Punish or persuade? The compellence logic of international criminal court intervention in cases of ongoing civilian violence

Can International Criminal Court (ICC) interventions in ongoing conflicts help curtail war crimes and civilian abuses that are being actively perpetrated? The court has increasingly intervened in such cases, partly with the intention of using its prosecutorial power to stop ongoing abuses. Yet, while much has been said about the court's potential for deterrence, little attention has been devoted to its compellent effects. Drawing on insights from the literature on coercive diplomacy, strategic bargaining, and civilian victimization, this article clarifies and critically assesses the logic of ICC compellence in cases of ongoing civilian violence. I argue that some forms of ICC intervention have compellent potential but are inherently limited. Specifically, I show why threats of prosecution, rather than actual indictments, are far more likely to be effective at curtailing violence, but also how their effective application is highly constrained by the court's own core normative principles, rules, and structures. While some see the main problem as weak enforcement-something that can be remedied with greater political will-there is a more fundamental impediment: to compel effectively, the court must carefully coordinate its actions with other states' diplomatic and military efforts or allow itself to be used strategically by states pursuing diplomatic and military measures to curtail violence- positions that are incompatible with the court's statutory obligations and its very ethos as an independent and impartial nonstate judicial institution

'Pernicious history' as a cause of national misperceptions: Russia and the 1999 Kosovo war

This article examines Russia's response to the 1999 Kosovo crisis in order to evaluate theoretical propositions about the relationship between historical memory and conflict-causing misperceptions. For decades, Russian society consumed, especially through mass education, a particular interpretation of Russia's imperial wars and interventions in the Balkans and its historical relations with Serbia and the West. A comparison of the content of this view to the Russian elite and popular response to the 1999 Kosovo crisis shows how particularly pernicious historical ideas influenced a number of serious misperceptions about Balkan realities and Western motives in 1999. The case reveals that historical memory is more far-reaching than accounted for by traditional theories of misperception. Those theories, when they do incorporate historical memory, ignore or minimize the role of popular historical ideas as independent causes of misperceptions; perceptual distortions result largely from cognitive limitations in the processing of information, hence little can be done to avoid them. This study shows how historical ideas themselves may be a source of misperceptions. This has important policy implications: since historical beliefs are hardly immutable, efforts taken to scrutinize and challenge particularly pernicious interpretations of the past could help avoid conflict-causing perceptual distortions

Truth-telling and mythmaking in post-Soviet Russia : pernicious historical ideas, mass education, and interstate conflict

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (p. [405]-409).Can pernicious views about history exacerbate conflict among states, and if so, how? How can we prevent such ideas from emerging, or dampen their more malevolent effects? Despite a long history of scholarly writing on nationalism that assumes that distorted, mythologized history can be dangerous, we still know little about how pernicious historical ideas lead to interstate conflict, if at all. This study clarifies that relationship by identifying a number of hypotheses on the malevolent effects of pernicious ideas that are empirically grounded in the recent experiences of post-Soviet Russia. It examines popular Russian historical ideas widely purveyed through mass public education, assesses their perniciousness, and details the mechanisms by which they have precipitated or exacerbated recent conflicts in Russian foreign policy. Pernicious historical ideas precipitate or exacerbate conflict in two general ways: First, through "emotional" mechanisms, whereby pernicious myths instill resentment and animosity, and manifest grievances over real or perceived injustices. These feelings then lead to violent retaliation or demands for apologies, restitution, reparations or other symbolic gestures that raise tensions, or lead to confrontational or antagonistic policy choices. Second, there are "cognitive" mechanisms. Pernicious myths foster ethnic and nationalist stereotypes and negative or false images about others, or create false assumptions and beliefs about the nature of international politics, the causes of war and peace, and one's own and other's national interests. These images and assumptions reflected in distorted and pernicious views of history-can cause significant national misperceptions that lead to conflictual policies. The study identifies popular views of history by systematically analyzing Soviet and all post-Soviet Russian history textbooks. It examines three cases of wars, conflicts and interventions that have been especially prone to Russian historical mythmaking: The Soviet-German War of 1939-45; Soviet western interventions in 1939-40; and the Russo-Turkish wars of the 19th century. Russia's portrayal of these wars and interventions is dominated by self glorifying, self-exculpating, other-denigrating and victimization myths. An examination of recent Russian foreign policy conflicts in two regions-the Baltic and the Balkans-illustrates how these historical ideas have shaped Russian images and assumptions, and fostered emotional antagonisms and misperceptions that have precipitated or exacerbated conflict.in those regions.by David A. Mendeloff.Ph.D

Connecting students internationally to explore postconflict peacebuilding: An American-Canadian collaboration

This paper presents the design and assesses the results of an international collaborative course of American and Canadian undergraduates on the topic of postconflict peacebuilding. Using online discussions, a web-based role-play simulation, and videoconferencing this collaborative course sought to enhance student engagement with the material by exposing them to views from different countries and encouraging broader thinking about the complex set of activities and challenges involved in peacebuilding. The challenges and benefits of such collaboration are discussed