In Praise of the World Policeman

[happyheathen]

Sua -

You seem to be assuming that evil can be eliminated.

The theological implications are staggering - think of the unemployed ritual specialists!

Philosophically:

An externally-imposed ruler is invaribly going to fail.
Such failures generally create more misery, not less.
Your proposal is self-defeating.

Practically:

Ain’t gonna happen - the surest way to prop up an unpopular regime is to attack it/the easiest way to garner support of a disaffected population is to identify a common enemy (comparisons to US v. Iraq welcome). (I can still use the ‘X v. Y’ notation, right? Please?)

I thought ‘pax americana’ was generally discredited.

[sub]Is this a homework question [/sub]

[SuaSponte]

HH, I’m not assuming that evil can be eliminated. I’m assuming that evil can be confronted and fought.

Sua

[chula]

First of all, we already know how to prevent oppressive dictators from coming to power - investing in education, social services, civil society, independent media, etc. (I can provide cites for that if anyone insists, but it’s outside the scope of the argument.) If we focus on those things, we wouldn’t have to worry about using war to get rid of them. And of course, most of these dictators wouldn’t come to power without the support and encouragement of powerful allies on the outside.

Furthermore, the UN was not created to act as an ethical force. An organization founded in ethics would not have given veto power to Stalin and Mao - both of whom would likely have been on the list for overthrow under my proposal.

I disagree. You point out that political compromises have undermined its ability to fulfill its ethical objectives, but it was created with that purpose in mind. The UN Charter lists its objectives as

• to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
• to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
• to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
• to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Instead, it was set up to protect the self-interests of the victorious powers in WWII, while giving the rest of the world a voice - though not necessarily a say - in international events.

Keep in mind that most of the rest of the world had no say in the United Nations when it was formed. Most of Africa and Asia were still colonized.

My main problem is that objective criteria will never be employed. The UN Commission on Human Rights exists for the purpose of evaluating the human rights records of different countries, but its decisions are constantly influenced by politics and economic interests. How can we expect governments to stop acting politically? Human rights NGOs are better candidates for drawing up criteria, since they have expertise and are more impartial. But there’s no way in hell governments are going to give up that kind of power to an NGO.

To avoid ambiguity and value judgments, I would give lesser concern to violations of political rights, and instead look to more objective criteria as extra-judicial executions, instances of torture, etc.

It is very problematic to place more value on certain civil rights over all other human rights. I’m not sure why you assume that certain rights should take priority, or why you think that in doing so you are not making a value judgment. Favoring civil and political rights over other human rights is the typical American approach; it is not generally shared by the rest of the world and is falling out of popularity even here. (See for example, Carter’s statement upon winning the Nobel Prize.) If we use the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as our standard, brutal dictatorships will not necessarily the worst offenders.

International law is what the international community decides it is. There is no International Constitution. If the international community decides that humanitarian intervention trumps sovereignity, it does.

I don’t know if I should be surprised or not that this statement is coming from a lawyer. Of course, international law can change, but there is a process by which it changes. There is no Constitution, but there is the UN Charter, innumerable treaties, and customary international law. The international community cannot, and would not, declare this entire body of law null and void. You can argue that there should be a progressive development in the accepted limitations on state sovereignty - this seems to be the direction things have been moving since the UDHR - but it can’t happen overnight.

Finally, I don’t see why these types of measures couldn’t be justified under the current UN Charter. It’s not difficult to argue that the most brutal regimes constitute a 'threat to the peace" under Chapter VII. This provision isn’t employed more often (1) because of the structure of the Security Council and (2) because an invasion is often not the best way to achieve the desired outcome, as others have pointed out.

Hey jjimm, you can take Sierra Leone off your list. The ceasefire declared two years ago has been mostly successful.

[Stoid]

Well, such a plan, if implemented, would certainly allow us to go after Saddam legitimately.

Too bad it isn’t already in place.

[chula]

No, Stoid, the suggestion is that such an action would be by the international community as a whole, and clearly the international community does not agree that Hussein presents a great enough threat to warrant an invasion. The proposed unilateral attack by the U.S. is clearly illegal under international law.

[Henry_B]

Chula wrote:

First of all, we already know how to prevent oppressive dictators from coming to power - investing in education, social services, civil society, independent media, etc.

True. South Korea came out from agriculture to a industrial country within 15 - 25 years. That is absolutely amazing! And as I understand with this huge step in industrialisation it also built up it’s democracy. I think these goes often hand in hand.
I am sure that there has been another side of the coin as well, but nothing borns without pain.

But as for the whole world, the “Korean solution” is too slow.
It has to be done as You said, paralelly with arms control, even if this means occupation.
But an occupation can only be done “legally” if the world agrees on its nessicity. And UN is most suitable for this.
It should absolutely have an army (e.g. as I suggested in my earlier post).

I tried to discuss this question of how we should help the third world to help itself, in another thread in GD, but it seem not to be a very interesting question, even if history will show that this is the most important questions of our time.

Chula wrote further:

The proposed unilateral attack by the U.S. is clearly illegal under international law.

And this should be understood by any despot and any country, even USA.

I fully agree with Chula

[the_great_dalmuti]

How about if we set up a similar organization, to seek out and shut down the worst 3 environmental polluters? (Evil? Yep.)

Many people are trying, but to no avail.

Or the worst 3 drug lords? (They’re definitely evil.)

Oh, tried that too. Didn’t work either.

