Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 23:26:07 +0200
Dishing Up International Law a la Carte
Official Washington honors international law when it’s politically useful,
such as in condemning a global adversary, but then dismisses it as useless
if it gets in the way of some desired U.S. action. This “international law
a la carte” undermines the concept’s fundamental value, says Lawrence
Davidson.
By Lawrence Davidson
September 13, 2014
International law is vital to the welfare of every man, woman and child on
this planet, although the vast majority of them do not know this is so. The
vital aspect lies in the fact that the universally applicable nature of
human rights - which prohibit such actions as the use of torture, arbitrary
arrest and detention while supporting freedom of movement, conscience,
cultural rights and the right to a standard of living adequate for health
and well-being, among other things - has its primary foundation in
international law.
Examples of this can be found in the <http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/>
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the various <http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions> Geneva Conventions.
To understand just how important international law is to the universal
application of human rights, one has to consider just how inadequate to this
end are national and local laws. This inadequacy should come as no surprise.
For hundreds of years now, the dominant form of political organization has
been the nation-state. The most common sort of law is that specific to the
state, and in the vast majority of cases, protection of rights under such
law is reserved for the citizen.
In other words, if you are not a citizen of a particular state, you cannot
assume you have any rights or protections within that state’s borders.
Worse yet, if you happen to be stateless (and the number of such people is
rapidly increasing), you are without local legal rights just about
everywhere.
Ideally, this is not how things should go. Indeed,
<http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/> Article 6 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights asserts that “everyone has the right to
recognition everywhere as a person before the law.” And, if you find
yourself in a country that has ratified this Declaration, you should come
under its protection.
Unfortunately, this is rarely the case in practice. The mystique of the
nation-state and the nativism that goes along with it often leads to the
denigration of this vital legal obligation just because it originates from
outside of the state.
Many people in the West assume that the denigration of international law
upholding human rights occurs mostly within authoritarian states - states
that do not protect such rights for their own citizens, much less recognize
them as universally applicable. But that is not the case.
Such flouting of international law is common among democracies as well. It
is even noticeable in the behavior of the United States. Take for instance
the current treatment of illegal immigrants. Their human rights are
certainly not respected in this country which, historically, is a nation of
immigrants.
The problem goes beyond the maltreatment of immigrants. In fact, the current
dismissive attitude toward human rights and the international laws that
uphold them has its roots in the fear of terrorism. Such actions as
arbitrary arrest, indefinite detention, the use of torture, and so forth are
all justified by the so-called “war on terror.”
These actions by the U.S. government are illegal under international law,
but because the enforcement of law is almost always the business of the
state, and the United States is a “superpower,” who is to call U.S.
officials to account for their crimes? No one. International law has no
designated policemen.
Culpability of Special Interest Politics
Although the “war on terror” appears to be an open-ended one, its
influence on policy and national behavior may wax and wane. There are other
obstacles that are actually structurally embedded within U.S. democratic
practice that also undermine adherence to international law. One of these is
the pervasive influence of apparently all powerful special interests or
lobbies in the formation of state policy.
Within the United States, there are a myriad number of special interests
that play the halls of power at every level of government. Some of them are
dedicated to good causes. Indeed, advocates for human rights and supporters
of international law have their own, albeit not very influential, lobbies.
There are other interests of great power, however, that devote themselves
to, among other things, the dehumanization of entire groups of people. A
good example are the Zionists whose multiple lobbies influence U.S. Middle
East policy so as to assure unquestioned support of Israel, and thereby
secure American involvement not only in the destruction of Palestinian human
rights, but of the Palestinians as a nation and a people.
In short, the power of some special interests is sufficient to involve the
U.S. in what amounts to international criminal behavior.
The average U.S. citizen, engrossed as he or she is in their local
environment, does not understand this aspect of their politics. The media,
from which U.S. citizens take most of their information on government
behavior, are themselves subject to the influence of the same special
interests that stalk the halls of power in Washington, D.C.
Therefore, the media cannot be relied upon to educate the citizenry on the
role of lobbies. We are thus faced with a messy set of problems: widespread
lack of popular awareness of how special interests can control government,
what this can result in, and the fact that this lack of awareness is likely
compounded by the public’s equally widespread apathy regarding their own
ignorance.
It is this insularity and the know-nothing attitude that goes along with it
that has allowed special interests to become the main center of political
power in America. Short of catastrophic political breakdown, this
arrangement is not going to change. The only thing that those who value
international law and human rights can do is to continue to build their own
special interest lobbies and compete for influence in government against the
dehumanizers and other assorted international law breakers.
Lawrence Davidson is a history professor at West Chester University in
Pennsylvania. He is the author of
<http://www.kentuckypress.com/viewbook.cfm?Category_ID=I&Group=55&ID=1490>
Foreign Policy Inc.: Privatizing America’s National Interest;
<http://www.upf.com/authorbooks.asp?lname=Davidson&fname=Lawrence> America’
s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli
Statehood; and <http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/GR2429.aspx> Islamic
Fundamentalism.
<http://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/georgewbush-43.jpg>
President George W. Bush.
President George W. Bush.
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