Saturday, May 17, 2003

NMD: Threat to Canadian Sovereignty? Or a Great Opportunity?

I will admit that my view on this subject has changed from when I first heard about it. Initially, my reaction to the prospect of America's National Missile Defence was to label it as the "son of Star Wars" and to criticise the administration for rocking the boat of international balance of power. I think I know why my view changed though. For this, I can thank North Korea. I'm afraid that I have difficulty viewing this issue with much clarity. In any case, North Korea is a separate issue. To be brief, my view on NMD changed because of the North Koreans apparent attempts at blackmailing the international community, specifically the United States. So in the end, I've come out in mild support of North American Missile Defence.

Firstly, I would like to say that Canada and the United States have a long history of defensive cooperation. This only made sense because our mutual border is the longest undefended border in the world. Despite our differences, Canadians and Americans have so much in common. Unfortunately, this is usually ignored. I have two major arguments to make in support of North American Missile Defence. First is the threat of proliferation. Second is the free-rider issue and national responsiblity.

Why is proliferation a problem? Is containment always an option for dealing with rogue states? These questions are interconnected, and are fundamental regarding nations such as North Korea and pre-war Iraq. Proliferation is a major problem. Obviously I'm not talking about the international small arms trade, a deplorabale trade that may be. People may be able to brush off the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction (WMD), since no leader in their right mind would ever consider using one, right? Are we willing to take that chance? (There's nothing quite like answering a rhetorical question with an equally rhetorical question.) I personally believe that most people are deluded to the actual threat that WMDs pose. The real risk that such weapons impose on the world is that certain unscrupulous nations will use the threat of such weapons to coerce their citizens (consider pre-war Iraq) or other nations (consider North Korea) into doing what they want. Of course there's the concomitant risk that they will get used, but I believe that we can safely assume that both parties (particularly the weaker one: the one without a deterrent) will do everything possible to prevent the use of WMDs (such as concede in the face of demands). This is one reason why the United States wants to build the national missile defence.

Despite international treaties such as NPT, proliferation of atomic and missile technology has continued. It is pretty well accepted that North Korea traded its missile technlogy with Pakistan (prior to the coup of Pervez Musharraf) in exchange for aid in its nuclear program (probably uranium enrichment). North Korea has shown that is it willing to to sell its missile technology to the highest bidder. It is naive to think that international treaties alone can stop proliferation, especially given the half-hearted commitment of many nations to the cause. What about individuals or groups? Personally, I don't pay too much heed to the threat that al-Qaeda could acquire an atomic bomb. It's possible, but I still think it's rather unlikely. Al-Qaeda has shown that it, and groups like it cannot be deterred or contained. Sure, nations can be contained and deterred, but if both sides have the same destructive capabilities, containment swings both ways.

I don't believe that it's unreasonable to assume that proliferation of nuclear and missile technology to nations hostile to Canada (or more likely to the United States) is inevitable. To be prepared for this contingency, it is necessary that Canada take part in the construction of the North American Missile Defence. Presently, I rate Canada's coerceability as rather low, because like most, I don't believe that anyone has any specific reason for hating Canada right now. This could change though. Having a missile defence system leaves the government much freedom to act in such a situation.

More important though is the free-rider problem. If the United States builds the NMD alone, does that mean that the missile protection would end at the 49th parallel?It's reasonable to assume that the protection would be extended somewhat to keep any explosions out completely. In that case though, Canada would be a major free-rider because a large portion of Canada's population would be protected by America's missile defence (and by America's tax dollars). Thus, the only ethical choice should be to take part in its construction. Canada cannot remain a leech on America's good will and its defence projects. Perhaps if Canada played a major role in the development and deployment of a North American Missiel Defence system, then the United States would be less likely to seem to ignore Canada for lengthy periods of time (though at present they seem to be motivated by political differences).

It is important that Canada get in on the action (with regards to NMD) now instead of later. The longer this is postponed, the further along America's plans will be. By then, it may be too late to take more of Canada's interests into account. The longer Canada waits, the less important it will be to the entire project, implying that Canada will have less power to affect the system's deployment and operation. In the end, waiting will have a much more negative impact on Canada's sovereignty because it will give Canada even less control over its own defence.

Obviously this is a complex issue, and I hope to tackle it again soon.

