Impediments to Peace: United States Political & Moral Willpower Into the 21st Century & Beyond
Posted 3/4/2009 1:35 AM EST
Impediments to Peace:
United States Political & Moral Willpower Into the 21st Century & Beyond
"The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may have been involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations."
--------- The North Atlantic Treaty - Article I, (4 April 1949)
I. Introduction
Insofar as endeavoring to objectively effectuate world peace and perpetual global human survival, no first world superpower during the 20th century made greater rhetorical claims, that waging war is a reasonable means to achieve the eventual goal of world peace both at home and abroad, than the Untied States of America. This paper critically analyzes this widely held political prescription to achieve world peace and examines its continued feasibility into the 21st century within the framework of human rights and the possible emergence of a future international criminal court. It will further both explicate and analyze the two most widely held bipolar scholarly arguments for and against the United States subjecting itself to a newly constructed international criminal court in the future as an innovative attempt to construct Kant’s noble goal, Perpetual Peace. In conclusion it will theoretically answer the question as to whether human rights and the future United States foreign policy should remain merely a bipolar ‘black & white’ issue.
The overall objective is to offer a new way of conceptualizing United States foreign policy into the future and to additionally offer an alternative manner in which to consider war, peace and preventive diplomacy so that one day world peace will one day overcome world war as America directs its future foreign policy trajectory into the 21st century and beyond.# It additionally elucidates whereby the United States has failed practicing the political and moral willpower necessary to construct and implement an objective foreign policy directive capable in the future of achieving Kant’s noble philosophical ideal of Perpetual Peace.
It moreover argues world peace and perpetual human survival can not be achieved until the United States and its democratic allies commit to cooperating with the other United Nation member states already subjecting their citizens and leader’s to the customarily accepted rule of international criminal law as would be prescribed by a newly constructed International Criminal Court.
Two Sides of the Same Coin: The Rome Statute
In critically analyzing America’s past, present and future objective human rights and international criminal law practices, human rights scholars have migrated towards two bipolar views insofar as analyzing the direction of American future foreign policy, human rights objectives as well as preventive diplomacy.
Scholars on the one side purport the United States continually fails producing the necessary political and moral willpower in objective political practice insofar as implementing itself, the identical high-minded humanitarian and social justice for all rhetoric that it demands other less powerful developing states adhere to. By doing so, these same scholars assert that America continually fails to lead the world by democratic example. Moreover they say that because of this, America in and of itself, is guilty of committing gross violations of human rights as well as violating international criminal law as set forth in the United Nations Charter, NATO’s Treaty and also many other important internationally agreed upon Treaties including the Geneva Conventions on War Crimes (1948). This they say clearly manifests the United States’ blatant disrespect for both the United Nations and its associated Security Council and sovereign member states and also for customarily accepted international criminal law (such as NATO’s using depleted uranium—a contraband weapon during its unilateral bombing of Kosovo in 1999 according to international treaty).#
It is the strongly held view of this one group of political scholars that the aforementioned acts by the Untied States undermines global social justice for all as well as the importance of upholding important human rights instruments standards and dignity for humanity both at home and abroad. This they maintain remains one of the largest impediments left in achieving world peace. They also claim that the incessant objections emanating from certain United States politicians such as republican Senator Jesse Helms, vehemently opposing the Untied States subjecting itself to the same Rules of International Criminal Law it demands other less powerful sovereign states adhere, makes of mockery of the United States human rights record and manifests America as a political hypocrite.
The other most largely held and bipolar scholarly argument asserts itself as ‘The Third Way.’ Its theoretical creator English scholar Anthony Giddens is both the Director of London’s School of Economics as well as the man perhaps known best as being British Prime Minister, Tony Blair's ‘political guru.’ Giddens himself defines this view as being the new democratic and moral state imperative into the 21st century forward. According to Giddens and his followers, both America and Britain are what he considers as ‘new democratic states.’ This concept of the ‘new democratic state’ into the 21st century is defined as being much more than merely what it was previously. Giddens claims that both Britain and American are not only what previously has been known as ‘cosmopolitan nation-states,’ but more. Both these democratic first world country’s are now bound by a far more widely reaching political arena than merely that of being bound by the United Nations and its customarily accepted international criminal legal norms.
According to those espousing his theoretical argument, certain powerful democratic country’s like America exist in a modish capacity as ‘Role Models’ for the other non-democratic states such as was the former Yugoslavia and Cuba. And of all these new realized democratic and ‘moral imperatives’ possessed by both the United States and Britain, perhaps the most hotly disputed and renown have been the moral privilege and/or political imperative that powerful democratic states now possess to ‘intervene militarily’ and without United Nations Security Council Approval, in the foreign policy objectives of other sovereign states. Exemplary of Giddens’ new moral foreign policy initiatives are manifest in NATO’s military intervention in Kosovo in 1999 and Bosnia in 1991.
