Does the rule of law matter to maritime security? One way into the question is to examine whether states show a discursive commitment that maritime security practices must comply with international law. International law thus provides tools for argument for or against the validity of certain practices. The proposition is thus not only that international law matters to maritime security, but legal argument does too. In this article, these claims will be explored in relation to the South China Sea dispute. The dispute involves Chinese claims to enjoy special rights within the ‘nine-dash line’ on official maps which appears to lay claim to much of the South China Sea. Within this area sovereignty remains disputed over numerous islands and other maritime features. Many of the claimant states have engaged in island-building activities, although none on the scale of China. Ideas matter in such contests, affecting perceptions of reality and of what is possible. International law provides one such set of ideas. Law may be a useful tool in consolidating gains or defeating a rival's claims. For China, law is a key domain in which it is seeking to consolidate control over the South China Sea. The article places the relevant Chinese legal arguments in the context of China's historic engagement with the law of the sea. It argues that the flaw in China's approach has been to underestimate the extent to which it impinges on other states' national interests in the maritime domain, interests they conceptualize in legal terms.

Following just over one year in office, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, outlines her ongoing priorities at a tumultuous time for fundamental rights protections worldwide.

She discusses the rights implications of climate change, gender inequality including the advancement of sexual and reproductive rights, the protection of vulnerable groups and the need to work closely with states, civil society and business to protect and advance human rights.

International law applies to cyber operations – but views differ on exactly how. Does state-sponsored interference in another state's affairs using cyber means – for example,  disinformation campaigns in elections, disabling government websites, or disrupting transport systems – breach international law? If so, on what basis and how are the principles of sovereignty and non-intervention relevant? States are increasingly attributing cyber operations to other states and engaging in the debate on how international law applies, including circumstances that would justify countermeasures.

As states meet to debate these issues at the UN, the panel will explore how international law regulates cyberoperations by states, consider the prospects of progress at the UN, and assess the value of other initiatives.

This event coincides with the launch of a Chatham House research paper which analyses how the principles of sovereignty and intervention apply in the context of cyberoperations, and considers a way forward for agreeing a common understanding of cyber norms.

This event will bring together a broad group of actors, including policymakers, the private sector, legal experts and civil society, and will be followed by a drinks reception.

 

Summary

• The vast majority of state-to-state cyberattacks consist of persistent, low-level intrusions that take place below the threshold of use of force. International law, including the principle of non-intervention in another state’s internal affairs and the principle of sovereignty, applies to these cyber operations.
• It is not clear whether any unauthorized cyber intrusion would violate the target state’s sovereignty, or whether there is a threshold in operation. While some would like to set limits by reference to effects of the cyber activity, at this time such limits are not reflected in customary international law. The assessment of whether sovereignty has been violated therefore has to be made on a case by case basis, if no other more specific rules of international law apply.
• In due course, further state practice and opinio iuris may give rise to an emerging cyber-specific understanding of sovereignty, just as specific rules deriving from the sovereignty principle have crystallized in other areas of international law.
• Before a principle of due diligence can be invoked in the cyber context, further work is needed by states to agree upon rules as to what might be expected of a state in this context.
• The principle of non-intervention applies to a state’s cyber operations as it does to other state activities. It consists of coercive behaviour by one state that deprives the target state of its free will in relation to the exercise of its sovereign functions in order to compel an outcome in, or conduct with respect to, a matter reserved to the target state.
• In practice, activities that contravene the non-intervention principle and activities that violates sovereignty will often overlap.
• In order to reach agreement on how international law applies to states’ cyber operations below the level of use of force, states should put their views on record, where possible giving examples of when they consider that an obligation may be breached, as states such as the UK, Australia, France and the Netherlands have done.
• Further discussion between states should focus on how the rules apply to practical examples of state-sponsored cyber operations. There is likely to be more commonality about specific applications of the law than there is about abstract principles.
• The prospects of a general treaty in this area are still far off. In due course, there may be benefit in considering limited rules, for example on due diligence and a prohibition on attacking critical infrastructure, before tackling broad principles.

International criminal justice provides a stark reminder that state sovereignty is not an absolute, and that the world’s most heinous crimes should be prosecuted at an international level, particularly where domestic systems lack the capacity or will to hold perpetrators to account. 