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

International Legitimacy and the UN

With the resignation of Claire Short from Tony Blair's cabinet, I think it's worth discussing whether the UN actually does what so many people claim: giving the actions of individual member states international legitimacy. Well, I think many people are right in this respect. The UN can and does confer legitimacy in a very novel way. It is wrong though (in my opinion) to say that it is the only source of legitimacy, or rather, the only valid source of legitimacy.

Firstly, let us consider the UN's problems.
1) The UN is not a world government, and without serious reworking of its charter, it can not be and will never be one. Actually, in many respects, this is a good thing.
2) The UN as an institution is hindered by its institutional legacy and inertia. If I may explain... the UN's General Assembly (GA) was a holdover of the pre-WWII League of Nations. As such, the GA is a talk shop devoid of significant geopolitical power. Before you cry blasphemy, please hear me out. There are serious limits to what can be said in resolutions passed by the GA. At most, the GA can only suggest a course of action, or beg one party to do something. At its nastiest, the GA can condemn a nation for its actions, but this is really only an expression of international opinion that has little bearing inside a country willing to ignore it. The Security Council (SC) embodies Franklin Delano Roosevelt's idea of the "four policemen". He had this bad idea that the permanent members of the SC would enforce the world order, and it stuck. The body does wield significant power, but it is not really representative of the balance of world power (of course, it's hard to measure this kind of thing). The weakness of the SC is that the permanent members block significant action on important issues, and with good cause too! That leads us to the next problem...
3) The UN is a venue in which foreign policy, and international politics plays out. This is just reality. The actions of the UN tend to be tainted by national interests. During the building up to the Iraq war, the US and France fought to legitimise their respective positions in the UN for better or for worse. While there are certainly examples of selfless action in the UN, I believe that such occasions are in the minority. How many times has action been avoided because a permanent member of the security council didn't like it? Or some coalition of nations is not in favour because the decision affects them?
4) The UN has a contradictory mission. It is supposed to protect human rights, and promote democratic freedoms on some level. At the same time, it is supposed to preserve national sovereignty. Incidentally, this tends to trump the UN's other mandates. The UN is a bit like a vampire: it needs to be invited in. Take Zimbabwe for an example. Without a doubt, Zimbabweans are being made to suffer, their human rights are being violated, and their democratic freedoms are being denied. Can the UN do something? Without the Zimbabwean government's approval, there is practically nothing that the UN agencies can do to alleviate the situation.
5) The UN is abused through the use of political horse-trading. How do you think Libya got to head one of the UN's human rights commissions? Sure, Libya has come a long way, but Qaddafi still has hundreds, if not thousands of political prisoners. Imagine the mayhem if a rogue state were to head the international criminal court
6) The UN just what its name implies: a union of nations, not people. the European Union is trying to represent the European people as well as their nations. The UN doesn't even come close. There is no world parliament. People have no representation at the UN. As such, the UN is not to be held accountable to people, only the nations that support it. There can not and should not be any expectation that the UN will adopt a course of action just because it's popular. Sure, millions of people opposed the war in Iraq (before it ended), but the UN didn't condemn it (neither did it support the war).
7) International law is quite murky and complicated. It can only be enforced so far as national governments are willing to cooperate. With regards to international conventions, they can only be binding if ratified by the representatives of the people: the parliament or equivalent. I must admit that my knowledge of international law is quite limited. I am quite sceptical of the whole issue though. The International Criminal Court is supposed to make strides towards enforcing international human rights law. Without political support from nations though, it cannot survive. It also lacks the executive and legislative support that a national judicial system enjoys. International accords are composed by diplomats: appointed representatives of elected governments. What executive branch enforces international law? Certainly not the UN secretariat. It exists on a skeleton budget. Another important issue is that there is no international constitution, and nobody similar to the supreme courts within nations that determine whether international law is constitutional. There is no judicial review or appeal.

Don't get me wrong. I like the UN. Actually, I've participated in a number of model UN events. People who are celebrating the end of the UN right now are likely to be disappointed. The UN does many things well. Multilateral aid management, in my opnion, has a much better track record than bilateral aid. The UN tends to handle development issues quite well. The UN's peacekeeping operations have probably saved millions of lives. At least by representating nations, it is harder for minority interests and NGOs to foist their specific agendas upon the world community, noble though they may be.

The likelyhood of reform of the UN is quite low. Diplomats have talked about restructuring the SC to eliminate the permanent seats, and to increase the size of the body. The permanent members (especially Russia, France and the UK) are likely to continue to block such attempts because they would lose power as a result. The formation of a world parliament under the auspices of the UN is incredibly unlikely because that would weaken the power of national governments.

