Tuesday, August 21, 2007
If the US Doesn't Want to Follow the Law, It Should Change the Law
If the US aims to abrogate its signing on to the UN charter, it should just do so instead of maintaining membership and violating the charter at every turn. Whatever you might think of the UN as an institution, the idea of outlawing the use of force across international boundaries except as authorized by the Security Council or in self defense from an immanent attack was a pretty good one. What with the veto power of the permanent members, there has to be a broad consensus among nations before the use of force will ever be approved. In any event, it’s better than having individual nation states decide unilaterally to use force. The US has a pretty crappy track record in following the charter and has advanced some ludicrous arguments over the years. The right of pre-emptive self-defense is one of the most ridiculous justifications ever put forward, and to accept it would completely render the UN charter null and void. Thankfully, the concept is a complete non-starter except with a few nut jobs and bed-wetters.
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2 comments:
You seem to have a very naive and historically ignorant view of international relations. Let me try and straighten you out on the basics.
First, the whole spiel given at the founding of the UN about its being a forum for nations to resolve their differences peacefully and lawfully is nothing but a smoke screen for the gullible. In reality, the UN was founded by and for the winners of World War II in order to keep the results of that war in place as long as possible. (Similarly, the League of Nations was an attempt to preserve the results of WW1, and the Congress of Vienna was an attempt to preserve the results of Waterloo.)
Even though Woodrow Wilson helped write the League of Nations charter, Congress (correctly, in my view) refused to ratify it because it would have placed real limits on the ability of the US to wage war, and even then, all factions in Congress realized that no other nation or group can be trusted with the ability to prevent the US from defending itself.
The UN avoided that difficulty by being toothless except for the Security Council, which can only act with at least the passive consent of the (then) five nuclear powers. As a result, those five nations have always been capable of refusing any UN demand with impunity. If this were not true, we would never have joined the UN either.
Second, the idea of establishing by treaty the principle that there are some things even rulers cannot do is a good one in principle; but it is quite naive to assume that such treaties will work as intended. If the wrong people wind up in charge of writing or administering the treaty, serious wrongs can go unpunished while innocents get turned into scapegoats.
Historically, the most successful good ideas of this type were either implemented unilaterally by strong nations "bullying" their foes (as at the Nuremberg and Tokyo genocide trials, and when the Congress of Vienna established a multinational naval patrol off the coast of West Africa to stop the slave trade), or by organizations that have the power to police their members and prevent untrustworthy ones from taking charge (as with the Geneva conventions and the Non-Proliferation Treaty).
Similar UN efforts have all been heavily corrupt, mostly because they are run by the General Assembly, in which each nation gets one vote (and most of the world's 197 countries are dictatorships). Deliberate mass starvations in the Ukraine, China, Ethiopia, and Sudan went unpunished because the UN wouldn't intervene.
Third, preemptive self-defense has often been just plain necessary. (The answer to this question is mainly a function of weapons technology and changes with time.) Our country and culture as we know them wouldn't exist if Britain hadn't forcibly prevented anyone else in Europe from building a navy big enough to invade Britain for 500 years (from Drake to WW1).
I suggest reading "Blood in the Streets" by Davidson and Rees-Mogg.
Thanks, JDG for pointing out some of my many deficiencies. My point in my post was that as long as the US is signed on to the charter it should at least pretend to honor it. Otherwise, it should just abrogate its obligations.
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