driven. The Berggruen Group has offices in New York, Berlin, Istanbul, Tel Aviv and Mumbai.

Mr. Berggruen is a board director of Zewail City of Science and Technology, Egypt; a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy.

NATHAN GARDELS has been editor of New Perspectives Quarterly since it began publishing in 1985. He has served as editor of Global Viewpoint and Nobel Laureates Plus (services of Los Angeles Times (Syndicate/Tribune Media) since 1989. These services have a worldwide readership of 35 million in 15 languages.

Gardels has written widely for The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Harper's, U.S. News & World Report and the New York Review of Books. He has also written for foreign publications, including Corriere della Sera, El Pais, Le Figaro, the Straits Times (Singapore), Yomiuri Shimbun, O'Estado de Sao Paulo, The Guardian, Die Welt and many others. His books include,"At Century's End: Great Minds Reflect on Our Times" and "The Changing Global Order”. He is coauthor with Hollywood producer Mike Medvoy of "American Idol After Iraq: Competing for Hearts and Minds in the Global Media Age."

Since 1986, Gardels has been a Media Fellow of the World Economic Forum (Davos). He has lectured at the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) in Rabat, Morocco and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, China. Gardels was a founding member at the New Delhi meeting of Intellectuels du Monde and a visiting researcher at the USA-Canada Institute in Moscow before the end of the Cold War. He has been a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, as well as the Pacific Council, for many years.

Economic Statecraft: Why Economic Growth is a Critical Foreign Policy Tool, by Under Secretary of State Robert D. Hormats

Thu, 7 Mar 2013 16:57:41 PDT

Please join us for a talk by Robert D. Hormats, the Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment. This event is sponsored by The Center for Middle East Development, the Burkle Center for International Relations, and the Anderson School Center for Global Management.

About the Talk:

As Harry Truman said, “our relations, foreign and economic are indivisible.” These words are just as true today, with difficulties in the Eurozone, revolutions bringing political change to the Middle East, and economic growth a domestic American priority. Economic growth abroad is good for the world and good for the United States. All states need robust economies to provide for their own needs. Healthy foreign economies raise living standards for their citizens and can create markets for U.S. exports. Economic growth is also crucial for sustaining political change and, as such, is an important component of national and regional stability. Growing economies can also serve to promote greater social inclusion; indeed, more and more countries are realizing that it is imperative to unlock the potential of women and girls, as their economies cannot afford to exclude 50% of the workforce. Many U.S. foreign policy goals, be they economic, political, social or developmental can be advanced by promoting economic growth abroad. And to the extent that our foreign policy aims opens doors for American firms or creates markets for American products, economic growth abroad contributes to economic renewal at home.

About the Speaker:

Robert D. "Bob" Hormats was sworn in as Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment (at the time, entitled Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs) on September 23, 2009. Hormats was formerly Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs (International). He served as Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary, from 1977 to 1979, and Assistant Secretary of State, from 1981 to 1982, at the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs. He was Ambassador and Deputy U.S. Trade Representative from 1979 to 1981. He served as a senior staff member for International Economic Affairs on the United States National Security Council from 1969 to 1977, where he was senior economic adviser to Henry Kissinger, General Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski. He helped to manage the Nixon administration's opening of diplomatic relations with China's communist government. He was a recipient of the French Legion of Honor in 1982 and the Arthur S. Flemming Award in 1974. Hormats has been a visiting lecturer at Princeton University and served on the Board of Visitors of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the Dean’s Council of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

For more information please contact

Michelle Chaldu
Tel: 310-825-0604
chaldu@international.ucla.edu

"White Paper Suggests U.S. Could Launch Drones Into U.S. Cities" by Burkle Center Director Kal Raustiala

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:39:41 PDT

The US government declares that suspected terrorists who are US citizens are not constitutionally protected from intentional killings by drones while abroad. But Kal Raustiala argues that the government's newly released "white paper" does not draw a clear distinction between the legality of killing Americans abroad versus on US soil.

By Kal Raustiala

President Obama’s deep embrace of drones as a tool against terror was thrust into the spotlight last week by the release of an official “white paper” detailing when, and why, the federal government could intentionally kill American citizens. Many have found the whole idea of targeting Americans for death abhorrent; the analysis has been called “chilling” and full of “twisted definitions.”