So, what about the original question? Does the UN confer legitimacy upon actions at the international level? Yes, to the extent that it is only a plurality of other nations that provide their support. Is this legitimacy important? It can be. It is only important so far as national governments value and respect it.

For some, the war in Iraq was a slap in the face. So many people seemed to be against it. Nevertheless, only a few national governments acted vociferously against the war. It is important to note that the UN is not the be all and end all of legitimacy. According to American public opinion, there was broad support for the Bush government throughout the war. Polls showed George W. Bush's popularity was way above 50% during the fighting, and continues be so. Clearly, the administration had a mandate from the American people for the conflict. Did the American people not provide some legitimacy to the actions of their government?

I will get back to this issue later.
Spam 101

Everywhere it elicits strong emotions.

Either your a victim, or you're making money off of it. Is there a valid use of spam? Is there an ethical argument to support this cancer of the internet? I have to say maybe to both questions. Like most people, I hate spam. I can remember 5 or 6 years ago, receiving only a few pieces of spam in my inbox every few days. These days, I receive upwards of 50 day, which is probably less than what a lot of people have to go through. I think there must be some valid use for spam. It wouldn't be so bad if the spammers didn't need to cheat to get the messages into the inbox. Then again, it would be much easier to block the crap if they didn't cheat. Ideally (at least in my mind), bulk e-mailers shouldn't need to send their spam anonymously or fraudulently. Most of the people who receive it, and just going to delete it anyways and get pissed off.
Why bother even trying to get the spam into their inbox? There are two types of people who fall for spam: people who are genuinely interested in what is being advertised, and poor saps who don't know what they're doing.

There's a big contradiction with regards to spam and privacy. Many people are rightfully scared of making private information public on the internet. No one really wants to give away demographic information for fear that they will be spammed by marketers. I've got news for you: That's how marketing operates, by trying to target advertising to people who will want to buy the product in question. Unfortunately, this paradigm failed. Now, the only economically viable way of performing e-mail advertisement is by sending it out by the millions, and hope that .01% out there follow through and buy your product. With modern spammers, there is no attempt to cultivate the client/vendor relationship. In an ideal world, we would only get commercial e-mail for products that we as consumers in specific demographics would conceivably want to buy. Also ideally, we wouldn't get so much of it. Unfortunately, we've missed the boat for this. The ideal situation is unattainable, and I am willing to bet that spam will probably continue in the format in which we know it now for several years to come at least.

Laws may make a difference. Unfortunately, the only remedies that I believe will work will be economic in nature, as opposed to legal. Charging a flat charge for every e-mail could do this. Better (or worse) still would be to charge internet users for bandwidth use, instead of providing it on a flat rate basis. That would get everyone re-thinking how they use their internet time. Imagine if your internet usage was metered just like water, electricity or gas. That would bring up some privacy issues, but let's try not to think of internet usage that way. In many ways, it's just another utility. As long as bandwidth is plentiful, I seriously doubt that there can be much done about this. We're stuck like this until all the excess capacity is wrung out of the fibre optic grid that spans the world. Also, the ISPs would have charge a pretty steep price to curtail spam, a price that I doubt as a society we are willing to pay.

Why do I think that laws will fail to curtail spam? Laws have physical limits. Outside of the jurisdiction of the government that has passed the law, the law has no effect. We may manage to curtail the spammers around us, but new ones will pop up in other countries. Imagine if North Korea got into the spamming business. It already sells illegal narcotics and WMD technology (but that's another topic to come up...), what could be done then. No international accord could stem the tide of spam.

Does that leave us without hope then? Well, we'll see. I will talk about this subject again in future.

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

Welcome to contemporary comments!

Introductions are in order... I am a business administration student at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Burnaby, BC. Presently, I am studying finance, international business and mathematics. With any luck, I will graduate some time in 2005, though SFU students have a strange tendency of taking more than 4 years to finish an undergraduate degree.

Politically, I would describe myself as a liberal internationalist. Naturally, there is a lot of confusion out there as to who actually straddles the middle of the political spectrum. I tend to be sceptical on a lot of political issues. I will admit to some level of prejudice against the radical left, and a certain amount of ridicule for the extreme right. Sometimes, it's difficult to separate oneself from the point-of-view of one's source of information. I know the there are a lot of valid points and arguments supporting and opposing political issues, but obviously, I can't subscribe to every one. If you don't like what I have to say, tough beans!

Robillard