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ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE - NI 342 - Might or right @import "/ui/styles/layout.css"; @import("/ui/styles/ie5mac.css");   New Internationalist 342 Jan / Feb 2002 Another world is possible / JUSTICE & SECURITY Teit Hornbak / Still PicturesNo government canjustify the massmurder of its owncitizens. But we haveyet to evolve international institutions that can intervene to prevent it. Peter Singer lays down some ground rules.  How can people be protected from genocide or mass terrorism? What part do ethics play in military intervention? And can the UN be reclaimed from the bullies? The aftermath of the 11 September terrorist attacks dramatically highlighted the way inwhich state sovereignty has ceased to be a sacred principle of international relations.Compare US demands on Afghanistan with Austria-Hungary’s demands on Serbia after theassassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 – the incident whichsparked the First World War.In both cases, there was strong evidence that the terrorists had come from, or beentrained in, the countries under threat. But Austria-Hungary had much better evidence ofthe involvement of elements of the Serbian Government in the plot than the US had in thecase of the Taliban. The Bosnian Serb conspirators were trained and armed by members ofthe Serbian intelligence forces, who aided them up to the point at which they crossed theborder to carry out their criminal act. Austria-Hungary presented the evidence to Serbia,demanding that it bring those responsible to justice and allow Austro-Hungarian monitors.Despite the evidence of Serbian complicity, Austria-Hungary’s ultimatum wascondemned in the US, France, Russia and Britain as merely an excuse for going to war.‘The most formidable demand ever imposed on one state by another,’ BritishForeign Minister Sir Edward Grey called it. Austria-Hungary and its backer, Germany, havethus been seen by historians as bearing a large measure of guilt for the First World War.The Bush administration’s demands of the Taliban were as stringent as those in1914, but were made without presenting any evidence to link Osama bin Laden to the attacksof 11 September. Yet the US demands, far from being condemned as a mere pretext foraggressive war, have been endorsed by a wide-ranging coalition of nations.The idea that national sovereignty cannot extend to harboring terrorists builds on anotion unknown in 1914: that there are ‘crimes against humanity’ which no-one,not even a sovereign government, may commit. Since terrorism indiscriminately killsinnocent people, it is a crime against humanity. As we struggle now to envisage a worldwithout terrorism, and to consider what are legitimate means of achieving this goal, weare broadening an earlier struggle to create a world without crimes like those committedin Nazi Germany, in Cambodia, in Bosnia, in Rwanda. What kind of institutions andstructures would we need to bring such a world about? An international courtJust as, at the domestic level, those who commit crimes know that they risk punishment, sotoo at the international level, those who commit crimes against humanity should know thatthey can be punished.We are beginning to develop international criminal law that is effective andenforceable. Tribunals authorized by the UN to try those guilty of crimes against humanityin Rwanda, East Timor and former Yugoslavia are now building on the precedent set by theNuremberg Tribunal in its trial of Nazi war criminals.So far these international tribunals have been one-off arrangements, set up to trythose responsible for particular atrocities. The planned International Criminal Court, tobe associated with the UN and situated in The Hague, will be permanent, with a prosecutorwho can charge individuals with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.An international treaty establishing the International Criminal Court has, at the timeof writing, been signed by 139 states, and ratified by 43. Ironically – and to itsshame – the US has said that it will not ratify the treaty. The court should set astandard for fair procedures, the jurisdiction of which every nation confidently accepts.If the Court had been in existence in 2001, it might have provided an acceptable way forOsama bin Laden and his associates to have been tried in a truly international court thatwas not dominated by the US. Preventing genocide Punishing the criminals after an atrocity has occurred is something that most people wouldsupport. But prevention would be even better. Those forms of prevention that do notinvolve military force are to be preferred. The long-term goal must be to build a globalculture that promotes respect for others and peaceful resolution of disputes. But for theforeseeable future there will be circumstances in which nothing but military interventionwill suffice to stop atrocities.Accepting the legitimacy of military intervention across borders is much more dangerousthan setting up an international criminal court. The difficulty is to specify thecircumstances in which military intervention should take place, so that humanitarian andanti-terrorist reasons will not slide into excuses for militarily strong nations to exerttheir power over weaker ones. How should this be done?The moral importance of protecting the lives