By Dr. Curtis F.J. Doebbler
As the U.S. elections results showed that Democratic presidential-candidate Barak Obama had defeated the representative of the George W. Bush's Republican Party, most of the people in the world breathed a collective sigh of relief.
This American election, probably more than any other in memorable years, was closely followed around the world. People everywhere watched with worried expectation. Would the process that had put an American President in office in 2000 with a half million fewer votes than his opponent and then re-elected him four years later in an election marred by irregularities again block what the polls showed to be the unambiguous will of the majority of the American people?
Of course and even more recent reason for the international interest was the terrible mess that President Bush had got the world into today. He had started two wars involving dozens of countries, killing well-over a million people, and with the most arrogant disregard for international law. He had driven a striving economy into the ground with his profit-taking friends. And he had made America weaker, less-liked, and more hated, then perhaps any other president in history.
At the basis of all this malaise was Bush and his allies' arrogant willingness to violate international law.
This legacy of disrespect for international law is an obstacle of monumental proportions that the new U.S. President will have to confront early in his term. The new president's start has not been good. He hardly mentioned international law during his campaign.
Although a lawyer, who even taught law, Mr. Obama does not seem to know much about international law. When he received a letter asking ten simple questions about international law—for example, will the U.S. ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child—neither he nor his campaign were even able to reply. Apparently they either did not think these issues are relevant for a future president or he did not know the answers or what the questions meant.
Being an American lawyer certainly does not qualify one as knowing much about international law. In fact, most American lawyers know little or next to nothing about international law. Remember Mr. John Yoo, an American international lawyer and professor of law, who thought that the president could suspend the ability of other countries to hold the U.S. to its obligations under the Geneva Conventions. This was wrong, dead wrong, but he believed it. Had it been true it would have made a mockery out of international law. Imagine if every state could unilaterally decide when to suspend the law. The basis of the rule of international law, like national law, is that there is one set of rules for everyone.
If Mr. Obama is up to the challenge of restoring respect for international law, here are some of the problems he will likely have to address:
- The International Law of the UN Charter
The U.S. is a member state of the United Nations, but it regularly violates the most basic principles of this organization. In the last few years it has repeatedly used military force against other countries. This is an explicit violation of the Charter of the United Nations that prohibits states form using military force against each other. Only when a state is attacked by another state or when the Security Council has agreed to the use of force may a state justify its action and avoid violating the law.
Neither of these two justifications were present when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 or Iraq in 2003 or when it recently bombed sites in Pakistan. In fact these violations of international not only allowed the victim states to legally respond using force with the justification of self-defense, but they leave the persons authorizing these acts of aggression open to prosecution for international crimes.
Will Obama respect these basic laws and ensure that those who have violated them are brought to justice?
There are other provisions of the UN Charter that the U.S. regularly flouts. For example article 55 and 56 require states to cooperate to achieve respect for human rights and social development. Nevertheless, the U.S. regularly rejects cooperation and remains well below the .07% of its GNP that has been suggested as the minimum a state should provide for Overseas Development Assistance.
Will Obama meet this minimum obligation? Or will he merely try to comfort the more than half the world living on an estimated less than 2 Euro-a-day with only sympathetic words as his successors have done for decades?
And what about the right to self-determination that is so important to so many states in the international community, especially African states. It is also a right that is one of the most fundamental principles of international law today. Despite this, the U.S. ensures that the Palestinian people are denied this right by an Israeli regime that has been dubbed as practicing racism, apartheid, and widespread violations of human rights against Palestinians for decades.
Today the unresolved right of the Palestinian people to self-determination is the longest standing serious human rights problem on the United Nations agenda, yet it remains unresolved largely because the U.S. does not act to resolve it. Will Obama have the courage to stand up to the Israeli lobby in the U.S. to protect his own country's interests? The choice of a former Israeli solider, Mr. Eham Emmanuel, as his chief of staff is not a good omen.
Will Obama be serious about ensuring respect for the right to self-determination?
Palestine is not the only place that the U.S. contributes to the violations of human rights. In recent years it has been cited for torture, unfair trials, extrajudicial or summary executions, violations of the right to housing, education, health care and social security. The list is pretty long, and relegates the U.S. to the position of pariah state, although it has the potential to be one of leading champions of human rights in the world.
Internationally recognized human rights are among the most important of the minimum common denominators that are a common global language. These rights are agreed in numerous treaties, some of which the U.S. has ratified. Despite this publicly manifested agreement, however, the U.S. regularly violates its obligations in these treaties.
Can Obama really bring change when the U.S. government that he heads remains one of the worst violators of human rights in the world?
Equally embarrassing are the treaties that the U.S. has refused to ratify. There are also some treaties that the U.S. has not ratified such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child—in fact together with Somalia, the U.S. is the only country in the world not to ratify this treaty. To be honest international law does not require the U.S. to ratify these treaties. A state is free to become a party to a treaty of its own free will. But what message will Obama send about America's leadership if he does not join leading treaties such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the American Convention on Human Rights?
Many of the most serious violations of the human rights mentioned above happened during the wars that Bush initiated. When human rights are violated in wartime these action constitute war crimes. Will Obama ratify the Statute of the International Criminal Court and allow all American perpetrators to be prosecuted for these most hideous of crimes? Will he allow officials of the Bush administration to be prosecuted for their international crimes?
In the past eight years perhaps no single issue has highlighted the United States' disregard for international consensus as much as its failure to remain outside the efforts to protect the environment. These efforts have been touted around the world by a former presidential candidate—Albert Gore—who lost to Bush eight years ago despite gaining more votes nationwide. Will Obama listen to Gore who endorsed him in the primaries and join the Kyoto Treaty and other treaties that protect the environment?
Perhaps before we destroy our environment we may incinerate our planet with nuclear weapons. Indeed, not only does Bush constantly warn us of the threat of nuclear weapons even from countries that do not have such weapons, he has threatened to use such weapons on occasion such as during his threats of war on Iraq in 2003. These threats cannot be taken idly by states that know that the U.S. is the only country in the world to have used nuclear weapons to kill hundreds of thousands of people. Will Obama agree to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty regime that Bush withdrew from? Can his concern for peace in the world be taken seriously if he does not?
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Certainly international law is just one challenge that Obama will have to face, but it is one that many will look to as indicating that he is really interested in bringing change.
Respect for international law is important because in a world of hundreds of languages, religions, ethnicities, legal codes, different courts, and other differences, international law provides one of the only agreed upon common means of communications. It reflects a common denominator that can help every one on the planet to minimally get along with each other. It will not help us to live perfect lives, but it will ensure that we treat each other humanely and that we can peacefully co-exist on one planet.
The United States has lost its way in the world and its faith in real cooperation, not merely the best money can buy or threats can coerce. During the last eight years, particularly, this has become evident by the way American shunned cooperation for condemnation, bullying, threats, and buy-offs that ran contrary to its own basic constitutional principles.
When such practices continue they hurt not only America's place in the world, but also the world as a whole. Most leaders and people in the world seemed to understand that, but George W. Bush and his cabinet did not.
The question for the new American President must not be can he do no worse. It must be is he ready and willing to do better? This is something I think many people around the world are hoping Mr. Obama is thinking about.
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