Month: September 2013

By JIM SOLLISCH

I was into eating and sports, but there were other manly pursuits I wanted nothing to do with. For example, I had no interest in tools. I could build a sandwich but not a birdhouse. Or a beer-can lamp. Which is exactly what I would be doing in shop class, which all boys had to take in ninth grade at my junior high school.

Girls took home economics. Boys took shop. Girls learned to cook lasagna and bake chocolate cake. I would be learning to use a lathe. I preferred lasagna. So I did the sensible thing: I signed up for home economics.

The school counselor called me into her office to tell me that boys weren’t allowed to take home ec. I asked to see her boss, the vice principal. Same story. “Well,” I announced, “we have a problem because I’m not taking shop. These rules are discriminatory.” This was 1972; discrimination was everywhere you looked. If you weren’t protesting something, what were you doing? My parents wrote a letter expressing their support for my decision.

My mother was called to school. The problem, it turned out, was that shop and home ec were same-sex classes, and they were worried that a boy would be disruptive in an all-girls class. As much as I wanted to be in an all-girls class — I liked girls as much as lasagna — I saw an opening.

The next day I circulated a petition at school, demanding that the administration establish an all-boys home ec class for the undersigned: some two dozen hungry males whose parents were willing to let them out of shop to learn to cook.

The democratic process worked, the administration backed down, and within a few days, we boys began our experiment in domesticity. It’s true that we spent most of our time throwing hot, wet spaghetti at one another and eating so much raw muffin batter that our muffins came out stunted, but in spite of ourselves we witnessed magic: onions sweetened by fire and flour transformed by yeast.

So began my love affair with cooking. I was given the keys to the castle, the ability to satisfy my largest appetite. It was like the power some kids feel when they get a driver’s license. If I was hungry (and I was), I didn’t have to beg my mother to cook me something or settle for pretzels or chips. I could make spaghetti or meatloaf. I was the master of my domain.

In college, I might have been the only guy to ever use the dorm stove. I sold my meal tickets and cooked almost every night. I started with chili and burgers and soon graduated to making hummus and curried chicken. Along the way, I asked the cook at the local vegetarian restaurant for her blue cheese dressing recipe. It called for two cloves of garlic. I bought two bulbs. When I separated the sections, they were all different sizes. I concluded that if a recipe called for two of something, then those somethings must be pretty uniform in size. The bulbs were uniform, and so I proceeded to blend in about 45 cloves of garlic. Lesson learned.

By the time I was dating Rique, the woman who would become my wife, I knew my way around several cuisines and had a drawer full of spices. I invited her over for dinner and was in the process of roasting fragrant Indian seeds — cumin, coriander, fennel, black mustard — when she walked in. I ground them with a mortar and pestle and let her take a whiff. She was mine.

What started for me as an act of civil disobedience back in the ninth grade became a lifelong habit. I cook every day. I cook because I love to eat. And I want control. I don’t want someone else choosing the flavors and textures of my dinner. I cook; therefore, I am.

Michael Pollan, in his book “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation,” suggests that cooking at home is the best way to combat the obesity epidemic. Most of us don’t make French fries at home, for example. And how often does a home cook reach for a jug of corn syrup, a common — and fattening — ingredient in so many processed foods?

Mr. Pollan also proposes that we spend more time in school teaching boys and girls to cook in home economics classes, which are rarely required courses anymore. I couldn’t agree more.

But in the end, health is just a byproduct of learning to cook. You could argue that cooking is the activity that most defines us as humans. Dolphins have a language; crows can create tools. But only humans can cook. By cooking, we transform the mundane into something sacred. And then we share it with others. Food is the most shareable currency we have. You probably don’t pass out money to your friends, but you can pass the paella. But first you have to know how to make it.

In February 2012 the UN Security Council and the Arab League appointed Kofi Annan to facilitate negotiations. But very soon the hardliners prevailed and eliminating the enemy became the only proposal. Eighteen months and 100,000 deaths later, six million people have been displaced and chemical weapons have been used; the world is now discussing military interventions.

But Russia and China will likely veto a UN Security Resolution authorizing the use of military forces. Even the Arab League, while demanding to the UN Security Council “to take the necessary measures,” has fallen short of recommending the use of military forces. The UK Parliament refused to accept British engagement in military operations. The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a limited use of force.

In 2010, President Obama stated that “preventing mass atrocities is a responsibility that all nations share.” His leadership and U.S. military power could be more efficient if they are supported by an international consensus.

What could be the terms of such an international consensus?

The Arab League is proposing an option that could be the foundation of an agreement: they suggest making those responsible for those crimes accountable before the international community. The Security Council took similar approaches previously and it could do it again. It created international ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and it referred to the permanent International Criminal Court the Darfur and Libya situation. Those in Syria who order the crimes should be prosecuted. The International Criminal Court is ready to provide the independent judiciary required.

It could be effective. Leaders in Syria are ordering massive crimes to retain or to gain power. If they evaluate that they conclusively would end in a prison at The Hague, they will stop.

But to be an effective option for halting the crimes against humanity, the international justice path should be refined and improved. There should be a strategy integrating justice with military efforts and political negotiations, a strategy that was lacking in the past. Justice could be a way to promote behavior change without involving the UN Security Council in ‘regime change.’ Four conditions are necessary to make the international justice path successful.

First, it will be necessary to find a common position with Russia. Russia has used its veto power at the UN Security Council to oppose opening the door for military interventions and regime change, but Russia is not against justice. On the contrary, Russia, a founder of international justice at Nuremberg, signed the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court and voted in favor to provide jurisdiction to the International Criminal Court in Darfur and Libya situation. Furthermore, on July 2012 Russia presented a draft UN Security Council Resolution “[c]ondemning the widespread violations of human rights by the Syrian authorities, as well as any human rights abuses by armed groups” highlighting the importance to prosecute also rebels that committed crimes and “recalling that those responsible shall be held accountable.”