and well-being of people does not dependupon the national boundaries they live within. National sovereignty has no intrinsic moralweight. What weight it does have comes from the role that respect for national sovereigntyplays, in normal circumstances, in promoting peaceful relationships between states. It isa useful rule that sums up the hard-won experience of many generations in avoiding war.Deciding on the circumstances in which national sovereignty must yield is, therefore, amatter of weighing up the risks of distinct evils: on the one hand, reducing theconstraints against war, and on the other, allowing crimes against humanity to continue.Every case needs to be considered on its own merits – no abstract formula can replacea detailed examination of the facts of the case.We can, as the international tribunals have done, make it a condition of interventionthat it is designed to stop crimes against humanity. There is, however, another conditionthat is equally crucial. Military intervention for humanitarian purposes usually costslives, and sometimes does not even achieve its goals. No intervention can be justifiedunless it can reasonably be expected to do more good than harm.For example, assume that Russia committed crimes against humanity in Chechnyacomparable to those that Serbia committed in Kosovo. Even so, since the costs of militaryintervention against Russia would have been far higher than those against Serbia –and the chances of success much smaller – intervention against Russia could not havebeen justified, whereas that against Serbia may have been.  Marc French / Panos A role for the UNBut who is to decide when crimes against humanity have taken place and when theexpectation of success is sufficient to justify intervening? There are dangers in having individual nations make such decisions, as Tanzania didwhen it invaded Uganda to depose Idi Amin, and Vietnam did when it moved against themurderous Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. Nor should the decisions be left to regionalorganizations like NATO, which have their own agendas.The United Nations is, for all its faults, the only global body that could conceivablydevelop an authoritative framework for specifying when intervention is justifiable. Withinthe UN only the Security Council could reach a decision on intervention with the necessaryspeed. But the present structure of the Security Council makes it difficult to see it ashaving the necessary moral authority for this task. The Security Council has fivepermanent members – the US, Britain, France, China and Russia – corresponding tothe major powers that were victorious in the Second World War. Although there are tenadditional members elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms, no substantivedecision can be taken against the overt opposition of any of the five permanent members.There can be no justification today for giving special status to states that were greatpowers in 1945, but are no longer so today. Why should France or Britain have veto rights,and not Germany or Japan, or for that matter, Brazil or Indonesia? Why should China be apermanent member, and not India? Why is there no permanent member from Africa, or LatinAmerica or from anywhere in the southern hemisphere?The UN has been looking at reform options since the mid-1990s but the process shows nosign of coming to fruition, though India and Japan, in particular, have recently beencampaigning hard for permanent membership. To expand the number of permanent members withveto rights would risk making the Security Council unworkable. A better idea would be toeliminate the veto and allow a three-quarters majority of an expanded membership to reachdecisions. In the long run, it is hard to see that giving special privileges to a smallgroup of states will be the best way to maintain either the authority of the UN or worldpeace.Whether or not the UN is reformed – and I would also advocate an elected assemblyas part of its regeneration (see 'A parliment for the planet')– it needs more resources to carry out its decisions. It should not have to begnation-states to allow their troops to serve under the UN flag. It should have the abilityto maintain its own well-trained forces so that the interventions it authorizes can becarried out rapidly and effectively.My picture of a possible future does not require us to dream of a world in whicheveryone is good and no-one commits crimes. It is a vision of global governance for aworld with human beings in it who are much like human beings today. That we could moveslowly in the direction of this vision is not an impossible dream. is DeCamp Professorof Bioethics at Princeton University in the US.ContactCoalition for an International Criminal Courtc/o WFM/IGP, 777 UN Plaza, New York, NY 10017, USTel: +1 212 687 2176E-mail: cicc@iccnow.orgwww.igc.org/icc/ Campaign for UN Reform 420 7th St SE, Suite C, Washington, DC 20003, US Tel: +1 202 546 3956 www.cunr.org USA for the International Criminal Court www.usaforicc.org      New Internationalist Need help? Home Sitemap Search Shop Subscribe Help Podcast help Contact NI Copyright notice Reprint policy Regular columns Big bad world Country profile Currents Essay Letter from Making Waves Mixed media Southern exposure View from Worldbeaters On the go? 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