Daily Class Meeting Information:

PolS 310: International Organizations

May Term 2012

 

Department of Political Science

Mary Baldwin College, Staunton, Virginia USA

Prof. Gordon L. Bowen


this page last updated May 14, 2012

Linked below are leads to resources used in each day's class, including some screen projections used in class, supplemental materials referred to during lecture, and other items.  Click on the box below to go to the links for each day's class.

April 25 April 26 April 27 April 30 May 1
May 2 May 3 May 4 May 7 May 8
May 9 May 10 May 11 May 14 May 15

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Days One, Wednesday April 25:  Course Introductions. 

 

 

Day Two, Thursday April 26: Roots of the U.N. System.  Please complete readings before class, as assigned in the course syllabus.  Before class read and come ready to discuss:  Weiss et.al., pp. xlii-28 (Introduction and Chapter One: The Theory of Collective Security). Discussion of sovereignty, collective security and theories of peace.

Bowen also will lecture on the history of International Organizations, the League of Nations and its doctrine of Collective Security.  Several cases prior to the founding of the U.N. will be addressed.  A brief film, "Heritage of War," will form part of our session.

Daily class notes projected onto the screen during class today will be linked here.

Course resources available supporting this lesson include:

Day Three, Friday April 27 : A first test for the United Nations: The Partition of Palestine and the Founding of Israel; and its after effects.

Before class please read the assignments in the syllabus, i.e.:

Daily class notes projected onto the screen during class today will be linked here. 

Supplemental (optional) resources: Additionally, a supplemental webpage entitled "The Roots of Israel" here on this website contains further development of the interpretations conveyed during today's PowerPoint presentation.  A second article by Prof. Bowen (not assigned, but useful), "Israel is Necessary," also would reinforce arguments related to those made in today's presentation.

Class today will chiefly be a presentation/lecture by Prof. Bowen on the roles of the League of Nations, United Nations, and U.N. Peacekeepers in the founding of Israel and the channeling of conflict in the Middle East region thereafter.

 

Day Four, Monday April 30 : The U.N., Security and Peacekeeping during the Cold War: Lebanon.  Before class read and come ready to discuss:  Weiss et.al., pp. 29-45.  Part of class today will concern the roles of international organizations in the Middle East during this era.  Foci are likely to include the role of U.N. Peacekeepers in Lebanon.

Daily class notes projected onto the screen during class today will be available after class here.

Extra credit enrichment activity: Tonight at 7:00 PM at Temple House of Israel, 15 N. Market St., Staunton, August Country Commonwealth Attorney and local criminal prosecutor Robin Boylan will speak on "Nazi War Criminal Trials in America: Justice Delayed."  Mr. Boylan spent 33 years working for the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Justice, including time at the F.B.I. working on cases involving the Latvian and Hungarian collaborators with the Nazis who improperly found sanctuary in the U.S. after the war.  Students attending will receive insight into the issues surrounding post-conflict justice that, with a more contemporary focus is our course topic on May 4 and May 8; and will receive extra credit in this course.   Attendance is open to the public and you are welcome to invite interested friends.  The talk will take place in the social hall at the rear of the building: enter through the side door that opens to the public parking lot on Market St.

 

Day Five, Tuesday May 1 : Security Operations after the Cold War: Somalia.

Please complete readings before class, as assigned in the course syllabus.  These include Weiss on Somalia.  

Daily class notes projected onto the screen during class today will be available after class: follow this link.  Class today will view the film "Black Hawk Down."  As the film is fairly long, bring your popcorn pre-popped.  It is possible that class will go a few minutes longer than 12:30 today.

Other resources of value:

 

Points to consider, questions to weigh in class discussion today:

We also should consider and in class may examine the aftereffects of U.N. failure in Somalia, and the efficacy of actions there by regional I.O.s (i.e., the African Union), and unilateral international actions in Somalia during the years since the 1993-95 debacle.  Prof. Bowen is likely to mention the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, December 2006-January 2007, and its role in bringing to an end the rule of the faction known as the Council of the Islamic Courts in Mogadishu.  While apparently a solely and completely Ethiopian operation, this Ethiopian operation clearly appears to have facilitated further operations in Somalia by U.S. counter-terrorism forces, believed to operate from the Combined Joint Task Force in Djibouti.  The Task Force seems to do many things, including civic action projects (e.g., well digging for villages) in Djibouti and more traditional counterinsurgency / counter-terrorism components throughout the Horn of Africa.  On at least two occasions in recent years, Predator drones or other U.S. aircraft have destroyed vehicles on the ground in Somalia that were believed to have Al Qaeda operatives in them.  (Follow this link for details.) For more information about the U.S. presence in Djibouti, please see the brief analysis of the Task Force at the private website Global Security.  These actions relate to the rising power in Somalia of the al-Shabaab militia (which loosely translates as "the lads"), an Al Qaeda aligned force that seeks to impose rigid Islamic law on the territory. 

