Rogue Nation [View All]

[Time for change]

When the administration of George Bush and Dick Cheney wish to threaten or attack another country they refer to that country as a “rogue nation” or “rogue state” or part of an “axis of evil”. The Wikipedia defines a rogue state as one which is

considered threatening to the world's peace. This means meeting certain criteria such as being ruled by authoritarian regimes severely restricting human rights, accused of sponsoring terrorism, and seeking to proliferate weapons of mass destruction.

Whereas many Americans, even many of the 60 or 70 percent of them who disapprove of George Bush’s performance as President, take seriously his talk of “rogue nations”, much of the rest of the world considers today’s United States of America itself to be the best example of a rogue nation. An international poll taken in November 2006, for example, showed that 83% of Mexicans, 78% of British citizens and 74% of Canadians consider George Bush to be a severe or moderate threat to world peace. And those are our allies!!

There are many reasons given for the widespread international perception of George Bush as being a major threat to world peace. Here is a very succinct explanation that I believe captures most of the important points:

The U.S. is fiercely aggressive toward its neighbors, undaunted by international law, armed to the teeth and dangerous. Increasingly, it is isolating itself from the community of nations in pursuit of unfettered sovereignty and the consequent economic and political power its wealth gives it. If it abrogates treaties, or simply refuses to be involved in any kind of multinational agreements that limit its powers, it will be uncontrollable. In short, a rogue nation.

A central issue is the Bush administration’s refusal to be bound by the constraints of international law. Just as George Bush feels that he and his administration are above the laws and the Constitution of his own country, he feels little need to cooperate with other countries with respect to international laws that were developed to ensure world peace and a decent habitable world in general. Let’s consider some examples:


Examples of George Bush’s defiance of and contempt for international law

George Bush has repeatedly condoned the abuse and torture of our prisoners of war, in violation of the Geneva Convention of 1949 and The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of 1984. He hasn’t withdrawn from these conventions – he merely claims that they don’t apply to what he does, which is clearly not true.

His preemptive invasion of Iraq was clearly a violation of international law, and constitutes the crime of “aggressive war”, as the United Nations Charter prohibits the initiation or the continuation of war except under two circumstances: self-defense and when authorized by the UN Security Council to “take such action … as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security”.

In 2002, George Bush “unsigned” the International Criminal Court statute that President Clinton had previously signed. The purpose of the 1998 statute is to prevent the most heinous of crimes that cannot or will not be addressed at the national level.

In 2001 Bush withdrew from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, a major arms control agreement we had with Russia.

At a convention in November 2001, U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton renounced the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, which had been signed by 144 nations, including the U.S.

In October 2006 the United Nations voted 139 to 1 to develop international standards for small arms trade. The United States was the only nation to oppose this.

In 2001, George Bush pulled the United States out of its international commitment to the Kyoto protocol, leaving us and Australia as the only two industrialized countries uncommitted to the international effort to respond to this great threat.

In February 2001 George Bush refused to join 123 other nations in a pledge to ban the use and production of anti-personnel bombs and mines.

There are many more examples, but these should suffice to make the point


The significance of George Bush’s defiance of and contempt for international law

Just as laws are established within nations to preserve the peace, there has been wide international recognition at least since the end of World War II that a thorough system of international law is vitally needed to preserve international peace and maintain the Earth as a decent place to live for the bulk of humankind. As the most powerful nation in the world at the end of World War II, the United States, under the leadership of President Harry Truman, played the leading role in establishing the beginnings of such a system, under the United Nations Charter.

It is widely recognized today that the failure of the United States to join the League of Nations following World War I was a major contributing factor to the onset of World War II. George Bush has not only withdrawn U.S. support for many of the peace preserving functions of the United Nations – worse, he has sought to actively undermine those functions by repeatedly violating international laws to which his nation is a signatory. David Rothkopf, in his book “Running the World – The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power” – describes what has been occurring:

During the Clinton years it seemed as if the direction would be more Trumanesque, more oriented towards the further development of an international community in which we would play a leading role. But after (9-11) there was a sudden change in the tone of that debate and in the driving philosophy shaping America’s choices.

This time…our leaders chose a different course. Rather than investing our power and prestige into civil institutions of the global community… they chose to go it alone, to use our power and resources to advance our interests as they defined them. And rather than showing a “decent respect for the opinions of mankind”, we set aside past notions of “our justice” and consequently rejected the path that had distinguished the country and its leaders at our birth and at the previous moment of our greatest triumph. The words from Truman’s first address as president to a joint session of Congress – that the “responsibility of great states is to serve and not to dominate the world” – were drowned out by concepts like preemption and unilateralism, ideas that were more founded in raw power than they were on the philosophies of America’s Founders. Advancing democracy may have been our ultimate objective, but we certainly did not choose to achieve it via the strengthening of the global laws or institutions we had once established for just such a purpose. Even if one result of our effort proves to be a net positive…. achieving it by placing ourselves above and beyond the influence of global institutions or the rule of law will only serve to seriously damage the international order that we have sought to build since the end of World War II.