The post-Cold War period witnessed a dramatic rise in the number of international tribunals with jurisdiction over war crimes and serious human rights abuses in countries including Cambodia, East Timor, Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Yugoslavia. With these processes approaching, or having reached the end of their dockets, many have called for the creation of new tribunals to address more recent conflicts, including the army crackdown in Myanmar in 2017 that resulted in evidence of crimes against humanity against the Rohingya. 

In January this year, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) imposed emergency provisional measures on Myanmar, instructing it to prevent genocidal violence against its Rohingya minority. But a final judgement is expected to take years and the ICJ has no way of enforcing these interim measures. Myanmar has already responded defiantly to international criticism. 

Model for justice

Myanmar is not the first country to face scrutiny for such crimes in Southeast Asia. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), more commonly known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal was established in 1997 to prosecute Khmer Rouge leaders for alleged violations of international law and serious crimes perpetrated during the Cambodian genocide. This provides an opportunity to consider whether the Tribunal can act as a ‘hybrid’ model for justice in the region. 

The first lesson that can be taken from the Cambodian context is that the state must have the political will and commitment to pursue accountability. It was indeed the Cambodian government itself, who requested international assistance from the United Nations (UN), to organize a process for holding trials. The initial recommendation of the UN-commissioned Group of Experts was for the trial to be held under UN control, in light of misgivings about Cambodia’s judicial system. Prime Minister Hun Sen rejected this assessment and in prolonged negotiations, continued to spearhead the need for domestic involvement (arguably, in order to circumscribe the search for justice). This eventually resulted in the creation of a hybrid body consisting of parallel international and Cambodian judges and prosecutors with supermajority decision-making rules.   

It is worth noting that the Hun Sen government initially chose to do business with former Khmer Rouge leaders, until it became more advantageous to embrace a policy of putting them on trial. It is possible to infer from this that there will be no impetus for action in Myanmar until it is domestically advantageous to do so. At present, this appetite is clearly lacking, demonstrated by de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi shying away from accountability and instead defending the government’s actions before the ICJ.

One unique aspect of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal has been the vast participation by the Cambodian people in witnessing the trials as well as widespread support for the tribunal. This speaks to the pent-up demand in Cambodia for accountability and the importance of local participation. While international moral pressure is clear, external actors cannot simply impose justice for the Rohingya when there is no domestic incentive or support to pursue this. The reality is that the anti-Rohingya campaign has galvanized popular support from the country’s Buddhist majority. What is more, the Rohingya are not even seen as part of Myanmar so there is an additional level of disenfranchisement.

Secondly, the Cambodian Tribunal illustrates the need for safeguards against local political interference. The ECCC was designed as national court with international participation. There was an agreement to act in accordance with international standards of independence and impartiality, but no safeguards in place against serious deficiencies in the Cambodian judicial system. Close alliances between judges and the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, as well as high levels of corruption meant the tribunal effectively gave Hun Sen’s government veto power over the court at key junctures. Despite the guise of a hybrid structure, the Cambodian government ultimately retained the ability to block further prosecutions and prevent witnesses from being called. 

In Myanmar, political interference could be a concern, but given there is no popular support for justice and accountability for crimes committed against the Rohingya, the prospects of a domestic or hybrid process remain unlikely. However, there are still international options. The investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into crimes that may have taken place on the Myanmar–Bangladesh border represents a potential route for justice and accountability. The UN Human Rights Council has also recently established the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), mandated to collect and preserve evidence, as well as to prepare files for future cases before criminal courts.

Finally, the Cambodian case illustrates the culture of impunity in the region. The ECCC was conceived partly as a showcase for international standards of justice, which would have a ‘contagion effect’ upon the wider Cambodian and regional justice systems. 

Cambodia was notorious for incidents in which well-connected and powerful people flouted the law. This culture of impunity was rooted in the failure of the government to arrest, try and punish the Khmer Rouge leadership. The Tribunal, in holding perpetrators of the worst crimes to account, sought to send a clear signal that lesser violations would not be tolerated in the same way. Arguably, it did not achieve this in practice as Cambodia still has a highly politicized judicial system with high levels of corruption and clear limits to judicial independence. 

What this illustrates is that the first step towards accountability is strengthening domestic institutions. The United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar has urged domestic authorities to embrace democracy and human rights, highlighting the need to reform the judicial system in order to ensure judicial independence, remove systemic barriers to accountability and build judicial and investigatory capacity in accordance with international standards. Based on this assessment, it is clear that domestic institutions are currently insufficiently independent to pursue accountability.

