Nicaragua
I alluded to Nicaragua briefly when discussing the Clinton administration’s intervention into Kosovo, but Nicaragua merits its own discussion to illustrate how thoroughly the United States has spurned the very legal mechanisms it placed within the U.N. Charter to curtail international aggression.
The United States has a long history of involvement in Nicaragua, dating as far back as the 1850 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty promising to share with Great Britain any future Nicaraguan waterway connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific. United States troops were deployed to Nicaragua on various succeeding occasions to contain outbursts of violence and civil unrest, until the military leader Augusto César Sandino waged a successful guerrilla campaign that expelled United States forces in 1934. In 1936, though, the United States collaborated with Anastasio Somoza – commander of the Nicaraguan National Guard – to assassinate Sandino and impose a dictatorial rule over Nicaragua that the Somoza family would perpetuate for decades to come.
In 1979, a socialist insurgency calling itself the “Sandinistas” (in memory of Sandino) overthrew the Somoza regime and assumed power. The arrival of this new socialist government in Latin America naturally alarmed the United States, which had vowed never to permit a repeat of Cuba, as demonstrated in the previous Guatemalan and Chilean episodes. Before long the United States accused the Sandinistas of trying to spread their socialist insurgency (with the aid of Cuba) to neighboring El Salvador. According to the Reagan administration, this aid to the Salvadoran insurgents triggered the right of collective self-defense under U.N. Charter Article 51, so the United States determined to “help” El Salvador by taking action against Nicaragua. Among the ways that the United States took such action was to fund an insurgency of its own, namely the “Contras” who were fighting within Nicaragua against the Sandinista government. In addition to helping the Contra insurgency, the United States took direct action by having the CIA mine Nicaragua’s harbors. At this point, Nicaragua decided to make use of the U.N. Charter to protest what the United States was doing, specifically by filing suit in the International Court of Justice (the “ICJ” or the “World Court”).
The ICJ’s rules appear in its founding Statute, attached to the U.N. Charter. Under the Statute, the ICJ may adjudicate disputes only between nations, and only between those nations who consent to the ICJ’s jurisdiction. One method by which a nation can express such consent is the “optional clause,” which obligates the nation to allow the ICJ to hear any future controversy with another nation that also agrees to appear before the ICJ. In 1946 – almost immediately after the adoption of the U.N. Charter – President Harry S. Truman avidly submitted the United States to the optional clause, and the United States spent the next four decades appearing before the ICJ numerous times in an effort to encourage other nations to settle their disputes peacefully. When Nicaragua brought its particular controversy to the ICJ, though, the United States suddenly reversed course.
Nicaragua’s lawsuit charged the United States with infringing on Nicaragua’s territorial integrity and political independence in violation of Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter. Instead of responding to these allegations on their merits, the United States attempted to wriggle out of the ICJ’s jurisdiction. For example, merely three days before Nicaragua filed its complaint, the United States attempted to carve out an exception to its 1946 acceptance of ICJ jurisdiction by declaring that such jurisdiction would no longer apply to any disputes with a Central American nation. The United States also argued that Nicaragua was not entitled to file the complaint because Nicaragua had not submitted to the ICJ’s jurisdiction in the exact same manner that the United States had (i.e., with the optional clause). These and other jurisdictional arguments failed to persuade the court, which ruled that the matter must proceed to a hearing on the merits.
What the United States did next confirmed its refusal to live by the very rules it had consented to: the United States withdrew from the case, and shortly thereafter it rescinded President Truman’s acceptance of the optional clause. Undaunted, the ICJ heard Nicaragua’s arguments and ultimately found that even if Nicaragua was illegally aiding an insurgency in El Salvador, this did not allow the United States to aid an insurgency in Nicaragua or to conduct direct military activities against the Sandinistas (especially since the government of El Salvador had not requested such help). The ICJ’s decision did nothing to deter the Reagan administration from continuing its aid to the Contras, but the insurgency finally came to an end in 1990 when the Sandinista leader, Daniel Ortega, held free elections in which the U.S.-backed candidate, Violeta Chamorro, became Nicaragua’s new president. Nicaragua never collected any of the $17 billion in damages on the ICJ judgment because the Chamorro government withdrew the complaint.
