-Caveat Lector- >From http://www.iht.com/articles/72506.html
Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com A radical rethink of international relations William Pfaff International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times Syndicate International Thursday, October 3, 2002 National Security Strategy PARIS The new U.S. National Security Strategy document, issued on Sept. 20, is an implicit American denunciation of the modern state order that has governed international relations since the Westphalian Settlement of 1648. That agreement, which ended the Thirty Years' War, recognized the absolute sovereignty and legal equality of states as the basis of international order. These principles of sovereignty and equality have been generally recognized ever since, if often in the breach. The consensus among governments and jurists has been that without acknowledging national sovereignty as the foundation of law, the world risked anarchic power struggles. The National Security Strategy statement is thus a radical document, whether Condoleezza Rice, reputedly its main author, understands this or not. There was another declaration of this kind, made 154 years ago: the Communist Manifesto. It denounced the existing international order of monarchies and "bourgeois" republics in the name of a new and superior legitimacy, that of the proletariat. It claimed this to be a universal and liberating legitimacy. After the Russian Revolution, the new Soviet Union set out to put this new principle into practice in its relations with other governments. It declared all other governments illegitimate. This is why Soviet policy so disturbed the international order. Its claim was absolute and, in principle, nonnegotiable. Karl Marx's "scientific" interpretation of historical processes - the intellectual foundation of Communism - claimed that history is driven by the struggle of classes, and that only workers' states were ultimately legitimate, since the industrial worker embodied the productive forces of modern industrial society. There was only one workers' state, Bolshevik Russia. All governments except the Soviet Union's usurped power that history had determined should belong to the proletariat. Therefore, those other governments sooner or later had to be replaced. Now the United States has stated that it will no longer respect the principle of absolute state sovereignty. It does not do so by substituting a new universalist and allegedly liberating principle, but to achieve American national security, to which it implicitly subordinates the security of every other nation. It says that if the U.S. government unilaterally determines that a state is a future threat to America, or that it harbors a group considered a potential threat, the United States will preemptively intervene in that state to eliminate the threat, if necessary by accomplishing "regime change." We already have been given an initial list of such states: those of the "axis of evil." The administration says it is simple "common sense" to preempt threats. It would seem common sense to agree, if it were not for the principle of the thing. This initiative is meant to supersede the existing principle of international legitimacy. International law is not "law" at all. It is a system of treaties, conventions, precedents and other commitments over many years by which governments have attempted to limit war, keep the peace and adjudicate their conflicting claims and interests to their mutual advantage and security. It is not law because no authority issues it. No one enforces it, other than through cooperative action among nations. The United States has, during its two and a quarter centuries of existence, been one of the nations most active in building up the structure of international law that the Bush administration now is engaged in knocking down. The Charter of the United Nations is one of the principal existing agreements making up international law and was drafted largely by the United States. The "threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state" is outlawed by the charter, and "preemptive" war was specifically treated as a war crime at the Nuremberg trials. One can say that the most powerful states have always made the rules. The United States has intervened in small countries many times. However, in the past Washington always claimed some form of legal justification. It acknowledged the principles of sovereignty and nonintervention. Now it jettisons those principles, substituting the claim that its own perceived national security interest overrides all. It also asserts its intention, and its right, by virtue of its own rectitude, to military domination of the world. This all is very dramatic. It would be better if Congress did not simply take it as decided. It needs debate, as its consequences may in the longer run prove unpleasant. International Herald Tribune Los Angeles Times Syndicate International Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; I don't believe everything I read or send (but that doesn't stop me from considering it; obviously SOMEBODY thinks it's important) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. 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