The ECCC, despite its shortcomings, does stand as proof that crimes against humanity will not go completely unpunished. However, a process does not necessarily equal justice. The region is littered with justice processes that never went anywhere: Indonesia, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. International recourse is also challenging in a region with low ratification of the ICC, and the absence of regional mechanisms like the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights, and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (although their remit is not mass atrocity prosecutions). 

The Cambodian case study illustrates the challenges of ensuring justice and accountability within the region. The end of impunity is critical to ensure peaceful societies, but a purely legalistic approach will fail unless it is supported by wider measures and safeguards. It is these challenges, that undermine the prospects for ensuring justice for the Rohingya within Myanmar.

The end of 2018 was a monumental year for Latin America’s two biggest economies. In December 2018, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was inaugurated as Mexico’s 58th president. The following month saw another political shift further south, as Jair Bolsonaro became Brazil’s 38th president. While sitting on opposite ends of the political spectrum, both AMLO and Bolsonaro were considered to be political outsiders and have upended the status quo through their election to office. 

To what extent does the election of AMLO in Mexico and Bolsonaro in Brazil represent a shift in those countries’ definitions of national interest and foreign policy priorities? How will this affect these states’ policies regarding international commitments and cooperation on issues such as human rights, environment and climate change, migration, and trade? To what extent do possible shifts reflect changing domestic opinions?  Will any changes represent a long-term shift in state priorities and policies past these administrations?

This event is part of the Chatham House Global Trade Policy Forum. We would like to take this opportunity to to thank founding partner AIG and supporting partners Clifford Chance LLP, Diageo plc and EY for their generous support of the forum. 

The pressure of the coronavirus pandemic is adding to a widely held misconception that trade in food products is bad for the environment due to the associated ‘food miles’ – the carbon footprint of agricultural products transported over long distances.

This concept, developed by large retailers a decade ago, is often invoked as a rationale for restricting trade and choosing locally-produced food over imports. Consuming local food may seem sensible at first glance as it reduces the carbon footprint of goods and generates local employment. 

However, this assumption ignores the emissions produced during the production, processing or storage stages which often dwarf transport emissions. Other avenues to address the climate change impact of trade are more promising.

Demystifying food emissions

In the US, for example, food items travel more than 8,000 km on average before reaching the consumer. Yet transport only accounts for 11 per cent of total emissions with 83 per cent – mostly nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) emissions – occurring at the production stage.

US Department of Agriculture data on energy use in the American food system echoes this finding, showing that processing, packaging, and selling of food represent ten times the energy used to transport food.

In practice, it may be preferable from an environmental perspective to consume lamb, onion or dairy products transported by sea because the lower emissions generated at the production stage offset those resulting from transport. Similarly, growing tomatoes under heated greenhouses in Sweden is often more emissions-intensive than importing open-grown ones from Southern Europe.

Seasonality also matters. British apples placed in storage for ten months leads to twice the level of emissions as that of South American apples sea-freighted to the UK. And the type of transport is also important as, overall, maritime transport generates 25 to 250 times less emissions than trucks, and air freight generates on average five times more emissions than road transport.

Therefore, air-freighted Kenyan beans have a much larger carbon footprint than those produced in the UK, but crossing Europe by truck to import Italian wine might generate more emissions than transatlantic shipments.

Finally, one should take into account the last leg of transport. A consumer driving more than 10 km to purchase 1 kg of fresh produce will generate proportionately more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than air-freighting 1 kg of produce from Kenya.

Shifting consumption towards local foods may reduce GHG emissions in sectors with relatively low emissions intensities but, when non-carbon dioxide emissions are taken into account, this is more often the exception than the rule.

Under these circumstances, preventing trade is an inefficient and expensive way of reducing GHG emissions. Bureau et al. for example, calculate that a global tariff maintaining the volume of trade at current levels until 2030 may reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 3.5 per cent. However, this would be roughly seven times less than the full implementation of the Paris Agreement and cost equivalent to the current GDP of Brazil or 1.8 per cent of world GDP.

By preventing an efficient use of resources, such restrictions would also undermine the role of trade in offsetting possible climate-induced production shortfalls in some parts of the world and allowing people to access food when they can’t produce it themselves.

