Jennifer M. Welsh is Professor in International Relations at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Somerville College. She is a former Jean Monnet Fellow of the European University Institute in Florence, and was a Cadieux Research Fellow in the Policy Planning Staff of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs. Jennifer has taught international relations at the University of Toronto, McGill University, and the Central European University (Prague). She is the author, co-author, and editor of several books and articles on international relations.
Her current research projects include the evolution of the notion of the ‘responsibility to protect’ in international society, the ethics of post-conflict reconstruction, the authority of the UN Security Council, and a critique of conditional notions of sovereignty. Jennifer was the Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Massey College (University of Toronto) in 2005, and is a recent recipient of a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship and a Trudeau Fellowship. In 2006, she joined the Board of Trustees of the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation, and in 2008 became a member of the Editorial Board of the BISA Series in International Relations at Cambridge University Press. Jennifer has served as a consultant to the Government of Canada on international policy, and acts as a frequent commentator in Canadian media on foreign policy and international relations. She has a BA from the University of Saskatchewan, and a Masters and Doctorate from the University of Oxford (where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar). Red Lines in Tel Aviv and Washington
Israeli airstrikes on Syria in recent days have brought the varying interests of outside actors in this long simmering conflict into sharp relief. While in Washington Obama administration officials continue to weigh options and assess the risks of intervention in a civil war, in Tel Aviv policymakers have acted swiftly and decisively to safeguard Israeli security. Indeed, sources in the U.S. claim that the Obama administration was not warned about impending Israeli attacks and learned of them after the fact. The powerful air assault of May 3 – the most significant since the violence began two years ago – was described by those on the ground as akin to a massive earthquake. More …
Comment (0)Thatcher’s Wars
The death of Baroness Thatcher, one of Britain’s most influential Prime Ministers of the twentieth century, has re-launched a fierce debate about her impact on her country’s economic, political, and social life. But Margaret Thatcher was more than just a national figure; she also stood out as a key leader of the world’s liberal democracies, which had endured a difficult decade in the 1970s. More …
How Iraq Changed How We Think About Human Rights
Ten years ago today, on the 18th of March, British Prime Minister Tony Blair addressed the U.K. Parliament as part of its charged debate over the impending war against Iraq. While many of the reflections on the war, a decade on, stress the importance of American neoconservatives, we must remember that the military intervention in the spring of 2003 was also supported by many liberal internationalists, including Prime Minister Blair. In both neo-con and liberal internationalist circles, Iraq’s suspected weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were always a means to add weight and urgency to a deeper, moral argument in favour of the use of force: the avoidance of future human rights abuses against the Iraqi people (of the kind Saddam had perpetrated before) and the potential to bring democracy and greater political freedom to Iraq and to the wider region. More …
An Election With Consequences
Six years ago, things looked different.
In December 2007, disputed election results triggered what was arguably the worst crisis Kenya has experienced since achieving independence from colonial rule. The weeks of violence claimed more than 1,000 lives and forced an estimated 600,000 people to flee their homes and villages. It also resulted in significant economic repercussions for the broader east African ‘neighbourhood’. Kenya has long been seen as a bright light in an otherwise troubled continent, and is considered a key Western ally in the ‘war’ on both terrorism and piracy. The country’s reputation for stability made the events of that winter even more unsettling. As a result (and unlike the genocide in Rwanda almost two decades previously), the international community’s response to the events in Kenya was unusually robust, and involved, among other things, a high-profile mediation effort, led by former United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. (Indeed, the international reaction to the 2007-8 post-election clashes in Kenya is often held up as a successful application of the principle of the ‘responsibility to protect’.) Annan’s intervention resulted in a power-sharing agreement between the two main rivals in the election, former President Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, which led to the adoption of the 2008 National Accord and Reconciliation Act, designed to prevent future crises by addressing deeper causes of the violence. More …
Third Time’s An Alarm
On Tuesday, after an emergency session convened by South Korea, the United Nations Security Council issued a unanimous condemnation of North Korea’s nuclear test – the third in a series of provocations (the first in 2006, and the second in 2009) that have entrenched the country’s isolation. South Korea’s Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan, who currently holds the Security Council’s rotating presidency, called the underground nuclear explosion a “clear threat to international peace and security” and warned that the council would take “appropriate measures.” Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, reinforced these calls for a “swift, credible and strong response” from the international community to North Korea’s increasingly bellicose stance. More …
Targeted Killing on Trial
The past few weeks have seen a flurry of activity aimed at achieving greater transparency and accountability with respect to the U.S. government’s practice of “targeted killing” (primarily through the use of drones).