Islamist extremists have a history in Somalia.  Note: On April 15, 2004, Osama bin Laden claimed that the 1993-94 violence that drove the U.S. to withdraw from Somalia was done by his group.   This claim lacks much credibility, as the forces behind the conflict in Somalia were diverse.  Even if our main adversary, the militia of Mohammed Fareed Aideed, received some assistance from Al Qaeda, the largest elements in its appeal and in its power derived from Somalis' involvement, not from global jihadist support or inspiration.

The problem of piracy off the coast of Somalia, and the potential dangers it has posed to international shipping and other seaborne activities, are a different issue, addressed by the navies of several states including the U.S., but not by the U.N.  Recently (i.e., April 27, 2010), however, voices have been heard arguing that the proper venue for trials of the Somali pirates is a U.N. court, not the U.S. courts in which trials are proceeding.  The Security Council on that date passed a Russian-sponsored resolution calling for such a court to be established.  In 2010-12, trials of pirates have taken place in German courts, and in a U.S. tribunal in Norfolk, Virginia.

Prof. Bowen also may give a brief presentation on the roles of the African Union, Uganda, and other regional states (e.g., Eritrea, Sudan) in the contemporary conflict in Somalia, as well as an introductory overview of the roots of Islamic extremism in the region.

 

Day Six, Wednesday May 2: Descent into Genocide in the former Yugoslavia: what role for the U.N.?

Daily class notes from today's course meeting will be available after class: follow this link.

Please complete readings before class, as assigned in the course syllabus.  These include Prof. Bowen with background on what are War Crimes, Weiss on Bosnia  and Rieff, “The Institution that Saw No Evil,” The New Republic (Feb. 12, 1996): (5pp).  Rieff, a reporter on the ground in Bosnia through most of the grisly war, provides a synopsis of his devastating (and, regrettably, poorly organized) book, Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1995). There was an error in the assigned reading by Weiss, in which two indicted war criminals, the wartime Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic and his chief commanding General Ratko Mladic, had their names and roles garbled.  Correct names and titles are here.

Supplemental materials worth a look prior to class:

Class today first will have a presentation by Prof. Bowen that will provide background on the road to war in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia.  We then will view a film, "The Peacekeepers: How the U.N. Failed in Bosnia" (ABC News, April 24, 1995), on U.N. Peacekeeping and its role; and then will discuss what we have learned.  Bowen's talk will likely make these points:

In our first hour plus we will examine the setting presented by the former Yugoslavia.  The six republics that composed it (1919-1991), will be introduced as we begin trying to understand the outbreak of war in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.  Points of focus may include:

  • their differing national identities and historic religious affiliations of their people,

  • the relative homogeneity / heterogeneity of their populations 

  • the uneven management of declining economic conditions in the 1980s

  • differences between Yugoslavian life under communism from other East European states

  • the impact of democratization on Yugoslav national unity

  • the roles of determined political elites in fostering popular national uprisings first against Communism, and ultimately against other ethnicities and followers of other religions.

  • Prof. Bowen's contention is that Robert Kaplan (in his bestselling book Balkan Ghosts) was wrong: it was not "ancient enmities" among the peoples of the Balkans that produced war.  The wars in the 1990s were willfully constructed conflicts and they were chosen by specific individuals --social and political leaders-- in each community.  Non-elites in each community then were drawn in to fighting, but they were led to it by their contemporaries, not by anything deep within themselves.  And while balance requires the phrase "each community" to be used to encompass the broad responsibility for what happened, all communities were not equally to blame in this.

  • The revival of Serbian nationalism in the 1980s, and its impact on the unity of the Yugoslavian League of Communists, and Yugoslavian unity, was the key factor precipitating these changes.  (The concept of nationalism in general is explained by following the link).  The impact of the personality of the late  President of Serbia Slobodan Milosevic needs to be emphasized.  Though other ideologies of nationalism also revived among Croats and some others during the 1980s, it was the political significance of the Serbian revival that set the conflicts in the 1990s in motion.

 

Day Seven, Thursday May 3: Justice after Catastrophe: A U.N. Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. 

Daily Class notes projected onto the screen today will be available after class: follow this link.

Please complete readings before class, as assigned in the course syllabus. 

Before class read and come ready to discuss the issues raised in the online  Bowen essay on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (originally written in 1999). 

A good portion of the class will review the case about the U.N. in Yugoslavia through a film focused on holding those responsible for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, and especially, the role played by Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic, the “World’s Most Wanted Man.”  

Karadzic was arrestedon July 20, 2009, i.e. after that film was made.  He currently is on trial at the ICTY in the Hague, Netherlands.  What the international community has done and can do about characters such as Karadzic and Mladic should focus our discussion. 

Additional resources for motivated students: 

 

 

Questions for discussion:

  Day Eight, Friday May 4:  Human Rights, Genocide, and the United Nations: the Holocaust, Guatemala, Darfur, the Former Yugoslavia, Rwanda

Notes projected onto the screen that supported today's class will be available after class: follow the link.

Please complete readings before class, as assigned in the course syllabus.  These include a general discussion by Weiss in the core text, pp 149-175, a U.N. document (i.e., the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), a background chapter about Guatemala by Prof. Bowen.

Additional supplemental (optional) reading: materials about the U.S. role in Guatemala prepared by Prof. Bowen.

