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Re: Ultra-right US politician on sanctions and Iraq



I'm sorry to have to reply, but I think some of these outrageous and
deliberate misinterpretations of what I wrote ought to be responded to.

On Tue, 1 Feb 2000, M wrote:

> Several list members responded to my posting. I found most comments
> quite reasonable however I have to take issue with Alan Bates. It is
> perhaps useful to begin by quoting Diane Orentlicher, director of the
> war crimes research office at the American University in Washington
> whose view (responding to an investigation into allegations by chief
> prosecutor at the UN war crimes tribunal, into NATO war crimes)
> encapsulates much of the Alan Bates position. "The even-handedness we
> expect of the chief prosecutor does not mean treating allegations
> equally". George Orwell anyone?

The Orentlicher quote has been taken completely out of context.  It is
obvious that allegations have to be treated equally.  How seriously you
look at an allegation depends both on how much evidence is provided for it
and the capacity to investigate and prosecute successfully.  Besides, I
specifically said that international law was not being applied equally and
that that was a problem with it.  But that is not a reason to return to
the much worse positions of non-intervention and national sovereignty
which M has emphasised.

> 
> AB: International law is being given ever greater prominence
> nowadays as people look for a post-cold war way of regulating world
> affairs and controlling rogue states.
> 
> M: By "greater prominence" I am not sure whether you mean greater
> enforcement and respect of  international law, or that politicians and
> the media are just talking more about them. If you are talking about he
> former, perhaps you are referring to the recent "prominence" given to
> the bombings of Iraq and Serbia which were in breach of the Geneva
> convention Act 1957 (amended 1995) of the UK specifically states that
> "civilians shall not be the the object of attack" (sch 5. art52.1) and
> also that " civilians shall enjoy protection unless they take a direct
> part in hostilities" (sch 6. art13.3). If you are talking about the
> latter a good example of recent 'hot air' is Robin Cooks 'ethical
> foreign policy' statement which prided itself on the amount of arms it
> could sell Indonesia.

I think you have completely failed to read what I wrote.  In context,
greater prominence clearly means people are talking about it more and
taking more notice of it.  Even ten years ago, hardly anyone mainstream
was seriously talking about concepts like international criminal
jurisdiction (Pinochet being arrested would have been inconceivable).  For
the record, civilians are NOT the deliberate subject of allied attacks in
Iraq.  There is no credible evidence to the contrary.  Even if there was,
the allies would DENY it.  This is the whole point I am making.  It is now
necessary for states to pay at least "lip service" to international law -
I specifically used that term.  It isn't my fault if you can't be bothered
to read what I have written.  If international law didn't matter at all
and was not given greater prominence nowadays, the allies would say, "Yes,
we bomb civilians when we need to achieve a particular objective."  That's
what they said during World War 2.  The whole point is that they DON'T say
that because of international law.  The fact that adherence to
international law is now universally recognised as a normative ideal shows
that it is being given greater prominence.  

> 
> AB: Indeed, many of the postings to the list from people with a very
> anti-American stance
> rely on international law rather than purely moral objections to
> sanctions.
> 
> M: Very true, not surprising when the US has vetoed more UN
> resolutions on human rights related issues than any other country. UK
> has the silver medal for second place I believe. Also the anti-American
> tag always suggests an irrational hatred of America. I am not
> anti-American, I am against state terrorism, of which the US is major
> player, backer, and sponsor around the world.

What has this got to do with what I wrote?  Besides, the US and UK are
entitled to veto resolutions, many of which are contrary to human rights
and very bad resolutions.  It isn't contrary to international law to vote
against something, is it?  The point I was making, once again, was that
both US/UK AND PEOPLE ON THIS LIST ALL rely on international law to
support their positions.  Once upon a time, people would have ignored
international law.  So if that doesn't prove that international law is
being given greater prominence, what does?

> 
> AB: Since 1945, a semblance of such order was provided by the two
> superpowers keeping a degree of control over their respective spheres of
> influence.
> 
> M: What do you mean by semblance of order? Vietnam, Panama, Cuba? I
> cannot quite see how this can be called order. Who were the US
> "controlling"? It is the US that could not exert control over its mad
> rampages into foreign territory.

