Today, I'm delighted to introduce our speaker microphone to our Shaumbra.
He is former U.N. assistant secretary general political affairs.
He has 43, 34 years of experience working for the U.N., but also the OSCE.
And he was in many of the world's trouble spots, and that includes Haiti.
He's got his start in Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Sierra Leone.
He also had assignments in Syria, Somalia, the Balkans.
And it's I have read his index on the ground, knowledge of all those conflicts that we are studying.
And he's experienced in a range of different U.N. activities that include both the development side,
the humanitarian side, but obviously also political affairs and peacekeeping.
And most importantly, he's also a former CCW visiting fellow.
So without further ado, I'd like to give you the hook,
and I think you very much think about for arranging it and think of how much for you all to come.
You know, the argument I want to make today is that the time of war among states is basically finished.
That's at least what the statistic indications are. What we have to deal with in the future, especially now, is all intrastate wars.
The intrastate might be a misconception because it goes across often back across
the border because it defined as wars between government and non-state actors.
non-State actors very often being 16121 recognised borders.
So we have often this big regional, a cacophony of intra state loss.
What I want to say in this one is ORZULAK has become so dominant, and I think in future it will become even more dominant because of climate change,
because of population increases, because of the economic inequalities, because of the limited resources since all of a sudden 11 billion people.
But I think with this type of conflict, we can take more. The second argument I want to make this really where I want to spend my time on
is that we have not found in our response how to deal with intrastate countries.
That's at least what I would argue. I'm stuck on the other side. So I will talk to you in three levels.
First of all, tell you what I think is really the difference between war among the states, two wars within states.
And the second thing is, I will look at the main sort of typical interventions we do in intrastate wars, and maybe none of them really as successful.
And finally, I will make some conclusions. Why is it that we haven't found the answers to the things?
And what I suggest, what has to be done in the future?
I want to emphasise that the first two parts I would call you might not agree with it.
But I would call on it because they are all political.
Whatever you think politically, I think that is in my view, you have to see what the discussion would be on the undertaking for growth.
The last point is long political. And I hope by this time you have not all left the room.
And you listen to me what I have to say in my offices on the Politico before I saw this,
when I wanted to make three points about my presentation, because here in Oxford,
I'm not an academic,
I'm coming from the practical world and the so I have not made a stretch of all these industry contracts and made some statistics and the whole thing.
And all of what I do is basically having been 34 years in one country and the other,
so what have I accumulated some knowledge and I will also bring here most examples from countries I've actually been into,
not countries that when you have sort of discussed things like this one and I would still say despite all the diversity we have in this,
in each one, our country is of course, very different.
And that what I'm saying, I would argue and you argue that I'm wrong, but I think to take a position on this one,
that these points are applied to all interesting conflicts in one way or another.
And I can only say that's based on experience, not based on academic research, but that's why we have CCW.
And let's say something you about CCW. And just this last point I want to make that I believe they often speak about me.
I usually in many presentations, I get back at least 5 million views on something that is one that I want to emphasise.
And also the critique I have of course involves me too.
I was also believing that certain things would happen a certain way and I was actually also an agent for all of these type of things.
So I was part of this whole thing and also therefore part of the development of the thinking.
So I when I speak about me, I generally mean the rest.
It is made class countries. It is not is a critique of the West.
It's not an obligation you find a conclusion from it is that we have to change our
policies across the board to so much change how we deal with confidence about us.
You first say a few things about you. The first time my life apart, you know, it wasn't Iraq, I said.
But we see the American military. You have lost the war in Iraq based benchmarks and PowerPoint presentations because you can't meet
an American general without immediately coming to the parliament because some allergic impact.
Since you paid for my flight, I think I have to bring something it.
So this is this is a Taylor which comes from the abstract because the data program, they usually are the people who sort of register armed conflict.
So that was it is very interesting that you see that it starts from the end of the Second World War Two almost today.
You see that the blue line, we don't have any more of these type of wars.
These are basically colonial wars. Yes, they are not anymore.
But the problem, the thing that is worse among states and you see they are less and less.
