Washington’s Phobia of Global Treaties
Why reject pacts to help the disabled or ban land mines?
Three quarters of the world’s countries have signed an international agreement to ban antipersonnel landmines. The Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty - to never again use, produce, acquire, or export these so-called “hidden killers” of civilians - reached its 10th anniversary this month. But the United States is still not a signatory.
Unfortunately this “just say no” approach to international treaties has become a pattern for the US, especially under the Bush administration. This trend must change. The president’s successor should make it a high priority for the US to rejoin the world and reassume the country’s role as a globally respected leader.
In some cases the rationale for US opposition is tied to security, economic, or legal considerations. But in all cases the unifying principle behind the Bush administration’s refusal to join these treaties seems to be ideological - not wanting to encumber the US with further international obligations or to constrain America’s freedom of action.
This “America unbound” approach is making the US the odd man out on critical global issues. In March of this year, a new human rights treaty was opened for signature at the United Nations, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The convention would ensure that people around the world with disabilities enjoy the same rights as everyone else to equal protection before the law, and in work and education opportunities.
Entry into force of the new treaty would give those disabled by land mines - an estimated 473,000 people worldwide - as well as others injured by weapons of war an important boost in their efforts to rebuild shattered lives.
The treaty had the largest number of first-day signatories in the history of the UN - 81. Today that number is 119. The US is not one of them.
Nor was the US a participant at a conference concluded this month in Vienna. Some 130 nations attended to consider an international treaty banning cluster bombs, which “cause unacceptable harm to civilians.” Once dropped, these munitions scatter hundreds of bomblets over a wide area. Many don’t explode (the failure rate is up to 30 percent) and instead linger on as de facto land mines.
The use of these weapons is rising, as is the civilian toll. In the 2006 “summer war” in Lebanon, UN officials estimate, the Israeli military dropped at least 1.2 million cluster bomblets on southern Lebanon, most of them manufactured in the US. Human Rights Watch says the munitions have killed or injured more than 250 people in Lebanon since then.
Instead of sending delegates to the Vienna meeting, the Bush administration says it will seek to regulate the use of cluster munitions in another forum known as the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW). Described by The Economist as “a ponderous process, going on since 1980,” the CCW normally takes years to produce results, if then.
Ironies abound in this record of the US standing aside from international attempts to establish legally binding norms and obligations to safeguard civilians from the effects of war and its aftermath. Although not a signatory to the land-mine ban, the US is the largest financial contributor for land-mine clearing and victim assistance around the world. The UN convention to protect the rights of the disabled is patterned after landmark legislation first passed by the US in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act.
But perhaps the greatest irony is that the US is missing the opportunity to take credit for much of the good that it does around the world. Instead of garnering appreciation, the US engenders resentment for its continued practice of “American exceptionalism.”
That resentment spilled over at the recent Bali conference on global warming, where obstructionist tactics by the US delegation were met by boos from other delegates and a threatened European boycott of the Bush administration’s climate conference in Hawaii next month. With the diplomatic equivalent of a gun to its head, the US showed a bit more flexibility. But it remained adamant in its refusal to join a global pact to cut greenhouse-gas pollution. Instead, the US said these goals should be “aspirational.”
“Just saying no” is not the kind of leadership that many expect of the US, either at home or abroad. By joining other countries to establish mutually binding agreements, the US could seize the opportunity to demonstrate that it is truly committed to working with the international community to solve global problems.
Karl F. Inderfurth, a professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, was the US special representative of the president and the secretary of state for global humanitarian demining from 1997-98.
Copyright © 2007 The Christian Science Monitor
It is a little hard to sign a treaty when your hands are so caked witht he blood of the innocent that you can’t wrap them around the pen.
The Bush Administration doesn’t want their “freedom” to be restrained by foreign or domestic democratic decisions.
They want the “freedom” to dump toxic waste, fight unilateral wars, steal elections, etc…
Why reject pacts to help the disabled or ban land mines?
