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Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation
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Catalogue
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Haditha Ethics - From Iraq to Iran?
The Spokesman, 91
Reviews
International
Lawlessness
Philippe
Sands,
Lawless World: Making and Breaking Global Rules, Penguin
For
more than a century, international law has been steadily developing. The
process is charted in this book by Philippe Sands, a well-known international
lawyer. One of its earliest landmarks was the 1899 Hague Convention on the
treatment of prisoners of war and the distinction between combatants and
noncombatants. The establishment
of the League of Nations and the International Labour Organisation by the
Treaty of Versailles in 1919 was an important milestone on the road. The
Atlantic Charter, formulated by United States President, Franklin D.
Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, in 1941, was a
precursor of the Charter of the United Nations, approved at San Francisco in
1945. A world system, with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
numerous other amplifications, by different conventions, followed.
Under
the UN Charter, countries agreed to refrain from the use of force except for
the purpose of self-defence or when authorised by the international community,
through the Security Council. Institutions were established and agreements
made which were related to world trade and development, for example, the World
Bank and International Monetary Fund, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade and the World Trade Organisation.
US
and British politicians were prominent in the development of the system and
frequently claimed it reflected the democratic values on which their countries
were based. This did not prevent them, or later political leaders, bending or
ignoring the rules. No one has, however, flouted them more flagrantly than
President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair. Philippe Sands
meticulously documents and analyses their behaviour in this book.
He
shows how the war initiated by American and British forces in Iraq was illegal
under the UN Charter and quotes the usually compliant Secretary General, Kofi
Annan, as saying so in September 2004. Tony Blair, who stated that Britain
would only act within the limits of international law, realised the need for a
new Security Council resolution to justify the invasion and, from November
2002 to March 2003, went to inordinate lengths to get one. The dropping of
criminal proceedings against Katherine Gun, a translator, for leaking to The
Observer an
e-mail instruction to bug Chilean and Mexican diplomats, who represented swing
states on the Security Council, indicated a desire not to rehash this in
public (p. 201).
When
efforts to get the second resolution failed, Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney
General, appears to have been pressurised to make a statement giving legal
backing for the war, despite having advised previously that regime change
would not be legal. Elizabeth Wilmshurst (Foreign Office Deputy Legal Advisor)
resigned, as she could not agree that a second resolution was not required to
legitimate military action (p. 189).
In
addition to challenging the legality of the war, Philippe Sands considers the
ill-treatment meted out to detainees at Guantánamo and at Abu Ghraib Prison
in Iraq and argues that it breaches both the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and the 1984 Convention against Torture. He then describes the various
means by which efforts have been made to justify what has been done.
President
Bush has denied that detainees were prisoners of war and, therefore, that they
were covered by the Geneva Conventions. The CIA was authorised to set up
detention centres outside the United States so that they were not subject to
American law. Richard Perle, a neo-conservative advisor, contended that, after
9/11, international law needed to be refashioned (p. 20).
Despite
blatant infringements of international law, however, official representatives
of the United States and of Britain still try to claim that they uphold the
system. Condoleezza Rice, at the international meeting of the American Society
of International Law on 1st April 2005, declared that the United States ‘…
has been and will continue to be the world’s strongest voice for the
development and defence of international legal norms’ (p. 254).
This
book not only exposes the barefaced hypocrisy of such statements; it also
systematically destroys the arguments of those who have sought to justify the
US and British military intervention in Iraq and associated policies as in
conformity with international law. For those of us who opposed Saddam Hussein
when the West was supporting him, and for the anti-war movement as a whole, it
is an invaluable source which all who wish to argue the case against military
intervention should read and absorb.
Stan Newens