We always think that this is actually our problem,
whereas this one and the grey one that was interesting was this one is where the washed up is out front and dimensions.
This is where you have a form of dimension that they all intrastate.
So you see already, right, this is only numbers. How many was defined as having, I think 25 deaths per year or more?
That's not much. And you see that. But what is not in such a statistics and very often statistics of course,
like is great is of course one thing is doesn't reflect and that is the Cold War after this time.
We had a Cold War. Now, we had always assumed these are proxy wars.
These are just signals that they were no longer proxy wars from here on.
And the interesting thing is, if I remember that at the time of the UN,
what we had expected in the political department is that vis a vis a breakdown of the UN system between the Soviet system and the Western system,
the grip on countries with. And when you think,
for instance on the Syria only conflict now America didn't want to intervene in a more the you
can for ask why might solve it wrong and we thought it would increase of wars among states.
They were suddenly free to settle their borders, their conflicts, their rights.
Whose resources and order. It's really astonishing what's happened there that actually intrastate wars increased.
Now they would tell us why, but it's simply a fact of life.
The interesting thing was it was today a big issue not once among states.
And for anybody who wants to criticise, the U.N. should not forget the U.N. was created all to prevent wars and nice things,
never interesting and that we don't have any war anymore.
This is actually also something to do with the U.N. charter, although getting get much of the second.
The next one is the technology to make this just click on the right one.
This is very difficult to read, but it's also a table from them. This is looks now at a time post Cold War.
And what you see this blue line here.
These are people killed because you can say, okay, we have so many wars that many of these wars, very few people don't always say.
Sad about that. Very important. How many people give the indication of the intensity of wars?
Now you see that it is since 2004, completely flat.
Never happened in history before for such a long time.
What do you really have? A second Gulf War from the first Gulf War?
What this one is this is basically the Eritrean Ethiopian conflict which killed a lot of people.
In my definition, I would have put it under I'm interesting countries because this is a war after
they separated from one country where they fought over the problem of the borders.
It's a typical follow up on a conflict which is actually interesting.
It only happens that both became members of the U.N. and then statistically we would fall into this line.
But from the whole type of conflict, this should really be there.
Then you see that typically the the the traditional wars among states with proper armies are only these little heaps since then.
So since the end of the Cold War. Wars among states have basically not the economic system they want, not the prime thing.
And it's the first time in human history that entire states was, of course, always existed.
And it's the first time that two things happened that they are now becoming the sole concern for security.
The second thing is that what happens in intrastate conflicts because of globalisation will affect us all.
Before what happened in Ethiopia, what happened maybe after the revolution, Russia really didn't catch us too much.
But what happens now? It will catch us all. So it has become interesting, the issue for international peace and security.
Now let me say a few things about the differences and that this is the most stupid thing I'm doing,
things like this one because you can't read it, but maybe people one time afterwards, some of it.
I want to talk, not how to prevent war or armed conflicts.
I would only talk how to respond.
Once interstate war in the world, wars emerge or sort of explode into a full fledged wars.
So it is a response to something that already happens that's very important.
Prevention would be a completely different thing. Now, what do we do if we have a war?
So called was always interested in armed conflicts between states and among states.
The biggest issue is that when you want to end the war among states, you separate armies and you separate populations.
That usually comes along because it's usually on the borderline anyway. You cannot do that in intrastate wars.
How do you bring peace to Aleppo? You have the Christians, you have sweet Sunni Arabs and Muslims.
As Sunni Arabs, you have Shiite are all sort of different religions and groups in the average fight each other.
You have to find a way to integrate this, and that is far more difficult than this one.
And because of this one, then you look, for instance, of all the U.N. peacekeeping operations which deal with wars,
and they are basically only in the first before the Cold War, they were all cease fires.
You have not a single peace agreement here.
You always have tried to achieve a peace agreement, a peace agreement,
because we had to find a way how people who fought each other before can live together without killing their neighbours.
We shouldn't forget this moment, but it was not.
The other problem is when you want to end things in this war and I've come afterwards Iran-Iraq war,
and here in Sierra Leone, there was no negotiations between governments.
