Rogue Elephant
Machiavelli redux
When George Bush Jr came to power in January of 2001, he proceeded to
implement foreign affairs and defense policies that were every bit as
radical, extreme and excessive as the Reagan/Bush administrations had
starting in January of 1981. To be sure, Bush Jr had no popular mandate to
do anything. Indeed, a majority of the American electorate had voted for his
corporate-cloned opponent.
Upon his installation, Bush Jr's "compassionate conservatism" quickly
revealed itself to be nothing more than reactionary Machiavellianism - as if
there had been any real doubt about this during the presidential election
campaign. Fascism with a friendly face. Even the Bush Jr cast of
Machiavellian characters were pretty much the same as the original
Reagan/Bush foreign affairs and defense "experts," many of whom were called
back into service and given promotions for international crimes they had
committed anywhere from ten to twenty years ago. It was déjà vu all over
again, as Yogi Berra aptly put it.
International legal nihilism
In quick succession the world saw these Bush Jr Leaguers repudiate the Kyoto
Protocol on global warming, the International Criminal Court, the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), an international convention to
regulate the trade in small arms, a verification Protocol for the Biological
Weapons Convention, an international convention to regulate and reduce
smoking, the World Conference Against Racism, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Systems Treaty, inter alia. To date the Bush Jr Leaguers have not found an
international convention that they like.
The only exception to this rule was their shameless exploitation of the 11
September 2001 tragedy in order to get the US House of Representatives to
give Bush Jr so-called "fast-track" trade negotiation authority so as to
present the American People and Congress with yet another non-amendable fait
accompli on behalf of American multinationals, corporations, banks,
insurance companies, the high-tech and biotech industries, Wall Street, etc.
The epitome of "globalization," American-style.
More ominously, once into office the Bush Jr Leaguers adopted an incredibly
belligerent posture towards the Peoples' Republic of China (PRC), publicly
identifying the PRC as America's foremost competitor/opponent into the 21st
Century. Then their needlessly pugnacious approach towards the downing of a
US spy plane in China with the death of a Chinese pilot only exacerbated
these already tense US/Chinese relations.
Next the Bush Jr Leaguers decided to sell high-tech weapons to Taiwan in
violation of the USA/PRC Joint Communiqué of 17 August 1982 that had been
negotiated and concluded earlier by the Reagan/Bush administration. Finally
came Bush Jr's breathtaking statement that the United States would defend
Taiwan in the event of an attack by the PRC irrespective of Article I,
Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution expressly reserving
to Congress alone the right to declare war. President Jimmy Carter had long
ago terminated the US-Taiwan self-defense treaty.
For twelve years the Constitution and the Rule of Law - whether domestic or
international - never deterred the Reagan/Bush administrations from pursuing
their internationally lawless and criminal policies around the world. The
same was true for the Clinton administration as well - invading Haiti;
bombing Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Serbia; the Lewinsky scandal, etc. The
Bush Jr administration has behaved no differently from its lineal
Machiavellian predecessors. Their bellicose handling of the 11 September
2001 tragedy was no exception to this general rule.
The Bush Jr withdrawal from the ABM Treaty Then, as had been foreshadowed,
whispered, hinted at and finally broadcast over a period of several months,
came the monumentally insane, horrendous, and tragic announcement on 13
December 2001 by the Bush Jr administration to withdraw from the ABM Treaty,
effective within six months. Of course it was sheer coincidence that the
Pentagon released their self-styled Bin Laden Video just as Bush Jr himself
publicly announced his indefensible decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty
in order to pursue his phantasmagorical National Missile Defense (NMD)
Program, the lineal successor to the Reagan/Bush Star Wars dream.
Predictably, the Bin Laden Video back-staged this major, pro-nuclear
announcement.
Once again the terrible national tragedy of 11 September was shamelessly
exploited in order to justify a reckless decision that had already been made
for other reasons long before. Then on 25 January 2002, the Pentagon
promptly conducted a sea-based NMD test in gross violation of Article 5(I)
of the ABM Treaty without waiting for the required six months to expire,
thus driving a proverbial nail into the coffin of the ABM Treaty before its
body was even legally dead.
The Bush Jr withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, which was originally negotiated
by those well-known Machiavellian realpolitikers Richard Nixon and Henry
Kissinger, threatens the very existence of other seminal arms control
treaties and regimes such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and
the Biological Weapons Convention, which have similar withdrawal clauses.
The prospect of yet another round of the multilateral and destabilizing
nuclear arms race now stares humanity directly in the face, even as the Bush
Jr administration today prepares for the quick resumption of nuclear testing
at the Nevada test site in outright defiance of the CTBT regime and NPT
Article VI.
The entire edifice of international agreements regulating, reducing, and
eliminating weapons of mass extermination (WME) has been shaken to its very
core. And now the Pentagon and the CIA are back into the dirty business of
researching, developing and testing biological weapons and biological agents
that are clearly prohibited by the Biological Weapons Convention and its US
domestic implementing legislation, the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act
of 1989.
The US first-strike nuclear strategy
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the impoverishment of Russia
leaving the United States as the world's "only superpower" or "hyperpower,"
we are getting to the point, if we are not there already, where only the
United States has the capability to launch an offensive first-strike
strategic nuclear weapons attack upon any adversary.
For that precise reason, deploying the so-called "national missile defense"
(NMD) has become a critical objective of the United States government. NMD
is not really needed to shoot down a stray missile from some so-called
"rogue state." Rather US NMD is essential for mopping up any residual
Russian or Chinese strategic nuclear weapons that might survive a US
offensive first-strike with strategic nuclear weapons systems.