I didn't say that the superpowers created order.  I said a SEMBLANCE of
order - look it up in the dictionary.  The simple FACTS are that during
the cold war, smaller states either allied themselves to the West or to
the USSR, whichever best suited their political philosophy.  These small
states relied on their patrons for security against aggressors.  NATO kept
the peace in its own sphere and defended it against attack, and Warsaw
Pact did the same for its sphere.  Of course, there were small skirmishes.
But international attention was focused on the cold war.  Vietnam, Panama
and Cuba were examples of COLD WAR conflicts, not localised problems as we
have now.  The USA wanted to stop the spread of communism and that was the
single driving force behind international affairs. These are facts which I
am not aware of any serious academic disagreeing with.  In fact, we all
lived through some of it so we might even be able to recall the situation
before the end of the Cold War ourselves.  During the Cold War,
international law was less important and the UN virtually irrelevant
because people relied on the balance of power to keep things in check.
All the problems now, including sanctions on Iraq, are consequences of the
end of this balance of power (i.e. the USA can do what it likes and ignore
the Russians).  So how this can be seen as me approving of US foreign
policy I fail to see.  During the Cold War even non-aligned countries had
a vital role in brokering between the superpowers and trading on their
neutrality.  After the cold war, the international order changed - the
break up of Yugoslavia for example: more regional conflicts.  This is just
simple fact - I can't see what is so controversial about it.

> 
> AB: We are now faced with a situation in which there is really only one
> superpower.  This is not, however, a good reason for saying that no
> control should be exercised at all the control rogue states.  If Iraq
> does possess chemical and biological weapons which it had intentions to
> use on its neighbours, which includes Israel (yes, even Jewish people
> have
> human rights too, even if not everyone seems to care much about them),
> it
> must be restrained from doing so.
> 
> M: Twice you have referred to "rogue states" without naming names.
> In current standard media jargon "rogue states" refers to countries like
> Iran, Iraq, Libya. I consider the US a "rogue state". Who will restrain
> them?  It is interesting that you should cite Israel as needing
> protection from "rogue states". Israel, a country which in 1982
> illegally invaded Lebanon (for the second time) massacring 20,000
> people, mainly Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, and has remained
> illegally in Southern Lebanon. Israel which since 1967 has been in
> illegal occupation of the occupied territories. A country which has one
> of the worst human rights records in the world, which has subjected the
> Palestinian people to political extermination, annexation, torture,
> imprisonment without charge, denial of civil, religious and political
> rights, destruction of property. In the last 12 years alone a recent
> Amnesty reported the destruction of 2,650 Palestinian homes, leaving
> 16,700 homeless. The "rogue state" of Israel is one of the largest
> recipients of US aid (for a time the biggest) Rather than the very large
> "if" which surrounds Iraq's nuclear capability, we know that Israel has
> nuclear weapons. The US of course, is the only country ever to use
> nuclear weapons in a war crime of massive proportions which killed
> 175,000 people in total.
> 
Rogue states, as I would define it, are states that openly flout
international law: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and yes, to an extent,
Israel.  But that does not mean it is okay for Iraq to threaten Israel
with chemical and bilogical weapons.  I am so sick of how partisan some
people on this list are.  Most Israelis are very concerned about human
rights.  Remember that they recently voted for Barak.  There are serious
campaign groups in Israel campaigning for peace and for an Israeli
withdrawal from occupied land, despite the security risks this would pose
because Israel is surrounded by states who are members of the UN and yet
continue to refuse to recognise the right of the state of Israel to exist,
Their attitude is a breach of the collective security underlying the UN
Charter.  Jewish people do not deserve to be killed by Iraqi chemical
weapons, any more than Iraqi civilians deserve to be killed by dodgy
sanctions.  I know that some people disagree with this and only hope that
someday they can overcome their prejudices and hatreds.

I agree with you that Israel is in breach of international law.  That is
why I condemn them for it.  According to your view of the world, I
shouldn't be condemning it as a breach of international law since this is
contrary to your rules of non-intervention and national sovereignty.  If
Israel decided to invade Egypt tomorrow, we should do nothing to intervene
according to you.  After all, according to you, we shouldn't have ejected
Iraq from Kuwait when Kuwait was invaded.  Thus, the only option left to
all the states in the Middle East, without any risk of outside
intervention, would be for everyone to fight it out with chemical and
biological weapons.  No international law enforcement would take place.
The law of the jungle would rule and the Middle East would be turned into
a bloodbath.  That is the logical consequence of complete non-intervention
by the West.  Of course, it is possible to argue that the West should have
intervened to stop Israel occupying Syrian territory - but surely that
would contravene your principle of nonintervention?  Besides, Israel took
that land during the Cold War (see what I said about this earlier!) -
different circumstances prevailed then.  Also, if you think the West was
wrong and did not behave evenhandedly to stop Israel occupying Syrian
territory, would you also have supported US intervention to bomb the
troops who were preparing to attack Israel and thus started the six day
war?

