| Subject: On International Law... |
Author:
Dennis Laurie
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Date Posted: 22:57:55 03/16/03 Sun
Author Host/IP: 098.216-123-194-0.interbaun.com/216.123.194.98
Too many people seem to be unwilling or unable to make the distinction between the basis and legitimacy of domestic law and the basis and legitimacy of international law. Furthermore, many seem to believe the United Nations to be an overarching, legitimate, democratic body that, for some reason, should be revered and obeyed without reflection or analysis.
"Individual freedom cannot be reconciled with the supremacy of one single purpose to which the whole of society is permanently subordinated. To a limited extent we ourselves experience this fact in wartime, when subordination of almost everything to the immediate and pressing need is the price at which we preserve our freedom in the long run. The fashionable phrases about doing for the purposes of peace what we have learned to do for the purposes of war are completely misleading, for it is sensible temporarily to sacrifice freedom in order to make it more secure in the future, but it is quite a different thing to sacrifice liberty permanently in the interests of a planned and centrally controlled world order." -- Friedrich Hayek
The main body for the determination of international law, the United Nations, is an organization that started with the purpose of maintaining and enforcing a free and democratic world order, as dominated and influenced by the victors of 1945, primarily the United States and Britain. These two western democratic powers wished to promote the ideals of western society and discourage the scourge of dictatorship, territorially-influenced aggression, crimes against humanity, and other objective and absolute human rights. The UN, as it is constituted today, has been irreparably altered. Countries that violate the very ethos of the UN are given power and influence over the affairs of the democratic and human rights respecting nations of the world. Lofty influential positions at the UN are allocated according to alphabetical order or regional circulation such that dictatorial, repressive and rights-violating countries chair human rights commissions at the UN, countries such as Iraq and Iran co-chair the UN Conference on Disarmament, and countries like Guinea and Syria, Pakistan and China have a great say, even a “veto”, over democratic countries and the efforts of those countries to bring a international and domestic criminal, a brutally repressive dictator, an autocratic murderer, to justice. These pathetically un-democratic, self-interested, and brutal states stand in the way of western democracies and their efforts to enforce the dictates of the UN, to enforce the terms of the armistice agreed upon in 1991, and to enforce international law as it has been advanced, for good reason, 17 times by the United Nations. Any self-respecting person who puts even an inkling of value on freedom, human rights, and democracy cannot possibly respect this organization in terms of international law and security. Yes, it does good work in many other areas, but not in the areas pertinent to this debate. It is unconscionable that the citizens of democracy would defend an institution where the forces of freedom, rights and democracy willingly submit to the will of self-interested and dictatorial regimes.
As for international law itself, it has not the same bases or legitimacy as those for domestic law, as should be viewed in this accurate light. Domestic law has justice, retribution (punishment proportional to the crime; a debt to society) and vengeance (a societal moral outrage; a desire to see the criminals brought to justice) as its pillars, its underlying values. An international system constrained by the type of law that international lawyers are now trying to develop is a global law superior to states, which holds each of them as subordinate to it, and which emerges from the sovereign will of the world community (seen as residing in the United Nations, or international courts), will create a system in which nobody is responsible. To be sure, each government that attends the UN and makes international law is responsible to its citizens, provided it is democratic (which for from all are), but the aggregate decisions of the UN on international law, and the groups who make these decisions, are not responsible to anyone or anything, save for their own self-interest. Are we, as Canadians, willing to be dictated by the self-interest of dictators?
“Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led”
Take the following question in this context: Where is the UN in Palestine and Israel? The answer is that it is nowhere; the UN is not as effective as a security organization as its proponents would have us believe. There cannot be even an evolution toward cosmopolitan international law and global sovereignty until all members of the world community both espouse and act on the principles of democracy and human rights that are at the foundation of the advocated cosmopolitan world order. Until that happens, the norms of the international system, developed through the past few centuries, must be maintained and enforced by coalitions of the willing and able, as has been the case since the birth of the modern international system. This situation is much more plausible than the proposals of cosmopolitan theorists, such as David Held and Mary Kaldor, who argue for the superiority of international institutions, and see them as embodying a new kind of superior, global sovereignty; this would be dysfunctional. It would discourage things we ought to encourage in the way of humanitarian intervention and the protection of human rights. It would encourage our neglect of the abuses of other states… it is notable that China was very disturbed about the Kosovo intervention. Why? They don’t have any particular affection for Mr. Milosevic, but they had stacks of international law books to hide behind, to say, ‘our sovereignty is opaque. What we do to our people is none of your damned business”. To be sure, the humanitarian issues that go along with any armed intervention in Iraq are of the utmost importance, taking a backseat, in my mind, only to preventing the Hussein regime from acquiring and using weapons of mass destruction. If the United Nations cannot prevent this from happening, the only recourse is to staunch and determined resistance, likely of an armed nature.
At this juncture, the prevalent demand for proof of either these weapons programs or of the aforementioned dangers is trotted out. This seems to be an obvious ploy for delay, as the deeper question is actually whether evidentiary rules and legal analysis even have a place in this debate. Is Iraq susceptible to an assessment of guilt or innocence at all? International law requires neither objectivity, nor admissible evidence, nor "proof" before nations act. It requires a majority of votes. If the Security Council opts for armed intervention, then the military goes into action. The UN Charter does not pretend to require that the decision be made on any basis other than the subjective interests of the voting states.
These same seekers of proof, while castigating the United States for it’s unilateral posture on Iraq (though boasting the support of some 30-odd nations can hardly be seen as “unilateral”), condemn a Security Council-authorized, multilateral scheme as much as a unilateral one, this of course being the United Nations imposed sanctions on the Iraqi economy.
Idealistic people, however, believe in this cosmopolitan system; this belief in itself is not foolish at all, nor is a healthy amount of idealism. What is foolish, in this context, is believing that this cosmopolitan world order is the prevailing norm on the world stage at this point in time. It clearly is not. The 19th century German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, once commented that people who want to appreciate treaties or sausages should not watch them being made. This also applies to international law and Security Council decisions. To global law purists, the recent resolution UNSC 1441 is especially troubling, given its potential for authorizing military action against Iraq; those who denounced the US for not getting a UN mandate against Iraq now have to eat their words while holding their nose. The term "liberal fundamentalist" was coined some years ago by Harvard scholar Ruth Wisse. Liberalism, she noted, is a belief that people are rational and therefore all conflict is amenable to compromise. Every now and then, however, history produces an Adolf Hitler, a Saddam Hussein, or an Osama bin Laden, who must be destroyed rather than negotiated with. Liberal fundamentalists" have trouble accepting this.
The unwavering faith that liberals have in global co-operation has forced them to ignore the failures of some of the world’s pre-eminent international institutions. They speak of the United Nations with soaring optimism, yet the UN's Chapter Seven edicts against Iraq have been ignored and to this the UN has responded by doing nothing. It is only the U.S. that is finally pressing the issue. Again, this refusal on the part of liberals to realize the precocious juvenility of their positions is driven by their reflexive disgust toward the notion that “we live in dangerous times with irrational enemies,” and that American power is an unwelcome affront to them and their world view; indeed, some of the forces that are facing the liberal democratic world are, though unacknowledged by these people, simply driven by hatred, and “the existence of such intractable hatred is hard for the liberal mind to accept. In the world we are faced with, there is no security without power; there is no room for liberal conceptions of “soft-power” in the face of “pure nihilism”.