In class we will engage the issues of what constitute human rights, will view a 2010 film about genocide in Guatemala, Rwanda and other places (Daniel Goldhagen's "Worse than War"), and will discuss the issues raised in readings, presentation and film.

Supplemental materials for motivated students include:

Day Nine, Monday May 7: Human Rights, Genocide, and the United Nations: Rwanda

Following up further on materials addressed Friday, a film on Rwanda, the award-winning account "Ghosts of Rwanda,"  will be shown and discussed.

Class notes projected onto the screen to support today's class will be available after class.

Please complete readings before class, as assigned in the course syllabus.  These include Samantha Power's essay "Bystanders to Genocide" from Atlantic Monthly (Sept. 2001), and Weiss on Rwanda. 

PBS online's background website about the "Ghosts of Rwanda," is linked here. 

Supplemental materials:

 

Day Ten, Tuesday May 8 : Establishing Justice after Genocide: Rwanda.

Class notes projected onto the screen to support today's class will be available after class.

Today we will examine the efforts to establish justice in light of the Rwandan genocide.  U.N. and other actors' efforts will be analyzed.

Today's class meeting will provide students the opportunity to meet McCall Carter, an attorney with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.  We are likely to hear about post-genocide legal remedies undertaken by the United Nations in regard to both the Yugoslavian Tribunal or ICTY (located at the Hague, Netherlands) and the Rwanda Tribunal (at Arusha, Tanzania), from which the interview will be conducted.

Ms. Carter is a native of Staunton who entered MBC as part of its PEG program, and who graduated in 2007 with majors in international relations and political science.  After graduation, Carter attended law school at Washington University in St. Louis, MO.  During her law school years she interned at the ICTY, serving in various capacities including as part of one defense team.  After graduation from law school, she has continued to focus on international justice issues, and has been working at the ICTR since early in 2012.

During class, it is likely we will discuss with McCall the structure of the pursuit of justice in both of the Tribunals (i.e., how the trial process differs from U.S. courtrooms), the preparations being made for successor institutions that are to replace these Tribunals in the next couple years, how trials are conducted in them, what her role is, and any and all other issues about the U.N. legal accountability process you students may wish clarified. 

She also can be a knowledgeable resource about law school and other topics that may interest students.  This is a rare opportunity to learn more about potential future directions you may be considering.  Take advantage of it by asking thoughtful questions.

 

Please complete readings before class, as assigned in the course syllabus.  I.e., Samantha Power's 1998 essay on this topic: "Never Again: The world's most unfulfilled promise",  which details how the international community, and Americans, have turned away from stopping war crimes.  Prof. Power now serves in the Obama Administration as Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the National Security Council.  Additionally, she is chairman of the Atrocities Prevention Board, and official advisory body created by Pres. Obama in August 2011.

A Timeline of the Rwandan case is linked here.  

Questions to consider:

  • Human rights expert Samantha Power wrote that:

    " ‘mere genocide’ could not pass a Pentagon cost-benefit analysis.”

    • What does this perspective suggest about the U.S. response to the Rwandan genocide?

    • Is this view sufficient to explain the behavior of diplomats and White House as well?  Why or why not?

  • Consider the behavior of the U.N. head of peacekeeping in New York at the time of the Rwandan crisis, Kofi Annan: did he play a commendable role in the Rwandan genocide?  What explanations did he or other U.N. officials offer for their behavior?  Are these explanations adequate?  How, if at all, do they harmonize with Power’s critical points?

 

Day Eleven, Wednesday May 9 :  Humanitarian and Security Challenges to the U.N. system, and to the U.S., in the years since the Rwandan genocide.

Class notes projected onto the screen today will be available after class: follow this link.

Please complete all assignments for today as directed on the course syllabus.

In class we will focus on British intervention in Sierra Leone (2000) and NATO intervention in Kosovo (1999).

 

Day Twelve, Thursday May 10: Applying Human Rights Standards in a Changing Age.

Class notes projected onto the screen today will be available after class: follow this link.

 

Please complete readings before class, as assigned in the course syllabus.  Review earlier reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). 

Additional (supplemental, optional) reading opportunities:

 

Day Thirteen, Friday May 11: Humanitarian Intervention and the "War on Terrorism." 

Please complete readings before class, as assigned in the course syllabus; these include Weiss on post 9/11 humanitarian intervention.

Class notes projected onto the screen today will be available after class: follow this link.

In class we will discuss the NATO+ operation in Libya (2011) and the current situation in Syria.  Please be attentive to the news about Syria and come ready to take a position on the question of whether the U.S. should support a U.N.-backed intervention in Syria.

 

Day Fourteen, Monday May 14: Groping into the 21st century: reform of the U.N.?

Please complete readings before class, as assigned in the course syllabus.

All independent report bibliographies are due at the start of class today.

Class notes projected onto the screen today will be available after class: follow this link.

 

 

Tuesday May 15: Final Exam: Before class purchase at the Book Store prior to class and bring to the test a Blue Book / Green Book Test Taking Booklet.  Write your name on its cover, only.

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