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Find the money-pot: Interagency budgetpolitik and American foreign policy

August 10, 2016 by Jackson Oliver Webster

By Jackson Webster

Gee, I wonder how much partner capacity we can build with the gold at the end of that rainbow!

In policymaking, as in politics, it’s usually wisest to ‘follow the money.’ This famous tagline of All the President’s Men was of course referring to corruption within the Nixon administration, but the key role played by money-matters in policymaking nonetheless finds its way into the conduct of American foreign policy.

The White House has three main tools at its disposal when dealing with the outside world: The Department of State (DoS), USAID, and the Department of Defense (DoD). Traditionally, State deals in diplomacy, USAID deals in development, and Defense deals in war, however these roles are becoming increasingly intertwined in today’s dynamic environment abroad.

Since the authorization of military assistance to Greece and Turkey in 1948, a process which has come to be known generally as ‘security cooperation’ has, through both accident and design become a mainstay of America’s presence abroad. This ‘security cooperation’ has been authorized by Congress on a piecemeal basis over the decades, and it currently consists of over 80 separate legal ‘authorities’ for delivering assistance to various parts of foreign countries’ security services. Each of these authorities has a separate pot of money from which it receives funding, and the amount of congressional control over each operation varies greatly. Over the past two administrations, this set of programmes has been included in a broader diplomatic initiative which has become a cornerstone of American foreign policy: ‘building partner capacity,’ or BPC. This process is intended to allow “like-minded regional partners” to share the burden of international security in an era of fiscal tightening in the United States.

What these trends amount to is a marked difference in the character of American foreign policy, particularly in terms of the agencies involved in its execution. Immediately following the Second World War, and well into the 1950s, the focus of American foreign policy outside of Korea was the reconstruction of Europe and the extension of Washington’s trade influence through strong Bretton Woods institutions (IMF, World Bank, etc.). Much of this was a ways-and-means issue. The Department of State had a great deal of money in its pockets due to the implementation of the Marshall Plan, as well as the burden of postwar diplomatic initiatives, and had a great degree of federal —especially congressional— attention paid to it as a result.

Since 9/11, the counterterrorism initiatives of the Bush and Obama administrations have caused funding to flow into the Department of Defense. State, on the other hand, has not received an authorization for its operations in 14 years, and thus its budget and responsibilities have remained relatively stagnant. The last time the purse strings for State were examined there was no Facebook, Saddam Hussein was still in power in Iraq, and Donald Trump was only a mediocre businessman without a reality TV show. Broadly speaking, this trend has caused significant mission creep away from the Pentagon’s traditional role and into what the armed forces call “military operations other than war.” The idea of the American arms industry being leveraged as a tool of diplomacy is nothing novel, however what has been a revolutionary change in our foreign policy is the centralization of a major part of our interaction with our allies overseas under the DOD rather than under the diplomatic bureaucracy at Foggy Bottom. While State was once America’s primary instrument abroad, this role has moved across the Potomac into the Pentagon, and DOD has now assumed much of the day-to-day work of maintaining our global network of alliances, in part due to its significantly larger piece of America’s budgetary pie.

The US Senate is currently entertaining a defense authorization bill, sponsored by Senator John McCain (R-AZ), to reform security cooperation and assistance programmes. The reforms contain a near-ludicrous 92 pages of legal jargon which, among other things, diverts a significant amount of money to the direct control of the Secretary of Defense for the purpose of ‘security cooperation’ with our allies. The current estimate is $10 billion for 2017, but during future appropriations and authorizations processes, that number will probably increase.

What this means in terms of US foreign policy is, as noted, an issue of ways-and-means. Should an administration wish to strengthen relations with a given country, solve a diplomatic problem, or confront an adversary, it will use the tool with the most resources at its disposal. In today’s budgetary climate, that’s the DOD, which means the military will continue to be America’s leading method of interaction with the outside world, not State and its civilian foreign service. This disconnect between what the military and its bureaucracy are designed to do and what they’ve recently been asked to accomplish both reinforces and is symptomatic of the funding prioritization of Defense over State. This effects all levels of Defense’s activities, from the Marine asked to “shoot with one hand and pass out aid with the other” to the 4-star combatant commanders asked to accomplish what were once considered diplomatic or development goals with the often blunt instrument of the military. Congress is giving the DOD a lot of money to execute a set of responsibilities of questionable effectiveness for which the military was not designed and which the military itself doesn’t necessarily want to do.