I am not being an apologist for Israel.  I am simply pointing out that if
you hold sacred the nineteenth century rules of international law:
non-intervention and national sovereignty - the world would be one hell of
a worse place to live in.  The fcat that the law is not applied
evenhandedly (just as UK law is not applied evenhandedly by the police),
that is not a reason to say, "Sod the law.  Let's have a war of every man
against every man so that human life is nasty, brutish and short."  That
is the logical consequence of denying a right of interventional in the
so-called internal affairs of other states.  It would mean that Bosnia
would no longer exist today, being swallowed up in a greater Serbia, with
Croatia taking a bite too.  It would mean ALL of the East Timorese being
killed, no intervention being permitted.  It would mean that the chaos
caused by non-intervention in Rwanda, where over a million people were
slaughtered, being repeated everywhere.

> AB: This should prompt us to seek greater internationalisation and
> democratisation of the world security order.  We will always need the
> military resources of NATO to preserve international peace. This may not
> be ideal, but the UN has no troops of its own and
> even if it had, would never be able to organise a credible force (just
> see
> what happened in Bosnia).  To an extent this is evidenced in sanctions
> and US military
> action against Iraq being, at least to a degree, made lawful by the
> passage of Security Council measures.  Those who would even go so far as
> to disagree with the actions by the West to expel Iraq from Kuwait must
> remember that this was done to uphold international
> law.  Of course, one can argue that other motives played a part.
> Nevertheless, it was a
> clearly authorised military intervention under Chapter 7 of the UN
> Charter under the principle of collective security.
> 
> M: If the actions of the west to expel Iraq from Kuwait were done to
> uphold international law, why was the west not ready to uphold
> international law, it holds so dear, when Indonesia invaded East Timor
> in 1975 and instead of the few thousand people Iraq killed during its
> invasion of Kuwait, Indonesia killed some 200,000 (a third of the
> population)? US motives for the invasion had nothing to do with Kuwait
> or international law. They wanted to establish a US protectorate,
> protect US economic interests, and reaffirm its military dominance in
> the region (and the world).

If we followed your principle of non-intervention, no UN forces would ever
have intervened in East Timor to uphold the election result there
recently.  The initial invasion of East Timor by Indonesia, if it happened
TODAY, would be prevented by the international community, led by the
US/UK's regional ally Australia.  Why?  Because (a) the Cold War has ended
and we do not need to give in to Indonesia all the time just because it is
anti-communist; and (b) because international law has moved on from the
principles of non-intervention and national sovereignty which M is so
eager to defend.  Things were different in the Cold War.  I have made this
point repeatedly now!!!!  
 > 
> AB: Even now, the US has to pay at least lip service to a need to have
> the support of
> international law and/or the authority of the UN Security Council.  So
> its superpower
> abilities are being restrained by international democracy, albeit
> insufficiently and in a very embryonic form.
> 
> M: How were its superpower abilities restrained by the authority of
> the UN when US/west invaded Serbia? What authorization did they have
> from the UN? I agree we need to have a UN but to say it has any effect
> on US decision making (aside from window dressing) is wrong. The
> authority of the security council is meaningless, it only has five
> members. The authorization of a UN resolution is sought when it can be
> used as cover (Iraq) and ignored when it will not be possible to gain
> (Serbia). Finally the US government has said many times that if US
> interests are at stake it will act with or without UN backing, thereby
> making a mockery of international law.