To begin, the UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson, announced in late January the launch of an investigation into the “civilian impact” and “human rights implications” of drone attacks and other targeted killings by the U.S. and other states. The rapporteur claimed that such attacks pose a serious challenge to the existing framework of international law, and therefore require the development of new legal mechanisms to regulate use and ensure accountability. He also warned that if states engaged in drone attacks do not establish effective, independent, and impartial investigations of their actions, it might be necessary for the United Nations to do so. (Note: The UN investigation will examine 25 different cases of drone attacks, not all directed by the U.S. However, it remains the case that U.S. policy is a main focus of attention, particularly for China, Russia, and Pakistan, the three states that called for the investigation within the Human Rights Council). More …
Showing Leadership in the Arctic
In 2013, the Canadian government’s attention will once again be focused on the Arctic. One immediate priority is the upcoming decision by members of the Harper Cabinet on how to conduct an environmental review for a proposal to develop the Izok Corridor in Nunavut. The plan – put forward by a company headquartered in Australia, but which is a subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned resource giant – could bring billions of dollars into the region through its production of an estimated 180,000 tonnes of zinc and 50,000 tonnes of copper per year. Such production, however, is also slated to bring the development of substantial new infrastructure, including open-pit mines, roads, bridges, air-strips and ports, as well as a processing plant. This prospect has raised concerns about, among other things, the fate of the Bathurst caribou, already in a precarious condition, which reproduce on the same territory. More …
When Regional Solutions Fail
Yesterday’s announcement by French President Francois Hollande that his country is engaged in a military intervention in Mali represents a significant shift in strategy for the former colonial power in Africa. Up until yesterday, France was very much the reluctant intervener, investing all of its energy in coordinating a multilateral intervention (led by the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS) to forestall the further advance of Islamist forces in the Sahel region, and in reassuring worried African states, such as Algeria, that France’s days as an ‘African policeman’ were long gone.
France’s reticence to intervene has also been a function of the country’s recent departure from Afghanistan, after a significant investment of soldiers and resources. The French were leaving one quagmire, and so were less than eager to enter another. More …
The Slow Death of the ‘Non-Combatant’
One of the bedrocks of the contemporary law of armed conflict, embedded in the 1949 Geneva Conventions, is the moral and legal notion of “distinction”: that acts of war must be directed only at combatants, and must avoid the targeting of civilians (or non-combatants). The past two decades, however, have seen a serious challenge to this traditional way of determining the liability of an individual (or group of individuals) to attack. First, within moral philosophy, prominent scholars have argued that some non-combatants can be liable to intentional attack if they are responsible for sufficiently grave unjust threats against others (see, for example, Jeff McMahan’s Killing in War and Michael Gross’s Moral Dilemmas of Modern War). Second, technological advances – particularly the use of remote-controlled UAVs – have enabled states to kill particular non-combatants (so-called high-value targets) who are part of the political leadership, or broader support network, rather than unidentified members of the class of enemy combatants. More …
The ‘Wicked Problem’ in Syria
At the end of last week, in a desperate attempt to frustrate a co-ordinated rebel assault on Damascus, the Syrian regime halted communication both to and within the country by shutting down internet access and phone networks nationwide. Though a temporary measure, the shutdown – combined with the closure of the city’s airport – demonstrated the determination of Assad and those around him to hold onto the Syrian capital at all costs.
We are 20 months into the Syrian crisis, with little sign of how it will be resolved. This ambiguity is particularly worrying, given what the BBC’s Middle East correspondent Jim Muir calls the “bottomless pit of humanitarian needs” in the country, particularly as winter approaches. The Syrian government’s current bombardment of the suburbs of Damascus, where rebels are dug in, is unprecedented in its scale. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon recently lamented that the conflict has reached “appalling heights of brutality,” and predicted that Syrian refugee numbers would soon swell to more than 700,000. Yet, at the same time, the UN appears to be leaving Syrians to rely on their own devices, announcing yesterday that it will pull all non-essential staff out of the country. More …
