Fata Morgana and the Lure of Law - Rebuilding a War-Torn State after Regime Breakdown: Prospects, Limits, and Illusions

Chapter 3 in Adenrele Awotona (ed.), Rebuilding Sustainable Communities in Iraq: Policies, Programs and International Perspectives, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2008)

33 Pages Posted: 6 May 2013 Last revised: 20 Jul 2013

See all articles by Tom Syring

Tom Syring

Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law

Date Written: 2008

Abstract

While a lot of attention has been devoted to discussing the moral and legal basis for resorting to war in an attempt at preempting nuclear capabilities, or, more generally, weapons of mass destruction etc. in the hands of so-called “rogue states”, or achieving a regime change (and often both) — in other words debate related to the grounds for intervening and the action of intervening itself — less time has been spent on “the day after”: i.e. on how to proceed once a regime has been toppled.

Whether a regime change has been brought about by foreign intervention, as a result of a preemptive strike or other international war (i.e. from the outside), or is the result of a domestic conflict, uprising, revolution, mutatis mutandis (i.e. brought about from the inside), or any amalgamation thereof (e.g. a domestic regime change spurred by foreign support or by some degree of direct or indirect intervention by one or several foreign countries), has to be taken into account when crafting a solution in a given case, but it does not affect the underlying, core problem: How is a stable, legitimate, viable, democratic regime to be created in the aftermath of regime change?

All post-conflict reconstruction needs to take at least four key issues into account: security, governance (and democratic participation), social and economic well-being, and justice and reconciliation. This chapter mostly focuses on the second and fourth areas, having the Iraqi experience of drafting a new constitution and establishing a higher criminal tribunal as its centerpiece, while acknowledging that all four pillars are ultimately interrelated.

Keywords: Regime-Change, State-Rebuilding, Constitution-Drafting, Democratization, Preemptive Strike Afghanistan, Iraq, Security, Justice, Reconciliation, Weapons of Mass Destruction

Suggested Citation

Syring, Tom, Fata Morgana and the Lure of Law - Rebuilding a War-Torn State after Regime Breakdown: Prospects, Limits, and Illusions (2008). Chapter 3 in Adenrele Awotona (ed.), Rebuilding Sustainable Communities in Iraq: Policies, Programs and International Perspectives, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2008), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2260975

Tom Syring (Contact Author)

Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law ( email )

Im Neuenheimer Feld 535
69120 Heidelberg
Germany

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