The government’s white paper declares that the Constitution doesn't protect citizens who act as senior leaders of al Qaeda from death from above. That, and the idea that judges have no real role to play in the targeting process, has generated substantial concern about an unrestrained and trigger-happy executive branch—one that has killed some 3,000 individuals via drone strikes since the 9/11 attacks.

But why stop there? Despite the government’s insistence that it is talking only about strikes abroad, could al-Awlaki have been targeted if, instead of Yemen, he was in Yonkers?

The answer seems to be yes. In fact, there is nothing in the white paper’s legal analysis explaining why it is only permissible to kill a citizen abroad. To the contrary, the thrust of the analysis points to the conclusion that the location of the strike doesn’t actually matter. As long as the other requirements are met—such as the individual being a senior al Qaeda leader whose capture is “infeasible”—Albuquerque is no different from Abbottabad.

How is this possible? Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the white paper’s overall legal approach is broadly correct—in other words, put aside all swirling debate over “imminence” and “due process” and assume that the smart lawyers at the Justice Department basically have it right.

The reason that it doesn’t matter where the target (read: American citizen) is located is one that liberals ought to love. As far as citizens are concerned, the Constitution really doesn’t discriminate by geography. The constitutional rights of Americans don’t get checked at the jetway door; they are more or less the same abroad as they are at home. So as long as a lethal strike passes muster in constitutional terms, the location of the target is immaterial.

This principle—that the Constitution's protections follow Americans wherever they go—is relatively new. For most of our history, the Constitution was thought to apply only within U.S. borders. If the federal government acted against Americans abroad or on the high seas, in most cases it could do what it wanted. For example, the U.S. was able to operate courts that violated basic constitutional principles in places like Shanghai—which until 1943 had one such federal court with jurisdiction over Americans living in China.

It took the Cold War, and the massive forward deployment of U.S. troops and their dependents that followed, to change this. With hundreds of thousands of Americans now based abroad, the principle that an American’s constitutional rights stopped at the border came under increasing stress.

In a 1957 case involving two civilian wives accused of murdering their service-member husbands, the Supreme Court declared that the Bill of Rights no longer stopped at the water’s edge. “We reject the idea,” the justices wrote, “that when the United States acts against citizens abroad, it can do so free of the Bill of Rights.”

So whether a drone strike that kills a citizen comports with due process or not has essentially the same answer if the target is in Toronto or in Detroit. Sure, a senior American al Qaeda operative hiding inside the U.S. could probably be far more “feasibly” captured than one hiding in Yemen. And, of course, the political calculus of using American military forces to fire missiles at U.S. cities and towns is another matter. But there is no legal reason the operative could not be killed during a difficult capture attempt, wherever he might be.

Nor, given the premises of the white paper, is it obvious why capture would even have to be attempted. If, as the executive branch states, the U.S. is involved in an armed conflict with al Qaeda, killing enemy operatives—regardless of their citizenship—is perfectly legal. Just as Americans fighting for the Confederacy were killed in the Civil War without any requirement to attempt capture first, so too can Americans fighting for the enemy be killed in this war. Of course, this only begs the question of whether we are actually at war—and if so, what war means when it is waged against a shadowy and ill-defined enemy force with global reach.

All this has one significant caveat: the white paper, while quite detailed, is just a white paper. The underlying legal opinion has not been publicly released. Perhaps the secret legal opinion justifies a distinction between killing Americans at home or abroad. But it would be quite strange if the white paper chose to leave out the legal basis for one of the key limiting factors it describes.

To view the original Daily Beast article click here.

Diplomats Urge Caution on North Korea Nuke Tests: Burkle Center Senior Fellow Kantathi Suphamongkhon Offers His Insight into North Korea

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 12:51:46 PDT

Former diplomats say Pyongyang is using planned nuclear tests to wring concessions and aid from the US.

By Ted Regencia

North Korea has announced it is preparing for a new round of underground nuclear testing, and is ready to take "strong physical countermeasures" against the United States and its southern counterpart in retaliation to new United Nations Security Council sanctions.

At a meeting with top security and foreign ministry officials recently, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un also warned he would take "high-profile important state measures" against the country's adversaries, according to state media.

