The western erosion of int’l law & justice
NEEDLESS to say, the very attitude of the western legal community vis-à-vis the concept principle of self-determination — a right to be fundamentally exercised by the people of Palestine and Kashmir seems passive because of the power play of geopolitics — undeniable western clout shown in the Cold War and the post-Cold War eras has for the general readers of international relations and international law, it must not be a surprising fact that the western positive centrism toward international law seems more plural and systematic to accord the spirit of international law just after the creation of the UN in 1945.
And yet, the West failed to address the challenges faced to transitional justice— in terms of gross human rights violations/ the principle of self-determination in Palestine and Kashmir accompanied by the controversial western interpretation of international humanitarian law-vindicated by the western utilitarian interventionist approach via two unjust wars-one in Afghanistan, and second in Iraq.
And yet, the semblance of international law is violated, because for the last 74 years, the people of Palestine and Kashmir have been denied to exercise the right of self-determination guaranteed to them via the fundamentals of justice that posit in the United Nations Charter.
This show of western double standard or the selective application of international law is well evident in the cases of East Timor and Kosovo.
Undeniably, the western powers seemed more prone to guarding their geopolitical interests.
Therefore, on the related issues of Kashmir and Palestine, the West, instead of responding to the challenges of transitional justice, preferred to safeguard their own concerns/interests, and hence this colossal denial of justice to the Palestinians and Kashmiris
Ironically speaking, the geopolitics of enclavisation and the death of two-solution to the Palestinians while the colossal western indifference to the plight of the Kashmiris people hold glaring indication to reflect the international community what ruthlessness the West reserves in its private heart about these humanitarian crises.
In theory, the European Union policymakers support the Palestinian cause of freedom, but in practice, they support the Israeli narrative of occupation and annexation.
This appraisal can rightly be endorsed by the fact that for the last four decades, despite negotiations, no practical solution has yet been achieved in this regard.
Whereas, it seems to have been a settled western policy not to speak about the rights of the Kashmiri people, notwithstanding the fact the Modi government has committed crimes against humanity in Kashmir.Sadly, the western community, so far, remains unconcerned and unmoved.
For the past 20 years, the US remained as an occupying force in Afghanistan, how this external intervention be justified on the pretext of defending a so-called just war against Al-Qaeda and its remnants, particularly, the operation of 450 US drone strikes, still remains the grey area of international law—seeking satisfactory answers to the logical questions raised in this regard.
The US-imposed doctrine of humanitarian intervention accompanied by the sweeping argument of preemptive self-defence, which faces some plausible queries in the domain of international law where use of force against the non-combatants have been wrongly justified.
Further, a high number of Afghan civilian casualties seriously questioned the ethical nature of the intervention and challenge the war’s moral foundation (Cortright, 2011: 24).
Many instances of strategic decision-making were flawed, with ‘inconsistent management of the implementation of strategy’ (Barry, 2017: 139).
In 2010, a NATO — military strike killing 23 civilians via drone operators, based in Nevada, had mistaken three minibuses for a convoy carrying insurgent militants (Medeiros, 2013: 26).
Earlier reports had stated that there may be civilians and children on board, yet the operators authorised the strike (Filkins, 2010).
In this backdrop, collateral damage becomes an accepted inevitability of conflict, but this inevitability of civilian collateral damage is only acceptable if the military operation is ‘proportionate to the objective’ (Medeiros, 2013: 26).
Bad decision-making was evident in this case since reportedly no extremists were killed in this particular strike.
Arguably, translating the War on Terror into a strong ideological character was a mistake (Carati, 2015: 209).
The symbolic rhetoric used in this speech elevated the moral status and credibility of terrorists from murderers to soldiers (Cortright, 2011: 27).
Unintentionally, Bush’s declaration resulted in the Taliban uniting Islamist militants to react to the West’s immoral schemes (Misra, 2002b: 580).
For jihadists, the War on Terror acted as a magnet to unite them against US crusaders (Kaldor, 2013: 162).
As Cortright (2011: 28) explains, waging war against a Muslim country after 9/11 validated al Qaeda’s ideology of ‘saving Islam from foreign infidels’, while there is a US tendency to blur just wars and crusades in a tale of ‘good vs evil’ (Walzer, 2004: 10).
Members of the US army understood it as a ‘just and noble war’ (Brown, 2005: 194), fought to spread freedom, under the banner of De Oppresso Liber (Liberate the Oppressed), the motto of the US Army Special Forces.Evidently, Islamists did not view this in the same manner.
However, is not it an interesting parallel that by invading Afghanistan on the pretext of self-defence in Afghanistan in 2001, albeit approved by the UNSC, the former Bush Administration in 2003, Invaded Iraq, though not approved by the UNSC?
The US-UK alliance on the unjust Iraqi War marks a black stigma on the legacy of international law.
According to realists, international law can be used to uphold any course of action (which is actually, a misuse of international law).
Veritably, the US and the UK forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.
According to Greenpeace, as a result of the Iraq war, ‘the framework of international law is currently under threat by the determination of the United States to redraw international law to allow its strategic imperatives’’.
It continues: nations have a stark choice: they can choose multilateralism, the rule of law and respect for international law, treaties and institutions; or, they can choose a unilateralist approach in which states pursue their own interests, irrespective of the will of world community’’.
—The writer, an independent ‘IR’ researcher-cum-international law analyst based in Pakistan, is member of European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group on IR, Critical Peace & Conflict Studies, also a member of Washington Foreign Law Society and European Society of International Law.