Published in his 1998 book, Giddens rallies not dissimilarly to former United States President Woodrow Wilson in attempting to win political approval of the former U.S. Congress to enjoin the United Nations and to apply his renown ‘14 Points’ as a preventive prescription for effectuating eventual world peace. Giddens like his successor former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson strongly believed that global world peace could not be achieved until every nation/state in the world espoused and objectively practiced ‘liberal democratic governance.’ This meant in the most basic terms that powerful democratic states as defined by both Giddens and Woodrow Wilson possess a special God given privilege as well as a special moral imperative to help the rest of the world construct world peace. And this future envisioned world peace will only come after the United States and Britain coerce militarily (if necessary) the rest of the world to espouse its governmental models of liberal democratic governance.
This comprises the overarching ideology of ‘The Third Way’ merely means that democratic states such as America and Great Britain have the exclusive moral right to ‘renew social democracy wherever it can be implemented.’ The former group of scholars of course argue that this view is not only hypocritical, but also that America should lead by moral example in objective political practice. Also that no state in the world possesses the exclusive privilege to wage war unilaterally on another sovereign state without prior approval by the other U.N. member states and their associated U.N. Security Council.
Giddens’ reasoning is that supposedly in a post-Cold War world, when any internal state conflict erupts such as genocidal civil war, this is indicative of political change necessities in the patterns of the way in which that particular state previously governed itself. And since according to those espousing this theory, that now since nation/states no longer exist in merely two bipolar blocs (East & West), and also because the prior boundaries between states have almost everywhere been fixed and agreed upon by international consensus, in an information age as is the 21st century, Giddens believes (either wrong or right), that state geopolitical territories no longer matter to the same extent to nation-states as in the past. And this is reason enough for powerful democratic states to militarily if necessary, make the rest of the world safe for peace-loving democracies globally.
III. Foreign Policy Merely a Black & White Framework?
The question remains however, should democratic foreign policy and grave matters of global social justice and waging world war and /or peace be conceptualized within such a narrow and limited bipolar framework? Moreover, can all the answers to the questions of world peace and social justice for all humanity be derived merely from the best and brightest international scholars constraining their theoretical arguments to just two opposing viewpoints? Or inversely, should there and is there a better and more innovative manner of considering important issues such as these into the 21st century? A third independent growing group of internationally recognized scholars believes that ‘yes,’ there is a better framework in which politically intense issues should be discussed. This newly emergent manner if theorizing world peace and preventive diplomacy should furthermore be saturated and spread throughout the international community comprising the officially recognized variant political spheres such as the United Nations as well as reaching far into the interior chambers of the 2004 U.S. Bush Presidency. This third growing group of scholars strongly espouses the alternative viewpoint that neither democratic nor socialist leftward leaning scholars and/or their politically associated politicians offer the only answers to such serious questions as the aforementioned (world war and peace). The next section will critically analyze the feasibility of this other theory.
IV. Conceptualizing International Justice: An Alternative Framework
The background and analysis of international justice is not new. Western political thought and tradition places its evolutionary development back to Ancient Greece and the theoretical writings of Plato and Aristotle. International justice according to Western tradition is applicable to ‘political domains’ within a certain social atmospheres. It is strongly believed as purported by Hobbbes and similar Western scholars that justice and ethics cannot exist in a state of lawlessness. In other words, without a viable striving overarching community existing such as the United Nations, which is capable of enforcing such laws and ethics equally to all humanity, humankind as well as states and nations will continue to pursue their own selfish interests without concern for the basic human rights and needs of others insofar as perpetual human survival, human dignity and respect. When applied to countries and states, they also would continually pursue their own selfish national interests with blatant disregard for the rest of humanity on a global scale. And the reason then follows wherefore a theatrical political sphere such as the United Nations and its successor The League of Nations institutes such an irreplaceable and important role in international politics. However back in the early stages of nation-state development, both the Roman Catholic Church and Early Christendom shared the role of regulating the integration of state / civil society ethical and national constraints. It was a strongly held viewpoint then throughout Europe (Including Eastern Yugosalvia as well as Russia prior to the Revolution 1918) that the common mutual bond binding all civilized states together in peace was the religion in particular Christianity.