While debate continues inside the Beltway over the strengths and weaknesses of the Senate’s proposed reforms, the most important takeaway from describing this process is the key role played by the congressional appropriations and authorizations process in the conduct of foreign policy. After all, a programme or policy without a large pot of money attached, for all intents and purposes, does not exist. Regardless of whether President Obama chooses to veto this year’s authorization bill or not, the fierce nature of the debate and its eventual consequences for policy are telling of the impact of budgets and bureaucracy on America’s foreign relations. Every programme needs a pot of money, and the politics behind agencies getting their hands on these funds are worthy of study for those wishing to understand why and how the United States does what it does overseas.

Jackson Webster is a graduate of the Department of War Studies and is currently based in Paris where he is reading for a master’s degree in international security policy from SciencesPo.

Notes:

1) All the Preseident’s Men, Alan J Pakula,1976. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq_4Zlhoj4k

2) Aftergood, Steven. “Assessing “Security Cooperation”, 2015. https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2016/04/security-cooperation/

3) “What is ‘Building Partner Capacity'”, 2015. https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R44313.pdf

4) De Long, Bradford, and Barry Eichengreen. “The Marshall Plan: History’s Most Successful Structural Adjustment Program,” National Bureau of Economic Research, 1991. http://www.nber.org/papers/w3899

5) Vinik, Danny. “The State Department Hasn’t Been Authorized in 13 Years.” Politico, Sept. 2015.

6) Graham, David. “The Many Scandals of Donald Trump: A Cheat Sheet.” The Atlantic, Jun. 2016.

7) The bill can be accessed here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/2943

8) Schubert, Frank. Other Than War. NSC Joint History Office, Washington, DC, 2013.

Image Credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Washington_Monument_Rainbow.JPG

The future of international criminal justice

August 8, 2016 by Henry Redwood

By: Henry Redwood

In December 2015 the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) delivered its final verdict with the “Butare” appeals judgement. The trial had found that 6 defendants, including a mother and son, were responsible for the death, rape and suffering of tens of thousands people throughout Butare prefecture during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The case brought the Tribunal’s mandate to an end; a tribunal that had secured 75 sentences, cost the “international community” over $2 billion, and received much criticism along the way. By reflecting on how the Tribunal developed over its 21 year existence, this brief comment explores what the ICTR might tell us what we can expect for international criminal justice (ICJ) and the possible problems with the current ICJ project.

The ICTR was created within an international context filled with both hope and desperation. The end of the Cold War had ushered in a hope for peace in the world and that an “international community” (IC) might now genuinely be possible. In the early 1990s, however, the IC witnessed (and was complicit in) widespread violence, including in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. The response to these two conflicts was to create two ad hoc tribunals to bring to account those responsible for the violence. This decision was partly due to: i) the expectation that the resurrection of the “Nuremberg model” could assist these states transition to peaceful democracies as it had done after WW2; ii) the UN’s need to do something after standing by during the violence; and iii) because this was seen as the least costly response. These tribunals were quickly overloaded with expectations as they were also caught-up in the post-Cold War rhetoric of “humanitarianism” and the promises of the new ‘transitional justice’ (TJ) project, driven by the seeming success of TJ mechanisms (such as truth commissions) in Latin America.[1] As a result, these tribunals were believed to be able to do more than just deliver retributive justice, but were held to be able to “draw a line” under the past by uncovering the truth, and reconciling countries by offering a space where victims could tell their stories.[2]

As time went on these claims were increasingly questioned. Not only were other TJ mechanisms seen as being better positioned to achieve the goals of truth and reconciliation, but the rising costs and slow progress of the tribunals meant that critics increasingly questioned whether these tribunals could have any positive impact on transitioning societies at all.[3] These criticisms led to a shift in the way in which the ICTR understood its purpose and, indeed, how it ended up functioning. Whilst the early trials at the ICTR (see Akayesu) had greater concern for establishing a broad narrative of the violence that occurred in Rwanda and providing space for victims to testify, increasingly the tribunal became focused solely with producing trials that were quick and efficient (see Gatete).[4] The result was technocratic trials that were short and to the point. These trials increasingly were concerned with simply securing a verdict, rather than writing history or providing space for the witnesses to speak and with these changes Agamben’s claim that law is purely about the moment of judgement rather than any deeper notion of justice seemed increasingly to ring true.[5]

