A return to international justice

[struggle4progress]

A battle is raging between international law and its champions and imperial law and its clients. The battle is ferocious and a resolution seems remote, or at least there are as of yet no apparent signs that either party will emerge victorious. Not so long ago, the US thumbed its nose at the principle of majority rule and waged an all-out offensive against the rules of international law and international agreements. It refused, for example, to sign the Kyoto agreement for the protection of the environment, the international agreement on landmines and the agreement to establish an international criminal court, and it campaigned furiously to persuade other countries to follow suit. It flouted a host of international human rights conventions in its refusal to grant terrorist suspects detained in Guantanamo access to lawyers and other fundamental rights, and in its torture of detainees and prisoners in its internment centres in Iraq and Afghanistan. It resorted to various forms of pressure and enticements in order to conclude bilateral agreements that would protect US subjects from prosecution in foreign courts on charges of perpetrating torture and other human rights violations. On numerous occasions over recent years it breached the prohibition against the use of force in international relations, a principle established in the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928.
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The US is still wavering in its resolve to boycott and decimate international law entirely. As long as the cornerstones of its project of global hegemony are not quite in place, international law and its organs of enforcement may still come in useful, as was the case in some phases of the war on Iraq, the war on Afghanistan and in the run-up to whatever the US intends for Sudan. However, whenever possible in its handling of international affairs it will give priority to imperialist convention.
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http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/704/op2.htm

Most of the rest of the article is devoterd to discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian issue and argues that the Arab world should support international law.