As this developed, the US and South Korea have announced the start of a long-planned naval exercise in the East Sea off the southeastern port of Pohang, which the North condemned as "warmongering."

But if there is a time for the US and its partners to further step up diplomacy, it is now, according to some Korea watchers.

Veteran diplomat Kantathi Suphamongkhon had been to Pyongyang several times, and dealt with top officials there. He told Al Jazeera that the last thing the country needs is an an all-out armed conflict.

In one of his trips to Pyongyang as Thai foreign minister a few years ago, Suphamongkhon recalled asking top officials how they would react to a complete withdrawal of US troops from the border with South Korea.

The answer surprised him. Pyongyang, he said, saw the idea as an "act of destabilisation" instead of a peaceful overture - a sign that the US is getting ready for a missile strike.

The incident, Suphamongkhon said, illustrates North Korea's "gap of perception" and level of suspicion, which in turn fuels its antagonistic behaviour towards the US and the world.

'Cat with no claw'

"There's a lot of misunderstanding going on," Suphamongkhon told Al Jazeera. "If one looks into their mind, they see themselves as victims. So their behaviour is logical from that standpoint."

"There is an extreme fear from their side," said the former Thai diplomat, adding that this sense of insecurity has fueled the country's "tendency to be provocative" with its actions.He said that with the latest threats, Kim Jong-un is trying to project his power and assert his leadership after his father Kim Jong-il died in late 2011.

There have been reports that the underground test would occur on or before February 16, to coincide with the late leader Kim Jong-il's birthday.

Although these repeated acts of "belligerence" may frustrate many, Soomin Seo, a South Korean journalist and a scholar, said they are North Korea's attempts to capture the attention of the world, particularly the US.

"They know that just about the only card that they can use to grab the outside world's attention, specifically the US, is nuclear weapons," said Seo, who visited the North numerous times during Kim Jong-il's regime.

US-China factor

Like Suphamongkhon, Seo is also calling for more diplomacy, particularly from the US.

North Korea's past misdeeds should not preempt engagement, said Seo, whose grandmother, alongside her then two-week-old mother, fled the North at the height of winter in 1950 and settled in the South. She never saw her family again.

Last week, China's new leader Xi Jinping proposed just that, calling for the the resumption of the six-party talks, which had collapsed in April 2009 after North Korea pulled out and later resumed missile tests and nuclear development.

Aside from China, the US and North Korea, other parties involved in the on-again-off-again talks are South Korea, Japan and Russia.

Of all the major players, China remains the North's biggest financial and geopolitical ally. But more recently, it has also made its frustrations clear towards its impoverished neighbour. Just last week, China voted alongside the US on a UN Security Council resolution condemning the North's latest rocket launch.

In a recent Brookings Institute memo prepared for President Obama, East Asia specialist Jonathan Pollack wrote that: "US and China have a compelling shared interest" to prevent the crisis from turning "into something far worse."

"The unraveling of the North is no longer a hypothetical possibility," Pollack wrote.

Part of the challenge the US and other negotiators face is that the North has already decided, that it wants to go ahead with its plan despite global opposition, James Hoare, a former British diplomat to North Korea said in an interview with Al Jazeera.

"I think that's the basic problem that North Korea is determined to acquire a nuclear capability for defense purposes, for prestige reasons, for arguing that all the states have the right to do this," said Hoare.

Hard and soft diplomacy

Whether or not the North is willing to talk, is not the relevant question, but how, said Seo.

Seo pointed out that there have been "genuine attempts" by the North to engage South Korea and the US. She cited the historic meetings betwen Kim Jong-il and South Korea's Kim Dae-jung, as well as President Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

But the North quickly retreated, when President George W Bush said it was part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq, she said, erasing the trust that took years to build.

"I don't think they really got over it, and they could not understand why a country as big as the United States would break its promise," Seo said. "North Korea bet on that. That's the only possible future of their economy."

Since then the North Koreans have initiated steps to develop its nuclear program, said Hoare, who now teaches at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

Hoare recalled then US Vice President Dick Cheney as saying that the US does not negotiate with "evil".

Then North Korea saw what happened in Iraq in 2004 and got even more scared. Thus, accelerating its nuclear weapons program as an act of deterrence, Suphamongkhon added.

