Month: March 2014

Amnesty International came out with a report last week documenting cases of abuse and killings by the Israeli army in the West Bank over the time period of January 2011 to December 2013.

The report documents “the killings of 22 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank,” mostly “young adults under the age of 25.” Amnesty reports that “261 Palestinians, including 67 children, have been seriously injured by live ammunition fired by Israeli forces in the West Bank” and “more than 8,000, including 1,500 children – have been wounded by other means” during the period in question.

The press release:

Israeli forces have displayed a callous disregard for human life by killing dozens of Palestinian civilians, including children, in the occupied West Bank over the past three years with near total impunity, said Amnesty International in a report published today.

The report, Trigger-happy: Israel’s use of excessive force in the West Bank, describes mounting bloodshed and human rights abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) as a result of the Israeli forces’ use of unnecessary, arbitrary and brutal force against Palestinians since January 2011.

In all cases examined by Amnesty International, Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers did not appear to be posing a direct and immediate threat to life. In some, there is evidence that they were victims of wilful killings, which would amount to war crimes.

The report warns that there is near-total impunity for such abuse and killings, noting “a pattern of war crimes and other serious violations of international law – both international humanitarian law and international human rights law – committed by Israeli military and security forces since they occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip in 1967.”

In a separate report from the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), condemns Israel for increasing restrictions on equality and freedom for Palestinians both inside Israel and in the occupied West Bank, serving as a detailed description of an apartheid system. The report condemns Israel for “maintain[ing] Jewish and non-Jewish sectors…[including] two systems of education…as well as separate municipalities: Jewish municipalities and the so-called ‘municipalities of the minorities.'” It also condemns the situation in the West Bank: “two groups, who live on the same territory but do not enjoy either equal use of roads and infrastructure or equal access to basic services and water resources.” It urges Israel to “to make every effort to eradicate all forms of segregation between Jewish and non-Jewish communities.”

Below is a video of the talk Scott Horton and I gave at the International Students for Liberty Conference in Washington, DC this month. We were initially scheduled to give the talk together, but due to weather conditions Scott was delayed. I handle the first half of the talk and Q&A, and Scott managed to make it towards the very end, thankfully.

We would both like to thank the Future of Freedom Foundation for inviting us to speak.

Writing in the Boston Globe about the U.S.-Russian jockeying in Ukraine, Stephen Kinzer has it exactly right:

From the moment the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the United States has relentlessly pursued a strategy of encircling Russia, just as it has with other perceived enemies like China and Iran. It has brought 12 countries in central Europe, all of them formerly allied with Moscow, into the NATO alliance. US military power is now directly on Russia’s borders.

…Some policy makers in Washington have been congratulating each other for a successful American-aided regime change operation in Ukraine. Three factors converged to produce the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych. First was his own autocratic instinct and utter lack of political skill, which led him to think he could ignore protesters. Second was the brave determination of the protesters themselves. Third was intervention by the United States and other Western countries — often spearheaded by diplomats and quasi-covert operatives who have been working for years on “democracy promotion” projects in Ukraine.

As protests mounted in Kiev last month, many in Washington found it difficult to break the old habit of shaping US policy to punish Russia. Several European leaders suggested resolving the Ukraine crisis through negotiation with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. This enraged the United States, which wants to isolate Putin, not accommodate him.

That is important context. If one wants to understand Russia’s calculations – an impulse entirely absent from most of the commentary coming out of Washington – one must acknowledge the provocations the U.S. has committed in continuing to fight the Cold War long after Russia’s defeat. Here again, the U.S. dismissed diplomacy in favor of sticking it to Russia.

From the beginning of the instability in Ukraine, the geo-political contest between the U.S. and its European allies on one side and Russia on the other was the underlying factor. Indeed, the protests that erupted started over the question of whether Ukraine would be integrated under Western influence or remain under Russian influence. Now, Russia is basically occupying Crimea as it tries desperately to undermine the new pro-Western regime in Kiev, while the U.S. continues to try to isolate Russia and bring Ukraine fully into its orbit.

But, as Kinzer explains, neither Russia or the United States is “powerful enough to emerge from the Ukraine/Crimea crisis with a full victory,” meaning that “any solution short of partition will have to take Russia’s interests into account. Thus far the United States has shown no interest in doing that. The likely geopolitical outcome, therefore, is a stalemate.”

There is a damn-near bipartisan consensus in Washington that something ought to be done to punish Russia further. Some call for sanctions, others for isolating Russia in the international community, and still others for some kind of provocative military action short of direct hostilities. Not only are these ridiculous, they would serve no practical purpose. How do they think Moscow will respond to sanctions? Putin would laugh. More drastic proposals for economic punishment would be no good, considering Washington’s European allies get a good bit of their energy supply from Russia through Ukraine. And any military action would be as contrary to international law as Russia’s incursions into Crimea, never mind being fantastically stupid given that it could provoke incredible carnage.

This is what seeing the world as a zero-sum strategic chessboard produces. Outside powers may profess genuine concern with the fate of Ukrainians, but they are viewing Ukraine in terms of their own interests, not the people’s. In Syria, that sort of proxy game has helped destroy a country and kill over 100,000 people.

As Anatol Lieven wrote yesterday, unless Russia and the West “find ways of withdrawing from some of the positions that they have taken…the result could very easily be civil war, Russian invasion, the partition of Ukraine, and a conflict that will haunt Europe for generations to come.”

International law is suddenly very popular in Washington. President Obama responded to Russian military intervention in the Crimea by accusing Russia of a "breach of international law." Secretary of State John Kerry followed up by declaring that Russia is "in direct, overt violation of international law."

Unfortunately, during the last five years, no world leader has done more to undermine international law than Barack Obama. He treats it with rhetorical adulation and behavioral contempt, helping to further normalize a might-makes-right approach to global affairs that is the antithesis of international law.

Fifty years ago, another former law professor, Senator Wayne Morse, condemned such arrogance of power. "I don’t know why we think, just because we’re mighty, that we have the right to try to substitute might for right," Morse said on national TV in 1964. "And that’s the American policy in Southeast Asia – just as unsound when we do it as when Russia does it."

Today, Uncle Sam continues to preen as the globe’s big sheriff on the side of international law even while functioning as the world’s biggest outlaw.

Rather than striving for an evenhanded assessment of how "international law" has become so much coin of the hypocrisy realm, mainline U.S. media are now transfixed with Kremlin villainy.

Continue reading “Heard the One About Obama Denouncing a Breach of International Law?”

This is something Secretary of State John Kerry actually said. It is not from The Onion:

“You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext.”

He was criticizing Russia’s incursions into Crimea and Ukraine. But the condemnation apparently did not strike him as hypocritical.

Micah Zenko, of the Council on Foreign Relations, noted the hypocrisy on Twitter:

US politicians and pundits newfound commitment to state sovereignty and non-interference in other country's affairs is admirable.

— Micah Zenko (@MicahZenko) March 1, 2014