Over time, then, there was a move away from the initial ideas about the potential of ICJ, and with this also a re-articulation of what “justice” in international courts might look like (from a broader more inclusive conception of restorative justice to an increasingly legalistic and retributive one). This resulted in growing tension between the hopes and desires of those directly effected by the violence with the priorities of the legal apparatus. This was particularly visible in the ICTR’s relationship with its witnesses (often directly effected by the initial violence), who overtime became utilised simply to secure verdicts with little consideration of how the process might effect them or what they might have wanted from it.[6] This more technocratic approach to prosecutions, and the problems associated with it, has continued at the ICC, as victim parties’ requests are continually ignored by the court as it searches for quick and efficient trials.[7]

It might be argued that the ICJ is not cut out for the extra-judicial goals that were associated with international trials in the early 1990s. Indeed perhaps the types of trials that the ICTR was delivering at the end of its existence and that the ICC is producing now are more in line with what we should hope and expect ICJ to achieve. However, advocates of ICJ continue to make claims of the truth finding and reconciling potential of these courts when they need to legitimise the existence of the ICJ project, and as a result courts are too regularly seen as unproblematic sites of “truth telling” and societal rebuilding.[8] Besides the tensions that can arise from this as discussed above, there are two additional problems with this.

First, this continues to propagate the myth that it is possible to uncover the truth and that this can assist in reconciling societies, and prevents the recognition of the power-laden quality of all TJ mechanisms, and the truths they construct. If we accept this, then we are in a better position to understand what systems of power produce these mechanisms, and are therefore reproduced by them, and what effects this might have on those that encounter these mechanisms.

Second, these ideas of “truth telling” and “reconciliation” are also fed to donors and those effected by the violence, and lead to unsustainable expectations being created about what these trials can achieve, which only adds to the tension noted above.[9] Suggesting that ICJ can do everything other TJ mechanisms can do and more, then, prevents a more pluralist understanding of TJ from developing. Within a pluralist approach to TJ a wider variety of responses to violence are seen as viable, and a wider array of types of violence (beyond only violations of international criminal law) are seen as needing redress. If this occurs, there is the greater chance that more appropriate TJ mechanisms will be used to meet the needs of populations in the wake of violence. Perhaps more importantly still, those responsible for deciding what responses are needed in the aftermath of violence might start listening more to those that lived through the violence, and move past the currently legalistic understanding of post-conflict recovery that still holds criminal trials as the only “just” response to atrocity.

Henry Redwood is a third year PhD student in the War Studies department and Senior Editor at Strife. His work engages with critical theory to explore how international courts construct truths and the normative underpinnings these project. Alongside his research Henry has previously worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and a number of (I)NGOs working in Rwanda. You can follow him on Twitter: @hred44

Notes:

[1] P. Hazan, Judging War, Judging History: Behind Truth and Reconciliation, (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 2010), p. 16, p. 18, and p. 42; Ruti Teitel, Transitional Justice, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 72, pp. 74-75

[2] Richard Goldstone, ‘Justice as a Tool for Peace-Making: Truth Commissions and International Criminal Tribunals’, Journal of International Law and Politics, 28 (1995), pp. 485-504

[3] Martha Minow, ‘Making History or Making Peace: When Prosecutions Should Give Way to Truth Commissions and Peace Negotiations’, Journal of Human Rights, 7:2 (2008), 174-185.

[4] See ICTR Completion Strategy Reports to the UNSC, found here.

[5] Elizabeth Dauphinee, ‘War Crimes and the Ruin of Law’, Millennium-Journal of International Studies 37:1 (2008), p. 54

[6] See a report on this by REDRESS, here.

[7] Mariana Pena and Gaelle Carayon, ‘Is the ICC Making the Most of Victim Participation?’, The Journal of Transitional Justice, 7 (2013), p. 530

[8] See speeches made by the ICTR Prosecutor, here.