Reducing the climate footprint of trade

This is not to say that nothing should be done to tackle transport emissions. The OECD estimates that international trade-related freight accounted for over 5 per cent of total global fuel emissions with shipping representing roughly half of it, trucks 40 per cent, air 6 per cent and rail 2 per cent. With the projected tripling of freight transport by 2050, emissions from shipping are expected to rise between 50 and 250 per cent.

Furthermore, because of their international nature, these emissions are not covered by the Paris Agreement. Instead the two UN agencies regulating these sectors – the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization – are responsible for reducing these emissions and, so far, significant progress has proven elusive.

Regional or bilateral free trade agreements to further stimulate trade could address this problem by exploiting comparative advantages. Impact assessments of those agreements often point towards increases in GHG emissions due to a boost in trade flows. In the future, such agreements could incorporate – or develop in parallel – initiatives to ensure carbon neutrality by connecting carbon markets among contracting parties or by taxing international maritime and air transport emissions.

Such initiatives could be combined with providing additional preferences in the form of enhanced market access to low-carbon food and healthier food. The EU, as one of the chief proponents of bilateral and regional trade agreements and a leader in promoting a transition to a low-carbon economy could champion such an approach.

This article is part of a series from the Chatham House Global Trade Policy Forum, designed to promote research and policy recommendations on the future of global trade. It is adapted from the research paper, Delivering Sustainable Food and Land Use Systems: The Role of International Trade, authored by Christophe Bellmann, Bernice Lee and Jonathan Hepburn.

Differing approaches across the hemisphere have had different impacts on presidential popularity and, at least in one case, on democratic institutions and human rights. Yet, even within that diversity, South America’s Southern Cone countries (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) have shown a sign of solidarity: protecting and facilitating trade flows, sponsoring cross-border research and ensuring citizens’ return to their home countries.    

The response from populist leaders

On the extreme have been the responses of presidents of Brazil, Nicaragua and Mexico, all of whom have ignored the science of the virus and of experts and refused to implement isolation policies.  President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil fired his health minister, Luis Henrique Mandetta on 16 April for contradicting him and earlier had claimed that the pandemic was a hoax or little more than a ‘measly cold.' 

Meanwhile, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega has resisted closing businesses and schools.  After a mysterious 34-day absence, Ortega appeared on television on 15 April reinforcing his refusal to close businesses saying that Nicaraguans must work or they will die and claiming that the virus was ‘imported.’ 

Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has also resisted the call for strict stay-at-home policies, though with his Deputy Health Minister, Hugo López-Gatell, has closed schools – recently extending the closure to the 1st of June and urging non-essential businesses to close – but focusing primarily on social distancing. 

In contrast to his deputy health minister and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard – who had declared the situation a health emergency on 30th March, later than many neighbouring countries – AMLO has largely attempted to avoid discussion of the pandemic, claiming that in his case he has lucky charms that prevent him from contracting the virus. 

And both Bolsonaro and AMLO have participated in large public rallies, doing all the things that politicians love, shaking hands and hugging babies, and in the case of the former even wiping his nose before embracing an elderly woman.

The Nicaraguan, Brazilian and Mexican presidents make an odd grouping since one (Bosonaro) is considered of the extreme populist right and the others (Ortega and AMLO) of the populist left. What unites them is good old-fashioned populism, a belief in a leader who represents the amorphous popular will and should be unfettered by checks and balances on his power, including something like… science.  

An eclectic group

At the other extreme have been the quick responses by governments in Peru, Argentina, Chile, El Salvador and Colombia which put quarantine measures in place in mid-March. In these cases, governments have even banned outdoor activities and in the case of Peru and Colombia (in the large cities) have imposed alternating days for when women and men can leave the house so as to better control outside movement.  

This too, though, is an eclectic group. It includes a Peronist president Alberto Fernández in Argentina, conservative presidents Sebastian Piñera in Chile and Ivan Duque in Colombia, interim president and relative political neophyte Martin Vizcarra in Peru and outsider president Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. 

El Salvador’s strict quarantine measures have led to rising concerns that Bukele is using the crisis to consolidate personal power, using the national police and the armed forces to enforce the quarantine and ignoring three rulings by the Supreme Court urging the president to end the abuses. In Argentina, Peronist Fernández has shown a surprising commitment to containment even as it hurts his party’s working-class base, not something typically expected of the populist Peronist Party.   