Those people/organizations are much closer, and much smaller than a dictator halfway across the world.

What makes you think that if the US can’t even solve its own problems, it can/should step in and (objctively) solve the problems of other nations?

[Stoid]

*Originally posted by chula *
**No, Stoid, the suggestion is that such an action would be by the international community as a whole, and clearly the international community does not agree that Hussein presents a great enough threat to warrant an invasion. The proposed unilateral attack by the U.S. is clearly illegal under international law. **

Evidently I didn’t not adequately convey my POV.

I think Bush’s decision to go after Saddam Hussein is the lowest, vilest, most disgustingly self-serving pile of shit I’ve ever personally seen a president produce. I am nauseated and horrified by how incredibly easy it has been for him to drag the Congress and the country along with him.

And I have learned something in the process. Something which I actually dare not say aloud, because no matter how carefully I phrase it, no matter how laboriously I qualify and explain and clarify it, I will end up being vilified for it. But I will say this: he scares me more now than he ever has, and that’s saying something.

[David_Simmons]

*Originally posted by Stoid *
**

I think Bush’s decision to go after Saddam Hussein is the lowest, vilest, most disgustingly self-serving pile of shit I’ve ever personally seen a president produce. I am nauseated and horrified by how incredibly easy it has been for him to drag the Congress and the country along with him.
**

This is off topic, but it isn’t difficult for an executive to get his way when people are panicked. Look how easy it was for Hitler to use the Reichstag fire and the fear of communism along with the wild inflation in Germany to get the German legislature to vote him emergency powers. Powers that never abated, only grew.

To get back on track, for Sua’s proposal to work a consensus among nations that it should be done would be required. I don’t see GW as a worldwide consensus builder. At least not until he’s forced into it.

[Jeu_D_esprit]

For my part of this discussion, I make the following explanation:

In the absence of any criteria I made up my own follow Sua’s guidelines of avoiding political rights and concentrating on more objective information. To be exact, I used Amnesty International’s subject headings of: Armed Conflict, Crimes against Humanity, Disappearances, Extrajudicial Executions, Indiscriminate Killings, Torture/Ill-treatment (of prisoners) and Use of Excessive Force. To balance these negatives I also used the topics of: Human Rights Defenders, Human Rights Developments, Human Rights Education and Human Rights Instruments. If a country received praise in these final four it would counter (in part) abuses in the first seven, or count as more damnation if denounced.

Further checking was done along the suggested headings with Human Rights Watch, the U.N. and the State Department sites and documents. (Lest you think I am a nut, this is a simple extension of research I was already doing for an academic paper.)

By reading and giving a simple up (good) or down (bad) check, I compiled a list of three countries that could be candidates in for the 2002 ‘Evil Countries that should be dealt with’ list. Two of them were not on my personal list really bad list before, but are now. In alphabetical order: Columbia, Guatemala and Israel (including the Palestinian territories).

Columbia had far and away the most strikes against it, followed by Israel and Guatemala in a close heat for the next two slots. For the purposes of this discussion, I will use these three as the candidate nations put forward for intervention.

 1) Who are the “contracting states set forth to overthrow one of the three violators?”  They cannot include any country that is allied to or has really significant economic ties with a potential candidate. Case in point: Israel and the United States. I cannot see a situation where either country would voluntarily put itself into a war with the other. If Israel was chosen, and the U.S. was a contracting state…the U.S. would simply pull out of the contract.

Perhaps the contract would have to be finalized after the target was chosen, but wouldn’t that lead to a choice of target country that the most countries would want to attack instead of the one that most deserved it? (Just like Alessan suggested?)

 2)  Could the contract include nations that don’t like each other? For instance: Guatemala is chosen as the target regime. The U.S. decides to back the action and permits the use of its bases for staging areas. For perverse reasons, Iraq decides it wants to help. The U.S., of course, would forbid the use of Iraqi troops outside of its borders…much less on a U.S. installation and military operation. The world would probably very easily deny Iraq the chance to join, but that begs the question of who can be excluded for what reasons? 

A powerful country like China may want to make itself felt on the world stage by joining in military action. Would the U.S. or Russia scuttle a plan just to keep China from increasing its influence? How about when Guatemala is being rebuilt or strengthened post overthrow? Would economic warfare replace military as China tries to break into a market that the U.S. wants to monopolize? That would end up weakening any country caught between the two.

I’ll stop at two right now, though I have several more problems with the premise.

[The_Calculus_of_Logic]

*Originally posted by SuaSponte *
**
Well, first of all, the UN wasn’t created for this reason. It was created for collective security, not to act as an offensive force.
Furthermore, the UN was not created to act as an ethical force. An organization founded in ethics would not have given veto power to Stalin and Mao - both of whom would likely have been on the list for overthrow under my proposal.
Instead, it was set up to protect the self-interests of the victorious powers in WWII, while giving the rest of the world a voice - though not necessarily a say - in international events.

Sua **

not true. The UN backed International Criminal Court was created for the exact reasons you described in your original post. To try & arrest people for crimes against humanity the statute can be found http://www.un.org/law/icc/statute/romefra.htm the list of crimes is articles 5-8) Sadly though, it will probably be an inept solution. The ICC will most likely end up functioning as a courtroom with no law enforcement arm :(. Condeming crimes, but not arresting the criminals or trying them.
Isn’t it the job of the security council to invade & send peacekeepers when individuals are threatened?