TelePolis writes about british Secretary of State for Defence John Reid’s speech at the Royal United Services Institute. ¹ They rightly criticise Reid’s argument, that the war against terror is “complexer” and “are exacerbated by greater uncertainties ahead, be they ecological, economic, political or social.” – How come, they ask, that these changes are required now, when terrorrists have been common throughout the last decades: Terrorrists existed in all asymmetric wars: In Malaysia against the British, in Algeria against the French, in the Balkans against the Germans – terrorism is nothing new.
What exactly do we need to change? Longer imprisonment of suspects without them having the right to see a lawyer? Longer imprisonment of suspects without putting them to trial, preemptive strikes against foes, dependence on fabricated reports from an unreliable secret service? Those are changes for the worse, not for the better!
Some quotes from his speech ²:
[...] warfare continues to evolve, and, in its moral dimensions, we have now to cope with a deliberate regression towards barbaric terrorism by our opponents. A few weeks ago I spoke [...] about the uneven nature of the modern battlefield, and the unconstrained enemy ranged against us. Against this background, I called for all of us to be swifter to support, and slower to condemn our armed forces.
I don’t know. Wasn’t public criticism of our politics, and extra careful scrutiny of those allowed to use force in our socity what makes our ideals worthy?
[...] I was not, in any way, suggesting that British forces should operate outside the law. What I said was that the legal constraints upon us, when set against an enemy which adheres to none whatsoever, but is swift to insist that we do, made life very difficult for the forces of Democracy.
It seems to me that he’s suggesting that British forces should operate as they like, and in the mean time, we should change the laws to match. I don’t think that’s a good approach to lawmaking. At least he acknoledges that we should stick to our core values.
Until recently it was assumed that only states could cause mass casualties – and our rules, conventions & laws are largely predicated on that basis. That is quite plainly no longer the case. I believe we need now to consider whether we – the international community in its widest sense - need to re-examine these conventions. If we do not, we risk continuing to fight a 21st Century conflict with 20th Century rules.
I don’t see how the existance of a formidable foe, distributed, networked, stealthy, fanatical, patient, and so on – I don’t see how the existence of such a foe would prompt us to change the laws that reflect our core values. Our values haven’t changed, have they?
Reid doesn’t go into much detail, here, what concerns me about this speech is that it seems to move towards a weakening of the inrnational pacts, a slow abandoning of our core values. Contrary to what our politicians proclaim, many of them make laws that go against our core values, in the name of safety and security. I often doubt that these new laws do in fact increase our safety and security, and similarly, I wonder whether other, equally important values have been sacrificed.
I do appreciate the more positive end of his speech, by the way:
The question that people standing in a bus queue in my constitiuency ask when they see on their TV what is happening in Darfur, Rwanda, Congo or elsewhere is not “Why are we interested in intervening?”. The question they ask is “Why aren’t we doing more to help these people?” As long ago as 1948 the Genocide Convention provided in its first Article I that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which states undertake to prevent and to punish. Why, nearly 60 years later, do we find it so difficult to intervene?
The important part here, I think, is this: We should not ask whether we “fight a 21st Century conflict with 20th Century rules” – we should ask how we ended up in the 21st Century without solving our basic problems from the 20th Century.
The Genocide Convention, the DeclarationOfHumanRights, the GenevaConventions – it still seems to me that we should strive harder to live up to them, instead of trying to reform them. Let us aim high.
In raising questions about the adequacy of the international legal framework in the light of modern developments in conflict, I am suggesting that the body of relevant international rules and conventions should, where beneficial, be strengthened, not weakened. If new agreements to cope with conflict against non-state actors such as the international terrorist will be helpful, we should not shy away from taking the initiative. This means extending, not reducing, such conventions. ³
That would a positive interpretation of his speech. If that is indeed the result, I congratulate him. But let’s not forget how badly we’ve handled the conflict in Yugoslavia, for example. Kosova is far from being pacified. Now and then there are articles in the MondeDiplomatique highlighting how these regions have turned into centers of a slavetrade specializing in the prostitution of young women, for example. I’ve said before that we cannot entrust soldiers trained to kill and subdue with tasks such as securing the peace, rebuilding institutions – nation building. Extending the conventions allowing us to wage war in remote areas under the pretext of humanitarian causes should be accompanied by the appropriate commitments to actually resolve the humanitarian problems. Without these, we’ll be exacerbating the situation.
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