Trebat is a first-year graduate student in mathematics.
By Nick Trebat
On Nov. 20, an important and well-attended lecture entitled
“Reinventing the UN System” was held at Bunche Hall.
The speaker, Tad Daley, is a visiting scholar at the Burkle Center
for International Relations as well as a former congressional
candidate from Los Angeles.
Daley’s talk focused on the war in Afghanistan, and his
basic argument was that diplomacy, through the UN, was a much
better option for the United States than bombing Afghani civilians.
Most people in attendance seemed to agree, and were eager to
discuss ways in which the UN could become a more effective
institution in times like these.
Some interesting suggestions were proposed, such as making the
UN voting system more egalitarian, eliminating the veto power held
by the five members of the UN Security Council, and creating a
stronger UN military force to prevent humanitarian tragedies such
as those that occurred in Bosnia and Rwanda in the ’90s.
Discussing this last point, Daley posited altering Article 2 of the
UN Charter to make it easier for states to carry out such
interventions.
But the suggestions all suffered from a basic limitation. A
meaningful international authority can exist only when all nations
agree to abide by its rules, and not just those rules that suit
them specifically at any given time. If this minimal condition is
not satisfied, then all talk of voting schemes and the revision of
articles is, if not useless, then fairly marginal.
It is a sad fact that many of the great crimes of the last
half-century were committed not by Bosnian Serbs or Rwandan Hutus
but by powerful nations. The actions, for example, of the
Indonesians ““ armed and supported by the United States
““ in East Timor in 1975, the Americans in Vietnam, and the
Russians in Afghanistan surely constitute crimes against humanity
““ cases of genocide, some might even say. Yet these crimes
all went unpunished, and are today largely forgotten.
This doesn’t mean attempts have not been made to force
these powerful nations to account for their actions. In 1985, the
International Court of Justice, to which the U.S. was a signatory,
demanded the U.S. “cease and refrain” in its attempts
to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, and ordered that the U.S.
pay $17 billion to Nicaragua in war reparations. The Reagan
Administration simply dismissed the court’s verdict and
continued its war against Nicaragua.
In 1967, the UN Security Council affirmed the infamous
Resolution 242, which demanded the “withdrawal of Israeli
armed forces from territories occupied” in the Six-Day
Arab-Israeli War. Yet to this day Israel retains control of the
West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights, claiming these
territories are vital to its security.
A dramatic recent example of the failure of international law
was the Gulf War, and the subsequent UN embargo on Iraq, held in
place at the insistence of the United States and Great Britain. The
war, we were told, was fought to repel Iraq’s invasion of
Kuwait.
But in “repelling” Iraq the U.S. killed over 200,000
Iraqis, often in a brutal and sadistic fashion, as evidenced by
incidents such as the “highway of death”, when American
fighter jets strafed fleeing Iraqi soldiers, many of whom were
Kurdish and Shiite conscripts ““ the very people we were there
to “protect.” Furthermore, U.S. and British attacks on
water supplies and sanitation facilities created a humanitarian
tragedy in Iraq that continues to this day.
As for the sanctions, the appalling UN statistic that 5,000
Iraqi children die each month as a result of these sanctions is
well known. Less well known are the words of the former UN
humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, Denis Halliday, who resigned his
post in 1998, calling the sanctions “genocidal.” In his
resignation speech, Halliday said: “We are in the process of
destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as
that. It is illegal and immoral.”
It is precisely this immorality, perpetrated by a superpower,
that the UN is powerless to stop, and in fact actively participates
in. The question then for those who wish to “re-invent”
international law is this: how is this international law to deal
with such a superpower? How is this international law supposed to
compel such a superpower to respect its authority, rather than
violate rules as it pleases?
Daley dealt with these questions at the conference, conceding
that powerful countries such as the U.S., France, Russia, and China
are guilty of many crimes. But this, he said, is no argument
against the value of international law. It may be true, he said,
that the leaders of powerful countries can escape justice, but this
doesn’t mean we should not go after the Pinochets, the
Videlas, and the Karadazics of the world. At least they will be
held accountable; at least they will be brought to justice.
Daley uses sound sound reasoning. There is value in bringing
mass murderers to justice, even if only those mass murderers too
weak to escape the law. But in seeking out these criminals, we must
recognize that “they” are only part of the story; that
we must also focus on “us,” on the crimes of our
leaders. Otherwise we are simply playing the role of the
“good Germans” in the 1930s and ’40s, happy to
criticize others, but too timid, or too brainwashed, to reflect on
the actions and attitudes of ourselves.