What is Wrong with Rights? : The Reign of Bullying!

PART 2

? Rahul Dutta | April 21, 2023 | 17th Issue

Bully Boys

Everyone would have noticed a few bully boys during their school days. Intelligent teachers generally appoint bully boys as class monitors to keep the classes in order. Parallelly, countries are like schoolboys on the political landscape, and a few countries act like bully boys.?

In this information age, media often diverts attention from the real issues. The war between Russia and Ukraine is a war of interest for the press, but decade-long wars in countries like Yemen, Sudan and Syria do not catch the eye of human rights champions in the media. War, anywhere, is a challenge for the attempts on climate change and for keeping the global temperature from rising above 1.5 degrees centigrade. War is a?war against the survival of all life forms survival and sustainability on Earth. The future of society and the sustainability of all life forms on our planet is a subject of interest for everyone alive. With time, the rising threat of the world engulfing in a nuclear war is becoming a chilling reality.?

We will examine the bullying diplomacy of the superpowers through the lens of the rights-duties ratio proposed in the previous edition.?

Wars, Post-World Wars

As per?Wikipedia,??3% of the world's population at that time, around eighty million, perished in world wars. World War also witnessed one of the darkest hours for humanity with the widespread annihilation of millions of people, followed by years of genetic catastrophe in Hiroshima and Nagasaki due to the use of atom bombs by America. World War II ended on the 2nd?of September,1945. The World War two causalities include the burden of the six million casualties in the?Holocaust Camps, without mention the innumerable tortures inflicted on innocent people.?

The defence personnel originate from civil society and, after retirement, return to the same. Civil society sends their loved ones to the defence forces to safeguard their national territories. Nationalism and patriotism of civil society do not include consent for the extraterritorial interest of the political leaders in power. The following graph depicts that civil society was the ultimate loser in the world wars.

Fifty-one days later, fifty-one countries signed a Charter on October 24, 1945, giving birth to an International Organization named United Nations Organization (UNO). The?objectives?of maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among the members and promoting social progress, better living standards and human rights would save the world from another world war were the founding principles. It was formed in the background of world war atrocities committed by countries. One of its objectives was to prevent the repetition of this black chapter of history.

Security Council?is one of the six principal organs of the UN. The Security Council has the primary?responsibility?of maintaining international peace and security. The UN Member States are?obligated?to follow Security Council decisions. Ironically, the current President State of the Security Council has waged war with Ukraine.?

The Security Council member States have been involved in?civil wars in other countries and full-fledged wars far away from their territories. In most wars, the Security Council Members did not shed blood in compliance with the solemn responsibility assigned to them by the UN.?

The Treaty of Rome was signed to establish an International Criminal Court, under the aegis of the UN, with jurisdiction to conduct individual trials for genocide, crime against humanity, and war crimes. Among the seven countries that?voted against?the enactment of the Rome Statute, the US and China were the only Security Council Members; the remaining five countries were Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, and Yemen. Excluding Qatar, the remaining four countries engaged in wars for one reason or the other. India is also not a signatory to the?Rome Statute for International Criminal Court,?to which 123 countries are the signatories. Israel, Russia and the US?signed the Rome Statute in 2000?but never ratified it.

Four years later, the US enacted?American Servicemembers' Protection Act 2002, during the Presidency of Mr George W. Bush. The US federal law protects the US military personnel and other elected and appointed officials of the US government against criminal prosecution by an international criminal court of which the US is not a member. The defence personnel serve their respective sovereign countries, and their acts in war are indemnified sovereign protection. Technically, the explicit American Servicemembers' Protection Act 2002 is an implicit Sovereign protection in countries where an equivalent law is not enacted. What was the real agenda for enacting the American Servicemembers' Protection Act 2002??

Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and annexed its territories. Next year, to protect the US interest in the crude oil of the Persian Gulf, then US President Mr George Bush ordered for military operation 'Desert Storm' to flush out the Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The US and the Allied forces succeeded in the Desert Storm operation. Iraq's President, Mr Saddam Hussain, sustained Operation Desert Storm. Iraq remained under the command of Mr Saddam Hussain against the wishes of the US President.