But it is not impossible to coax North Korea back into the negotiating table, he added, emphasizing the need for a third party go-between to overturn the degree of mistrust after years of isolation.

"I see the UN Security Council resolution and all those things as public diplomacy," Suphamongkhon said. "But you need that more private diplomacy with a credible person that's acceptable to all sides, to try to bridge that gap. I think that is crucial."

While strengthening its cooperation with China to continue to monitor North Korea's nuclear activities, in the public diplomacy sphere, the Obama administration should also try a parallel soft-power approach with Pyongyang, he said.

Suphamongkhon said the US had some "degree of success" in such kind of diplomacy when the New York Philharmonic Orchestra performed in the North Korean capital in 2008.

Unofficial visits similar to Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson made recently, should be also be encouraged, Suphamongkhon added.

"The US can always say that it is not officially sending these people in. But the communication that takes place, I think is something useful," he said, before specifically suggesting music legend Eric Clapton, who is actually an Englishman, to perform in Pyongyang, apparently hinting at Kim Jong-un's fondness for Western music.

"One thing that is clearly lacking is effective communication between the world and North Korea," he said.

Hoare, on the other hand, said that there is no need for the US to use intermediaries.

"I don’t think it’s the problem with the the mechanics of how you get message, but how you decide what message to send and what to do," he said. "But there's nobody really has any idea what to do."

Hoare also said that if the US is "willing to pay enough" it can stop the North's nuclear program. "But you've got to pay a lot, there's not doubt about it."

The alternative would be a nuclear-armed North Korea, which could pose an even greater headache to the region and the world.

"Somehow, you have to grit your teeth and get in there keep the conversation going," Hoare said.

To view the original article, c lick here.

Huffington Post Op-Ed by Burkle Center Director Kal Raustiala: Are We Really Pulling Out of Afghanistan?

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:13:33 PDT

Burkle Center Director Kal Raustiala discusses the controversy surrounding legal immunity, and how it will affect the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

By Kal Raustiala

America's long war in Afghanistan is drawing to a close. President Obama recently announced that he will speed up troop withdrawals and end most unilateral combat operations there. Yet history teaches that the end of combat rarely means all the troops come home.

In fact, since 1945 America's grand strategy has been built around troops deployed and based in former war zones. From Korea to Kuwait to Kosovo, U.S. military bases circle the globe.

Will Afghanistan be different? The Obama administration is currently weighing whether to keep American troops there beyond 2014. Many factors will go into this decision, but one is surprisingly critical to any continued deployment of troops: legal immunity. Immunity is so essential that without it, American troops will not remain in Afghanistan.

Indeed, the refusal of Iraq to grant continuing immunity to American troops led to a complete U.S. military withdrawal in 2011.

Why is immunity so important -- and often so controversial? To understand, step back and consider the broader U.S. approach to national security.

We enjoy many natural defensive advantages: vast oceans to the east and the west, friendly neighbors to the north and the south. Yet the federal government has long pursued an outward-looking approach to security that relies on the extensive -- and expensive -- projection of power.

Since 1945, a strategy of forward deployment via foreign bases has been critical to U.S. defense, and in turn to our global leadership. Overseas bases existed before 1945 -- think of Guantanamo Bay, where the U.S. has maintained a "coaling and naval station" for over a century -- but the number and scale of these bases grew dramatically during the Cold War. Little changed with the end of the Cold War, however; in fact, many new bases came into existence. Today, there are some 500 foreign bases in nearly 40 nations.

This heavy presence overseas has drawn fire from right and left alike: both Noam Chomsky and Ron Paul have criticized our extensive foreign basing strategy. But overseas troops remain central to the exercise of American power and, many have argued, have been the basis of lasting peace in Europe and at least stable relations in Asia. A key issue for the future of Afghanistan is whether it, too, will remain home to a large numbers of American troops.

But troops don't just set up camp in foreign countries and stay awhile. Typically, American troops based abroad are governed by what is called a "Status of Forces Agreement," or SOFA for short. The U.S. has negotiated over 100 SOFAs. SOFAs are agreements between the U.S. and the host country that specify what laws govern the troops and who has legal jurisdiction over various issues.

