The Road Not Taken

On September 12^th, the US immediately began to prepare for war. There was another road that might have been taken—the road of international law, working together with other nations to find and arrest the members of the criminal conspiracy. In fact, many individuals were identified, arrested, and await trial in a number of countries, using just such methods.

There is an International Criminal Court that will soon come into force when 60 nations ratify it. Already more than 50 have done so. The current US Administration rejects this treaty and refuses to support or cooperate with it. As a nation, the US has declared itself above the law of other nations.

We might on September 12^th have supported a special tribunal like that now operating in The Hague and trying Slobodan Milosevic. We might have developed a special court or arrangement, like the Scottish court that operated in the Hague to try the perpetrators of the bombing of Pan AM 103 (on which one of my closest friends lost his youngest daughter)

We might take action to make future terrorist activity less likely. We could ratify international agreements on stopping the financing of terrorist groups, but we have not yet done so. We might support efforts for better information sharing between nations to identify such criminals, but we have not yet done so. We might have tried to limit the trade in weapons to unstable regions, but instead the US almost single-handedly thwarted a special United Nations conference convened for that purpose.

We might have sought to strengthen the verification procedures on biological and chemical weapons, but instead the US scuttled that conference also, enraging our British and Australian allies who had worked six years to bring nations together on this treaty. We might have sought to limit the spread of nuclear weapons technology to rogue nations and others, but instead we are dismantling the international agreements that have limited proliferation, and the US appears to be standing ready to resume testing of nuclear weapons. I could go on for some time.

There has been a conscious choice to use US military force rather than international law against Al Quaeda. There is a conscious decision to expand the war to countries with whom we want to settle old scores (North Korea, Iran, Iraq), or where we can gain access to oil (the former Soviet republic of Georgia), or where we hope to regain military bases (the Philippines)—whether or not the nations involved have any connection to September 11^th.

This is a decision to use the tools of warfare rather than the tools of policing and international law. It is also a decision to seek to weaken or prevent the development of any international structures that might provide an alternative to military force. As long as decisions are made by military force, the US, which spends now over 400 billions of dollars a year on the military has a decided advantage. This amount ($400 billion) is more than the military budgets of the next 25 nations combined. Russia, the nation with the next largest military budget spends about $60 billion on its military each year. (source: Center for Defense Information and FCNL)

For over a year, it has been the stated policy of the Bush Administration to seek "full spectrum dominance"—to be able to do whatever the US wants anyplace in the world without fear of retaliation by its opponents. That is one reason the attacks of 9-11, using commercial aircraft as missiles against civilian targets, was such a shock to the government.

There are, of course, consequences to such military buildup. Other nations feel they have to respond in kind. The European Union, America’s friends and allies, confronted by a unilateralist US, has decided they must develop a European military capacity capable of acting without US involvement, in situations where the US has no interest. Japan and Germany are for the first time since World War II sending troops outside their borders, in what some citizens of those countries regard as an unconstitutional policy. China, believing itself to be a potential target of the US, is increasing military spending by 17%

Conflicts in those parts of the world where the US has an interest in oil or military bases are intensifying. And every military dictator and despot is now using the catch phrase of "terrorism" to expand military operations, crush dissent, limit human rights, and carry out atrocities—all in the name of fighting terror. Open our eyes! Look and see!