In all of these cases, the quick, strong responses by the presidents shored up their popularity. Peru’s Vizcarra saw his popularity shoot up 35 points in a week to 82 per cent according to surveys taken in March. In late March 2020, Fernández in Argentina saw his approval ratings swell to 79.2 per cent with 94.7 percent of citizens approving of the government’s strict shelter-at-home policies.   Even presidents Piñera and Duque who had struggled with low approval ratings throughout 2019 and saw those numbers sink even lower after the social protests that ended the year have seen their numbers rise.  

According to an 20th April poll, Piñera’s popular approval rating swelled from 13 percent in March 18th at the start of the crisis to 25 per cent by 20th April; while hardly a sweeping popular mandate, even that level was unthinkable only a few months ago when administration was battered by social protests. 

In Colombia, after a series of political missteps and the popular protests, Duque’s popular approval rating had slumped to 26 per cent; by April 2nd, 62 percent of Colombians supported the once-beleaguered president.   (No recent surveys were available for Bukele in El Salvador.)

In contrast, Bolsonaro’s in Brazil has only nudged up.  Before the crisis hit, the president’s popularity had been in steady decline from a high of 49 per cent in January 2019 to 30 per cent by early December 2019. But by the first week in April, in the midst of a crisis in which other presidents saw their approval ratings increase by double digits, after his public disagreements with the health minister, Bolsonaro’s had sunk to 33 per cent while the soon-to-be-fired Mandetta’s stood at 76 per cent.  

AMLO in Mexico has fared no better. The populist leftist scored a high 86 per cent approval rating in February 1, 2019. By March 28, 2020 with concerns over his weak and flippant COVID-19 response and a severe contraction in economic growth, AMLO’s approval rating had sunk 26 points to 60 per cent and his disapproval stood at 37 per cent.    

In the midst of disharmony, coordination

Despite these differences, many countries in the region have shown the solidarity they often speak of but rarely follow in policy or practice. Peru, Chile and other countries have collaborated in repatriating citizens back to their home countries in the midst of the crisis.  

Even the countries of the Southern Cone common market, MERCOSUR, have pulled together on a number of fronts.  The trade bloc had effectively been ruled a dead-man-walking after its failed efforts to integrate Venezuela into the bloc, lowering its standards to let in the petroleum dependent semi-authoritarian government of then President Hugo Chávez. 

Even on the basics of internal cooperation, the block was struggling, unable to coordinate monetary policies and non-tariff trade barriers between the original founding member states, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The 35-year-old customs union seemed to get a breath a new life with the announcement that it had concluded 20-year-long negotiations with the EU for a free trade deal. Ratification of that deal, however, ran aground on the political differences between the recently elected governments of Bolsonaro in Brazil and the Peronist Fernández in Argentina. 

Bolsonaro refused to attend the Fernández December 2019 inauguration, in protest of the newly elected president’s leftist leanings.  And this was well before their sharply divergent reactions to the COVID-19 virus. 

How surprising then that Mercosur has served as an effective coordination mechanism for these different and once opposed governments. The trade body is collaborating among member states to ensure the repatriation of citizens and has agreed to coordinate to ensure that trade flows, especially of medical supplies, are not interrupted by shutdown measures. 

Mercosur has even gone one step further than several other bodies have failed to take.  In early April the bloc’s governing body, based in Montevideo, Uruguay created a $16 million (12 million pound) fund to augment country research and assist in the purchase of supplies needed to combat the virus.  

Now if Brazil, Argentina and the others could only coordinate their domestic coronavirus responses and economic policy. In late March Fernández announced he was pulling Argentina out of a possible Mercosur-EU trade deal.

In 2016, the then-German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, suggested a way around the impasse in east Ukraine.

He proposed that elections in the areas held by Russian-backed insurgents – the ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ (DNR) and the ‘Luhansk People’s Republic’ (LNR) –   could be held under Ukrainian legislation, with Kyiv adopting a temporary law on ‘special status’, the main disagreement between Russia and Ukraine in the Minsk Agreements. This law would become permanent once the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had declared that elections correspond with OSCE standards.