As the newly emergent rise of the ‘secular modern state’ replaced the religiously based state conception, eroded became the ethical considerations and their integration into civil society prior. Eventually the total erosion as seen today in the West and particularly in the United States as embedded deeply in the United States Constitution, all former associations and bonds between Church & State relations were eventually dissolved as a new ideological view emerged along with the ‘Industrial Revolution’ and the ‘Modern Secular State.’ As the secular state replaced the former more ethical and religious state, with is arose a naturally more secular less non-religious non-ethical view of how to run foreign politics in those modern states. And it became the widely espoused view that ethics have no place in politics as renown George Kennan has told us in several of his scholarly writings such as ‘Do morals have a place in politics’ and also his editorials on “American Diplomacy.” These two developments, the dissolution of the religious state and the ride of the territorial modern state opened an arena for discussion as to how this modern state should consider ethics (or if it should at all). To ease the transition towards 21st century modernity, many jurists such as Suarex a well noted Spanish scholar at the time and other such as Vittoria helped to divide future scholars in political science into two vehemently opposed camps. The former group espoused the ‘Westphalian’ conceptualization of international justice based on the former religious state view and altered it as a mere extension of the Catholic Churches ethical considerations with respect to global social justice. One most renown scholar in this field was the Dutch jurist, Grotius.
Grotius was reacting at the time to the barbarous ‘Thirty-Years Religious War spanning the entire transition from religious to modern state development. His views gave rise to definitions known today as conceptualization of what constitutes ‘A Just War’ v. ‘An Unjust War.’ In attempting to reconcile the new modern realities of sovereign-secular statehood with the former notions of constructing some sense of normative ethics that all European states should follow in a national, moral and legal sense, a new notion emerged that some international sate solidarity leading to sustaining peace between states could emerge within an international framework based on many of the previous ethical considerations existing before the modern state emerged. From this view emerged the one modern group of scholars discussed previously that believe that America has failed living up to the same morals it makes other less powerful states adhere to.
Another group of scholars and jurist during Grotius’s time emerged with the other opposing view such as both Jean Bodin and Emmerich de Vattel in the mid to later 18th century. They were the those who constructed the other modern group of scholars believing that there should be no ethical considerations in pursuing state interests. And with this view came the associated belief that the notion of absolute state sovereignty takes primacy over all other ethical considerations and in pursuing national state centered interests, human beings existed as merely ‘collateral damage; if wounded in the attempt to pursue these national state defined interests. It is noteworthy to mention that in NATO’s 78 day bombing of Kosovo in 1999, this modern state view of ‘Realism and Anarchy’ was taken and even though there was many human civilian casualties and errors in the non-military targets accidentally bombed by the NATO powers, British Prime Minister Tony Blair in his daily addresses to the international media and public would refer to the men, women and helpless children killed by cluster bombs and wrongly targeted and destroyed civilian targets in one care a Belgrade Hospital Unit containing newborn children which were referred to by Blair as not human but as merely In his own words “Collateral Damage” as if he were referring to an automobile and not human beings with both the capacity to be scarred for life by both emotional and physical war pains throughout the lives (if they were to live through the war at all).
As modernization further emerged, so did a framework become necessary in which a desperate need for a durable method to maintain world peace in some manner was needed to prevent world war. This was especially true after the commencement of World War I and even stronger during and after World War II. Eventually the indispensable need for constructing as lasting peace between states globally took hold and potential answers came in the form of creating some manner in which the problems of war could be solved by constructing a solution sought by creating international agencies in which each sovereign state would have an alleged equal say and also by institutionalizing ethical considerations and a customarily accepted ‘Rule of Law’ by some future emergent international community.. That community eventually emerged as the United Nations and associated with it the many humanitarian and U.N. accredited NGO’s today such as Amnesty international.
However the latter group of previously discussed scholars such as Giddens’ became hysteric at espousing such a proposal. Mainly attributed to issues of a Countries ‘accountability’, the primarily anxiety existing not only by many such as formerly mentioned U.S. Senators such as Jesse Helmes is that the United States and its serviceman/women would one day also be held accountable for war crimes the same way in which former President Slobodan Milosevic is being held at the Hague today for war crimes. Another anxiety held by those who don’t want any overarching agency such as the United Nations or a newly emergent International Criminal Court to is that any overarching international agencyz such as that may one day degenerate into a world dictatorship acting in a diabolical superstate emerging as a global police force. Both sad and ironic is critics of the United Nations and constructing a new international criminal court verbally say we have that now and that superstate even has its own court and jail manifested in the international embodiment of institutions such as in Netherlands as the Hague and its jail, the World Court of Criminal Justice and the United Nations associated global policing institutions.
We must not forget to also consider the other politically active lobby groups, political action committees, the military-industrial complex and associations like it, the WTO, the NATO, GATT, and the many other regional self-serving interests which also have a profound effect on matters of war and peace globally.
