Thursday, September 13, 2007

Treaties: worthless pieces of paper?

"Do treaties change what states do?" That's the big theoretical question the University of Michigan political scientist James D. Morrow sets out to answer in the latest issue of the American Political Science Review. [$] Specifically, treaties governing the laws of war.

Foreign-policy realists argue that treaties are largely irrelevant, because with or without parchment agreements, states will pursue their own interests, bound only by their own codes of morality (or lack thereof) and the balance of power. In contrast, liberals believe treaties can restrict the behavior of nations and foster new norms of international conduct.

Morrow analyzes historical data on wars from the Boxer Rebellion, at the turn of the 20th century, through the first Gulf War -- data that includes information on the use of chemical weapons, treatment of POW's, protections granted noncombatants, and similar subjects -- and concludes that treaties do, indeed, shape the behavior of states to some extent. But the overall picture is messier than any one overarching theory can explain, he concludes. Treaties, norms, and power considerations all play parts in encouraging or discouraging atrocities.

Morrow finds, for example, that democracies that ratify war-crimes treaties do tend to refrain from the acts they have prohibited, even when they go to war with nations that have not ratified those treaties. (Democracies, however, will respond in kind if the other side violates international law -- no turning of the other cheek, here.)

On the other hand, the behavior of non-democracies is constrained by treaties only when the non-democracies fight mutual signers of those agreements. When non-democracies war with states that have not signed the treaties, they don't follow the rules. They have not absorbed the parchment "norms."

Surprisingly, Morrow finds that the worst violators of specific rules of war turn out to be democracies that have declined to sign the relevant treaties. That category of nations is followed "by non-democracies regardless of ratification status, with democracies that have ratified having the best record."

Adherence to war-crimes laws varies significantly according to the offense: bans on chemical weapons are widely followed, while few states, regardless of regime type, protect noncombatants to the extent they have pledged to.

Realists can point, for justification of their worldview, to some conclusions Morrow reaches: the stronger the nation that violates the rules of war, the worse the violation will be. And the bloodier the war, the higher the odds the rules will be torn up. Liberals, however, can point to the non-trivial effect that treaties themselves have -- especially on democracies.

Posted by Christopher Shea at 12:54 PM

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