Unilateralism Can be a Blessing

On August 26, 2002 Vice President Dick Cheney told the National Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars that "the entire world must know" that the United States "will take whatever action is necessary to defend" its "freedom" and its "security." Under current circumstances, his meaning was clear. Having concluded that over a decade of multilateral action had failed to defang Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration is now prepared to act unilaterally to remove him for power. Though motivated by American vital national interests, Cheney added, the American unilateral action will have the added benefit of liberating the Iraqi people in the same manner that ridding Afghanistan of the Taliban liberated the Afghani people.

Such sentiments led the sainted Nelson Mandela to condemn the U.S. for advocating the introduction of "chaos in international affairs." For Mandela the welfare of the Iraqi people must take a back seat to the welfare of the international system. "No country whether a superpower or a small country," Mandela fumes "should take the law into its own" by going "outside the UN" and attacking "an independent country."

Both men are right. There are times when breaking the international law, like breaking the national law, is justified. Indeed, it can be necessary to achieve a higher good. However, such unilateralism is so dangerous to the international social contract embodied in the UN that, just like civil disobedience, it must carry a price high enough to ensure that it remains an exception rather than the rule though not so high as to deter all unilateral action.

It is in this context that a short examination of two 1979 unilateral regime changes of the murderous governments of Pol Pot in Cambodia and Idi Amin in Uganda is so instructive. The genocide in Cambodia began with the April 1975 takeover of its government by the Khmer Rouge. For the most part, the response of the anti-war international community to reports of mass killings ranged from disbelief to denial and even to accusations of slander (see http://jim.com/canon.htm ). Senator George McGovern did ask the crucial question: "when do human rights supersede those of sovereignty?" But the State Department was in no mood to consider force in Southeast Asia. The UN Commission on Human Rights delayed action, and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees satisfied itself by forwarding the allegations to the Cambodian government for comment. In October 1978, Cambodia finally agreed to a fact finding mission by Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim. The ex-Nazi was in no hurry to follow through.

In December 1978, Vietnam organized a Cambodian government in exile. On Christmas Day, its army attacked cambodia and on January 7 it captured Phnom Penh. "Thank God somebody finally ended the killings" was not the universal response to the discovery of the mass graves or to the emaciated population found in the doomed country. Actually, the opposite was true. "During the January debate in the Security Council," writes Arthur Klinghoffer, " the international legal principle of sovereignty took precedence over moral concerns." The American representative Andrew Young argued that "a poor human rights record" did not justify intervention. The French representative could not agree more. "The notion that because a regime is detestable foreign intervention is justified and forcible overthrow is legitimate is extremely dangerous." His foreign minister Jean Francois-Poncet insisted that "the independence and territorial integrity" of Cambodia trumped the suffering "inflicted by Phnom Penh regime on the Cambodian people themselves." Sweden argued that all interventions put small states in jeopardy. Singapore expressed similar concerns. Even the Vietnamese foreign minister later told Congressman Steven Solarz that 'Human rights was not a question; that was their problem . . . We were concerned only with security."

It is no small wonder that the UN focused on demands that Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia and continued to consider the Khmer Rouge to be the legal representatives of Cambodia at the UN. To make matters worse, moralist Jimmy Carter's Washington encouraged Beijing to help the Khmer Rouge engage in decades of guerrilla warfare against the Vietnamese installed government. His National Security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, could not have been less circumspect when he said in 1981: "I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him. But China could" and the US "winked semipublicly."

If Cold War ramifications contributed to the international failure to prevent the demise of a million Cambodians, they played almost no role in the international failure to stop Idi Amin from continuing to murder hundred of thousands of Ugandans. The Organization of African Unity's concern for sovereignty was uncompromising. It not only ignored pleas to interfere, it even permitted Idi Amin to become the chairman of the organization. An infuriated Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere declared : "An African leader, so long as he is an African, can kill Africans just as he pleases, and you cannot say anything. If Amin was white, we would have passed many resolutions against him. But he is black, and blackness is a license to kill Africans. And therefore there is complete silence; no one speaks about what he does."

Unfortunately he was only partially right. Africans were not unique. Recently, the International community began to concern itself with governments killing people not considered to be of their own ethnicity. For the most part, governments, legitimate or not, have a license to kill people living under their jurisdiction. Be that as it may, Nyerere put his money and army where his mouth was and, with the help of exiled Ugandans, used Amin's provocative moves in the border region to march on Kampala and overthrow Idi Amin Dada. Asserting self-defense rather than moral outrage, Nyrere announced: "What we did was exemplary at a time when the OAU found itself unable to condemn Amin. I think we have set a good precedent inasmuch as when African nations find themselves collectively incapable of punishing a single country, then each country has to look after itself." This time it was Nigeria's turn to point to Amin's human rights violations, but it warned that Tanzania's intervention could set off a "chain reaction" enabling strong states to overthrow the governments of weaker ones. True to form, the New York Times argued that Ugandans, not Tanzanians, should have overthrown Amin for even if his overthrow was done for "a good cause" one must worry ab out the "abuse of precedent." Amin then found a welcoming home in Saudi Arabia where he is enjoying a luxurious life style and no human rights group or activist judge has yet made serious efforts to bring him to justice.

It is important to note that once they were rid of their homicidal dictators, neither Cambodia nor Uganda emerged as model democracies. Still, the world is a better place because Pol Pot and Idi Amin are no longer in power and most Cambodians and Ugandans are grateful to Vietnam and Tanzania for braving international condemnation and sunctions to bring about a regime change in their countries. As I have argued on this website before (in "Afghanistan: A Just War," ) results more than causes determine the ultimate justice of a military undertaking. Indeed, unilateral action by self-interested states willing to pay the cost of universal condemnation, is the only hope available to people suffering under murderous dictators like Pol Pot, Idi Amin or Saddam Hussein.

Note on Sources: The book on which I relying for the history of Cambodia is Arthur Jay Klinghoffer's The International Dimension of Genocide in Rwanda (New York University Press); in particular see the chapter, "A Comparative Perspective."