Other evidence that the United States under Bush and Cheney is a dangerous rogue nation

The Wikipedia definition of “rogue nation” that I displayed at the beginning of this article noted a threat to world peace as the main component of the definition. But it also noted some other characteristics of rogue nations, including restricting human rights, proliferating weapons of mass destruction and sponsoring terrorism.

The abuse of the human rights of our prisoners of war was discussed above, and I have discussed it in more depth here (see subsection on “the inhumane treatment of prisoners including torture) and here.

With regard to proliferating weapons of mass destruction, suffice it to say that a military budget of $643 billion, which exceeds the military budget of all the rest of world combined, and which includes enough nuclear weapons to destroy all human life on Earth many times over, qualifies as “proliferating weapons of mass destruction”.

Furthermore, indications of the plans for use of those weapons is laid out by the men of “Project for a New American Century” (PNAC), who play essential roles in the military policies and planning of the Bush administration. In their document, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”, they say that the U.S. military must be much stronger than any nation or combination of nations that might oppose our ambitions, because we need to “shape a new century favorable to American interests and principles”. There are numerous references to this sort of thing throughout the document, the bottom line being that we need to be able to deter competitors by “deterring or, when needed, by compelling regional foes to act in ways that protect American interests and principles…” And therefore, “The Pentagon needs to begin to calculate the force necessary to protect, independently, US interests in Europe, East Asia and the Gulf at all times.”

Does this constitute terrorism? Well, consider how the Bush administration has used these principles to promote “our interests” in Iraq: The use of chemical weapons in Iraq has resulted in many terrible deaths, to civilians as well as to Iraqi fighters. Ferocious U.S. military attacks on populous Iraqi cities result in numerous civilian deaths. Destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure during the course of the war has greatly reduced the access of Iraq civilians to such basic needs as electricity, clean water supplies, and basic health care. For example, three and a half years after the invasion of Iraq, residents of Baghdad were receiving a average of only 2.4 hours per day of electricity. And the result of all this is that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, mostly civilians, have died in the Iraq War thus far. And keep in mind that this was and is an illegal war. Oh, and Bush intends to perpetrate another war, in Iran, as well.


How should we and the rest of the world understand our current situation?

Perhaps most Americans aren’t alarmed to read that those in charge of U.S. military policy feel that we need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to have the military technology necessary to “compel our foes to act in ways that protect American interests”. Perhaps that sounds benign to many Americans. But most of the rest of the world doesn’t see that as benign – especially given the recent history of aggressive warfare by our country under its current leadership. Here is a good summary of U.S. policy and rationale , as seen from the eyes of non-Americans:

the United States is arguing that it has the right, whatever the rest of us might agree, to possess the power to force less well-armed countries to do its bidding… to own and trade in the means of destruction of populations on a scale never before seen on earth. The present U.S. administration sees no value in co-operating with the other nations to reduce this power, this threat, any more than the neighborhood psychopath sees the value in co-operating with his/her neighbors to increase the security of all. If this administration gets away with it, we will be back in the jungle again, after decades, even centuries, of effort to escape.

So, what argument does the United States have left for its attitude? Only the truth: the present U.S. administration prefers lawlessness to law because it knows the U.S. has the money, the weapons, and the ruthlessness to force the world into its service. It knows that, if the law of the jungle prevails, the U.S. will be the top predator.

The only way to prevent this from happening is for the rest of us to stand up, now, and refuse to go along with such a blatant power play

But of course it’s not only foreigners who understand what’s going on. There are also millions of Americans who have been able to see through the obfuscations we get from our corporate news media, to understand the grave danger posed to all of us from the continued presence in office of George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their helpers. Paul Craig Roberts summarizes the current situation as well as I’ve seen it summarized:

The fact remains that a dozen men … were able to overthrow the U.S. Constitution and launch military aggression under the guise of a preventive/pre-emptive "war against terrorism."

When the American people caught on that the "war on terror" was a cloak for wars of aggression, they put Democrats in control of Congress in order to apply a brake to the regime's warmongering. However, the Democrats have proven to be impotent to stop the neoconservative drive to wider war and, perhaps, world conflagration.

We are witnessing the triumph of a dozen evil men over American democracy and a free press