>I got my aunt to admit (and my uncle didn't protest her position) that it
>was OK for the US to intervene in foreign societies if they were
>oppressive. In other words, its OK to put a stop, forcefully if necessary,
>to various forms of repression around the globe.
Well, I did something today I haven't in ages, picked up a copy of Foreign Affairs. The lead piece is by Michael Glennon of the UC-Davis law school, a former counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Glennon says the Yugo war means the effective - and welcome - abandonment of the UN Charter's rules "in favor of a vague new system that is much more tolerant of military intervention but has few hard and fast rules." It illustrates "America's new willingness to do what it thinks is right - international law notwithstanding." [When did the U.S. ever stop to worry about international law?] Claims of "justice," argues Glennon, outweigh the details of law, making the bombing of Belgrade a kind of civil disobedience I guess.
The UN mechanism - which never prevented any wars anyway - is just too unwieldy. "When last year the United States threatened force to curb Iraqi misbheavior, [France, Russia, and China] exploited their vetoes by stalling the process for their own diplomatic gain." But, Glennon concedes, the intervention is illegal under current international law. No matter - "openly breaking the law is much less dangerous than only pretending to comply with it, since disingenouous, disguised violations undermine the open debate on which legal reform and the law's legitimacy depend."
We don't yet know the outlines of this Newer World Order, but "some general observations may be made. The West's new rules of thumb on intervention accord less deference to the old idea of sovereign equality - the erstwhile notion that all countries, large or small, are equal in the eyes of the law. The new posture recognizes the hollowness of this concept, accepting that all states are not in fact the same in their power, wealth, or commitment to human rights or peace." Unfortunately, says Glennon, "no one, as yet, has devised safeguards sufficient to guarantee that power will not be abused by the strong." This new regime hasn't yet been codified into law. "But what of justice?... That a new interventionist regime might not at the outset be a legal one does not mean that enhanced global justice need remain a fantasy. International justice can in fact be pursued ad hoc, wihtout a fully functioning legal system. This evidently is what NATO and the United States have recently set out to do. A child saved from ethnic cleansing in Kosovo [!] by NATO's intervention is no less alive because the intervention was impromptu rather than part of a formal system."
But this new regime will lack "legitimacy" unless it's codified into law at some point. "The new interventionists must reconcile the need for broad acceptance of their regime with the resistance of the defiant, the indolent, and the miscreant. Proponents of the new regime must asess whether the cost of alienating the disorderly outweighs whatever benefits can be wrought in the form of a more orderly world.... But the new interventionists must not be daunted by fears of destroying some lofty, imagined temple of law enshrined in the U.N. Charter's anti-interventionist proscriptions. The higher, grander goal that has eluded humanity for centuries - the ideal of justice backed by power - should not be abandoned so easily. Achieving justice is the hard part; revising international law to reflect it can come afterward. If power is used to do justice, law will follow."
The privilege of defining justice being reserved for the U.S. and its NATO allies.
Doug