The Foreign Service Journal, September 2007

The mighty action that we are call- ing for cannot be based on a disre- gard of all the things worth fighting for.” Sixty years later another presi- dent, at another moment of great peril for America, would choose a distinctly different course. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, with un- precedented international support and sympathy, with a Congress more united than at any time since Dec. 7, 1941, and with overwhelm- ing support from the American people, George W. Bush possessed a nearly unprecedented opportunity to lead. The course he set, however, has gravely undermined decades-old alliances, invited the rebuke of internation- al opinion and incurred staggering costs in terms of blood and treasure. The cost of U.S. policy in the “war on terror,” conflat- ed by the Bush administration with the war in Iraq, is reminiscent of the cost to the United States of its Vietnam adventure a generation ago, which undermined key alliances, prompted international popular condem- nation and incurred a heavy cost in lives and resources. But the U.S. course in Vietnam served ultimately to reinforce human rights as set forth in the Universal Declaration as an international bar or standard against which state action, even action by the leader of the Free World, was to be measured. Despite multiple missteps and policy errors, the United States — mired in an unwinable war and driven to tactics that it would later deeply regret — never sought the wholesale demolition of the standard by which its conduct then and since has been measured. The Challenge to Human Rights Standards By contrast, the Bush administration has sought to set aside that standard by challenging fundamental tenets of the human rights edifice constructed since World War II. These challenges can be summarized in three spe- cific categories: The doctrine of pre-emption. The “new” doc- trine of pre-emptive defense is, of course, not new. It was a standard policy tool of some of the 20th century’s most notorious tyrants. Its employment by the princi- pal world actor of the early 21st century, however, push- es the international community to the precipice of a brave new world from which the U.N. Charter was, in its most essential purpose, meant to deliver us. The doctrine violates Chapter 7 of the charter, which addresses “actions with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression.” While the administration has sought to place the pre-emptive war doctrine with- in the context of Article 51 of Chapter 7, which allows for action in the event of “immi- nent” attack, the Bush concept of pre-emptive self- defense appears nowhere in that article. Nor do the facts, even as erroneously presented before the war by the administration, constitute a circumstance of “immi- nent” threat as defined within Article 51. A separate administration claim that it went to war on the basis of Iraq’s “material breach” of U.N. resolutions ignores the U.N. Charter’s clear empowerment of the Security Council, and not individual members, to judge whether a breach has taken place and how to respond to it. The alarming consequences for world peace posed by the doctrine of pre-emption was evidenced in the Russian government’s resort to such a defense of its 2002 military action in Chechnya. Similarly, India shortly thereafter spoke of pre-emption in warnings to Paki- stan over developments in Kashmir and the Pakistani nuclear weapons program. In sum, the Bush pre-emption doctrine is in funda- mental conflict with the intent of President Roosevelt’s fourth freedom, the freedom from fear, which he described as meant to ensure that “no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor.” Institutionalizing detainee mistreatment. Bush administration actions and policies, including rendition, detention without charge, denial of habeas corpus, detention of “ghost prisoners” and the rewriting of the Geneva Conventions to allow the severe mistreatment of detainees, collectively amount to a wholesale assault on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and partic- ularly Articles 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 (see box, p. 23). The administration has refused to specifically discuss interrogation methods employed by the CIA at its deten- F O C U S 22 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 7 The Bush administration has challenged fundamental tenets of the human rights edifice constructed since World War II.