Foreign relations paradigm unabashedly reverts to barbarism

“The US/UN/NATO race for global full-spectrum dominance” (August 20 and 21, 2012)  by Christopher Black, James Henry Fetzer, Alex Mezyaev, and Christof Lehmann writing at Pravda.ru

Excerpt, editing by
Carolyn Bennett

Under any pretext ─ freedom, democracy, ‘responsibility to protect,’ human rights, ‘war on terrorism’ ─ no act of lawlessness or terrorism is shied away from: assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, murder of Libyan leader (Col.) Muammar al-Qaddafi Muammar or the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic, the President of Iraq Saddam Hussein, or President of the Republic of Rwanda Juvenal Habyarimana.

Unless this regression into global barbarism is opposed by all necessary popular, political, diplomatic, economical, legal, and if necessary, military means, humanity will descend into a state of global barbarism and unspeakable outrages.

Principles, conventions, declarations of law, human rights (breach)

These authors correctly observe that recent decades have witnessed “an unprecedented deterioration, a ‘collapse’ (I have termed it BREAKDOWN) of international law.

“This deterioration is driven by the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and their refusal to abide by long-established legal principles of international law in all its aspects: peaceful coexistence, human rights, military conduct and others, which have been established over hundreds of years. Many of these principles and laws were implemented after unspeakable human suffering.”

Principles in Treaty of Westphalia, National Sovereignty (breach)

The Treaty of Westphalia (Peace of Westphalia) was signed by European powers in 1648 after a religious and political power struggle between European empires had resulted in more than thirty years’ war. “The treaty defines the sovereignty of national states and the principle of non-interference into the internal political affairs of sovereign nations by others.”

The Treaty was one of the international legal principles used in guiding the drafting of the Charter of the United Nations; to many people, it is considered “the most important principle of international law with respect to the regulation of bilateral and multilateral diplomacy and politics.”

Sovereignty (breach)

“The principle of non-interference into domestic affairs and the principle of national sovereignty enshrined in the UN Charter is increasingly being challenged by those (that is, the Americans) who argue that the ‘international community’ (again, the Americans) has a ‘responsibility to protect’ civilians in cases where the government of a sovereign state is unable to protect its citizens, or when the government of a sovereign state is committing severe violations of other principles such as human rights. A resolution that implemented the ‘responsibility to protect’ was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2009 in violation of the UN Charter.

“This false responsibility was first termed ‘humanitarian intervention’ but it appears that this term could only be used in propaganda when a crisis was already in progress. The slogan responsibility to protect was coined in order to give this strategy more flexibility so that ‘intervention’ could be used ─ even before the United States had succeeded in creating a crisis.”

Hague Conventions

Law against mercenaries (breach)

Coining of the term ‘unlawful-combatant’ was designed in the attempt “to evade provisions of The Hague Convention, which clearly specifies that a population has the right to armed resistance against an aggressor’s military forces.

“The use of mercenary forces (e.g., using 20,000 mercenaries of the Al-Qaeda associated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group in the attempted subversion of Syria) erodes the concept of  command responsibility.

“It provides the USA/NATO with a loophole to commit the most serious acts of terrorism, massacre and military barbarism, while NATO’s military leadership and Defense Ministries and NATO member governments enjoy ‘plausible deniability’ for their command decisions.” But it is clear in international law that U.S. officers have the real command responsibility (effective command and control) over these mercenaries and therefore for their war crimes if ever they could be brought before an international tribunal.

The International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries (from December 4, 1989) forbids use of mercenaries; thus the United States’  illegal use of mercenary forces is a systematic circumvention of the Hague Convention.

Nevertheless the United States “reserves for itself the right not to make its citizens ─ including military personnel ─ subject to the International Criminal Court at The Hague.”

It does demand prosecution of citizens of nations opposed to US/NATO hegemony. “Members of militia who legally resist US/NATO occupation are often turned over to authorities of a government installed with US/NATO assistance.” They may then be sentenced to long prison terms or execution because US/NATO has found a way around the guarantee of protection under The Hague Conventions. But U.S.-deployed mercenaries, “private contractors,” soldiers of fortune used repeatedly in relatively recent years (from “the war on Yugoslavia” through the “wars on Afghanistan and Iraq”) to fulfill military tasks routinely and with impunity disobey “the rules or customs of war.

“The use of private military contractors and the use of allied or state-sponsored mercenary forces including Al Qaeda brigades are a breach of  the Hague Conventions.”

Global assassination

CIA drones military operations (breach)

“Extrajudicial executions and assassinations warn of what ‘human rights,’ ‘civil liberties,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘democracy’ and ‘justice’ now mean ─ in practice as opposed to in preaching ─ to the United States of America and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.”

Whether a drone attack is targeting resistance fighters (so-called ‘terrorists’) or Gameboy Killers at Langley, Virginia, blow up a bride and groom at a wedding party in Pakistan or Somalia ─ “any and all of such attacks circumvent The Hague Conventions.” Though the United States increasingly uses “unmanned aerial vehicles for observation and kinetic military actions, the CIA’s Gameboy Killers in Langley operate outside a legal military command structure.”

Barbarism veiled, plausibly denied, the authors conclude, consists of systemic acts of lawlessness. 

Circumvention of international law
Circumvention of legal responsibility for illegal acts of war
Circumvention of human rights, civil liberties
Implementation of torture

NATO family photo

Institutionalization of terrorism, massacre of civilians, members of militaries, combatants, non-combatants

Barbarism in war ● Return to endless wars of aggression

Crimes against the peace, unrestrained in ferocity and cruelty

Establishment of illegal international courts, politicized trials, pseudo-legalistic political witch hunts, victors’ justice ─ dangerous acts disguised as legitimate justice, more dangerous than outright violation of international laws and conventions

Sources and notes

Two-part article August 20 and 21, 2012,

Part I

“The US/UN/NATO Race for Global Full Spectrum Dominance” (Christopher Black., James Henry Fetzer, Alex Mezyaev, Christof Lehmann), August 20, 2012, http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/20-08-2012/121926-race_global_dominance-0/

Part II

“The US/UN/NATO Race for Global Full Spectrum Dominance Part II” (Christopher Black., James Henry Fetzer, Alex Mezyaev, Christof Lehmann), August 21, 2012, http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/21-08-2012/121938-race_global_dominance-0/

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Peace of Westphalia: European settlements of 1648, which brought to an end the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Dutch and the German phase of the Thirty Years’ War.

The peace was negotiated, from 1644, in the Westphalian towns of Münster and Osnabrück. The Spanish-Dutch treaty was signed on January 30, 1648. (Westphalia (German Westfalen) is a historic region of northwestern Germany, comprising (with the former state of Lippe) the present federal Land (state) of North Rhine–Westphalia and parts of the Länder (states) of Lower Saxony and Hesse.)

Under the terms of the peace settlement, a number of countries received territories or were confirmed in their sovereignty over territories. The territorial clauses all favored Sweden, France, and their allies. Constitutional changes made by the treaty ended the century-long struggle between the monarchical tendencies of the Holy Roman emperors and the federalist aspirations of the empire’s German princes.

The Peace of Westphalia recognized the full territorial sovereignty of the member states of the empire. They were empowered to contract treaties with one another and with foreign powers, provided that the emperor and the empire suffered no prejudice. By this and other changes, the princes of the empire became absolute sovereigns in their own dominions. The Holy Roman emperor and the Diet were left with a mere shadow of their former power.

Sweden and France as guarantors of the peace acquired the right of interference in the affairs of the empire. For many years, Germany became the principal theatre of European diplomacy and war, and the natural development of German national unity was delayed.

Though pronouncing the dissolution of the old order in the empire, the Treaty of Westphalia also facilitated the growth of new powers in its component parts, especially Austria, Bavaria, and Brandenburg. The treaty was recognized as a fundamental law of the German constitution and formed the basis of all subsequent treaties until the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.

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