I alluded to Nicaragua briefly when discussing the Clinton administration’s intervention into Kosovo, but Nicaragua merits its own discussion to illustrate how thoroughly the United States has spurned the very legal mechanisms it placed within the U.N. Charter to curtail international aggression.
The United States has a long history of involvement in Nicaragua, dating as far back as the 1850 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty promising to share with Great Britain any future Nicaraguan waterway connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific. United States troops were deployed to Nicaragua on various succeeding occasions to contain outbursts of violence and civil unrest, until the military leader Augusto César Sandino waged a successful guerrilla campaign that expelled United States forces in 1934. In 1936, though, the United States collaborated with Anastasio Somoza – commander of the Nicaraguan National Guard – to assassinate Sandino and impose a dictatorial rule over Nicaragua that the Somoza family would perpetuate for decades to come.
In 1979, a socialist insurgency calling itself the “Sandinistas” (in memory of Sandino) overthrew the Somoza regime and assumed power. The arrival of this new socialist government in Latin America naturally alarmed the United States, which had vowed never to permit a repeat of Cuba, as demonstrated in the previous Guatemalan and Chilean episodes. Before long the United States accused the Sandinistas of trying to spread their socialist insurgency (with the aid of Cuba) to neighboring El Salvador. According to the Reagan administration, this aid to the Salvadoran insurgents triggered the right of collective self-defense under U.N. Charter Article 51, so the United States determined to “help” El Salvador by taking action against Nicaragua. Among the ways that the United States took such action was to fund an insurgency of its own, namely the “Contras” who were fighting within Nicaragua against the Sandinista government. In addition to helping the Contra insurgency, the United States took direct action by having the CIA mine Nicaragua’s harbors. At this point, Nicaragua decided to make use of the U.N. Charter to protest what the United States was doing, specifically by filing suit in the International Court of Justice (the “ICJ” or the “World Court”).
The ICJ’s rules appear in its founding Statute, attached to the U.N. Charter. Under the Statute, the ICJ may adjudicate disputes only between nations, and only between those nations who consent to the ICJ’s jurisdiction. One method by which a nation can express such consent is the “optional clause,” which obligates the nation to allow the ICJ to hear any future controversy with another nation that also agrees to appear before the ICJ. In 1946 – almost immediately after the adoption of the U.N. Charter – President Harry S. Truman avidly submitted the United States to the optional clause, and the United States spent the next four decades appearing before the ICJ numerous times in an effort to encourage other nations to settle their disputes peacefully. When Nicaragua brought its particular controversy to the ICJ, though, the United States suddenly reversed course.
Nicaragua’s lawsuit charged the United States with infringing on Nicaragua’s territorial integrity and political independence in violation of Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter. Instead of responding to these allegations on their merits, the United States attempted to wriggle out of the ICJ’s jurisdiction. For example, merely three days before Nicaragua filed its complaint, the United States attempted to carve out an exception to its 1946 acceptance of ICJ jurisdiction by declaring that such jurisdiction would no longer apply to any disputes with a Central American nation. The United States also argued that Nicaragua was not entitled to file the complaint because Nicaragua had not submitted to the ICJ’s jurisdiction in the exact same manner that the United States had (i.e., with the optional clause). These and other jurisdictional arguments failed to persuade the court, which ruled that the matter must proceed to a hearing on the merits.
What the United States did next confirmed its refusal to live by the very rules it had consented to: the United States withdrew from the case, and shortly thereafter it rescinded President Truman’s acceptance of the optional clause. Undaunted, the ICJ heard Nicaragua’s arguments and ultimately found that even if Nicaragua was illegally aiding an insurgency in El Salvador, this did not allow the United States to aid an insurgency in Nicaragua or to conduct direct military activities against the Sandinistas (especially since the government of El Salvador had not requested such help). The ICJ’s decision did nothing to deter the Reagan administration from continuing its aid to the Contras, but the insurgency finally came to an end in 1990 when the Sandinista leader, Daniel Ortega, held free elections in which the U.S.-backed candidate, Violeta Chamorro, became Nicaragua’s new president. Nicaragua never collected any of the $17 billion in damages on the ICJ judgment because the Chamorro government withdrew the complaint.
No comments:
Post a Comment