Second, it will be necessary to find an agreement with China. The Arab League request can facilitate such agreement. China has always been consistent in taking into consideration the position of the regional organizations. International justice is not part of China’s agenda but Beijing will harmonize its position if there is a general agreement. China’s valuing of harmony and regional consensus is demonstrated in its decisions to abstain — instead of vetoing — the Security Council’s referral of Darfur to the International Criminal Court and its vote in favor of a similar referral in the Libya case.

Third, the temporal jurisdiction should be thoroughly discussed by UN Security Council members. They have options. They can request that ICC investigations start from the beginning of the Syria conflict or establish a deadline in the near future that will trigger the jurisdiction of the Court. Such a timeframe could provide an incentive to begin a different style of negotiations to end the conflict.

Should the conflict effectively stop before the deadline, the national leadership could discuss adequate ways to promote justice for the past. It will be a challenge for negotiators to include accountability as a part of the political agreement but it will be the only guarantee that the leadership are not involved in new crimes.

Fourth, in order to have an impact, the referral to the International Criminal Court should include references on how to execute arrest warrants. Without enforcement, the threat of prosecution would be toothless. Security Council members should define the framework and political constraints of such arrest operations. In the case of the former Yugoslavia in 1996-1998, a coalition of countries spent months planning the modalities of arresting individuals during the conflict. This time the military should adjust and plan innovative arrest operations of criminals, in accordance with the limits imposed by the UN Security Council. The simple possibility to execute arrest warrants will change the tone of the negotiations.

“Never again” has been an unfulfilled promise. The Syrian conflict offers the world an opportunity: to find an innovative response to establish global order. Today’s leaders could make our children safer. Or not.

Published: September 3, 2013

 

 

 

It is no surprise that both liberal interventionists and neoconservative realists are advocating American military intervention, even if it is illegal. As President Obama said on Saturday, “If we won’t enforce accountability in the face of this heinous act, what does it say about our resolve to stand up to others who flout fundamental international rules?”

But this question ignores the obvious: If the United States begins an attack without Security Council authorization, it will flout the most fundamental international rule of all — the prohibition on the use of military force, for anything but self-defense, in the absence of Security Council approval. This rule may be even more important to the world’s security — and America’s — than the ban on the use of chemical weapons.

Mr. Obama cannot justify an attack on Syria based on any direct threat to the United States. Nor does there appear to be a direct threat to Turkey, a member of NATO, which might justify an assault based on collective self-defense. The sad fact is that Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, is visiting horrors, for now, mainly on his own citizens, though the conflict has caused two million refugees to flee to other countries.

Some argue that international law provides for a “responsibility to protect” that allows states to intervene during humanitarian disasters, without Security Council authorization. They point to NATO’s 1999 intervention in Kosovo. But in 2009 the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, rejected this view, finding that “the responsibility to protect does not alter, indeed it reinforces, the legal obligations of Member States to refrain from the use of force except in conformity with the Charter,” a position he affirmed on Tuesday. (The Independent International Commission on Kosovo found that the intervention was “illegal but legitimate.”)

Others say it is legalistic, even naïve, to rely on the United Nations Charter, which has been breached countless times. What is one more, especially when the alternative is the slaughter of innocents? But all of these breaches add up — and each one makes it harder to hold others to the rules. If we follow Kosovo and Iraq with Syria, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to stop others from a similar use of force down the line.

Consider the world that preceded the United Nations. The basic rule of that system, one that lasted for centuries, was that states had just cause to go to war when legal rights had been violated. Spain tried to justify its conquest of the Americas by saying it was protecting indigenous civilians from atrocities committed by other indigenous peoples. The War of the Austrian Succession was fought over whether a woman had a right to inherit the throne. The United States largely justified the Mexican-American War, including the conquest of California and much of what is now the Southwest, by pointing to Mexico’s failure to pay old tort claims and outstanding debts.

The problem with the old system was not that no one could enforce the law, but that too many who wished to do so could. The result was almost constant war.

In the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 and in the United Nations Charter of 1945, the world rejected this system. States were forbidden to enforce the law on their own and had to work through a system of collective security.

For all its obvious failings, the United Nations system has made for a more peaceful world than the one that preceded it. No leader may claim the right to collect debts or gain thrones by going to war. States may fracture into smaller pieces, but they don’t get conquered. Gunboat diplomacy is also out of the question.

The desire to respond to the atrocities in Syria with force is natural. The slaughter of civilians is impossible to watch without feeling morally impelled to act. The dysfunctional Security Council’s refusal to act leaves us feeling helpless in the face of evil.

But the choice between military force or nothing is a false one. Most of international law relies not on force for its enforcement, but on the collective power of nations to deprive states of the benefits of membership in a system of states. Mr. Obama can cut off any remaining government contracts with foreign companies that do business with Mr. Assad’s regime. He can work with Congress to do much more for Syrian rebels and refugees — including providing antidotes to nerve agents, which are in short supply. He can use his rhetorical power to shame and pressure Russia and China.

For all their wisdom, the United Nations’ founders showed incredible lack of foresight in freezing in place a system in which five nations hold permanent veto power in the Security Council. Unfortunately, that’s unlikely to change, despite almost uniform consensus that the configuration makes little sense. The question is whether we can manage to live with these shortcomings. If not, we have to think very hard about what the alternative might be — and recognize that it could be far, far worse.

The question Congress and Mr. Obama must ask now is whether employing force to punish Mr. Assad’s use of chemical weapons is worth endangering the fragile international order that is World War II’s most significant legacy.