Between these two primary bipolar groupings and the newly emergent third groups of human rights scholars is a myriad of others from the neoliberalists to the liberatarians whom believe that the powers of capitalism and financial take primacy over human rights and social justice. Other barriers to moving forward in advocating of global social justice have been the United Nations itself owing to the absolute VETO power given to the five permanent members of the its associated Security Council. If any of the five permanent members VETO any resolution, it stops it dead in its tracks. These permanent five powers also happen to be the original founders and financiers of the United Nations and its associated organs of global law enforcement. In such a real scenario many ask whether these five members pursue their own narrow diplomatic state andnational interests or do their advocate social justice for all member states. Many have said that the Council is merely an extension of Thucydides statement during the Polponesian Wars that ‘might makes right.’ Moreover, the United Nations institutionalizes a one-country one-vote protocol which requires the use of force only to be allowed in sovereign state intervention if the state consents to intervention. Otherwise, there is a consensus requirement which in a world of competing narrow state interests is just about equal to paralyzing the United Nations altogether. The United Nations has no financial core so it risks being run and administrated by the first world superpowers, or becoming a mere beggar. Many smaller states such as Greece and Bosnian state this elucidates the inequality amongst member states. And the one vote / one country protocol treats a larger state the same manner it does a larger state and this is equally unfair.
Proposing a New Preventive Peace Plan
Although this paper will not allow for all the necessary discussion owing to space limitations on what is right and wrong with the current international legal system associated with the United Nations and Security Council, it is obvious that it remains an monumentally difficult task which must be undertaken sometime in the future if as former U.S. President Ronald Reagan once said in 1983, “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” After considering a majority of the good the bad and the ugly portions of the present customarily accepted international criminal legal system as it stands today into the 21st century, we can conclude the world is heading in the right direction. Although the United Nations and its associated organs are both underfinanced and lacking compulsive legal jurisdiction globally, many advances were made. The search for definition of the concept of ‘human dignity’ led to the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1949. Am every human being alive according to the UDHR is entitled to certain inalienable rights including:
“Life, liberty and security” (Article 3);
“Asylum from Prosecution” (Article 14);
“A standard of living adequate for health and well-being…including the right to clothing, medical care, food and housing…”(Article 25);
“The right to education (Article 26);
And Article 28 boldly states that all individuals are further entitled to an “International Order in which theses rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully (objectively) realized.”
However, this is only a ‘declaration’ which is not been fully and objectively realized. Although many countries have implanted these noble human rights into the constitutions and even into their domestic laws, the large majority of world citizens still exist in a state of squalor and extreme poverty. Why? Many claim the problem is the lack of a legal manner in which this declaration can be both enforced fairly on all member states of the international social order as well as in giving the United Nations a manner in which to deal with those guilty of violating this noble declaration of human rights without offering them ways such as diplomatic immunity in which former Head’s of State before the ‘Pinochet Precedent’ could impunity. Many see the answer in all United Nations members states subjecting themselves to a newly emergent international criminal court having compulsive international legal jurisdiction to punish those responsible for committing the gravest crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity in a not dissimilar manner as both the Tokyo and Nuremberg Tribunals before it.
VI. What America Can Do
Only time will tell whether the seemingly never ending debate between all these competing groups of human rights scholars will resolve and if the future path of United States foreign policy will take either an isolationist or an internationalist approach.
America can however advocate a positive stance and assist the United Nation member states and itself in effectuating future world peace by leading by objective democratic liberal example, not in political principle alone. Principle without practice is as useless as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights without being implemented globally to all humanity. Both sad and ironic is that ever since the development of international criminal law and associated tribunals began, America, the world’s greatest democratic superpower resisted it. At this junction it is not necessary to go into a lengthy discussion as to why. By now political analysts should be acquainted with the field to know that America primarily has resisted subjecting itself to the same international legal standards it demands other less powerful states adhere to owing solely to duel concerns:
That former United States Officials such as Doctor Henry Kissinger will one day be extradited to the Hague War Crimes tribunal on alleged war crimes they themselves may have committed during time served in office;
That servicemen/women on Duty in places such as Vietnam and Iraq will similarly be summoned to the Hague to a future International Criminal Court should one be constructed on alleged violations of committing war crimes such as the recent manifestations of the sex war crimes committed by U.S. female servicewoman, Lindsey England, in Iraq (See cover of New York July 2004);
And that the United States, in and of itself will be constrained in pursuing its own narrow national state interests by a future emergent international criminal court with legal jurisdiction over America in an equal manner it would other states such as Yugoslavia.
However, during the summer (June 1998), the United States possessed a strong enough interest to send several important diplomatic representatives to Rome Italy to participate in the original drafting of the Rome Statute and its rules. The United States was particularly interested in drafting the part of the Rome Statute Rules governing the prosecution of war crimes. Particularly those war crime rules governing the prosecution of those persons allegedly found guilty of perpetrating war crimes, evidence, procedure and various protections for those accused of war committing crimes. On (December 31st 2000), former United States President Bill Clinton finally signed the Rome Statute immediately prior leaving office.
However, many human rights scholars claim he did so only to ensure the United States is included in future ICC meetings safeguarding America’s continual right to partake in forming a new International Criminal Court, if created. After George W. Bush Junior took over presidential office after Clinton (May 2000) he explicitly denounced that the United States would be bound by Clinton’s signature on to the Rome Statute. Since then, the United States has acted aggressively to end all and any cooperation with a newly formed international criminal court as well as the with United Nations Security Council on matters pertaining to world peace when it pertains to United States national security interests.
