Íslenska leiðin - 01.11.2003, Side 42

intolerable for the rest of the world, for the
permanent five of the Security Council to have that
option. China, which also has the power of veto,
has yet to ratify the ICC statute. Britain and
France may do so, but Russia, China and the U.S.
are unlikely to. So it's not just the U.S. There are
other major powers that will never submit to it.
You talked, a little bit earlier, about the
possibility of transforming the powers of the
state (executive, legal, judicial) into the
international arena. Do you think that it is
far in the future or do you think that
necessity will create a situation in which we
will see an international executive authority?
The prime moment for transformation comes at
the end of a war, as it did after WWI with the
League of Nations and WWII with the United
Nations. We may have missed the moment at the
end of the Cold War, to accomplish it. The U.S. has
seized the moment for unilateral transformation.
There have been cases brought before the World
Court which asked those judges to find that the
Security Council had exceeded its authority under
the U.N. charter. That is the power of judicial
review which our own Supreme Court does in
finding laws of Congress to be unconstitutional.
So far the World Court has declined, out of a
realistic fear that the Security Council would
simply not accept that judgment, by those fifteen
jurists. That is a step that could come with some
bolder judges in the near future. One of the cases
involved sanctions against Libya and the other was
the arms embargo on Bosnia. Bosnians had the
right to self-defense and the Security Council took
that away from them by imposing the arms
embargo. In neither of those cases did the World
Court proclaim for itself the power of judicial
review.
You asked about executive power. Of
course the Secretary General of the U.N. is not
there yet. He has been the errand boy for the
major powers, with an occasional Secretary
General who was more assertive, Dag
Hammarskjöld most notably. The Europeans
themselves do not even have a strong executive.
As the European Union Constitution is negotiated,
that may not be the best thing. We have the
strongest executive in any democratic system. In
the U.S. the head of state is also the head of
government. He is also now a law unto himself in
determining the use of military forces, despite
what the constitution says. So at the time, when
our framers debated the constitution, there was
great disagreement on how powerful the executive
should be. There are inherent dangers in having
too strong an individual in office.
Would you describe yourself as an optimist or
a pessimist in these matters, for the future?
The reason I remain hopeful is out of a conviction
that without hope, despair can be a self-fulfilling
prophecy. If you follow Hobbes in believing that
human nature is so flawed that the evil impulse
will always triumph over the good instinct, it is not
realism. That too is a value statement which can
encourage people to be more brutal and mean.
Whereas if you have faith in the capacity for
human reason to solve problems, to make the
world a better place, it brings out the best in
people and it too can become self-fulfilling.
Without hope you lose the vital impulse to apply
your reason, to do your best. I believe that
saying: "Trust, but verify." I think we need to
assume that people we deal with have the capacity
to be fair-minded and to be trustworthy. But we
also have to be constantly on our guard and to
create institutions that provide a systemic check
when, as we have learned through history, the
weak side of human nature emerges.
Excerpt from the Pax Americana lecture:
Despite so much incriminating evidence of illegal
U.S. economic tactics, I remain unwilling to agree
with those who consider economic interests as the
sole determinant of U.S. policy. For any nation,
including a hegemon, security ranks first, and
economic interests are secondary. In third place,
I would rank human rights as a U.S. priority in
situations where there are no overwhelming
political and economic concerns. U.S. Security
concerns are genuine, not a pretext. George Bush
and his advisers were terrorized by the 9/11
attacks. Four of our Presidents have been
assassinated ... The wars on Iraq may have been
economically motivated, but the war on
Afghanistan was based on genuine fear about
national security and outrage. In the Kosovo war
I would argue that human rights values were the
most significant ... I object to anti-war rhetoric
equating George Bush to Hitler or Stalin. The U.S.
recent disregard for international law resembles
the way other dominant states have behaved
when they could get away with it. The
Netherlands approach to international law changed
after it became a major power with economic
interests of the Dutch East India Company. Today
Dutch Shell behaves like U.S. multinational
corporations. Since the end of the Cold War the
U.S. has not provided the type of enlightened
global leadership that it offered after World War II,
but its initiatives have not been totally misguided.
Perhaps it is still not too late for the U.S. ... leading
a collaborative global effort to remedy the failings
of the international legal order ... Clearly this
critical lecture by a scholar supported with U.S.
government funds indicates the enduring vitality
of free speech for Americans ... My lecture today
was designed to raise a timeless question that
each generation must address anew: "Do the
ends justify the means?" I am firmly convinced
that U.S. might does not make right, but I have
been tempted in cases of genocide to support
military intervention for humanitarian ends.
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