There are many ways of relating Osama bin Laden's final fate. We have hardly seen the end of the story, especially when Western “experts” charge that a breach of international law has been committed by the United States (Ove Bring in Sydsvenska Dagbladet, David Allen Green in the New Statesman). So, the enforcement agent must put his own life and that of his team-mates at risk in order to ensure the humane treatment of one who has organized suicide bombings of thousands of people? Sure. Mind you, they did not even ask for his ID.
In my view, it is not the HR principles that are stupid. In fairness, while Bring sees this as a serious matter, Green says he will hardly lose any sleep over it. Then again, many in the Muslim world think like the Swede, which leads them to call for reprisals against the US.
The obligation to provide bin Laden with a fair trial must be laid at Pakistan's door. The US took its own measures when its ally failed to do what it could and should have done.
There is a good old rule of foreign policy that says if you don't effectively control your own territory, others will – or at least they will take advantage of you. Territorial control is a military task. Pakistan, however, has a military that is busy with other matters, domestic politics above all. The only border they guard jealously is that with India. So it was apparently easy for the US Navy Seals team to swoop down from Afghanistan in their helicopters and snatch bin Laden where he was hidden in northern Pakistan, next to a Military Academy. The hue and cry afterwards about the transgression on Pakistan's sovereignty was predictable. However, blaming others for failing to respect an unguarded border is hard to take seriously, even more so considering the circumstances.
Now the dispute is on concerning who's to blame for bin Laden's eight-year residence in the area where he was found. We need not ponder long to guess that someone must have known. Of course, within the Pakistan Army and its Inter-Services Intelligence there are many different sections, and as in any large political organization sections often become factions with aims of their own, some corresponding to movements in the subterranean landscape of Pakistani politics. One of the ISI sections was previously in charge of training mujahedin to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, among them the young Osama. No one knows for sure when they stopped doing that after the Soviets bowed out in 1988. I read somewhere recently that turning a blind eye to inconvenient facts is said to be a necessity in Pakistan's political culture. That is a believable statement.
9 comments:
Dear Olav,
I am not quite sure I agree with you on this case. I take it for granted that you don't think that I in any way defend the terror used by bin Laden, so I will not spend time underlining this. What is bothering me is when liberal democracies like the US and Israel use methods are beyond international law, because of the perceived goodness of the cause. When governments with full purpose kill (or place alleged criminals in special prisons) without proper trials, I cannot see how this could be defended from a judicial point of view. If the size of the atrocities is what matters, one wonders where the limit is - when is it OK for a government to kill people without a fair trial? How can we say that this is not revenge, rather than law? Admittedly, there seem to be elements of revenge thinking in US legislation, but to me, this does not belong in a modern, liberal democracy. Whenever we justify the means with the ends, I think we may be on a dangerous slippery slope.
And by the way, how do we convince terrorists that see themselves as freedom fighters (it hardly matters much to them what we see them as), that it is OK for Western governments to kill people without any trial whatsoever, whereas they are not allowed to kill, what they see as their enemy (it hardly matters much if we perceive ourselves as the evil, or not)?
Björn H
Dear Björn,
Fortunately for both of us, you are not obliged to agree with me. And vice versa. On the level of principle I concede your point – it would be better if governments – all governments (why should we allow a lower standard for sham democracies or dictatorships?) - all governments should always use methods within the range of international law. However, I wanted to emphasize the relative irrelevance of international law for a case like this. First of all, there must be sovereign states applying that law. Here, (during a period of nearly 8 years) there clearly was no authority in Pakistan that had pursued the fugitive actively. For the law to apply in Pakistan there is only Pakistan to refer to as enforcer. With its abstention from the exercise of that legal authority Pakistan left the situation essentially lawless. Hence it became a question simply of exercising power, which is what the US did next, with the outcome we know. That may well be “illegal”, but I can only see such an argument as off the point. Moreover, as I see it, for the principles you refer to to come into effect in the concrete case, you have to have an apprehended suspect. It has been argued that bin Laden should have been tried in a Nuremberg-like manner. But in that case, peace and order reigned, all the suspects were apprehended and waiting for the process to begin. In the present case there was a suspect, but in the account of those undertaking the action against him, he "resisted arrest” by not showing his hands and attempting evasive action instead. We have no way of independently verifying this account, except to note the US President's order to kill the suspect in that circumstance. Yes, we know what international law says, but there was no authority to apply it, hence there was lawlessness, and it was set aside by the exercise of US power, under – as I understand it - what the US government sees as its legal authority.
Dear Olav,
I understand your point, and it is easy to agree with you given what bin Laden has done (or rather; what he presumably has been part of organizing). Feelings of revenge are natural. If my family would have been among the victims, I would most likely have shared the same feelings.
But, and this is my point, I do not in principle see revenge as a legitimate part of a modern, liberal democratic judicial system. If it were just an issue of revenge, we don't need any system at all, just make sure that people can take revenge when something happens (which, kind of, comes more or less automatically in law-less societies).
I do think that we, as Western democrats, have a serious pedagogical problem when we apply different moral and judicial standards on ourselves, compared with others. If we give us the right to "make exceptions" and take the law in our own hands, how can we (morally) stop others from doing the same? To be honest, quite many people have suffered, being tortured and/or killed in various extra-legal US missions around the world. Many of them have most certainly not been guilty or were just civilians being at the wrong place at the wrong time. It takes a very limited sense of imagination if one is surprised if some of these peoples' families and friends do their best to take revenge...
