Resumo de Lawless World: America And The Making And Breaking Of Global Rules

Philippe Sands is a British lawyer with international law
experience in the negotiations for the 1992 Climate Change
Convention and the 1998 Rome Statute of International
Criminal Court as well as in international law cases such as
the Pinochet extradition case and the Guantánamo Bay and
Belmarsh detainee cases. Sands' thesis is that while the US
and UK led the design and development of a rules-based
international system during the 1940s (1941 Atlantic
Charter, 1945 Bretton Woods Agreements and 1949 Geneva
Conventions), this is in sharp contrast to the post-Cold War
era, and especially the post-9/11 era, during which the US
has declared itself above the law of nations and during
which UK has struggled with its divided loyalty between
Europe and US. The Atlantic Charter, signed by President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston
Churchill before the US entered World War II, was a
declaration of political and economic liberalism,
self-determination, respect for human rights, enmity towards
Nazi Germany and collective security. Bretton Woods
represented the beginning of a new international economic
architecture under the International Monetary Fund
(responsible for economic stability), the World Bank
(responsible for economic development) and the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (responsible for free and
open trade). The four Geneva Conventions were adopted to
prevent future wartime abuses with respect to the victims of
war, e.g., prisoners of war and civilians.

In making the case that the US has moved away from the
liberal internationalist principles of the Atlantic Charter,
Sands moves through a number of high profile international
law issues ranging from Pinochet to the 'war on terror'. In
the Pinochet cases of 1998 and 1999, the British House of
Lords ruled that former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet
did not have immunity from the English courts with respect
to the 1984 Convention against Torture. Spain had requested
that the UK extradite Pinochet for crimes that he had
committed as President of Chile from 1973-1990. Although a
political solution was ultimately reached rendering moot the
House of Lord's judgment in terms of Spain's extradition
request, Sands considers the Pinochet judgment to be
precedent-setting in that it limited the once absolute
sovereignty of the state and denied absolute immunity to a
former head of state.

The ICC (not to be confused with the International Court
of Justice which aroused US ire with its 1986 ruling on the
US' illegal war against the Sandinista Government in
Nicaraugua v. US) has jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes
against humanity and genocide. Sands argues that since the
special international criminal tribunals established to
investigate such crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda were
politically dependent upon the UN security Council and thus
subject to veto by any permanent member, including the US,
these special international criminal tribunals were
acceptable to the US. Sands notes that the US continues to
oppose the ICC for fear that US military personnel may be
political victims of the court, which is why the US insists
that the criminal prosecutions under the ICC be subject to
the veto power of the permanent members of the UN Security
Council. In other words, according to Sands, the US does not
support the idea of an independent judiciary at the
international level.

It is in that part of international law that concerns
war, the treatment of victims of war and human rights that
Sands finds US unilateralism to be most offensive and
dangerous. It is also here that the UK has shown its
greatest loyalty to its Atlantic alliance, especially in
supporting the US war against Iraq. According to Sands, the
US, in waging its 'war on terror' has suspended humanitarian
international law as it applies to victims of war.
Detainees at the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay have been
denietion un1949 Geneva Convention III
relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, the 1966
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the
1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or
Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The prisoner abuse
scandals at Abu Ghraib in Iraq demonstrate US violations of
the 1984 Convention against Torture. And then there is the
dubious legality of the US war against Iraq in 2003. Sands
believes the US case for preemptive war of self-defense to
be unfounded in fact and in law. First, there was no
imminent threat of Iraq's use of weapons of mass
destruction, and there was no alliance between Iraq and
al-Qaeda. Second, the United Nations, the collective
security organization foreshadowed in the Atlantic Charter,
recognizes the right of one country to wage war against
another country either as a matter of self-defense or in
accordance with a UN Security Council authorization. Sands
notes a third justification - response to humanitarian
emergency - is very recent and still contentious but may
represent an evolving point of international law. However,
none of these justifications applies in the case of the
Anglo-American decision to wage war against Iraq - a
decision that clearly violates the spirit of the Atlantic
Charter. Paraphrasing Sand's book title, where World War II
revealed the US to be a constructive and leading force in
expanding the rule of law in international relations, the
'war on terror' has revealed the US to be a destructive
force in international affairs insofar as the rule of law is
sacrificed to rule of Machtpolitik.

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