The reaction in Ukraine was strongly negative. The so-called Steinmeier Formula contradicted Kyiv’s position that elections in the occupied Donbas should only go ahead in a secure environment – requiring the prior withdrawal of Russian forces and the return of the eastern border to Ukraine’s control. It also did not address the differing views of ‘special status’; Russia demands a much greater devolution of constitutional powers to the DNR and LNR regimes than Ukraine will grant.

But on 1 October, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the new Ukrainian president, announced that he was signing up to the Steinmeier Formula. He also announced a conditional withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from two frontline areas in the east.

Quick reversal

During the 2019 presidential election campaign, Zelenskyy repeatedly promised that, if elected, he would re-energize efforts to end the war. This appealed to many Ukrainians, who understandably want the conflict over, although Zelenskyy’s eventual electoral victory was largely won on domestic issues.

But his initiative quickly ran into two problems.

First, following a major prisoner swap in September, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to judge that Zelenskyy was in a hurry to deliver his election promises and was acting without consulting France and Germany. Russia had earlier demanded that Ukraine formally agree to elections in the Donbas as the precondition for a summit of the ‘Normandy’ powers (the diplomatic format comprising leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France, which has not met since 2016).

Moreover, the US, which is not part of the ‘Normandy’ group, has seemed disengaged because of domestic controversies. Concluding that Zelenskyy was vulnerable, the Kremlin welcomed his announcement about the Steinmeier Formula but declined to assent to a summit, hoping to extract further concessions.

Second, Zelenskyy’s action triggered protests in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. Critics feared that he intended to make unilateral concessions over ‘special status’. Though he tried to assure Ukrainians that ‘there won't be any elections there if the [Russian] troops are still there’, concerns were fuelled by what many saw as his lack of openness about what the Steinmeier Formula really meant. Ukrainian public opinion wants an end to the war, but apparently not at any price.

Zelenskyy duly rowed back. During a marathon 14-hour press conference on 10 October, he emphasized that he would not surrender Ukraine’s vital interests. He also acknowledged that he had been insufficiently open with the Ukrainian public. For the time being at least, he seems to have been given pause.

A situation resistant to compromise

Instead, Zelenskyy may now attempt to ‘freeze’ the conflict by ending active operations. This is not Ukraine’s favoured outcome but could be the most realistic one in current conditions.  

Russia still calculates that time is on its side. It believes that Western support for Ukraine is lukewarm and that Kyiv will eventually have to give it what it wants. Russia clearly felt no pressure to respond positively to Zelenskyy’s overture, which it probably read as a weakness to be exploited.    

For these reasons, Zelenskyy now appears less optimistic that rapid progress to end the war is possible. A new summit of the ‘Normandy’ powers may happen but looks unlikely in the near future. This may act as an incentive for further bilateral negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, such as those which delivered the prisoner swap. However, a diplomatic process managed by Zelenskyy and Putin alone risks reducing Ukraine’s leverage. 

Finally, the main obstacles to implementation of the Minsk Agreements – radically different views of elections in, and ‘special status’ for, the DNR and LNR – remain. The Kremlin’s versions of both would gravely limit Ukraine’s sovereignty; Kyiv’s would facilitate the re-establishment of its control over the east. It is hard to see how this gap can be bridged.

Tellingly, the Steinmeier Formula offers no answer to this conundrum. Some conflicts, it seems, are resistant to diplomatic compromises that aim to satisfy everyone equally.

What does Britain’s departure from the EU mean for the country’s policy towards the South Caucasus, a small region on the periphery of Europe, fractured by conflict? Although Britain is not directly involved in any of the region’s peace processes (except in the case of the Geneva International Discussions on conflicts involving Georgia, as an EU member state), it has been a significant stakeholder in South Caucasian stability since the mid-1990s.

Most obviously, Britain has been the single largest foreign investor in Caspian oil and gas. Yet beyond pipelines, Britain also has been a significant investor in long-term civil society-led strategies to build peace in the South Caucasus.

Through what was then the Global Conflict Prevention Pool, in the early 2000s the Department for International Development (DfID) pioneered large-scale peacebuilding interventions, such as the Consortium Initiative, addressing Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, in 2003-09. These built civic networks in the South Caucasus and partnerships with British-based NGOs.

This experience left a strong intellectual legacy. British expertise on the South Caucasus, including specific expertise on its conflicts, is highly regarded in the region and across the world.