III. United States Political Willpower v. World Peace
United States security and economic interests and United States cooperation with the United Nations Security Council in matters of world security remain bipolar. Exemplary, was the case when the International Court of Justice ruled against the United States in 1984 when it allegedly illegally invaded Nicaragua being guilty itself of committing war crimes and threatening international peace and security.#
Similar statements emanating from key American politicians seriously undermined if not permanently damaged United States credibility in delicate diplomatic matters#, as also uncover the United States a political hypocrite insofar as human rights and social justice. They have also placed a diplomatic wedge between the United States and other non-western, non-liberal governed states such as Iraq, China, Russia and Yugoslavia. Some human rights scholars also maintain that they worked towards increasing terrorist activities currently directed against America and its citizenry by Islamic fundamentalist groups such as, Al-Qaeda.# Thus, such statements have only helped make a mockery of United States and its high-minded human rights rhetoric as it unilaterally uses militarism to invade sovereign states while superseding United Nations Security Council approval first. This is the case in both Clinton’s decision to bomb Kosovo (1999) as well as in Bush’s current military involvement in Iraq.#
IV. Consequences of United States Foreign Policy
This current one-sided trajectory the United States now takes in guiding its future foreign policy directives involving militarism, in and of itself has had serious consequences.# Former Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, currently sitting in a Hague jail cell for committing crimes against humanity during both the Bosnian and Kosovo civil wars is just one of many non-western Head's of State currently accusing high ranking United States officials and diplomats of being guilty themselves of gross violations of human rights as well as having guilt in their complacency involving war crimes, genocide as well as being heavily involved in committing crimes against world peace and humanity.#
V. The United States and International Criminal Law
During the NATO”s bombing of Yugoslavia (1999), Republican Senator Tom Campbell (R-San Jose C.A.) along with 14 other Senator’s filed a lawsuit against former United States President, Bill Clinton for allegedly violating the 1973 War Powers Act enacted post Vietnam.# On December 29th 1999 the New York Times reported at the Hague:
"The chief war crimes prosecutor for the United Nations is reviewing the conduct of NATO pilots and their commandants during last spring's 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia…[and that Carla Del Ponte's, Staff Prosecutor's spokesperson reported that]…Carla Del Ponte [Hague Prosecutor] has compiled a report on the air strikes at the urging of several "interested parties" including a group of Russian lawmakers and a Canadian Law Professor [including former United States Attorney General Ramsey Clark]."#
Similarly on May 9th 1999, United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, Mary Robinson stated that:
"people are not collateral damage [inverse to what top NATO leaders in particularly what English Prime Minister Jamie Shea proclaimed publicly that accidentally killing hundreds of Yugoslav civilians via NATO bombs were merely “Collateral damages”], people are people."
Diplomats, attorneys and many other high ranking international politicians such as South Korean Foreign Minister Hong Soon-Young, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and many Canadian scholars have been vocally blaming NATO (1999 Kosovo Crisis and in reference to George W. Bush Junior’s invading Iraq 2004) that:
"From the beginning, the Untied States and NATO act in an imperial and uncontrolled manner by repeatedly circumventing Article 2 of the United Nations Charter, and also its own Charter [OAS]# the Vienna Convention on the Laws and Treaties, and the Helsinki Accords of 1975 and unilaterally acting on its own national interests without concern for world peace and human rights." #
As international criminal law progresses, lawsuits and complaints against the United States and the NATO member states have been flooding the Hague where the Int'l Court of Criminal Justice (IJC) is located alleging that NATO leaders be held equally accountable for their own alleged war crimes against world peace. Over ten countries have indicted former United States politicians such as Henry Kissinger and Bill Clinton for being complicit in the plotting and waging of unauthorized war against other sovereign nation-states. Many of these Western politicians have also been repeatedly refused VISA’s and entry into foreign countries. There also were several arrest several warrants issued in Europe and also in the Balkan’s for many top NATO leader’s including former United States President, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair for spearheading NATO’s use of unauthorized force against Yugoslavia (1999)’#. It is most indisputable to most human rights scholars that both the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions governing the rules applicable to undertaking war. NATO's former Cold-War theme that "an attack on one [member of the NATO] is considered as an attack upon all NATO members", cannot account for the NATO military aggression launched against Yugoslavia for 78 days last year.
