Counter-proliferating the rogue states
President George W. Bush, in his State of the Union speech in January 2002, described Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an “axis of evil” and accused them of seeking to acquire and develop weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, biological). Further, Under Secretary of State John Bolton said that Cuba, Libya and Syria could be grouped with these as “rogue states”. In doing so, the mere alleged acquisition, without any stated intent, of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) weapons and delivery systems was designated a threat to local, regional and global stability and security, given the terror and fear they invoked. The ensuing policy agenda and process of arms control (non-proliferation) and disarmament (counter-proliferation) was based on the vulnerability management of these capabilities. This was premised on the refusal of the labelled rogue states to accept the international norms of recognized arms control practices of diplomacy, international negotiation, compliance, regulation, transparency and verification. It is upon this assumption that the crux of the argument exists of a clear case for pre-emptive or preventive armed force against rogue states. On this basis, this article will, through its analysis, settle the outstanding question of whether war against rogue states can be considered a just war, based upon historical precedents. The first of such wars against a rogue state is that waged against Iraq (2003), where the alleged Iraqi WMD capability has not yet been shown to exist. Approaching this mandates rethinking basic notions and mannerisms of international defense and security. America cannot act as world policeman indefinitely. This projects the need for an alternative to unilateral counter-proliferation by way of pre-emptive military action; namely a “Hague Style Convention on Proliferation” to reintroduce the international community of nations to a self-regulatory multi-polar approach towards arms control and disarmament. Given the options, it is clear that there is a consensus to the ends. While the means to the end might be arguable, there is Defense & Security Analysis Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 343–354, December 2004
Promoting Democracy after Conflict: The Difficult Choices
This article examines the democratic reconstruction model advocated by western countries for postconflict societies. It finds that the model has not been implemented successfully, in part because of a lack of international political will and financial resources, in part because the model has grown too complex. As the international community learned from successive experiences with postconflict reconstruction, the model grew in sophistication and complexity. While this is good in theory, in practice it widens the gap between the ideal and what can actually be accomplished with limited international resources and weak local governments. Even in Bosnia, where international commitment has been large, this maximalist approach to state reconstruction has met with only limited success. The international community must rethink its approach to postconflict reconstruction and scale it down to something that can realistically be achieved.
Translating Legal Language and Comparative Law
Legal texts are in the focus of both lawyers and translators. This paper discusses the binary opposition of these two views especially in the light of contract law. There is one crucial epistemic difference between the point of view of the translator and the lawyer when it comes to the interpretation of legal texts. In the translator’s view legal text is traditionally conceived as static as to its nature; something that already exists in the form of text. Traditionally, the translator is interested in the text itself as it was written down in a document, i.e. the translator needs to go back to the frozen moment when a legal document was constructed and finalised. The lawyer, in contrast, is very much interested not only in the text of the legal document but also in the contextual surroundings of the text. In fact, for legal interpretation, sometimes the key-elements for the interpretation come from outside of the text itself. This paper concludes that legal translation is in many cases closer to transcreation than it is to traditionally understood translation.