So you had people who had that unique authority over what is decided, usually to sometimes more.
But Iran-Iraq was what do you do? So the biggest issue was government to government here.
It's very unclear. First of all, it's governments, non-government actors and are often several months of them also from the government side.
On the government side, you have very often to the also illegal militia forces and things like this one.
So the whole thing becomes extremely complicated.
And on this type of war, the military command and control structure is relatively clear and reliable.
If Iran decides to end the war, it's a war because their military structure, they would have internal problems and things are not that easy.
But it is a clear military command control structure.
You will never have that on the side. And this comes back to the peace agreements by peace agreements falls so quickly apart.
This is a clear issue of which we don't know how to deal with.
The other thing, it's international. You see this in wars among states.
We have a clear international law, relatively clear. It's a U.N. charter and it's a humanitarian law and so on.
And many other it's somehow defined. And these countries or these governments, we have a number of these international conventions.
They might not apply to them, but they're still involved. Once you come to the other type of conflict,
you have a lot of parties which that which would not recognise international law because they have never signed up to it.
They say that's a Western saying that's, you know, whatever that's to to push us down, whatever.
There is no international law for intrastate conflicts.
We try somehow ICC to apply humanitarian law, but it has not gone anywhere.
Really. It's not automatic with this. Yes.
There's never signed the U.N., U.N. human rights conventions or you want to take off.
That means very often that the government acts accordingly.
You know, that's it also goes outside things.
The next point, which is so difficult, I say, from the point of view from the U.N., is the role of the U.N.
Assuming you have the U.N. in this type of wars, it depends on impartiality.
So in the Iran-Iraq war, we have not ruled out what happens politically in both countries.
We are focusing of separating the army, someone who technically still thinks impartiality and watching for respect for the U.N. flag,
because both sides have agreed that we should do that. And therefore, the monitors are very few and very likely out here.
The U.N. is always party to the country. The U.S. had peacekeepers into the fray of Mali or other things.
Your party, your party or even the civilians.
And if you remember the bombing of the UN canal in Baghdad, in two bombings of it, it was in a way illegitimate, actually.
I mean. Because the Sunni Arabs who opposed what we did saw as being invited by a not legitimate government which was put in place by the U.S.,
by the by occupation forces. So we were there illegally in this country, and we would take the side of the government of the cross.
Those I think it's called administrative council at the time being and all of those things and the occupying forces.
So we were actually part of the enemy.
And if you have always this discussion before anybody ever accepted to you and flat and now they don't do it anymore.
And the reason is that before we had many conflicts between states.
Now we have conflict inside states. The aftermath of the conflict, Mali, everywhere we are, conflict.
And of course, the U.N. is not more armed.
You have increased the mandate of peacekeepers and they could forcefully defend the mandate to not only be lightly armed,
it has my not my, in my view, a great mistake. Then the second was his indicated and their ceasefire agreement.
We never bother about the post-conflict peacekeeping or anything like this one.
You just leave these countries.
You're not going to India and Pakistan to redo their administrations or you don't give humanitarian aid or something like this one,
this, this, this, this, this doesn't this doesn't exist in this one here.
It does. And that means here a conflict always means that you want to reform the government or establish a government, maybe a security sector reform,
then judicial reform, creating human rights commissions and the electoral commissions and all these sort of gadgets.
And, of course, a lot of development aid and a lot of humanitarian aid here.
Often the humanitarian development aid is larger than the cost of a U.N. force in Iraq.
You would never have such. So it's worked much better.
Also from the internal U.N. unit is, of course, an organisation where every department has institutional interest.
The conflict in your own back among the U.N. agencies didn't exist because everybody had to work.
They didn't have anything to develop inside, did nothing do with it. Now we have to work together.
And that's what goes so terribly bad here.
It's working together among different parts of the U.N., which have different operating principles and different interests.
And you have so. That's the only time you look at me, Gordon Dixon.
We give you this an example. Maybe it becomes clear because these are the two things I was involved in Iran and going off the Iran-Iraq war and.
And of course, also to Syria out of typical cease fire agreement accepting of U.N. Security Council Resolution five, nine, eight.