In 2003, against?worldwide public opposition, to protect the world from the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) at the disposal of Mr Saddam Hussain, the US and her allied forces once again invaded Iraq. This time the US President was Mr George W Bush, son of Mr George Bush. Ironically, before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, UN WMD Inspection team leader Mr Hans Blix had declared that there was no evidence of WMD existence in Iraq. Before the invasion, Mr Bush demanded that Mr Saddam Hussain and his two sons surrender or leave Iraq in 48 hours. The attack decimated Mr Saddam Hussain's regime forever. Even in the light of the victory, the invaders could not find any WMD! The success in Iraq inspired the mission to topple Col Gaddafi's regime in Libya in 2011.

The International Criminal Court?(ICC) issued an arrest warrant against the Russian President?for war crimes in March 2023. Is it the beginning of International Sovereignty or an extra-territorial order under the influence of the countries aligned with the cause of Ukraine? The Western sympathy for Ukraine locked in a war with Russia is testing the Russian mettle as a Superpower and simultaneously making Russia and Ukraine weak without directly engaging in combat. Based on?350,000 causalities?inflicted in the first year of the Russia-Ukraine war, more bullying, more deaths, and more courageous warrants can be apprehended. In this respect, the silence of the non-aligned countries is intimidating. Such fragile is the world order. This is in sharp contrast to the rhetoric of the bullying boys!

This narration of historical and current facts was to bring home a few abstract points concerning rights and duties. The Security Council's permanent members destabilise the basic principle of equality among the Sovereign member States. The Status of the Security Council's permanent Members gives them vast powers at the cost of no associated duties. The US is the most powerful country in the world, having 'interests' globally. To achieve the goals in the 'interests', the US has established the sui generis tools and the system to enforce the domestic law beyond the national jurisdiction. The approach is a simple extension of rights beyond territories without any associated duties and, of course, with immunity against the international society. A?recent report?published by the UN Human Rights Office of the Commissioner on March 9, 2023, affirms the rights without duties enjoyed under the grab of the superpower by the US. The two paragraphs from the report are worth noting:

The United States has for years been imposing sanctions on individuals and entities without national criminal jurisdiction and in the absence of universal jurisdiction.

Unilateral sanctions target individuals abroad for alleged activities outside the United States, including legal activities where they occur.

Securing justice in globalisation is complicated, costly, and complex. When justice is scarce, and the rights-to-duties ratio tends to infinity, the division of justice by the ratio yields a zero. Thus the injustice percolated by the assertion of extraterritorial rights by the US against the international community makes justice if achieved somehow, zero.

Earth has two poles. The ambition of a superpower to dominate the world as a unipolar power is untenable. China has emerged as a superpower with the decline of Russia. The Chinese ambitions are the ambitions of its single-party rulers. The objective of the World Trade Organization (WTO) was to help its Member States to use trade as a means of raising living standards, creating jobs, and improving people's lives. It is a general principle of governance that government should not engage in trade. The plan was to engage the Countries as the signatory member States and then let the countries draw their legal tools in coherence with the WTO for the domestic entities to participate in international trade.?

China created business behemoths with public money. Soon after joining the WTO on December 11, 2001, it climbed the economic ladder fast and became a dominant global manufacturing hub. The direct role of the Chinese Government in international trade has made China the second most powerful economy in the world. The Chinese adaption to the WTO was not perceived while designing the Rules and Regulations for the WTO.?

In the year 2021, China officially declared that it had removed poverty from the lives of its people. The economy might bring extraterritorial ambitions and 'interests' for China. With this came the clash of interests with the US. The US Lower House enacted?PRC is not a Developing Country Act?on March 27, 2023. The US used legal means to raise the status of China as a Developed Country. Unsurprisingly,?China was not pleased?with this US Act. It was in the economic interest of China to remain a developing country. No law defines a nation as developing or developed.

Justice Enlightens Every Soul

Brighter lights cast giant shadows and form darker corners. The relationship between peace and silence holds good with light and enlightenment. Life in any form illuminates the soul. The soul is the supreme judge. The quest for justice is the character of only life forms. The assertion of rights without the sanction of the public and associated duties is untenable. The attempts to make justice meaningless anywhere cast an imminent threat to justice everywhere. A bullet is not an alternative to a loaf of Bread.