There is also a strong tradition of British scholarship on the Caucasus, and several British universities offer Caucasus-related courses. Through schemes such as the John Smith Fellowship Trust, the Robert Bosch Stiftung Academy Fellowship at Chatham House and Chevening Scholarships, significant numbers of young leaders from the South Caucasus have spent time in British institutions and built effective relationships within them.

Three challenges

This niche as a champion of long-term, strategic peacebuilding and repository of area-specific knowledge should not be lost as Britain’s relationship with the EU and regional actors evolves. This can be ensured through awareness of three challenges confronting a post-Brexit Caucasus policy.

The first challenge for London is to avoid framing a regional policy in the South Caucasus as an extension of a wider ‘Russia policy’. Deteriorating Russian-British relations in recent years strengthen a tendency to view policies in the European neighbourhood through the traditional prisms of Cold War and Russian-Western rivalries.

Yet an overwhelming focus on Russia fails to capture other important aspects of political developments in South Caucasus conflicts. Although often referred to as ‘breakaway’ or ‘occupied’ territories, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorny Karabakh are not ungoverned spaces. They have evolved into examples of what scholars call ‘de facto states’ that, to differing degrees, control territory, provide governance and exercise internal sovereignty.

Few disagree that these entities would not survive without external patronage. But neither does that patronage explain their sustainability on its own. Russia-centricity diminishes Britain’s latitude to engage on the full range of local drivers sustaining these entities, contributing instead to less effective policies predicated on competition and containment.

A second and related challenge is to maintain and develop Britain’s position on the issue of engaging populations in these entities. De facto states appear to stand outside of the international rules-based system. Yet in many cases, their civil societies are peopled by skilled and motivated activists who want their leaders to be held accountable according to international rules.

Strategies of isolation ignore these voices and contribute instead to fearful and demoralized communities less likely to engage in a transformation of adversarial relationships. Making this case with the wider international community, and facilitating the funding of local civil societies in contested territories, would be important steps in sustaining an effective British policy on the resolution of conflicts.    

The third challenge for Britain is to maintain a long-term approach to the conflicts of the South Caucasus alongside potential short-term imperatives in other policy fields, as relationships shift post-Brexit.

In this fluid international environment, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has a role to play both as an internal champion of a long-term peacebuilding strategy and a coordinator of British efforts with those of multilateral actors engaged in the South Caucasus. These include the United Nations, the EU’s Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the Crisis in Georgia and OSCE’s Special Representative for the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for the South Caucasus, all of which have built relationships with relevant actors on the ground.

Recommendations

Britain’s niche as a champion and advocate of a strategic approach to peaceful change can be secured post-Brexit in the following ways.  

First, in-house expertise is crucial to effective peacebuilding programming. The Foreign Office’s research analysts play a vital role in generating independent internal advice and liaising with academic and NGO communities. Their role could be supplemented by the reinstatement of a regional conflict adviser post, based in Tbilisi, tasked with strengthening Britain’s regional presence on conflict issues and coordinating policy at a regional level.

This post, with a remit to cover conflicts and build up area knowledge and relationships can contribute significantly to working closely with local civil societies, where so much expertise and knowledge resides, as well as other stakeholders.

Second, programming should build in conflict sensitivity by dissociating eligibility from contested political status. This can encourage local populations to take advantage of opportunities for funding, study, comparative learning and professional development irrespective of the status of the entity where they reside.

The Chevening Scholarships are an excellent example, whereby applicants can select ‘South Caucasus’ as their affiliated identity from a drop-down menu. This enables citizens from across the region to apply irrespective of the status of the territory in which they live.   

Finally, a holistic understanding of peace is crucial. Programming in unrecognized or partially-recognized entities should acknowledge that effective peacebuilding needs to embrace political dynamics and processes beyond cross-conflict contact and confidence building. Local actors in such entities may find peacebuilding funding streams defined exclusively in terms of cross-conflict contact more politically risky and ineffective in addressing domestic blockages to peace.

While cross-conflict dynamics remain critical, ‘single-community’ programming framed in terms of civic participation, inclusion, civil society capacity-building, minority and human rights in contested territories, and building the confidence from within to engage in constructive dialogue, are no less important.

The ’global Britain’ promised by Brexit remains a fanciful idea. Quiet, painstaking work to build on the legacies of a long-term British investment in a peace strategy for the South Caucasus, on the other hand, is a realistic and attainable goal.

