Violation of Vienna Convention

William S. Lear rael at zopyra.com
Sun Apr 4 22:31:26 PDT 1999


On Monday, April 5, 1999 at 00:17:19 (-0400) Doug Henwood writes:
>...
>Niall Ferguson wrote in Saturday's Financial Times:
>...
>This decision to circumvent the UN will come back to haunt the Nato powers.
>Henceforth, it will be extremely hard for the US and its allies in Nato to
>make a credible complaint if, for example, China were to bomb Taiwan, or if
>a more militaristic regime in Russia decided to reassemble the Soviet
>empire by force. It will be easy enough for tomorrow's aggressors to trump
>up a "humanitarian crisis" and then simply bypass the UN, citing Kosovo as
>the precedent.

Methinks Niall doesn't quite get it. There is no need for "credibility" when you have the ultimate military force and a long and spotless history of utterly immoral and lawless behavior on your side. Our complaints about "human rights violations" or "violations of international law" have always lacked a scintilla of credibility because we have never considered them worth a second thought when "our" interests are at stake. If tomorrow's aggressors were to violate international law and/or commit gross human rights violations, the US would respond as it always has: if it's good for us, it's a defense of Freedom and Human Rights, and therefore the US government and the media will either publicly ignore it or support it with gusto; if it's bad for us, it's an outrage to be addressed with no little haste, the braying editorials hot on the heels of our cruise missiles.

Bill



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