[9] Eric Stover, ‘Witnesses and the Promise of Justice’, in E. Stover and H. M. Weinstein (eds), My Neighbour, My Enemy: Justice and Community in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 104-120

Image Credit: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-321607622/stock-photo-arusha-tanzania-3-july-2015-the-international-criminal-tribunal-for-rwanda-is-located-at-the-arusha-international-conference-centre-in-tanzania.html?src=EFuCe1lnHcf5JOMTiJbUjg-1-0

After the DNC: Hillary Clinton and the discontent of the Sandernistas

August 5, 2016 by Andrew Smith

By: Andrew Smith

Image Credit: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-386144416.html

The Democrats need to unite their party or risk conceding the White House to Mr. Trump

The DNC is over and yet again the Democrats showed that they know how to put on a show. From the highly personal speech of former president Bill Clinton, who presented his wife and current presidential nominee Secretary Hillary Clinton in a very human manner, to the emotional addresses of both Obama’s, the most notable theme throughout the four day convention was the optimistic manner in which the convention presented the United States. This stood in stark contrast to the Republican convention the week earlier which mainly concentrated on denouncing Clinton and promoting Trump’s agenda of fear.[1] Given the differing political rhetorics of both presidential nominees this perhaps came as no great surprise.

Throughout the four-day convention however it was Secretary Clinton’s ex-rival, Senator Bernie Sanders, and his supporters, who arguably had one of the most significant impacts, as he is – and they are – also likely to do so in the coming months. Day one of the convention in particular highlighted the polarisation that currently exists within the Democratic party and within American politics more widely. Die-hard Sanders supporters protested on the streets of Philadelphia, the host city of the DNC, and within the convention hall itself at the prospect of a Clinton presidency.[2]

These types of images are unusual for a party convention which are more traditionally seen as one last grand celebration of each party’s presidential nominee, culminating with the formal nomination and acceptance speech, before the final toils of the campaign in the months leading up to election day. They are also about setting the agenda and the tone of the campaign for the closing months and beginning to make decisions on which issues will be prioritised, and will create the more appealing headlines in an effort to convince the undecided voters. More importantly conventions are about unification. Whilst most Democratic officials have rallied around Clinton’s campaign, the 2016 DNC showed a raucous minority of the electorate certainly has not.

What the DNC brought to the fore was that, seemingly, the Sandernistas are as defiant in their acceptance of Clinton as Trump supporters are in their ignorance of any logical narratives suggesting that just perhaps he is not the man to ‘make America great again.’[3] Sanders supporters depict Secretary Clinton as the quintessential candidate of the establishment they despise. Someone who represents those at fault for wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria; who colludes with Wall Street for political funding, leverage and progression and; stands for those whom are in favour of neoliberal policies which Sanders supporters feel have neglected the poorest in American society for the past three to four decades. She is also portrayed as a president who will assure the prolongation of the in-fighting of party politics which has characterised much of the Obama administration and has hindered progress on an array of issues; gun control being debatably the most infamous. In short the die-hard Sanders supporters want to see large scale overhauls in the American political system. It is in this divergence of opinions where the division within the party resides. Clinton needs to address this disunity and quickly. If she is to become the first female president of the United States it could ultimately be down to her ability to convince these hard-line Sanders supporters to vote for her.

For Hillary Clinton the principal concern is not that these voters will vote for Donald Trump but that they will not vote at all. Many Sanders supporters, and many party unaffiliated voters – who make up the majority of the electorate – are reluctant in having to choose between the lesser of two evils. In an election of such importance Clinton needs as much of the US public as possible to go to the polls for her. Senator Sanders could play a crucial role in ensuring this.

His powerful delivery on day one of the DNC was his most convincing speech to date whereby he proclaimed his support for Secretary Clinton and where he endorsed her stance on some, although notably not all, issues including: the economy, health care, climate change, the Supreme Court and more.[4] His speech’s recurring phrase of ‘Hillary understands’ was significant and suggested real progress was made during the party’s platform in the weeks prior. It was the second day however where Sanders’ impact was most felt when he ended the roll call vote with his acclamation for Secretary Clinton from his Vermont delegation.[5] This hugely symbolic gesture was a clear stride towards party unification and should not be devalued.