The UN Security Council does NOT "only have five members."  It has, I
think, 15 members.  Most members are ELECTED by the other member states in
regional blocks.  There are five permanent members.  The USA/UK/ALL OUR
EUROPEAN PARTNERS justified intervention (not invasion) of Serbia/Kosovo
on the basis of the asserted principle of humanitarian intervention in
international law.  Whether or not such a principles has yet been
established in international law is a matter of keen academic debate.  But
that isn't the point I was making.  The point was that at one time,
intervention would have been justified purely on the grounds of keeping
order or stopping communism or whatever.  Now even the USA feels that it
cannot do things unless it can put some reasonable view of international
law forward to support their position.  Whether or not they are right
either legally or morally is irrelevant for the point I am making.  The
point is that they feel they have to claim that they are acting in
accordance with international law.  A few years ago, they wouldn't have
had this constraint.  So, once again, my point is proved: international
law is being given greater prominence!  The Security Council is not
meaningless.  Every country in the world recognises its authority as the
UN's body charged with maintaining international peace and security.  If
any country is making a mockery of the Security Council it is Iraq which
has consistently refused to allow weapons inspectors to do their job
properly.  Of course, Iraq is not alone in its disobedience to SC
resolutions.  But the USA/UK are not showing disrespect for the Security
Council.  The problems over Serbia were caused by the RUSSIAN veto (M
having criticised the USA and UK for using the veto!) which was happy to
condemn NATO for a few accidental damage incidents to civilians in Kosovo
and shed a few crocodile tears over them (when actually it was Russia that
was cynically trying to increase its influence and use the veto as a
bargaining chip and to get votes for corrupt Russian politicians), and yet
is now happily and deliberately slaughtering civilians in Chechnya.  It is
funny that certain people feel so much sympathy for the Serbs simply
because they have been in conflict with Uncle Sam, even though many Serbs
laugh about Muslims in Iraq and elsewhre dying because they have so much
hatred for Muslims nearer to home.

> 
> AB: At the conference on the holocaust a few days ago,
> many Jews, gypsies, gays and Jehovah's Witnesses wondered why the allied
> 
> forces did not bomb the railway lines to the death camps.  They wished
> that this had been done, not only once the war had started, but before
> it had started. Others might similarly wonder why, when Hitler began
> rearmament contrary to the Versailles treaty, the allies did not take
> firm action by bombing his production facilities.  I suspect that these
> past misjudgments do not look any more justified or morally pure by
> rightly
> noting that they were simply applications of M's principles of
> non-intervention and national sovereignty.
> 
M:> 
Perhaps in the future at a meeting of Kurds, Palestinians, East Timorese
> they will sit and wonder why the US/west armed to the teeth Turkey,
> Israel and Indonesia. Others might similarly wonder why while Turkey
> continues its brutal war against the Kurds (in 1993 -94 alone 3200 Kurds
> were killed and 3500 villages destroyed), Israel continues to defy
> international law, and Indonesia's proxy army in East Timor goes on a
> rampage, after a vote for independence, the west not only does nothing
> (aside from a mop up operation) but actually backs Turkey, Israel and
> Indonesia, economically, militarily, and diplomatically.  I suspect that
> these current misjudgments do not look any more justified or morally
> pure by rightly noting that they were simply applications of Alans
> principles of looking the other way.

This is really outrageous.  The whole point which I am arguing here is
that we should NOT look the other way in these situations.  Where we can,
we should INTERVENE.  It is M who is prepared to look the other way -
that is what the principles of non-intervention and national sovereignty
mean.  People should be allowed to torture and murder willy nilly and it
is no concern of any other country.  Iraq can invade Kuwait if it feels
like it.  Indonesia could invade East Timor again.  Neighbours of Sierra
Leone can divide it up between themselves and strip it of its diamond
wealth.

I am really fed up with the way that it is completely impossible to say
anything reasonable on this list without being instantly characterised as
a supporter of US "neo-colonialism" and the imp of Satan.  I did not
defend the USA (although in many ways it is a pretty cheap target - and I
would rather live in a world where the USA was more powerful than Iraq
under Saddam than the other way around).  I didn't say a single thing in
my e-mail in support of the USA.  All I did was make broad observations
about the post-Cold War international order and the growing singnificance
of international law.  Those things are facts accepted by all serious
academics.  Whether these things are good or bad isn't the point - they
point is that that is the background against which the events are
happening.  The principles of non-intervention and national sovereignty
are wedded to the ideas of the sanctity of the nation state.  These ideas
are defunct in a globalised world as well as being contrary to everything
which any internationalist should believe in.  Fortunately they are being
consigned to the dustbin of history.  But new principles to replace them -
such as how we REGULATE intervention - are still embryonic - hence the
confusion in the international order.  So lets stop deliberately
misconstruing each others mailings to this list.  Lets stop harking back
to bad and outdated principles from the past.  Lets look forwards and
think about how we can contribute to founding an international order based
on law, democracy and justice instead.  That is what I am advocating.
Either we look around us, see the way the water is flowing, and make sure
we alter its course to the good of humanity, or we become an irrelevancy,
There is no point in trying to swim against the current to try to get back
to a point ten miles upstream which we have long since (mercifully)
passed.

Alan

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