Syrian Strikes are ‘Legal’ – But Only According to the ‘Law of the Jungle’
The full extent of the damage to international peace and security caused by the US-led Syrian strikes will take some time to become clear. But its impact on the very concept of legality in international affairs is already evident [...]
The full extent of the damage to international peace and security caused by the US-led Syrian strikes will take some time to become clear. But its impact on the very concept of legality in international affairs is already evident.
Simply put, the most powerful county in the world and its chief satellites, the UK and France, have thrown the rule of law into the trash can. The only “law” now is the law of the jungle. There is no going back.
Ironically, the attack itself was claimed by its perpetrators as enforcement of legality, not of its obliteration. For example, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called the alleged use of chemical weapons by Syrian forces “a clear breach of international norms and agreements” that “calls for a collective and effective response by the international community.”
Leaving aside for a moment the question of what really happened in the Syrian city of Douma, Stoltenberg knows very well what the mechanism is for a collective response by the international community. It is an agreement by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to “determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression,” and to take military or non-military joint action to “restore international peace and security” under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. Such action is subject to veto by the permanent members: the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France.
This means that if it were determined to the satisfaction of all five permanent members, and presumably to a majority of all the countries represented on the UNSC at a given time, that aggression or another threat to peace had taken place, joint action, including military action, could be authorized. Under the United Nations system, which is the current governing law of the international order, authorization by the UNSC is the only justification for armed action by a state or group of states against another, other than a country’s “inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs” under Article 51 of the charter. Stoltenberg knows this too, since NATO, the organization he heads is ostensibly based on its members’ “exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51” under the North Atlantic Treaty’s oft-cited Article 5. That’s why operations by Russia and Iran at the invitation of the Syrian government are legal, but those of the US, Turkey, and any other countries not given permission by Damascus are illegal.
In short, in the absence of consensus in the UNSC, no country had or has the legal authority to attack Syria. This is even assuming the claims of chemical-weapons use were true. The Chemical Weapons Convention, to which Syria acceded in 2013, is not self-activating. Nothing gives any other country the legal right to unleash a military action against another country under its own claim that the convention has been violated.
Military action against another state that is neither in self-defense nor authorized by the Security Council has a name. It is called aggression. Based on the bitter experience of World War II, which gave rise to the United Nations in the first place, the UN Charter cites “suppression of acts of aggression” among its fundamental purposes in its Article 1, as judged by the Nuremberg war crimes court:
To initiate a war of aggression… is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
For the informed observer, it is shocking how seldom the question of international legality comes up in Western political and media discussion on Syria. One would never know that the UN Charter is a binding treaty. Thus, under American law, it is the law of the land on a par with federal statutes. Its requirements are not optional.
But in the US, no one cares. We are a law unto ourselves. Even the application of US domestic law is hardly mentioned, except to note in passing that the constitutional requirement for congressional authorization is a dead letter and presidents do as they please.
It cannot be stressed enough: the prohibition on any country’s committing aggression against another would apply even if the targeted county was engaged in appalling crimes. Such crimes would include Saudi Arabia’s horrific war against civilians in Yemen, abetted by the very governments self-righteously preening themselves over their moral credentials with respect to Syria.
Still, anyone with a set of eyes and ears and an ability to think on his own can have little doubt that the Syrians did not use chemical weapons at Douma. This is evident in the haste of the countries attacking Syria, just as a team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had arrived in Syria and would soon be in a position to shed important light on what actually had occurred. What did Washington, London, and Paris fear would come to light?
In the coming days, we will see what the OPCW and other independent investigators will turn up in Douma, as well as at other targets struck as supposed chemical weapons sites. Hopefully, those investigations will be free of the politicized skew of the “Joint Investigative Mechanism” (JIM), which Russia has slammed for its reliance on “cherry-picked facts and accounts by partisan sources.”
Western governments’ arrogation of the right to attack other countries in the absence of legal authority based solely on their own subjective assertion of fact serves as an incentive to fabricate the necessary circumstances to “justify” their actions. It is also an open invitation for false claims by interested governments and for false-flag attacks by combatants. We can be sure that Douma will not be the last allegation of chemical weapons use as outside powers continue their efforts to prolong the Syrian war and thwart the legitimate government’s recovery of its territory from foreign-backed jihadists – whose own possession and use of chemical weapons are established.
Unfortunately, those allegations will not be made within an orderly legal framework that is able to investigate them objectively and decide authoritatively on an appropriate response. That framework, already coming apart under the illegal assaults of Western governments in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere, has been totally shattered in Syria. There is little prospect that it can be reconstructed.