Secretary Clinton’s response to the division in the party during her acceptance speech was typically Clinton-like and yet untypical at the same time.[6] Whilst she did not acknowledge her criticisms directly, she also did not go on the defensive, as seems to have become her norm, and addressed the fact there are many people who just don’t know what to make of her. She also returned the compliments Bernie Sanders paid to her by directly commenting on the economic and social issues that gave the Sanders campaign so much momentum during the primaries and assured his voters that she has heard them, and that she needed their ‘ideas, energy and passion’ to ensure real change in America. She may not have had the poetry and natural public speaking ability of Barack Obama or her husband but this was an effective speech that left no stone unturned. A delivery that accurately reflected the type of politician she is and potential president she could become.

Regardless of all the statements made by Clinton herself, the generous motions by Sanders and the endorsement of high profile politicians and celebrities alike, Clinton will know she faces an uphill struggle in the months ahead if she is to convince the Sandernistas to vote for her on November 8th. Most worryingly is that the gap between her and this minority is one she may be powerless to bridge. She could attempt to smooth relations; starting perhaps by accepting some degree of responsibility for the email scandal, although this has become ever the less likely after the FBI ruling.[7] Nevertheless even if the potential trade-offs, where they do exist, see her gain ground it may still not be enough to help her claim the White House.

One thing that can be said for Donald Trump is that he may not have the backing of many of his own party but at least he has his hardline voters in order, and as the recent British EU referendum has shown, it is they, the voters, who will decide the direction in which the country will progress, regardless of how small the margin.[8]

Andrew is currently pursuing his MA in Conflict, Security & Development at King’s College London after attaining his BA in Criminology. Andrew has a specialist interest in private military and security companies, and natural resources & armed conflict, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. He has previously interned as a political and security risk analyst within the private extractive industries for both BP and Halliburton. You can follow him on Twitter @agsmith_93.

Notes:

[1] ‘2016 Republican national convention: a look back – in pictures,’ The Guardian (24 July 2016), http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2016/jul/24/republican-national-convention-look-back-in-pictures

[2] ‘Bernie Sanders Backers March Against Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia,’ International New York Times (24 July 2016), http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/25/us/politics/protests-convention-bernie-sanders-philadelphia.html?_r=1

[3] ‘33 Percent of Bernie Sanders Supporters Will Not Vote for Hillary Clinton. Here’s Why,’ The Huffington Post (16 March 2016), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/33-percent-of-bernie-sanders-not-vote-hillary_b_9475626.html

[4] ‘Sen. Bernie Sanders’ full speech from the DNC,’ Politico (26 July 2016), http://www.politico.com/video/2016/07/sen-bernie-sanders-full-speech-from-the-dnc-060086

[5] PBS NewsHour. “Bernie Sanders surprises crowd, moves to nominate Clinton by voice vote at the 2016 DNC.” Youtube video, 4:45. July 26, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9tMnZKsRPY

[6] ‘Hillary Clinton Begins Building Her Coalition,’ The Atlantic (29 July 2016), http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/live-coverage-of-the-democratic-national-convention-day-4/493385/

[7] ‘Statement by FBI Director James B. Comey on the Investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s Use of a Personal E-Mail System,’ Federal Bureau of Investigation, 5 July 2016.

[8] ‘EU Referendum Results,’ BBC News (24 June 2016), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/eu_referendum/results

Transitional justice: Reflections on the state of the field

August 4, 2016 by Henry Redwood

By: Henry Redwood

Image Credit: Shuttershock

In 1992 Ruti Teitel coined the phrase “Transitional Justice” (TJ) to capture a new project sweeping through Latin America, where mechanisms like Truth Commissions were being used to usher in peaceful democracies after decades of violence.[1] The 1990s saw a proliferation of these types of responses to mass atrocity (increasingly known as “TJ tools”), with ad hoc criminal tribunals created for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, lustration proceedings in the former Soviet States, and the opening of archives in East Germany. Underpinning these mechanisms was the belief that states needed to “draw a line” under the past if they were to transition from war torn, divided or authoritarian societies to peaceful and reconciled communities. Within a matter of years the TJ industry was booming, and by 2010 approximately 848 TJ mechanisms had been used across 161 different countries, and over 2400 scholarly articles and books had been written on TJ.[2] Throughout all of this, TJ has been concerned with its relevance and its “uniqueness” as a discipline, leading to attempts to demarcate a space for it as a distinct field of academic enquiry. It now has its own journal and even an international “HQ” with the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) on Wall Street, of all places. This short piece offers a series of thoughts on the state of the field, and also on the possible consequences of this attempt to demarcate a specific space that could be considered “unique”.

