With respect to diplomatic assurances against torture, diplomacy alone provides no guarantee against maltreatment. Trusting States to Honor Unenforceable Assurances International agreements between and among states have a generally high level of compliance.55 The diplomatic and monetary consequences of non-compliance often provide the necessary incentive for states to comply with their obligations under these agreements.56 Human rights treaties and international agreements dealing with human rights protections, however, often lack that incentive. As one commentator has remarked: [T]he major engines of compliance that exist in other areas of international law are for the most part absent in the area of human rights. Unlike the public international law of money, there are no "competitive market forces" that press for compliance. And, unlike in the case of trade agreements, the costs of retaliatory noncompliance are low to nonexistent, because a nation's actions against its own citizens do not directly threaten or harm other states. Human rights law thus stands out as an area of international law in which countries have little incentive to police noncompliance with treaties or norms.57 Diplomatic assurances against torture represent a set of “understandings” agreed in principle between two governments. They have no legal effect and the person who they aim to protect has no recourse if the assurances are breached. Moreover, the governments involved in negotiating the assurances have little or no incentive to monitor for and highlight a breach of diplomatic assurances against torture or ill-treatment. In some cases, sending governments want the receiving state to use prohibited interrogation techniques against a person to extract information. In other cases, the sending state simply wants the receiving state to take responsibility for warehousing a suspect who is considered a national security threat in the sending state. 55 See, Jose E. Alvarez, “Why Nations Behave,” 19 Mich. J. Int’l L. 303, Winter 1998. Alvarez quotes the now famous claim by international legal scholar Louis Henkin that “It is probably the case that almost all nations observe almost all principles of international law and almost all of their obligations all the time.” Louis Henkin, How Nations Behave, (Columbia University Press, 2d ed., 1979), p. 47. 56 See Beth A. Simmons, “Money and the Law: Why Comply with the Public International Law of Money?” 25 Yale J. Int'l L. 323 (2000). 57 Oona Hathaway, “Do Human Rights Treaties Make a Difference?” 111 Yale L.J. 1935 (June 2002), p. 1938. Hathaway also quotes Louis Henkin, who admitted that "The forces that induce compliance with other law ... do not pertain equally to the law of human rights." Henkin, How Nations Behave, p. 235 in Hathaway, p. 1938. 21 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH VOL. 17 NO. 4(D)