Björn H
But Björn, I have not even mentioned revenge. I do not consider the killing of bin Laden to be revenge. It was – in my view – at the same time a successful political undertaking and a failed attempt to bring him to justice. As for taking the law into one's own hands (and speaking as a political scientist), when there is no authority upholding the law, then there is no law either. It is the duty of a sovereign state to exercise its authority so that the law is upheld. When it does not do so, it abdicates that authority and leaves it to drift with the wind – or for others to assume on their own initiative. It seems to be clear that the United States had long attempted but ultimately given up on getting Pakistan to do its part in the hunt for bin Laden. That led them to the nearest alternative – to act on their own.
Legality is not in my view a relevant issue here, for the reasons already given. Morally, the answer is that killing is wrong, except in self-defence. But that is not what we are debating, as I see it.
True, Olav, that you have not said anything about revenge, but do you honestly believe that this was not what drove the decision to take this drastic step? We will most likely never know what really happened, if it was a deliberate choice by the highest Command in the US to execute bin Laden or if the main objective was to capture him, but listening to the domestic US "political market", killing him was not a bad choice, politically... And to call it "self-defence" is to stretch things very far, and would certainly not work in any domestic court worth the name..
Regarding international law, do I understand you correctly if you mean that if a state is perceived not to do what it should, others are free to do what ever they find to be in their interest? That does not seem reasonable to me, unless one strongly believes that might is right.
Finally, as we all know, the US has chosen not to sign a number of international treaties. To me, the reason to this is obvious - the US wants to keep as many doors as possible open, and have the option to do whatever suits US interests best. That is understandable, but still a problem for international cooperation. And they are (still) a member of the UN, and are bound by the UN Chart, requiring decisions taken in the Security Council...
Björn
Björn: We are discussing international politics, not morals or legalities. Of course, states tend to do what is in their perceived interest – we are not in utopia yet. Whether they “are free” to do so is a matter of debate. I say “yes, of course,” as long as there are no institutions or other mechanisms to stop them. In the absence of a working legal system, that is still the way the world functions – when clashing interests are seen as vital. When interests are not so highly charged, it's a different matter. The US, the EU, Japan or China can be fined substantial penalties for breaking WTO rules. Such matters are not charged with national commitment the way security issues are. Overlooking that difference is what gives many the mistaken impression that not only can one formulate nice principles for international conduct, one can also make governments adhere to them, or make them take the consequences if they don't. Without legally sanctioned consequences, there is no law. Only power. It is not just; it is not fair. It simply is.
Well, that's a convinced Realist speaking, I reckon. However, I am not so sure that one could distinguish so easily between politics, law and moral. Who says, except for convinced Realists, that foreign policy issues - be it on sate security or something else - are determined solely by "state interests"? My point is that all state leaders - democratically elected or autocratic - first and foremost have to consider the home turf, to make sure that the domestic support is strong enough not to lose power. How could it be in any other way? A leader without substantial support from important groups is simple not possible, or even imaginable.
So, without knowing any details, my guess is that rather careful calculations of what domestic reactions the shooting of bin Laden would lead to were made by the President and his staff. And not only whether to go for it, but as importantly how to do it and what to do afterwards (regarding e.g. showing pictures of the body or not).
Finally, I have never really understood the Realist notion that state security is something qualitatively different from other policy areas. Why would it? After all, isn't all decision-making about comparing pros and cons, cost and benefits? Presumably, a high stake issue that is not about national security could be a lot more important to nations than a miniscule issue, though being about national security... Or?
Björn
Well, that's a convinced Realist speaking, I reckon. However, I am not so sure that one could distinguish so easily between politics, law and moralS. Who says, except for convinced Realists, that foreign policy issues - be it on sTate security or something else - are determined solely by "state interests"? My point is that all state leaders - democratically elected or autocratic - first and foremost have to consider the home turf, to make sure that the domestic support is strong enough not to lose power. How could it be in any other way? A leader without substantial support from important groups is simple not possible, or even imaginable.
So, without knowing any details, my guess is that rather careful calculations of what domestic reactions the shooting of bin Laden would lead to were made by the President and his staff. And not only whether to go for it, but as importantly how to do it and what to do afterwards (regarding e.g. showing pictures of the body or not).
Finally, I have never really understood the Realist notion that state security is something qualitatively different from other policy areas. Why would it? After all, isn't all decision-making about comparing pros and cons, cost and benefits? Presumably, a high stake issue that is not about national security could be a lot more important to nations than a miniscule issue, though being about national security... Or?
Björn
You are straying from the question at hand, Björn. Whether I am a “True Realist” or not is beside the point. The point is that one cannot expect governments to adhere to a legal system that does not function. End of story – the rest is just things that political scientists and their students quarrel about.
The statement you attribute to me about “state interests” is not mine. I said “states tend to do what is in their perceived interest”, in other words that governments look out for their best interests (a truism), and in doing so they tend to prioritize security interests over other kinds of interests, PROVIDED, of course, that those security interests are actually IN THEIR VIEW significant and endangered (a verifiable empirical fact). Hence it is the government's perception and evaluation of the case at hand that determine what they do, and this is what the term “interest” is about. That does not make me a “Realist”. In fact, several pieces of my early work on shipping politics were written to show that security issues are NOT always at the top of the priority list. I still hold that view. Nevertheless, as tension and commitments rise, so does the likelihood that security issues will override other issues.
As for the leadership's need for support, your description of it is not at odds with what I say, and I fully agree with you on that point. But there is more to a decision than merely support. There is also the question of what is at stake and more broadly what the issue is about. This is where the leadership's perception and evaluation of interests come in.
Björn – beyond this I see no more that we can meaningfully add to this debate and suggest we lay it to rest.
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