The successful deployment of NMD will finally provide the United States with
what it has always sought: the capacity to launch a successful offensive
first-strike strategic nuclear attack, coupled with the capability to
neutralize a Russian and/or Chinese retaliatory nuclear attack. At that
point, the United States will proceed to use this capability to enforce its
Hegemonial Will upon the rest of the world.
Strategic nuclear "thinkers" such as Harvard's Thomas Schelling call this
doctrine "compellance" as opposed to "deterrence." With NMD the world will
become dominated by this US "compellance" strategy.
Honest nuclear war-mongering.
Consequently, it should come as no surprise that the historically covert
intent of America's nuclear "deterrence policy" should now come to light
through almost off-the-cuff remarks such as those by the omnipresent US
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz appearing in the 9 January 2002
edition of the New York Times:
"We're looking at a transformation of our deterrence posture from an almost
exclusive emphasis on offensive nuclear forces to a force that includes
defenses as well as offenses, that includes conventional strike capabilities
as well as nuclear strike capabilities, and includes a much reduced level of
nuclear strike capability," the deputy secretary of defense, Paul D
Wolfowitz, said. [Emphasis added.]
Well at least he was honest about it.
Wolfowitz admitted that the current US practice of so-called nuclear
"deterrence" is in fact really based upon "an almost exclusive emphasis on
offensive nuclear forces." To reiterate, since this deserves emphasis: The
US Deputy Secretary of Defense has publicly admitted and conceded that
"almost" all US nuclear forces are really "offensive" and not really
"defenses." That Statement could be taken to the International Court of
Justice and filed against the United States government as an Admission
Against Interest, Wolfowitz acting within the scope of his official duties.
Of course the Peace Movement and informed American public knew this was true
all along. Nonetheless, it should be regarded as an ominous sign of the
times that the Pentagon has become so brazen that it is publicly admitting
US nuclear criminality to the entire world. The arrogance of the Hyperpower!
A Nuremberg crime against peace
Then, writing in the March 10, 2002 edition of the Los Angeles Times,
defense analyst William Arkin revealed the leaked contents of the Bush Jr
administration's Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that it had just transmitted
to Congress on January 8. The Bush Jr administration has ordered the
Pentagon to draw up war plans for the first-use of nuclear weapons against
seven states: the so-called "axis of evil" - Iran, Iraq, and North Korea;
Libya and Syria; Russia and China, which are nuclear armed.
This component of the Bush Jr NPR incorporates the Clinton administration's
1997 nuclear war-fighting plans against so-called "rogue states" set forth
in Presidential Decision Directive 60. These warmed-over nuclear war plans
targeting these five non-nuclear states expressly violate the so-called
"negative security assurances" given by the United States as an express
condition for the renewal and indefinite extension of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by all of its non-nuclear weapons states
parties in 1995.
In this regard, Article 6 of the 1945 Nuremberg Charter provides in relevant
part as follows:
"The following acts, or any of them, are crimes coming within the
jurisdiction of the Tribunal for which there shall be individual
responsibility:
"(a) Crimes against peace: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or
waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international
treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or
conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing; "...
"Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the
formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the
foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in
execution of such plan." [Emphasis added.]
To the same effect is the Sixth Principle of the Principles of International
Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment
of the Tribunal, which were adopted by the International Law Commission of
the United Nations in 1950:
"PRINCIPLE VI "The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under
international law:
"(a) Crimes against peace:
"(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a
war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; "(ii)
Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any
of the acts mentioned under (i)." [Emphasis added.]
Notice that both of these elemental sources of public international law
clearly provide that the "planning" or "preparation" of a war in violation
of international "assurances" such as the aforementioned US negative
security assurance constitutes a Nuremberg Crime against Peace. Such is the
Bush Jr NPR!
The Rogue Elephant of international law and politics Equally reprehensible
from a legal perspective were the NPR's call for the Pentagon to draft
nuclear war-fighting plans for first nuclear strikes (1) against alleged
nuclear/chemical/biological "materials" or "facilities"; (2) "against
targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack"; and (3) "in the event of
surprising military developments," whatever that means.
According to the NPR, the Pentagon must also draw up nuclear war-fighting
plans to intervene with nuclear weapons in wars (1) between China and
Taiwan; (2) between Israel and the Arab states; (3) between North Korea and
South Korea; and (4) between Israel and Iraq. It is obvious upon whose side
the United States will actually plan to intervene with the first-use nuclear
weapons. And quite ominously, today the Bush Jr administration accelerates
its plans for launching an apocalyptic military aggression against Iraq,
deliberately raising the spectre of a US first-strike nuclear attack upon
that long-suffering country and its people.
The Bush Jr administration is making it crystal clear to all its chosen
adversaries around the world that it is fully prepared to cross the
threshold of actually using nuclear weapons that has prevailed since the US
criminal bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Yet more proof of the
fact that the United States government has officially abandoned "deterrence"
for "compellance" in order to rule the future world of the Third Millenium.
The Bush Jr administration has obviously become a "threat to the peace"
within the meaning of UN Charter article 39. It must be countermanded by the
UN Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. In the event
of a US veto of such "enforcement action" by the Security Council, then the
UN General Assembly must deal with the Bush Jr administration by invoking
its Uniting for Peace Resolution of 1950.
There very well could be some itty-bitty "rogue states" lurking out there
somewhere in the Third World. But today the United States government has
become the sole "rogue elephant" of international law and politics. For the
good of all humanity, America must be restrained. Time is of the essence!
Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign, IL 61820
217-333-7954(voice)
217-244-1478(fax)
fboyle@law.uiuc.edu
-----------------------------------
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