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The
Bush Administration's
Assault
on International Law
By
David
Krieger
President, The
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
TFF
associate
October 4, 2002
A war initiated by the United States to oust Saddam
Hussein from power in Iraq under the present
circumstances, and without U.N. Security Council
authorization, would be tantamount to a "war of
aggression," an international crime for which
high-ranking leaders of the Axis countries during World
War II were held to account at the International Military
Tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo.
The chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials,
U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Robert Jackson, described
such war as "the supreme international crime differing
only from other war crimes in that it contains within
itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Thus, the
seriousness of the international law violation that such
a war would entail would exceed the seriousness of the
Iraqi violations that the Bush administration has cited
to justify it. Such a war would also symbolize the
complete reversal of official U.S. policy toward
international law since World War II.
In the immediate aftermath of the allied war against
Nazi and Japanese aggression, the United States led other
nations in establishing the United Nations Charter "to
save succeeding generations from the scourge of war," and
in founding the United Nations "to maintain international
peace and security," "to take effective collective
measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the
peace," and "to bring about by peaceful means"
settlements of international disputes.
A war against Iraq at this time, whether initiated by
the United States alone or with authorization from the
U.N. Security Council, would violate these founding U.N.
principles by permitting an unprovoked major war to
occur, most likely with massive loss of life and the
threat of wider conflict and conflagration.
Furthermore, because the law of the U.N. Charter is
less than ideal--reserving permanent Security Council
membership to the great powers, including the United
States, with veto authority over the councilís
resolutions--a U.S.-imposed Security Council resolution
authorizing the use of force against Iraq would highlight
and exacerbate the U.N.ís weaknesses, and would
constitute a major setback to its fundamental goals and
aspirations.
If noncompliance with U.N. resolutions and secret
weapons programs were legitimate grounds for the Security
Council to authorize force, then the United States, if it
were consistent, would be preparing a force-authorizing
resolution for its own invasion, as well as for invasions
of other permanent members of the council, and of Israel,
India, Pakistan, and others.
If the Security Council, however, manages to withstand
U.S. pressure to authorize an invasion, and if, as it has
threatened, the Bush administration invades Iraq without
such authorization, the damage to international law would
be equally great, given that the United States would be
demonstrating its contempt for the U.N. Charter and the
United Nations in the clearest possible terms.
As the chief architect of the U.N. Charter, and as the
worldís most powerful nation--militarily,
economically, and politically--the United States has a
special responsibility to uphold the founding principles
of the United Nations, and to lead the world, not
repeatedly to war, but in setting international
precedents and developing global models for the peaceful
resolution of conflict consistent with the rules,
principles, and procedures of the U.N. Charter.
With such leadership, the world could then turn its
attention to broader applications of international law to
other areas of profound concern, including global
warming, preserving the oceans, protecting human rights,
raising standards of living for the worldís poor,
ending global starvation, ending the global arms bazaar,
ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a just
solution, and ending the threat of nuclear war--issues
for which the Bush administration has shown only
hostility. The alternative is international anarchy,
irreversible environmental degradation and destruction,
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and
perhaps also a proliferation of wars unconstrained by the
principles of a peaceful world order that the United
States helped establish a half-century ago. Even the Bush
administrationís efforts to reduce the terrorist
threat to the United States would likely be damaged by an
unprovoked war against an Arab state in the Middle
East.
International law is essential in the twenty-first
century because powerful technologies and integrated
economies cannot be constrained by national boundaries.
The adverse effects of pollution, disease, and weapons of
war are uncontrollable without standards contained in
law. The sanctity of the earthís biosphere,
including human survival, has become dependent upon the
strengthening of these standards. Sadly, however, the
United States under the Bush administration has initiated
an intense assault on international law in order to
pursue short-term and short-sighted interests that avoid,
evade, ignore, or violate the standards painstakingly
developed by the international community, including the
United States, over many decades.
If the United States continues to shirk, even
denounce, its responsibilities to uphold international
law across a range of global problems and concerns, it
will tear open the fabric of world security and
international cooperation, and leave the future of the
human race, including the United States, in extreme
peril.
"Peace is the only battle worth waging."
--- Albert Camus
David Krieger's most recent book is Choose
Hope: Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear
Age (published in the USA).
Choose
Hope: Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear
Age (published in the UK)
©
TFF & the author 2002
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