It was accepted and the war ended. There was no fighting anymore afterwards.
You know, peacekeepers there, about 2400 of them.
400 of them. No peacekeeper was killed in action during the time because both sides accepted it.
The population involved to end the war is 85 million.
Those people who were killed you couldn't get decent enough who were killed in this war was here about 700,000.
Here we have an impartial U.N. mission. Didn't care about the human rights abuses in Iraq like Iraq.
Simply nothing better than what would happen politically, even when we had our counterparts on the Iraqi side,
something the genuine some of the disappeared that we assumed was taken prisoner that were not trusted by Saddam anymore.
He would never say a word if it was simply focusing on making sure that in certain areas that do move 20 kilometres from the border,
the other 50 kilometres from the border,
depending on the type of weapons and things like this one that could be easily monitored by them, by helicopter and things like this one.
This was, of course, the last the last Cold War.
I think we should not forget our Western special U.S. involvement on the Iraqi side.
It would never have been a chemical warfare was taking.
I've seen it on the other side. It was awesome. Now, look at scenario one.
They signed a peace agreement with one of the worst peace agreements you could imagine.
And it was also accepted by the parties. But these parties were meeting outside the country.
That's not necessarily what the people thought inside. We had here for the country, which had a population of only 6 million people.
We had 17,000 U.N. peacekeepers, 17,000 compared to 85,000,004 hundred peacekeepers.
You see how deep the huge differences in this country.
70,000 people died. So all estimates, he had ten times as many.
How likely this whole thing was, how easy it was. And that was peacekeeping actually done for?
It was never done for this type of thing, although we got very, very involved in the Congo and things like this one.
And of course, here we were part of the conflict actually. The U.N. took over the entire security of the entire country until 2005.
All the provinces, all the borders. It was all U.N. force. There was no police.
There was no army anymore. We dissolved police. We dissolved the army.
We decommissioned everybody.
We've been decommissioning was so successful that afterwards the town complained that they couldn't protect their fields again by any means anymore.
And then during the four years I was there, there was only one person killed by a fire.
And four years in a country before killing was basically a thing of the day.
I was very successful in doing that, but it was, of course, enormous.
I mean, if we drafted the Constitution, we did the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
It has a huge, massive humanitarian assistance to sort of the population that left to be there.
They have to be brought back there. I mean, it was a massive operation.
In addition to the peacekeeping and of course, there was all these government institutions, there was nothing like we did here.
It is so completely different.
And if you read the latest article from Sydney this year about peacekeepers, then I think she has never been in these missions.
She seems to ignore that. That goes from one type of peacekeeping to the other.
She doesn't realise that you're talking about completely different things when you talk about interesting.
It's just a sort of a continuum. It is not a continuum. It is a huge break.
And we, of course, tried to introduce a Western model of governance which wasn't here.
We want to know is based on how many successful elections evolve and whether it's wise to change the political party within government.
But that happens very rarely. So what I wanted to say was these two of these tables and that's my first point,
is you have to understand that we talk about two very, very different things, and that really scared you.
What I want to say to you is. You can't read this all.
But I just said you know maybe somehow I think for issues here and begin each down into on which I want to
see what we do with intrastate conflicts and why it doesn't work for us is military based interventions.
And I really distinguishes between military intervention, direct interventions like the U.S. National Peace Corps and Peacekeeping.
And I will talk about how we relate with local parties and religion to see if the government and the recognition of armed non-state actors.
And then I will speak about the challenges to this new nation state,
nationhood and national various government sovereignty, the issue of sovereignty and the issue of self-determination.
And finally, I want to talk about peace agreements, elections and the constitution.
If you don't. The ripple fact, you see.
In the last ten years, the most severe interventions and intrastate conflicts are from military operations.
According to the Office of the Conflict Peace Conflict, there are countries that they can program the country.
You simply looks at our research in 1919 and in 2015, 92% and 93% of the figures of all those people killed in intrastate wars,
in wars went in those wars where the foreign power had 93%, 11,091%, and last percent, 70, I think estimate was the 89%.
