The sinking of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Who to blame?
If the US President launches his war of aggression against Iran, for example, with a successful decapitation strike on the Grand Ayatollah, who should be held accountable if the USS Abraham Lincoln with up to 6,000 US servicemen aboard, with a nuclear reactor on board, bristling with some 90 aircraft and hundreds of different types of missiles, was sent to the bottom of the Persian Gulf by a salvo of Iranian hypersonic missiles travelling at Mach 8 (about 10,000km per hour)?
If history is a guide, the Americans would blame the Iranians for hitting back, would turn psychotic and, as they did in Korea, Vietnam and elsewhere, launch what a New York Times reporter once called “war by tantrum”. Many tens or hundreds of thousands of Iranian civilians would be incinerated, many of them regime opponents, exactly the kind of people President Trump was pretending to care so much about just a couple of weeks ago.
Attacking Iran should be a Nuremberg Moment for the USA.
A leader who launches such a war is, under international law, responsible for all deaths that follow.
But have you noticed there are precious few references in the mainstream to the illegality under international law of the US attacks on Iran and the build-up to war now? “President Trump, what is the basis in international law for the attack you say may be imminent?”, “How will you remain in compliance with Article 2(4) of the UN Charter that prohibits the use of force against sovereign states?”
I may seem sweet and Pollyanna-ish to say this but: if Donald Trump launched his war against Iran, he would be, under international law, guilty of what is defined as “the supreme international crime”. Just for a moment, let’s pretend we live in a world of law, not a world of brute force.
The Nuremberg Military Tribunal (1945-46) ushered in a new lexicon for international law, including “Crimes Against Peace” – the notion that leaders can be held personally accountable for war of aggression. A leader who was convicted of the planning, initiation, or waging of a war in violation of international treaties could face consequences up to and including the hangman’s noose.
Even superpowers need to be subject to international law
The International Criminal Court (ICC) was designed to bring such leaders to justice. Personally, I would welcome leaders, including the Russian and French Presidents, various British Prime Ministers, various German Chancellors and, of course, all living US Presidents appearing before the ICC (with the necessary amendments to jurisdiction) for violations of the territorial sovereignty of another nation. We live, however, in a world where the West wishes to prosecute the Russian leader, a Balkan leader or two, some African leaders, but ignore the relentless death machine that is the Washington-headquartered Western Empire.
To my knowledge the first use of the term “the supreme international crime” was used by Justice Robert Jackson, Chief Prosecutor for the United States at the Nuremberg Tribunal, who at the time said:
"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
Every US Congressman and President should be required to commit to memory these immortal words by Justice Jackson:
“If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes, whether the United States does them or Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others, which we would not be willing to have invoked against us. We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow.”
How Pollyanna-ish of Judge Jackson! More clear-eyed in these matters was the playwright Harold Pinter. I recently watched his 2005 Nobel Prize acceptance speech – surely one of the greatest ever delivered to a Nobel audience – in which he excoriated the US for decades of unpunished crimes against humanity. He cited President Reagan's arming, funding and training of the Nicaraguan Contras death squads as a prime example. The funds for the Contras, you may recall, came from secret US arm sales to their own enemy Iran! In accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature Pinter said:
"The United States... has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power throughout the world while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."
If you watch Pinter’s speech (highly recommended) and replace ‘Bush’ with ‘Trump’, ‘Iraq’ with ‘Iran’ and 'Nicaragua' with ‘Venezuela', it is as fresh as today’s news but contains vastly more truth in it. The great playwright, horrified at the ability of the Americans to distort the truth in the service of empire, spoke of our collective responsibility to pursue truth, but he singled out writers in particular:
“Sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror – for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us. I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce, intellectual determination as citizens to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is, in fact, mandatory, if such a determination is not embodied in our political vision, we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us, the dignity of man.”
What happens next in Iran?
What happens next in Iran is unknowable till it happens. There is, however, the very real risk of Balkanisation – the splitting into warring states of the Iranian State. This would be an outcome devoutly wished for by the Israelis and Americans who would then totally dominate the region. It would undoubtedly lead to huge numbers of dead and injured, millions displaced, tens of millions immiserated and a huge refugee crisis (remember Iran is a country of over 90 million people). Convicted war criminals have hanged for less. Were this crime against innocent people to happen, I hope all those refugees end up in Europe and the US if only to improve the West’s aberrant political culture.
Returning to a world of law
Isn’t it time for the West to look into its dark heart's core and say it's time for this endless killing, this racist series of assaults on suffering humanity to stop?
The important struggle of the Iranian people over the nature of their government, the rights and roles of women in society, the push for a system that acknowledges pluralism are all incredibly important. The resolution of these issues should be left to the Iranian people themselves and will not be advanced by military attacks by the racist, genocidal State of Israel or the missiles, bombs and sanctions of the US Empire.
One only has to look at Iraq, Libya, Syria, and so on to understand that tens of thousands of Iranian women risk death and worse, that millions may be displaced, that the fabric that has woven Iranian society together for centuries may be ripped apart. Should this happen, Israel and America will rejoice; the mass of the Iranian people will weep. Judge Robert Jackson, one hopes, will turn in his grave.
Eugene Doyle
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on European geopolitics, Middle East, and peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.
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