{"id":160859,"date":"2020-05-18T12:00:30","date_gmt":"2020-05-18T11:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=160859"},"modified":"2020-05-14T10:43:14","modified_gmt":"2020-05-14T09:43:14","slug":"u-s-uses-humanitarian-intervention-to-advance-economic-and-strategic-interests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/05\/u-s-uses-humanitarian-intervention-to-advance-economic-and-strategic-interests\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Uses \u201cHumanitarian Intervention\u201d to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>No More War, By Dan Kovalik, 2020, New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 319 pp.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/em>No More War<\/em> focuses on the one nation in recent times that has been continuously engaged in wars of aggression. In fact, that nation has been engaged in wars or military occupations in all but five years since its founding in 1776. Author and professor of human rights law at the University of Pittsburgh, Dan Kovalik, contrasts international law designed to keep the peace to the contravening ideology of \u201chumanitarian intervention\u201d used to excuse the US imperial project.<\/p>\n

Besides being a compelling exposition on US imperial adventures and its epigones, No More War <\/em>is also a primer for law students and the general public on international law. The two most seminal documents of international law, the Charter of the United Nations and the Statute of the International Court of Justice, are included as appendices.<\/p>\n

Vietnam War veteran S. Brian Willson\u2019s forward explains, \u201cpeace is impossible in a predatory capitalist society [with] bipartisan support for [the] military.\u201d Willson, an esteemed peace activist, suffered having his legs severed while protesting US munition shipments.<\/p>\n

Kovalik explains that the UN Charter and associated human rights covenants are intended to provide the legal basis to end wars of aggression. In the words of the Nuremberg Justices:<\/p>\n

\u201cTo initiate a war of aggression, therefore is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The UN Charter only allows states to use of force for self-defense, and then it must be pursuant to a UN Security Council resolution and with the consent of the host state. Citing numerous examples \u2013 Nicaragua, Vietnam, Libya, Syria, Iraq, etc. \u2013 Kovalik shows that \u201cnearly every war the US fights is a war of choice, meaning that the US fights because it wants to, not because it must do so in order to defend the homeland.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kovalik credits the Soviet Union as having been a check on US interventionism. Since the Soviet Union\u2019s demise in 1991, US interventions have increased. In 2001 on the border of the former Soviet Union, the pursuit of Saudi national Osama bin Laden was the US justification for the invasion of Afghanistan. However, bin Laden never was on the FBI\u2019s most wanted list because of lack of evidence. And since his murder by US Navy SEALS in 2011, the US has continued its war in Afghanistan with no end yet in sight.<\/p>\n

Kovalik documents in instructive detail how US intervention is \u201cnot about protecting human rights\u2026[but] about profit, power, and imperial domination.\u201d He comments how the US military devastates a country so that US corporations can profit in rebuilding it:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Vulture capitalism\u2019 is indeed too kind a term for this type of creative destruction, for vultures feed on carrion that is already dead; in this case\u2026the US creates the carrion for its corporations to feed on, and at someone else\u2019s expense.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg is quoted, \u201cIt\u2019s not really that the US is on the wrong side; it is<\/em> the wrong side.\u201d<\/p>\n

The obscene oxymoron \u201chumanitarian intervention\u201d is used to contravene international law. No More War <\/em>makes the case that this concept is neither humanitarian nor has a place in international law. The Uruguan poet and political analyst Eduardo Galeano observed, \u201cEvery time the US \u2018saves\u2019 a country, it converts it into either an insane asylum or a cemetery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democratic party luminary and former US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, is credited with being a major purveyor of the \u201chumanitarian interventionist\u201d justification for US wars of aggression for economic gain and imperial domination. Power, author of \u00a0the Pulitzer-awarded A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide<\/em>, condemns genocide except when it is committed by its principal perpetrator such as in the US\/NATO destruction of Yugoslavia, which transpired on her watch at the UN.<\/p>\n

The billionaire-funded so-called human rights groups are also exposed for their ideological service to the US imperial project. Amnesty International has the distinction of being the only major human rights organization failing to condemn apartheid in South Africa or to protest the US designation of Nelson Mandela as a terrorist.<\/p>\n

Likewise, Human Rights Watch and especially its director Kenneth Roth are criticized for promotion of the \u201cresponsibility to protect\u201d pretext for US aggression.\u00a0 According to Kovalik, Roth believes \u201cthe US, by definition, simply does not commit mass war crimes or genocide. It is only people of the undeveloped world who do such things.\u201d Ajamu Baraka with the Black Alliance for Peace observes, \u201cThe \u2018responsibility to protect\u2019 is a white supremacist construction \u2013 the 21st<\/sup>-century \u2018white man\u2019s burden.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

With leading \u201chuman rights\u201d organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch running cover, it is little wonder that the US is in \u201calmost total denial of international law obligations,\u201d including rejecting the jurisdiction of the International Court of Criminal Justice.<\/p>\n

Kovalik\u2019s international perspective describes decolonization as the truly defining international law issue of the 20th<\/sup> century. Peace, Kovalik argues, is a paramount human right upheld in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international covenants.<\/p>\n

A consequence of the US \u201cspending more on its military than nearly all the other countries of the world combined\u201d<\/em> is domestic neglect. Of the developed (i.e., members of the OECD) countries, the US has the highest youth poverty, infant mortality, and incarceration rates. The UN High Commission for Refugees found that conditions in Syrian refugee camps were better than those for the homeless in Los Angeles (now numbering nearly 60,000 in LA County).<\/p>\n

Kovalik entreats, \u201cfrom a moral and legal point of view, going to war to defend imperial domination of other nations is not defensible and must be resisted.\u201d Revealing is this brazen confession by New York Times<\/em> columnist Thomas Friedman:<\/p>\n

\u201cFor globalism to work, America can\u2019t be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is\u2026The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist \u2013 McDonald\u2019s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley\u2019s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To which, former New York Times <\/em>columnist Chris Hedges observes, \u201cWe have, as always happens in war, become the monster we sought to defeat.\u201d<\/p>\n

No More War <\/em>is not a rant. Given his meticulous presentation of the particulars of US imperialism, Kovalik\u2019s insightful critique is restrained, allowing the facts to speak for themselves. Kovalik concludes, \u201cthe American people are much more in tune with the spirit of international law than their rulers, and it is because this law, borne of human experience, simply makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Roger Harris<\/em> is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network<\/a> and the immediate past president of the Task Force on the Americas<\/a>, a 33-year-old human rights organization in solidarity with the social justice movements of Latin America and the Caribbean. He is active with the Campaign to End US-Canadian Sanctions against Venezuela<\/a> and is on the state central committee of the <\/em>Peace and Freedom Party<\/em><\/a>, the only ballot-qualified socialist party in California. He recently visited Syria for an international conference on the impacts of economic sanctions by the US and its allies on over 30 countries in the world.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No More War, By Dan Kovalik, 2020, New York: Skyhorse Publishing –> The book focuses on the one nation in recent times that has been continuously engaged in wars of aggression. In fact, that nation has been engaged in wars or military occupations in all but five years since its founding in 1776.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":160860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[1817,642,870,118,481],"class_list":["post-160859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-anti-militarism","tag-literature","tag-reviews","tag-war","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}