The NATO's own "aggression" against Yugoslavia as Former Nuremberg Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz suggests violated the three chief war crimes as defined at the Nuremberg Trials (against world peace, security and humanity) in stating:
"The greatest step forward in promoting the law of peace took place in Nuremberg after World War Two. The International Military Tribunal (IMT) Charter listed only three crimes that would come within the Court's jurisdiction. The first [was] war Crimes Against Peace, namely the planning, preparation, initiation or waging of war."#
Serious scholars of human rights remain both vexed and perplexed as to wherefore the U.S. has so strongly resisted ratification of establishing an International Criminal Court merely enforcing all of the three Nuremberg Principle Crimes against world peace and humanity upon the U.S. and every other country. The only valid reason seems that certain U.S. officials may fear that they themselves could come under the scrutiny and suspicion of a newly established ICC. Especially in light of the fact that in: "1996, the International law Commission composed of 34 "independent experts" completed work on the draft Code of Crimes that had first been ordered by the UN Charter in 1946. It described "aggression" as a "customary law crime" that created a "peremptory norm"---irrevocably binding on all states."#
Therefore, as defined by the Nuremberg Trial precedents in undertaking unilateral military action by bombing Yugoslavia, NATO leaders could be seemingly held as accountable as they claim Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is of committing crimes against world peace and humanity. The entire matter throws an ominous shadowy figure in the form of great shame upon the United States of America and its leaders as we enter a new millennium and must be reconciled with in some official capacity and not merely left neglected. Especially in light of the NATO's latest political objectives of expanding its original mandate regarding the Warsaw Pact to transforming itself into an international and unilateral global police force unconditionally independent from any UN Security Council scrutiny.
Now more than ever the time for establishing of an ICC is vital to global human survival and establishing future world peace. Even if the U.S. continues to refuse to ratify the Rome Statute by itself, once 60 states ratify the Treaty, the Rome Statute will become the compulsory collective international legal rule of law for the entire world in lieu of the NATO's unilateral militarism. Ironically at that point the U.S. may have no choice left but to abide by the ICC's decisions.
To elucidate the grave primacy of this matter, in a special report published by the USIP regarding the NATO's 50th Anniversary celebration, ironically held April 23-25th (1999), the USIP reports regarding the new NATO mandate of "humanitarian intervention":
"Within the alliance, Non-Article 5 missions may vary…Such missions (backed primarily by both the U.S. and U.K.) are described by Americans as "crisis response operations" (an activist approach)…implying that such [military] missions would only be used to [enforce coercively and to] support a peace agreement)."# What is striking and most disturbingly remarkable abut the aforementioned complaints being filed by Milosevic and others against the U.S. and its NATO counterparts at the Hague (ICJ) is they are becoming increasingly more difficult for the U.S and their NATO leaders counter. Scholars of human rights and international criminal law have been primarily conceding with local law officials in Beograd Serbia stating:
"that NATO violated international humanitarian law…and that NATO may have breached the Geneva Convention in five areas: it conducted air attacks using cluster bombs near populated areas, attacked targets of questionable legitimacy; did not take adequate measures to warn civilians of strikes…"#
Inverse to the rhetorical proclamations made by many U.S. governmental officials, the United States has shown itself to be entirely more interested in judging the alleged human rights records of other countries more than its own. Exemplary is the U.S. State Dept. web site (www.state.gov) on which is listed all of the alleged human rights violations committed by every country in the world, except for the U.S. This U.S. brushing off of its own moral political obligation to uphold its own human right instrument, the Organization of American States, has steadily declined since World War Two.
This sad social historical fact is revealed when inquiring into the history of the U.S. and its past human rights track record with respect to the world's former and present international criminal tribunals.
The first attempt to establish an international criminal court was in 1907 during the Second Hague Conference at the suggestion of former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. He proposed an International Court of Justice would:
"Decide between nations, great or small, exactly as a judge within our own limits [U.S. Western Courts] decides between individuals, great or small…"#
The reasons for which Roosevelt's idea to establish an international criminal court died in committee are both mysterious and controversial, yet worth examining. Perhaps the idea died owing to many Non-western governed states and their associated societies composed of primarily traditional cultural communities whose governance is not premised upon Western political philosophical principles being highly skeptical of submitting themselves to a Western styled international criminal tribunal.# After all, much of this same skepticism is still very prevalent today within the UN international relations purview and is manifested in the following statements given by an African Head of State:
"No one but us understands the motives upon which we act. Imperialists talk about human rights, drinking tea or sipping champagne. They can afford to--after all, they have it made. If we had slaves for 200 years to build our roads, build our homesteads, sow our fields; if we had multinationals for 300 years looting wealth from other people's lands; if we had literate, healthy, well-fed citizens---if we had a diversified economy and people had jobs---we too could talk human rights from our air conditioned offices and homes. But we can't do it; we have nothing."#
In another instance a Junior Minister joined in saying:
"You know, professor, we wish imperialists could understand that the sick and hungry have no use for freedom of movement or of speech. Maybe of worship! Hunger dulls the hearing and stills the tongue. Poverty and lack of roads, trains, or buses negate freedom of movement. You know, freedom to own private property alone is demanded by less than 1% here---those who had collaborated with imperialists in robbing the poor masses. The poor are grateful and glad to share."#
