America Violates The Law Consecrated By Its Own Blood
Despite waging a war to defeat the aggression of the Axis powers, and despite constructing a legal framework in the Nuremberg Principles and the U.N. Charter to prevent such calamities from recurring, the United States government has since undertaken its own course of aggression that disrupts international peace and threatens to tear this legal framework apart. In a most unoriginal manner, the United States has justified such actions as necessary to protect oppressed peoples and to foster an overblown concept of national security reaching far beyond national boundaries. These rationales do nothing more than mimic the rhetoric of Japan, Italy, and Germany prior to World War II, and they make a mockery of that war’s chief lesson: aggression is a forbidden method for advancing any agenda no matter how just it may seem. Due to the fact that the federal government has discarded most legal restraints on its behavior, and further due to the absence of a serious foreign rival to its military might, the federal government has brazenly proclaimed that its version of post-constitutional “democracy” is superior to all other forms of government and that the United States may impose this system on any other nation for the sake of national security. As President George W. Bush openly admitted in his second inaugural address.
Even the most despicable nation may make binding treaties; it may refuse to enter treaties with which it disagrees; it may defend itself or seek help from other nations if attacked; and it may come to the aid of any other nation under attack. “Democracies” are not the only nations entitled to such basic rights, and “democracies” are certainly not entitled to deprive other nations of them.
Disregarding all this, federal foreign policy now mimics the Brezhnev Doctrine whereby the old Soviet Union reserved the right to invade its neighbors to restore regimes more friendly to Soviet policies (as with Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979). An American Brezhnev Doctrine in the service of “democracy” is no more legal and no less opportunistic – the federal government topples elected governments while empowering despots whenever expedient to its own interests. A few examples of federal aggression abroad demonstrate that the federal government’s war-making policy is in fact a war on the Nuremberg Principles, on the U.N. Charter, and on national sovereignty.
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*The technical method for describing nation-states is to refer to them as “states.” However, since most Americans perceive “states” as the internal components of the United States, I avoid confusion by referring to states on the world stage as “nations,” “nation-states,” or “countries.”
Despite waging a war to defeat the aggression of the Axis powers, and despite constructing a legal framework in the Nuremberg Principles and the U.N. Charter to prevent such calamities from recurring, the United States government has since undertaken its own course of aggression that disrupts international peace and threatens to tear this legal framework apart. In a most unoriginal manner, the United States has justified such actions as necessary to protect oppressed peoples and to foster an overblown concept of national security reaching far beyond national boundaries. These rationales do nothing more than mimic the rhetoric of Japan, Italy, and Germany prior to World War II, and they make a mockery of that war’s chief lesson: aggression is a forbidden method for advancing any agenda no matter how just it may seem. Due to the fact that the federal government has discarded most legal restraints on its behavior, and further due to the absence of a serious foreign rival to its military might, the federal government has brazenly proclaimed that its version of post-constitutional “democracy” is superior to all other forms of government and that the United States may impose this system on any other nation for the sake of national security. As President George W. Bush openly admitted in his second inaugural address.
[I]t is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.This is not a crusade to end tyranny. This is tyranny. The sentiment on display in Bush’s pronouncement (and which America’s political firmament shares) disregards not only the law of the use of force, but also another rudimentary doctrine of international law: nation-states are not obligated to adopt a particular form of government.* A nation-state’s existence hinges on only four things: 1) a permanent population; 2) a defined territory; 3) a government (not a particular type of government); and 4) the capacity to conduct relations with other nation-states. The United States itself officially acknowledges these criteria. In the eyes of the law it makes no difference whether a given government is a democracy, a republic, a monarchy, a socialist collective, or a military dictatorship – so long as the nation-state satisfies the legal criteria, then it shares sovereign equality with all other nation-states, and it has the right to defend itself from unprovoked attacks or interventions.
Even the most despicable nation may make binding treaties; it may refuse to enter treaties with which it disagrees; it may defend itself or seek help from other nations if attacked; and it may come to the aid of any other nation under attack. “Democracies” are not the only nations entitled to such basic rights, and “democracies” are certainly not entitled to deprive other nations of them.
Disregarding all this, federal foreign policy now mimics the Brezhnev Doctrine whereby the old Soviet Union reserved the right to invade its neighbors to restore regimes more friendly to Soviet policies (as with Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979). An American Brezhnev Doctrine in the service of “democracy” is no more legal and no less opportunistic – the federal government topples elected governments while empowering despots whenever expedient to its own interests. A few examples of federal aggression abroad demonstrate that the federal government’s war-making policy is in fact a war on the Nuremberg Principles, on the U.N. Charter, and on national sovereignty.
____________________________________
*The technical method for describing nation-states is to refer to them as “states.” However, since most Americans perceive “states” as the internal components of the United States, I avoid confusion by referring to states on the world stage as “nations,” “nation-states,” or “countries.”
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