That’s simple enoughy, because there is too much money to be made operatiung as an outlaw to such conventions. Now when it comes to NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO, GATT, and lother enablers of the business elites, neither Republicans nor Democrats have any qualms (that a generous stipend paid by foreign governments and profiting businesses won’t cure)about international treaties. That way we would have a better chance of getting back some of the wealth stolen from us by these monetary predators.
It is time that multi-national businesses got a taste of their own medicine. A good place to start would be to restore tariffs on all imported goods and raise the corporate income tax rate to 45%.
“Unfortunately this “just say no” approach to international treaties has become a pattern for the US, especially under the Bush administration.”
I guess when you’re free to spend billions of tax payers dollars building Humvees that will help decrease traumatic injuries to our own troops, the callous disregard for the rest of humanity and our enviroment will go unnoticed by most Americans.
Oops!–the above post should have read:
Why reject pacts to help the disabled or ban land mines?
That’s simple enough, because there is too much money to be made operating as an outlaw to such conventions. Now when it comes to NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO, GATT, and other enablers of the business elites, neither Republicans nor Democrats have any qualms (that a generous stipend paid by foreign governments and profiting businesses won’t cure)about international treaties.
It is time that multi-national businesses got a taste of their own medicine. A good place to start would be to restore tariffs on all imported goods and raise the corporate income tax rate to 45%. That way we would have a better chance of getting back some of the wealth stolen from us by these monetary predators.
What does it mater which international treaties the corporatocracy signs or doesn’t sign. They signed hundreds of treaties with the Indian nations and flagrantly violated them all. The only thing a US signature on a treaty means is that the signee learned to write in cursive.
It’s disgraceful but not surprising. Look at the common American attitude towards the UN.
Signing a treaty means an intention to change internally, to make an effort to steer behavior in particular ways. Not signing means what? Do not want to change, or do anything for other peoples? Not interested, no effort? Clashes with other goals and interests, such as power and money? For many things, for example Cluster bomb manufacture and sale, taking part in discussions or signing a treaty of any sort might be taken by the legal minded US as an admission of responsibility or even liability to damages. No participation equals no responsibility equals no liability. With a paper hood over its head, eyes, ears, smell all blocked off, with regards to encumbering obligations, the US hopes to avoid the hard task of self examination or regret, without which the future becomes created by default.
The US is the land of weapons. With the military industrial complex a hugely profitable “industry” this land of capitalism as religion would rather watch mangled children spend lifetimes in agony than do the right thing *(at a loss to profit).
We are told “What profiteth a man/industry to gain the world and lose its soul.” It’s time for the next Charles Dickens to lend masterful texture to what’s taking place and design “A Christmas Carol” for our times. In it, weapons manufacturers and their CEOS, or one particularly creepy fellow therein, is paid a visit by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. And when this ghost allots him a vision of what he did (via weapons) and what is to come (statistical probabilities of those land mines YET to blow up at some unfortunate child’s feet)let him have the epiphany that echoes like a scream through the souls of ALL those who make such weapons, profit from their sale, and turn away from the results as if attending some political orgy or religious version of same entitles them to a blank check on that all important universal inviolate account named KARMA!
The US agenda is empire, a sort of capitalist/christian mission, to spread its influence worldwide, with the US at the center of course. Americans do not talk about it directly but encourage each other with jestures to join in the effort. This is how the machine perpetuates itself.
The Christian Science Monitor wants us to puzzle over the US rejection of landmine/cluster bomb treaties but the missionary machine is not powered by virtue. It is powered by its ability to evoke fear.
America is a rogue State, yes, but it’s also a *weakening* rouge State. Its military is too small and has been exhausted by two guerrilla quagmires, and its currency is no longer #1 in the world. I expect we’ll soon see a “perfect storm” of imperial decline descending upon the USA as all the chickens this country has loosened come home to roost.
Here is one treaty that we should publicise:
The 1797 Treaty with Tripoli
especially
Art. 11.; As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries