Week 2 Blog Post:

"What is the main problem with international relations?"

I think at the core of it the main problem is that there are too many people trying to impart their own ideologies and agendas upon others and this creates an issue where no one decision can be reached. So in essence the main problem with international relations is the actors themselves. This can be seen at any level, be it individual actors (states) or even international organizations (UN, EU). Each of these, regardless of the level that they are acting at, act with the sole purpose of ensuring their own supremacy and self interests. Since personal interests are at the heart of their actions some good is done but it is limited by what that individual country deems within their own personal cost-benefit analysis. I have broken up the three areas into subsections below and for the sake of consistency I used the same example (1994 Rwandan Genocide) as I believe that this incident demonstrates the various motivations of individual "players" in international relations.

States

Individual countries are motivated by political, economic and even religious influences. Each of these drives their responses to specific situations. In the case of the Rwandan Genocide, most states had little political or economic motivation to intervene and as a result hundreds of thousands of individuals were killed. If for no other reason than to ensure that individual freedom should continue and that all people are created equal and should have some basic rights an intervention should have been warranted. Since the individual states self interests weren't in jeopardy little to no intervention was provided.

UN

Before talking about the UN, which is a international body made up of individual state actors, it is important to identify what the UN's purpose/role is:

Purposes of the UN:

to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and

to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

(Source: http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter1.shtml)

The two points highlighted above are good points to place within the purpose statement of an organization like the UN but much harder to implement in practice. The intervention that the UN used was weak and didn't do much to stop the violence but rather to ensure that those members of the UN and other peace keeping organizations were protected. Depending on what you think constitutes "peace keeping" the actions of the UN could be seen as justified. However, the Genocide could be seen as a form of war as it was "a struggle or competition between opposing forces or for a particular end" (Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/war). The conflict that happened in Rwanda was clearly a struggle between two forces and the particular end was the total elimination of the Tutsi population. Why is it that the UN response was so weak? Individual self interest and cost-benefit analysis. It would have been too costly and there would have been too little of a financial reward for the UN to deploy large amounts of troops to stop the violence from occurring. If you feel that maybe the conflict that occurred doesn't classify as war and that is why the UN didn't intervene, the second point should have been justification enough for them to intervene in a more direct manner.

I don't mean to harp on the failings of the UN or state actors during the Rwandan Genocide but I believe this incident helps to illustrate how individual actors can influence the outcome of international intervention and international relations. Rwanda didn't have a lot of things to offer either politically or economically and thus there wasn't a dire need for UN or even individual state led intervention. Until individual motivations are left out of the picture and action is taken based upon the overall good (which is something that would have to be defined and agreed upon nearly unanimously which in itself is near impossible) there will always be issues within international relations.