So around 90% of all people are killed in those four speaking.
Intervene has something to do with parties that wasn't more important.
But I think it has a lot to do by interventions, people in a completely different military and government, and especially the American government.
And, you know, soon those people killed. It's by some estimates, 40,000.
And it's all by an effort by the Russians.
I mean, whoever. I don't like the CIA who doesn't. This is the thing.
Now, if you look at it, there is no international law which justifies human intervention.
Just in context. I would argue not. Putin would say no, but I would cite past.
And then we look at this where.
And you look at the UN charter document. It says for me, what is the revolutionary about the charter?
Then it says You should not use military force anymore because of our countries.
But it seems very clearly it is only somewhere.
It's only for international relations if the territorial integrity of another state is in jeopardy.
That's how they define conflict. They don't define that this interesting conflict is one such a thing.
And so it is only the UN Charter is only if you always forget this.
What we do today is not covered by the charter. The Charter was to prevent wars among states, and we don't have them anymore.
So if Russia goes into Syria or the United States goes into Syria or whatever, they all do at the time, the justification, the charter even clear.
I don't know why I don't have enough these documents and they seem clear on the whole thing as it and and it saves.
You have to trust the Member States to refrain from the any in the international relations as a relation with the nation
state of from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.
That's nothing. This is nothing interesting. Edition. Then it says nothing of the president.
Chavez should authorise the U.S. to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.
That means it has to even exclude it deliberately that we intervene in the interest of countries.
Now, there's always a trick, and that's a trick we used. It's Article 51 and article.
Article 51 says nothing in the present charter shaped impair the inherent right of individual or collective.
Not secure the collective self-defence. If any armed conflict occurs against a member state, the species.
The right to self-defence. This one means that the country is attacked by an outside force.
It does not justify that the government says, oh, I have a, you know, position I can't get rid of.
Maybe. Maybe you come in and have me to to to to deal with this opposition.
It's not the problem we have always used because in the conditioning it was only the West to intervene.
We have always used this argument saying that collectively, in the eyes of justification, the government,
government has in mind has to become we have to abide by the charter because I said you might now change your mind,
because now I shall have to say he is message to Saudi Arabia.
Turkey doesn't say. I mean, you have many other things on the other stuff.
You might have to rethink our position on. Especially now that Trump's withdrawing troops from these countries,
that maybe the West is tired of giving military alternatives to a deep sea field open to others.
If they would only use the argument you always have used to intervene in other countries militarily, like in the Balkans.
I mean, what would have happened, James? So I think we have to be hopefully.
Let me come to peacekeeping. They are involved in peacekeeping now.
Peacekeeping is not fighting the Chinese. That's not where peacekeeping doesn't exist.
No. Oh, really? Okay.
Peacekeeping? No, at the time we have a great deal and don't have a great problem.
How can an organisation which just rejected always to all involved in conflicts, invite the military to help them to maintain cease fires?
So they came as a great idea that we have to find people.
We don't call them soldiers anymore. You call them peacekeepers, which is already a misnomer because peacekeeping, there was no peace to keep.
It was always a cease fire to keep a peacekeeping force on effect.
So we called them peacekeepers, but they invented three principles impartiality, mutual agreement and minimum use of force.
If you think what I said about the Iran-Iraq war, both governments agreed it didn't matter what happened politically.
Most people are impartial and b they're actually after their money.
Just want you to sign arms in intrastate conflicts.
You don't have that. These three principles make absolutely no sense.
There is no way we would get an agreement from this or from from from other opposition groups.
That would be very clear. We would never, ever reach an agreement and we are never impartial.
And of course, we have to be heavy on some types of like which I think is a grave mistake.
So this what do you do now? And we almost all our interventions now in interesting countries,
we live on guiding principles for us, which makes absolutely no sense, but we have never changed it.
Because of the timing, sir, if you go down this one there, we'll have the same problem.
You know why elections don't work? Why constitutions don't work?
Why the. Why do you have a problem of sovereignty?
That's me talking about what state do you know that sovereignty, national sovereignty is not once mentioned in the U.N. charter.