TJ has constantly tried to adapt and evolve in order to maintain its relevance over its 25 year existence, visible in the many internal “turns” it has witnessed: the impact turn; [3] the cultural turn;[4] and the latest the “local” turn. [5] The idea of “re-invention” is true, however, only to a certain extent as the broader parameters of the field and the logics that underpin it have been surprisingly resilient in the face of change, criticism and failure. What has perhaps defined this process more is its reactionary nature which has left many of the underlining assumptions of the field unquestioned: what TJ is about, who it concerns, what violence it addresses, how TJ might lead to “peace” in the long run, and indeed what is “peace”?

As such, as a field we rarely properly reflect on why our gaze is always on the Global South and never “internally” at issues at or in our own borders (the ICTJ map of places where it works is almost solely focused on the Global South). We rarely hear it being asked, then, how we might apply TJ in relation to post-crisis societies such as New Orleans after hurricane Katrina or in the face of mass police brutality against black bodies in the US, or how TJ might help to heal a divided country like Britain in the wake of “Brexit”. The failure to ask these questions propagates not only the legitimacy of the Global North intervening in the Global South to help “solve” their problems without reflecting on their complicity in the violence, but it also means that the model of the Western state (as a peaceful neo-liberal society) remains the unspoken and assumed goal of TJ processes (as “exceptional” violence, rather than systemic everyday violence, remains the point from which transition begins).

Similarly, for decades now we constantly call for the same mechanisms to be used in the wake of violence under the same notions of the power of “truth” and the catharsis of “speaking out” even whilst we hold suspicion that these are little more than (often Western-centric) aspirational dreams. Here, we consistently refuse to acknowledge that in practice all that we seem to do, at best, is treat the “symptoms” of violence and never address its cause: structural inequality, patriarchy, militarisation, securitisation, capitalism etc.[6] Without doing this, without challenging the very principles on which societies function and are reproduced (and the conditions whereby violence is both possible and legitimate), these mechanisms seem too often to have a tendency to re-ingrain and re-produce these structures that allow violence to occur rather than undermine them. Indeed it seems like TJ is often less about a transition to than it is a transition back to.

Equally, we seem to allow, both through our advocacy of these mechanisms and in our own academic writing, for potentially harmful “realities” to be reproduced. For instance, the problematic distinction between victims and perpetrators remains central to most TJ projects despite all that is known about the harm that this can cause.[7] What all of this suggests is that TJ has struggled to account for the broader mechanisms of power relations that it is part of. It has struggled to see how it might, as David Kennedy has recently argued, be complicit in violence. This has even been the case in some of the more recent work that emphasises the importance of the “local”. Here, whilst on the surface the turn to the “local” is a response to the Western hegemony that dominated the field in its early years (and in many respects still does), the “local” is too often seemingly praised for its natural (othering) value, still as something that is allowed to exist (“we” must prioritise the local) and continues to ignore the problematic power dynamics that local responses to mass violence seem to continue to produce.[8]

This is, of course, more than just about TJ operating as a field. But some of this has, I think, been down to this search for “uniqueness”. This has in part led to the notion that sometimes appears in TJ that bringing new ideas in “from the outside” means that the ideas are new. At times, this also led to a failure to turn outwards to learn lessons from elsewhere that were learnt decades earlier. The need to demarcate a terrain of enquiry and policy has also led to the reproduction of the problematic ideas underpinning some parts – though not all – of the field. In response to why not look at Brexit, structural violence or patriarchy, the answer is too often that if we expand TJ too much it becomes meaningless as a field or policy area.[9] This might be true, to an extent, as all enquiries have to make decisions over what not to study, and analysis inevitably results in (arbitrary) categorisations. But it might be worth considering the harm that is caused by the current divisions around what is TJ, where can this be applied, to what and by what means, by who and what social orderings this re-creates before we continue to press on with advocating and analysing TJ.