Whether this was the problem at that time, we will never truly know. What we do know is that two world wars have yet to teach the most powerful Superpower in the world, the U.S., either the lessons or legacies of strategically planning, instigating, engaging and waging aggressive war.# Two world wars have failed to teach many U.S. political leaders the grave importance of working towards permanently capitulating aggressive war altogether in order to safeguard against the possible future extinction of humanity. Let's face it, the world is not getting any safer insofar as nuclear weapons are concerned and one atom bomb can ruin your whole day. Moreover, more persons have died in genocidal civil wars since 1945 than in all of both the former world wars together:
"Since 1945, some 135 wars, most of them in the developing world, have killed more than 22 million people--the equivalent of World War III..."#
This paper is the first part of a multi-volume series of works discussing various impediments to the attainment of world peace. The clear continued lack of genuine Political Willpower on the part of the U.S. to assist the rest of the world and in particular the European Community in establishing a permanent International Criminal Court with compulsory jurisdiction over all nation-states constitutes part one of this series. This author shares the opinion of former Nuremberg Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz regarding the primary impediment to achieving World Peace and Global Human Survival. Undoubtedly, the greatest impediment to attaining world peace is the fault of, and also falls upon those member states within the international relations purview and the UN such as Germany, the U.S. and U.K. For these three states primary bare responsibility for stalling the establishment of an International Criminal Court. According to Ferencz:
"Every effort should be made to obtain the widest possible acceptance of the proposed International Criminal Court. Once all views have been heard, bickering must stop and decisive action taken. The number of signatories required…[to establish a treaty effectuating an international criminal court]…should be kept to the minimum needed to make the court operational; it should not exceed fifty."#
No treaty is officially binding upon any nation-state until embedded into its domestic law such as in Europe. Both sad an ironic is that the U.S. cannot even obtain the required two third vote from its own Senate in order to ratify a Treaty that would establish an new International Criminal Court with compulsory jurisdiction to impose its legal adjudication's upon every country equitably. As read in Global Survival, unlike the U.S., most of Europe has already established the EEC (Court of European Communities). The EEC and its affiliated CJEC (Court of Justice of European Communities) does possess compulsory legal jurisdictions to impose its legal decisions upon its members by superceding any European domestic law. It is also accessible to individuals, states and corporation. This has been the cause of much friction now existing between European states and the United States regarding imposing political and economic sanctions against Yugoslavia, Cuba, Iraq and Iran. In 1985 the U.S. withdrew itself from the legal jurisdiction of the ICJ (International Court of Justice) after the court rendered the U.S. guilty of committing "war like acts".# Thus U.S. Presidents and their associated political entourages seemingly prefer judging other counties rather than their own. This is clearly seen in the U.S. clearly rejecting to be bound by the Treaty of the Laws of the Sea. Ferencz states in:
"December 1982, at Montego Bay in Jamaica, 119 delegates from 117 states signed the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. It was an unprecedented and monumental achievement that had taken over 14 years of work by representatives of more than 150 countries…The sea-bed, the vast area not immediately contigeous to national boundaries, was declared to be "the common heritage of mankind. (Art. 136) Its resources were to be used for the benefit of mankind as a whole….[However] as in all such treatise there were some states that would not accept some of its provisions. The United States, that had the minig capacity to mine the seabed, was not inclined to accept the diktat, or controls of any independent authority regarding its actions on or under the high seas."#
U.S. strategic economic and political interests have often taken precedence over upholding democracy and fundamental human rights (social and economic as well as political and civic) in countries such as Iraq, Cuba and Yugoslavia. As Ferencz states:
"Sovereign states should realize that there is no danger in voluntarily accepting certain restrains for the common good [of all humanity]…States must finally summon the political courage to accept universal "rules of the road" that bind everyone for the benefit of everyone."#
Now is the time for all UN member states (past, present and upon new admission) to concur it is wisdom to avoid war by at very least, making it mandatory for UN member states to both recognize and ratify in their domestic law, the three Nuremberg Principle war crimes. Nothing less but the immediate establishment of an International Criminal Court can guarantee that their will still be a world left for our world's future posterity so that as Ferencz states:
"Never Again would aggression, genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes be tolerated without punishment of the perpetrators."#
In light of the aforementioned international development of NATO expansion without UN Security Council approval of its unilateral humanitarian militarism, the dialectic tensions holding the delicate balance of world peace together are becoming increasingly undone daily. The U.S political leaders must come to terms with the idea that sharing the world's wealth with other countries is far better than obliterating Earth and all of humanity altogether. It is as sad as it is ironic that the U.S. elite politicians cannot view this issue with the same rationality others seem to be capable. The world community in the 21st century will undoubtedly face many new challenges. Moreover, the growing uncertainty as to whether the future international relations purview regarding world peace, security and human rights will become better or worse than the previous century remains to be seen. In addition, the tensions existing between the duties of states to uphold and abide by the UN Charter while simultaneously trying to uphold the fundamental human rights issues and also sustaining world peace for the entire world in its diversity will continue to grow. Yet, the U.S. has still remained strongly opposed to the idea of establishing an international criminal court and abiding by its fair rulings. Time will tell whether the world will lean towards world peace or world war in the future. Notwithstanding, the fact remains evident that unless the U.S. will work with the rest of the world community in trying to achieve world peace, it risks the possibility of possible human destruction by way of its own nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Let us hope the U.S. along with the rest of the world community of rational men and women chose the former and not the latter path.