You know. You always so to mention some of you are trying to you solve with your own you haven't is an adjective but it's one says sovereign equality.
But it means that all countries have a say you say which they must look at it.
So it. But it doesn't say that these sovereign. So state sovereignty.
So we have made this up as the job is far more advanced than we ought to have it.
The other thing is the whole thing about self-determination.
It actually was invented by Trotsky, but then propagated by Wilson in the First World War and was not one of the 14 points,
but basically it was the argument to it to dissolve also an Indian empire and then the politics of Germany after that.
But we don't know what it means. It never sees it.
When Woodrow Wilson called by the self-determination of races because there tends to be an issue of peoples not in the UN charter.
Difficult. A lot of people would, and it's a huge problem because many of the non-state actors are separate movements.
Let me also take this one very quickly, because it's so important which government is legitimate that if we interview, that's a real issue.
When does a government is legitimate and doesn't lose its legitimacy?
Think about Yemen and Yemen. Saudi Arabia says they are invited by President Hadi to go there, but by that time, Hadi wasn't president anymore.
You ceased to be president in 2012. What happened is that his ambassador still sits in the General Assembly,
but it's simply because nobody wanted to make a decision against it, because it's not an important country.
I think reality Hadi is not on that.
If I understand correctly, on the house arrest in Saudi Arabia, how can we say that he justifies us to intervene in the country under Article 51?
This is a real issue, but the biggest issue is non-state actors. Nowhere in international law you define non-state actors.
How do you stop state actors? This is a huge problem today.
If you look at the world of today, I would say up to 50% of the population in this world live under governments and.
Think, by the way, one number. It's estimated by 230 that 50% of all city dwellers drift in flux, and that is 3 billion people.
That's not even substandard houses like in the surroundings of Marseilles or.
If he calls these people who coach wants him to stay.
That's a big problem. How do we deal with this ongoing fight with the rest of society?
Can we really have a society organised which is based with 11 million people,
half of them organised by principle, which doesn't apply to any congressional, to any new order.
This is a really big a huge problem. We have to do this. No, let me just make a conclusion here before.
I've been shocked by you know, everybody is right now I'm waiting for closure and this conclusion today.
Why do you think we have not responded properly to.
If this is the end of the. At this time.
I too we all believed that we are now.
The only remaining political system is no competition. Everybody would move along except our system with some adaptation or something like this one.
We've already basically we had the model how to deal with all states who failed.
And the second thing that we have to solve, we have the power to do with economic military power to do this.
And I think what we have to realise that a post Cold War area is finished and probably the best time for it is President Trump.
It's a finish line. It's not that I can write anything. I just want to finish time.
It means we have to find a different model and why.
We saw after 91 Life in the West that we didn't need to do it.
We never spoke about the youth shop anymore. I saw him today, the German foreign minister in the General Assembly.
And I have to speak the this based on which you mean, of course.
But whatever just wrote for us and it will be us or there's no global agreement on this future for this.
And I would say that very well, because we have to stop that.
Know the other countries we have a problem is a huge population.
And the chaos that we have to come to terms with that we have to work with other greater powers Russia, China, India, Brazil, whatever.
You have to come to terms. It's a one that's only one organisation that can do it, and that's the United Nations.
The charter of the United Nations was meant for countries with different political systems to come together on certain things,
to accept that war is not the answer, and to accept that some basic human rights, which is the relationship between the states and the citizens.
So what I want to say to you, we have we have stop.
That's what I feel. And I think that we have in our interests to make civil war again.
Why? Because we have. Forget Naples.
12% of the world's population and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is for.
You can have so many platforms that you have that you would not accept as far as we have to it, that we cannot dominate the world anymore.
We cannot tell anyone what we do. We can have these operations.
We call them operations. Freedom across this country is going to kill people. It is not the the the other things.
I'm also a strong believer that our liberal values has to be basically developed in the West.
Free speech responsible for government is in Pakistan.
This will slowly go forward, but it would not go through its libertarian direction to not go with a regime change agenda.
Something like this one. If you go into. I think that's because we have to talk about these.