Íslenska leiðin - 01.11.2003, Qupperneq 39

Security and human rights
Interview with Dr. Howard B. Tolley Jr., 30 ofOctober
Dr. Howard B. Tolley Jr.,
professar of pclitical sciaxe at the
liráersity of CincinrBti, Chio. Eárector of
"Tteaching Human Rights Qn-line":
http: / /banqpages. oz .uc. edu/thro
What brings you to Iceland?
I've been visiting the Netherlands for four months
on a Fulbright appointment. I'm doing a lecture
tour. I am in Iceland after visits to Galway Ireland,
Essex U.K. and the Danish Institute for Human
Rights in Copenhagen.
You are giving a lecture today here at the
University of Iceland, called: "Pax
Americana and Human Rights: U.S. Security
Strategy and the Rule of Law". Could you
please give us a brief abstract of the lecture?
I apply five human rights standards to the recent
conduct of U.S. foreign policy, since the end of the
cold war. My point of departure is the national
security strategy of the U.S., a 32 page document
published in September 2002 (whitehouse.gov).
In the first instance, it elevates self-defense as the
primary American goal. That is consistent to the
right of a state to defend it self, according to the
U.N. charter. Beyond that, the U.S. claims it will
assure world peace as the global leader. That too
is an end which is legitimate under the U.N.
charter, but the means are questionable in my
judgment, because of some of the doctrines of
pre-emption. I will question the legality of this
strategy.
Secondly I will look and the right of self-
determination and whether peoples victimized by
tyranny have a right to use armed struggle against
an oppressive government. There the U.S. objects
to recent changes of law that legitimize what the
PLO does, for example, in trying to achieve its own
right of self-determination.
Thirdly I look at humanitarian intervention,
situations like Kosovo with ethnic cleansing in the
former Yugoslavia. The last two parts deal with
the standard human rights of political and civil
liberties and economic rights.
What, if any, effect has the current US
foreign policy had on the structure and
operation of the international system?
It's too early to tell how much lasting change will
result. The current administration is seeking to
weaken the United Nations, the role was assigned
after WWII to be the primary governing body for
issues of war and peace. Instead the U.S. has
insisted, because of its pre-eminence, it has a
special responsibility. That is a reaction against
the growth of multilateral institutions since the end
of WWII. It might be a temporary slip or it might
become, if the U.S. has its way, a reversion to the
earlier order of state sovereignty.
In the title of your lecture you combine
discussion on human rights with security
issues. Instinctively, these concepts sound
distinct and separate in context. How do
human rights intertwine with internationai
security?
There has been a trade-off. When a country feels
its security to be in danger, it tends to violate
human rights. The government of India, for
example, faces secessionist movements in the
Kashmir and Punjab regions. So when there is
terrorist violence, the government engages in a
kind of counter-terrorism which is a violation of
the rights of non-combatants that get caught in
the cross-fire. They are occasionally targeted.
Israel, when it is victimized by a suicide bomber, it
will retaliate by destroying the home of the family.
That is clearly a human rights violation. So the
struggle has been to, as the American Civil
Liberties Union says, to keep people both safe and
free. We have new domestic legislation that
creates more police power for the government,
that many of us feel does not make us safer and
clearly makes us less free.
The current international system is
frequently described as anarchic, i.e. lacking
any supra-national authority. Such a system
declares the sovereignty of nations as
supreme and absolute. Is it possible to make
a claim to universal human rights in that
context, that is, in a system that exalts the
nation, or more correctly, the state above the
individual human being?
I think that we've seen an erosion of state
sovereignty which governments refuse to
acknowledge. But it is clear in practice that you
are no longer able to treat your own citizens with
brutality, in any situation. Some countries, the
biggest ones, still get away with it. But there are
mechanisms that form a barrier, varying in
strength and effectiveness. The most highly
effective are in Europe, where the European Court
of Justice issues judgments that are binding on the
fifteen member states. The judges within those
countries comply with those decisions. Those
judges are also applying the European Convention
of Human Rights in the national courts to decide
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