Liberals often chastise the United States for propping up dictators, for not doing enough for human rights around the world, and for adding to the US induced misery endured by the Iraqi people by enforcing the United Nations sanctions against Iraq, but what about the human cost of leaving Mr. Hussein in power? He is one of the world's cruelest dictators, a man who tortures and kills his opponents and denies his people their most basic freedoms. Removing him would be a huge plus for human rights in Iraq. It also would mean an end to the sanctions and the suffering they have caused; it is perverse to use human-rights grounds to oppose confronting one of the great human-rights abusers. Washington is now prepared to act; liberals should support the new activism of the United States accordingly. If Mr. Hussein is one of the world's greatest human-rights abusers, he is one of its greatest criminals, too. Mr. Hussein has violated countless international treaties and agreements covering everything from his treatment of his own people to his weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Hussein has flouted at least 16 consecutive Security Council resolutions since the 1991 Gulf war. That has done tremendous damage to UN credibility. He has never been brought to account. International law means nothing if it is not enforced. Making Mr. Hussein pay for his crimes would send a message to others like him that international law is more than an abstraction. It would strengthen, not undermine, the force of international law.
The newly articulated National Security Strategy, as put forth by the Bush Administration, advocates as its main principle pre-emption against states that are in possession of weapons of mass destruction. Pre-emptive action is not a new concept on the international stage. The only difference that the Bush Administration has introduced to the concept and the system is that of judgment; judgment of past behavior and judgment of the character of the regimes in question is now on the table as a valid method of formulating policy. This addition of judgment troubles those who seek that International law, as it now stands, is followed to the letter. Specifically, judgment is not an objective factor, and this is what troubles opponents of the new Bush doctrine. The subjective judgment of a powerful state, such as the United States, cannot be easily influenced by international institutions or by other actors; objective measures, such as evidentiary notions of concrete proof, are much preferred by advocates of the primacy of international law, for only by way of international law can a superpower like the United States be constrained or influenced in any way by those not already in positions of power over its direction.
Where do we stop you ask? Well let's examine the facts of the new US National Security Strategy, not what people believe it is. The newly articulated National Security Strategy, as put forth by the Bush Administration, advocates as its main principle pre-emption against states that are in possession of weapons of mass destruction. However, the new doctrine does not insist that possession of weapons of mass destruction is a sufficient cause for military pre-emption. It is not the technologies of mass destruction, which have been with us since the first nuclear weapon was exploded, but which state has these weapons that matters. The funnel for pre-emptive military action narrows quite sharply as we move through the argument. It is only tyrants who have weapons of mass destruction and who are likely to either use these weapons or share these weapons with terrorists that should be pre-emptively removed, through military force if necessary. Not even all tyrants who have weapons of mass destruction meet these criteria. Simple possession of weapons of mass destruction will not draw the ire of the United States. Force is also not the only method advocated by this strategy. Indeed, diplomacy is advocated to attempt to rectify any situation sensitive to the United States before force is used. North Korea? They have nuclear weapons and a massive army poised mere miles from Seoul, thus pre-emption is practically off the rader screen. Iran? It has programs for WMD, but has demonstrated restraint in the aggressive war category. It is ruled by theocrats hostile to the west, but has a largely democratic parliament that is growing in strength and power; Iran is a case where a very soft and unthreatening hand is needed. Zimbabwe? Human rights violations have been witnessed, but sanctions or other means should and likely can be used against him, provided the world community recognizes Robert Mugabe for what he is and takes appropriate action. Where do you stop? Easy, right after Iraq to survey the landscape and see what repercussions come of the Iraq intervention. Those who will draw the attention of the US under this doctrine are few, not many. To say that the US will go after every government it dislikes is juvenile, simplistic, insulting, prejudicial, and flat out wrong.
Now, back to our leadership race…
After all of this, it is clear to me that interventions in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq are justified, rational, and most importantly, morally right. Opposition to these interventions, such as that of David Orchard, is morally and intellectually bankrupt, ignorant of international realities, apologetic for dictators and moral relativists, opportunistic, wrong in every sense, and not “conservative” in any way. Peter MacKay realizes the realities of the international situation, and has sound legal and moral foundations for his policy stance on Iraq. He is showing leadership with his stance on this issue. His stance is the conservative one. His stance is the right one.
Dennis L. Laurie
1st Vice President, Edmonton North PC Constituency Association
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