American troops based in abroad, for example, don't arrive on a tourist visa, so special rules have to be made to govern their entry (and often their families') into the country. Likewise, SOFAs address a wide array of mundane but significant issues, such as taxation.

The real meat of a SOFA, however, is in the realm of criminal law. Most American SOFAs declare that the U.S. has jurisdiction over many offenses. This means that for many criminal and civil matters, an American who breaks the law in, say, Germany cannot be tried in a German court -- though American troops may face U.S. military justice or, if a civilian dependent is the accused, may conceivably be sent home for trial (which, to the chagrin of host states, doesn't always happen.)

The rationales for this arrangement vary, but include that our troops need protection from alien and unfamiliar legal systems; that military discipline requires military justice; and, maybe most importantly, that as a practical matter American politicians don't want to put our troops at risk of foreign prosecution and punishment.

This kind of immunity bears a family resemblance to the more familiar immunity enjoyed by diplomats. Diplomatic immunity shields ambassadors from local prosecutions on the theory that they could not effectively do their jobs if they could be jailed by their hosts.

For the most part immunity is a quiet practice that allows the wheels of diplomacy to turn. But diplomatic immunity also allowed Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor who in 2011 gunned down two Pakistanis on the streets of Lahore, to escape prosecution for murder. (The U.S. maintained he was properly listed as an accredited diplomat, and, after jailing Davis for some time, the Pakistanis relented).

So even diplomatic immunity is not without controversy. And immunity for military servicemembers is no different. In Japan, for example, incidents ranging from rapes to manslaughter have led to many protests against the arrangement. In some parts of Japan, the special legal rights of American servicemembers have become an important domestic political issue.

There is at least one major difference between diplomatic and military immunity, however. Diplomatic immunity is reciprocal. One reason we are careful to respect the legal rights of foreign diplomats is because we have so many of our own diplomats posted abroad. That risk of tit-for-tat prosecution (or worse) helps to maintain the legitimacy of the system.

Military immunity, by contrast, is not reciprocal. Germans -- or Afghans -- do not have military bases in Arizona or Ohio. SOFAs are inherently unequal arrangements. And this makes the negotiation of a SOFA for American troops complicated. The host nation may see it as an infringement on their sovereignty, and local populations may resent the special treatment American troops receive.

SOFAs can remind other nations, especially in the Middle East, of their subjugation by the West in the 19th century, when Westerners were often granted "extraterritorial rights" that gave them immunity from local laws and allowed them to follow the law of their home country. Like SOFAs, these treaties were clearly unequal and are today often remembered as humiliations. (See China.)

The unhappy history helps explain why the U.S. and Iraq failed to negotiate a SOFA in 2011 that would have allowed a continued presence of American troops. The Iraqi leadership feared that granting American troops immunity would be deeply unpopular. Immunity was seen as a imperialistic and demeaning. Iraqi opposition was especially vehement given events like the mass shooting in Nisour Square in 2007, in which American contractors killed 17 Iraqis. The contractors faced no prosecution thanks to a sweeping grant of immunity that had earlier been decreed by the "Coalition Provisional Authority" in Iraq.

For many Iraqis, in short, immunity was akin to subjugation and semi-sovereignty. Yet for the U.S., immunity was a nonnegotiable requirement. The result -- not necessarily a bad one, but one certainly fraught with major implications -- has been no lasting American military presence in Iraq.

Will the same happen in Afghanistan? Certainly Hamid Karzai's government shares many of the concerns that motivated Iraq. Special rights for foreigners are never popular. Yet a continued U.S. presence also has significant appeal in Afghanistan; history has shown that American troops can be a powerful force for stability.

The Obama administration will surely reduce the number of American troops in Afghanistan substantially. The key question is how far and whether the right number of troops -- or, if immunity is not granted, the only number -- is zero. For his part, Karzai recently stated that "granting immunity to American soldiers is not a decision that could be made by Afghan government... This is a decision that should be made by the Afghan people in a Loya Jirga: whether they are granting immunity to them or not; if yes, how and under what conditions." We will soon see what the appetite of Afghanis is for immunity -- and by extension, what the future of the U.S.-Afghan relationship is.

Either way, America's long war -- 12 years and counting -- is coming to an end. And while war is politics by other means, it's often law that determines the nature of the peace.

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