Works Cited
[1] Machiavellian diplomacy and international relations theory directed a country’s foreign policy initiatives upon its own selfish
national state interests and not on any goals of constructing world peace.
[2] The Balance of Power system of early European diplomacy premised itself on each country possessing a relatively equal
amount of power. Enough to keep any one state power from dominating the others and thus deterred war while producing some
semblance of peace and stability.
[3] Both the Cold War and also NATO’s 78 day undeclared war against Yugoslavia (1999) elucidate this United States inclination
in its foreign policy and diplomacy.
[4] John Quincy Adams, Address of July 4th, 1821, in Walter LaFeber, ed. John Quincy Adams and American Continental
Empire (Chicago: Times Books, 1965), p.45.
[5] Woodrow Wilson, Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union, December 7th, 1915, in The Papers of Woodrow
Wilson, vol. 35, p.297.
[6] Woodrow Wilson Commencement Address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, June 13, 1916, in The Papers of
Woodrow Wilson, vol. 37, pp. 212ff.
[7] George Washington’s Farewell Address, September 17th, 1796, Reprinted as Senate Document no. 3, 102nd Congress, 1st
Session, (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991), pp. 24.
[8] Jefferson’s Letter to Mme. La Duchesse D’Auville, April 2, 1790, in Paul Leicester Ford, ed., in Tucker Hendrickson, “Thomas
Jefferson,” p. 139.
[9] Mikhail Gorbachev, Gorbachev: Mandate for Peace, Paperjack’s Limited Press, New York, N.Y., 1987, pp.30-31.
[10] Alexander Hamilton, “The Federalist, No.6”, in Edward Mead Earle,ed., The Federalist, (New York: Modern Library 1941), pp.
30-31.
[11] President George Bush, “The U.N.: World Parliament of Peace,” address to the U.N. General Assembly, New York, October 1,
1990, in Dispatch, (U.S. Department of State), vol. 1 no. 6 (October 8th 1990) p. 152.
[12] President Bill Clinton, “Confronting the Challenges of a Broader World,” address to the U.N. General Assembly, New York,
September 27, 1993 in Dispatch (U.S. Dept. of State), vol. 4 no. 39 (September 27th 1993), p. 650.
[13] NATO’s unilateral nuclear militarism launched without first obtaining UN Security Council authorization for 78 days in an
illegal undeclared war waged against Yugoslavia, served to seriously undermine some very important diplomatic ties that America
had worked hard for several decades to establish e.g., China, Russia, Greece etc. It also led to dangerously destabilizing the entire
Balkan Peninsula in which the hostilities could easily have spread into Greece, Turkey and also elsewhere. This incident was also
very closely reminiscent of whereby both world wars previously occurred in almost the same Balkan area. The Clinton
Administration was logistically unprepared to provide for the mass waves of Albanian refugees fleeing from Kosovo into
Macedonia. Simultaneously, a NATO air carrier accidentally bombed the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia during the height of
the Cox scandal. This entire disaster could had been prevented if only American diplomacy had been previously revised by
policymakers into a more pragmatically applicable methodology capable of dealing with these and other 21st century civil war
crises. But instead, NATO’s war against Yugoslavia leaves serious international legal questions soon to be resolved at the Hague
as to whether NATO leaders’ themselves committed crimes against humanity in undertaking unilateral militarism against
Yugoslavia and firing directly on international legally protected cultural and civilian targets (UNESCO). The war also greatly
increased alienation between both China and Russia against the United States and its novel idea of intervening militarily as a
Humanitarian Interventionist necessity for promoting world peace and stability. A United Nations investigation recently
revealed that the NATO used illegal depleted uranium weaponry. According to international law, using depleted uranium
weaponry when engaging in war hostilities is a war crime since DU is contraband. This further leaves another serious legal
question unresolved as to whether NATO leaders should be tried for war crimes at the Hague similarly to former Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic.
[14] Holtsi, War and the State of War, Cambridge University Press, New York, N.Y., 1991, pp. 100-101.
[15] As the unwillingness of many countries to accept American values has shown.