Russia’s published development agenda to 2024 focused on gaining advantage from its human capital. In reality however, issues surrounding Russia’s population remain a major challenge, considering its demographic trends, an undoubted brain drain and societal divisions.

This expert roundtable will explore the current state of – and interconnections between – human and social capital in Russia. The speakers will also address Russia’s regional disparities, migration effects and political elite dynamics and their relationship to the population at large.

Six years after the annexation of Crimea and the start of the armed conflict in Donbas, the process of coalescing the Ukrainian society around a common civic identity remains complex. Ukraine comprises many ethno-linguistic identities, and various internal and external actors have been able to exploit old and new grievances to increase tensions at the regional and local level.

The panellists will discuss the conflict dynamics along parts of Ukraine’s international border and the line of contact with Crimea. The speakers will review the internal political, social and economic trends that cause friction and suggest ways to strengthen cohesion.

The event will build upon key findings from International Alert’s analysis of the south of Odesa, Kherson and Zakarpattia oblasts and on the reintegration of veterans in Ukraine.

This event is organized in partnership with International Alert, supported by UK aid from the UK government as part of the Peace Research Partnership programme.

 

Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo became the highest-ranking US official to visit Belarus since Bill Clinton in 1994. After meetings with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenka – who Condoleezza Rice once memorably described as ‘Europe’s last dictator’ – Pompeo said he was ‘optimistic about our strengthened relationship’. 

The EU and its member states have also changed their tune, at least a little. Previously, prosecutions of democratic activists led to sanctions against the Lukashenka regime. But his less-than-liberal manner of governance did not prevent him from visiting Austria last November or from receiving invitations to Brussels. 

Eight years ago, most EU contacts with Belarusian officials were frozen. Now, Western diplomats regularly meet with Belarusian officials again. This year, a US ambassador to Belarus will be appointed after a 12-year break.

The West is also more willing to support Belarus financially. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development invested a record-breaking $433 million in the country in 2019. The European Investment Bank only began working with the country in 2017 but already has a portfolio of $600 million.

Certain policymakers in the EU and US now, at least publicly, appear to regard Lukashenka as one of the sources of regional security and a defender of Belarusian sovereignty against Russia.

There is some truth in this. He has taken a neutral position in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine, and he has consistently resisted pressure from the Kremlin to establish a military base in Belarus.

Now, amid Moscow’s demands for deeper integration in exchange for the continuation of Russian energy subsidies, Lukashenka has shown reluctance to sell his autonomy. In a token attempt to portray sovereignty Belarus even started buying oil from Norway, although this makes no economic sense.

But Lukashenka’s long-term record shows he has done little to ensure the country’s sovereignty. Lukashenka has resisted reforms that would have strengthened the economy (because they would have weakened his own position). The political system is also dependent on Russia because Lukashenka has been unwilling to build better relations with the West. Belarusians are still strongly influenced by Russian culture and media because the authorities marginalize their own national identity.

Since the conflict in Ukraine in 2014, Lukashenka’s primary goal has not been to strengthen the sovereignty of Belarus, but to preserve his absolute control over the country.

For example, when in 2018 Russia started pressing Belarus to deepen its integration in order to retain economic support, Minsk did not reject this approach outright; instead, it discussed no less than 31 ‘road maps’ for deepening integration for more than a year, hoping to receive more benefits. For Lukashenka, greater dependency on Russia is a matter of price and conditions, not principle. 

None of this is to say Belarus has illusions about Russia. It is just that Lukashenka does not take long-term steps to protect the country’s sovereignty or to strengthen relations with the West.

Belarus needs to start economic reform with the support of the International Monetary Fund, but this cannot happen without Lukashenka’s genuine commitment to transform the economy. Absence of cross-sectoral reform has led to the deterioration of the education system as well as unprecedented emigration. Few Belarusian experts are optimistic about their country’s future. Lukashenka knows all this, but does not change his system, fearing it would damage the stability of his regime.  

The West should therefore adopt a broader policy. Lukashenka is unlikely to still be president in 10–15 years, so policymakers should develop relations with the broader ruling elite, which will remain after he leaves, and try to be present in Belarus as much as possible helping it to improve public governance and develop private businesses.

The West should also support the country’s civil society and independent media, for whom Belarusian independence is a matter of principle rather than something to be bargained away.

Lukashenka may be a strong leader, but the state he has built is weak.