Henry Redwood is a PhD candidate in the War Studies department and senior editor at Strife. His work engages critical theory to explore how international courts construct truths and the normative underpinnings these project. Alongside his research Henry has previously worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and a number of (I)NGOs working in Rwanda. You can follow Henry on Twitter @hred44.

Notes:

[1] Pierre Hazan, Judging War, Judging History, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010) p. 8

[2] Patricia Olsen et al, Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy, (Washington: United States Institute of Peace, 2010), p. 2 and p. 39

[3] See Eric Stover and Harvey Weinstein , ‘Introduction’, My Neighbour, My Enemy: Justice and Community in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity, Stover and Weinstein (eds), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)

[4] Tim Kelsall, Culture under Cross-Examination: International Justice and the Special Court for Sierra Leone, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)

[5] Alexander Hinton (ed.) Transitional justice: Global mechanisms and local realities after genocide and mass violence, (Piscataway: Rutgers University Press, 2010)

[6] See Rosemary Nagy, ‘Transitional Justice as Global Project: Critical Reflections’, Third World Quarterly, 29:2 (2008), 275-289

[7] Kierran McEvoy, K., and Kirsten McConnachie, ‘Victims and Transitional Justice: Voice, Agency and Blame’, Social and Legal Studies, 22:4 (2013), 489 – 513

[8] Susanne. Thompson and Rosemary Nagy, “Law, Power and Justice: What Legalism Fails to Address in the Functioning of Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts”, The International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 5, 2011, pp. 12-15

[9] Nagy, ‘Transitional Justice’, p. 277

‘Authentication – Crypto-Wars’ new frontline

August 1, 2016 by Yuji Develle

By: Yuji Develle

Image credit: https://netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/23390123_b6caaefc16_o.jpg

9 February, 2016: the FBI requested Apple to unlock an iPhone device belonging to a suspect of the San Bernardino terror shootings. Given until 26 February to respond, Apple flatly refused. So began a drawn out legal battle and ongoing public debates surrounding the merits of encryption, pitting the national security community and the tech-world against each other. Captains of industry and five-star generals faced-off in fiery declarations. As the FBI hired Japan-based Sun Corp to unlock the iPhone for close to $1 million, WhatsApp (April 5^th) and Viber (April 18^th) both raced to complete end-to-end encryption roll-out on their products. Across the pond, just last week the second reading of the was discussed in the House of Lords. This Bill appeared just steps away from authorising state-sanctioned “equipment interference”. Reaching a new zenith, a new chapter in the Crypto-Wars has begun.

Most “battles” in this Crypto-War occur in the legal and policy spheres. This is primarily due to requirement that intelligence services and law enforcement have to request the right to access the encrypted data of individuals in specific cases (lawful intercept). Lawful Intercept has been a hallmark of the telecoms industry for decades, as network managers were compelled by the law to provide data that may help with criminal investigations. As made apparent to the British public in the public uproar created by the ‘Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA 2000)’ (Snooper’s Charter) and the recent ‘Investigatory Powers Bill’, many policy-makers are striving to create greater legal leeway for intelligence and law enforcement. Meanwhile, academics such as Thomas Rid (Rise of the Machines) from the War Studies Department at King’s College London, have discussed the place of encryption in society’s moral-compass, whether such leeway is morally justifiable. Legal, policy and academia interact reflexively in a constantly shifting Crypto-War landscape.

However, an aspect of this conflict is certain. Both the national security establishment and the tech-world are developing surveillance and encryption technologies far faster than laws or policy. Just as Daniel Moore’s and Thomas Rid’s Cryptopolitik & the Darknet exposed the critical chasm between Westminster’s understanding of the Darknet and real traffic trends, the available technologies driving encryption out-pace the current laws sanctioning “equipment interference”. These technologies cover a variety of areas such as F-Secure’s Freedome (better VPNs) or Silent Circle’s head-to-toe phone encryption, but appear most notably in the field of web authentication.

The very fabric of the internet hinges on the idea of trust. Without trust, it would be impossible to be certain that a file from Mr. Smith actually comes from Mr. Smith. E-Commerce, E-Banking and in particular E-Voting rely on the trust of both their users and their servers to function properly. One major structure in charge of maintaining this trust is web authentication, or the structures of authentication and certification in place to make sure, for instance, that a certain ‘Mr. Smith’ is actually who he says he is. Currently one system, the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), dominates this space since the Internet’s humble beginnings.

The Public Key Infrastructure is a centralised model of assigning a certain number (or key) to each individual machine attempting to gain access to a given server on the internet. If Alice wishes to access a server, she will be put through a multi-step process before gaining access to that server:

1) A Registering Authority (RA) notes down Alice’s Public Key (unique credentials)
2) A Certificate Authority (CA) notes down the Public Key onto a Central Directory
3) The CA issues a certificate based on Alice’s Public Key, this certificate is Alice’s digital signature.
4) This signature is matched with the Server’s Private Key to grant access
5) The signature is verified again by a Validation Authority, in charge of double-checking the validity of digital signatures/certificates.

It is quickly apparent how such a system may lead to serious vulnerabilities. The Public Key Infrastructure is a chain of events that relies on the integrity of the initial Public Key, and on the reliable denotation of this key in each following step. Alice’s identity on the internet is directly bound to her key. Due to this, after having been registered by RAs, Public Keys are stored by CAs in “Central Directories”. The PKI paradigm relies on storing this type of identification information on supposedly “air-tight” info-caches.

Similar to how keeping a list of username and password pairings in an office drawer, “Central Directories” are inherently dangerous and have been the cause of some of the largest security breaches in web history (See 2011 DigiNotar Breach). The repeated communication between different steps of the PKI also mean that “Replay” attacks are easier to undertake, such as when a hacker eavesdrops until they are able to replicate a given communication/operation. Moreover, governments have worked with other companies in issuing fake certificates to sanctioned spyware and malware. One example being Gogo Inflight Internet’s alleged use of Google certificates, as sanctioned by the FCC shown in this letter. The top 5 Certificate Authorities are all based in the United States – food for thought!

In light of these bedrock vulnerabilities, the tech-world has been busy. The Web of Trust model, gives the freedom to each network to gradually accumulate their list of “trusted introducers”, or trusted users, placed on a White-list. The idea is that the more White-list users are placed, the more authentic one becomes. This circumvents the need to pass through CAs hundreds of times, as is usually the case with any given web-application. The Distributed Trust model is the most innovative, however.

A Distributed Trust Infrastructural Model

In a D-TA model, Alice would for instance, only have to supply two different pieces of information (Step 1: Multi-Factor Authentication), a pin code and the fact that she is using Google Chrome (logo shown in Safari), before being assigned a “Unique Cryptographic Authentication Key” (Step 2) and thus accessing the server. Alice did not have to surrender any passwords, keys or personal information to any “Central Directories” to be identified and authenticated. To prove that Alice’s pin and browser-type is correct, the information is matched with two or more partial key-holders (called “Trusted Authorities” or TA). The TAs constitute a block-chain of key-parts that together form the key. At no time does any TA have access to the full key, nor does any information get stored on any registry. Every authentication key is unique.

The Distributed Trust model eliminates two of the most damaging sources of cyber-breaches: password-related breaches and ‘Man-in-the-Middle’ attacks. Without any directories to poach information from, this near-eliminates the possibility of ID-theft (think: 2014 OPM Hack, last April’s Mexican Voter Breach, the LinkedIn Breach). More relevant to the Crypto-Wars, this technology prevents a common-method with which governments agencies – including intelligence services – implanted spyware into social-media, e-mail, and banking apps. At the same time, Distributed Trust would protect every government server from sophisticated attacks. Eliminating the need for passwords and/or public-key registries makes web-security truly air-tight.

In light of the resurgence of Crypto-Wars in public debate, the fate of Distributed Trust hangs in the balance. Should governments prove to make headway in adopting Distributed Trust, this would limit Opposition parties (in some countries) and Hacktivists from penetrating public servers. While widespread private-sector adoption would lead to a much more secure internet, it would remove many of the spy tools available to law enforcement and intelligence services (those being made legal by “Electronic Surveillance”).

Yuji Develle, is an Undergraduate Representative and Editor for Strife Blog. A French and Japanese War Studies graduate; he is currently working for a London start-up specialised in cryptography. His interests lie in cybersecurity, energy security and other emerging security issues.

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