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.
Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!
Donate to Support Us
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics, and international relations.
The U.S. Government has invaded and destroyed many countries that posed no actual national-security danger to America, such as Iraq on 20 March 2003, and all on the basis purely of lies. Even if one forgets that the war in Ukraine started in February 2014 and that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 was a reaction to that ongoing military conflict on Russia’s own border and which Russia always said consequently endangered the national security of Russia — even if one forgets such things — was America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq (which had posed no national-security threat to ...
An idea of effective collective security is the foundation of the Organization of the United Nations (OUN). Fundamentally, collective security has to be a system to protect global peace and security through the common agreement and activity of all nations. Therefore, the focal idea of the concept of collective security is to institutionalize a permanent arrangement of the balance of power in which the whole international community has to agree to oppose any armed aggression by any member state. The very theoretical logic of the concept of collective security is double: 1) No state can stand up to all of ...
Remember watching ancient Orthodox Christian monasteries in flames in Kosovo dozen times.Old, noble constructions, spiritual and historical testimonies of past times.I also remember that majority of Orthodox Christian monasteries, churches and relics has been attacked and destroyed after NATO forces (officially: KFOR) took full control of the Serbian province.It amazed me to see how Western soldiers, under full equipment and heavy armament, often didn’t make a single move to stop Albanian violence; over 200 000 Serbs had to flee, in order to save their bare lives, bearing whole their lives in few suitcases if they were lucky enough.It turned out ...
An earlier abridged version of this post was published by Middle East Eye under a different title on June 5, 2016. The focus is upon the misuse of anti-Semitism by those defending Israel to deflect a rising tide of civil society activism and public criticism of Israeli policies and practices.Zionism as Racism? Zionism and the State of Israel8 Jun 2016 – More than 40 years ago the UN General Assembly adopted controversial resolution 3379 by a vote of 72-35 (with 32 abstentions), determining “that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” This resolution was bitterly opposed by Israel and its ...
On September 16, 1982, Christian Lebanese militiamen allied to Israel entered the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila and the adjacent neighborhood of Sabra in Beirut under the watch of the Israeli army and began a slaughter that caused outrage around the world. Over the next day and a half, up to 3500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, mostly women, children, and the elderly, were murdered in one of the worst atrocities in modern Middle Eastern history. The New York Times recently published an op-ed containing new details of discussions held between Israeli and American officials before and during the massacre. They ...
During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Syrian forces had surprised Israel and were fast approaching the edge of the steep Golan Heights, captured by Israel during the 1967 war. It seemed as if Syrian armor and infantry would retake Golan, then pour down into Israeli Galilee.Soviet recon satellites observed Israel moving its nuclear-armed, 500km-range Jericho missiles out of protective caves and onto their launch pads. At the same time, Israel was seen loading nuclear bombs on their US-supplied F-4 fighter-bombers at Tel Nof airbase.Believing Israel was about to use nuclear weapons against Syria and Egypt, Moscow put huge pressure on both ...
PrefaceIt is a very linguistic fact that the term “race” exists in all languages derived from the Latin one. For instance, the meaning of this term is identical in English and French like in some other languages or very similar regarding the meaning. However, the term “race”, basically, refers in all of those Latin derived languages to a group of people who are sharing a common origin. Nevertheless, therefore, the term is not clearly distinguishable from very similar terms of “ethnicity” or “nationality”.[1]Before 1945Historically, it was not up to the mid-19th century that any account of race became to a ...
There are many American and other Western journalists and political analysts who have been severely criticizing U.S. policy in the Balkans during the last 30 years but especially in the 1990s during the time of the brutal destruction of ex-Yugoslavia followed by the bloody civil war primarily because the U.S. administrations backed Muslim radical extremists in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo-Metochia, and North Macedonia; the radical fundamentalists who allowed the creation of the strong Osama bin Laden’s “al-Qaeda” Islamic extremist network in the Balkans that is functioning up today. Such U.S. foreign policy in the Balkans, however, decreased the real chances for any ...
Aleppo has become synonymous with destruction and “Syrian state-generated” violence among those whose perception of the situation in the war-torn nation is contained within the prism of mainstream media narratives.The NATO-aligned media maintains a tight grip on information coming out of this beleaguered city, ensuring that whatever comes out is tailored to meet State Department requirements and advocacy for regime change. The propaganda mill churns out familiar tales of chemical weapons, siege, starvation, and bombs targeting civilians–all of which are attributed to the Syrian government and military, with little variation on this theme.The purpose of this photo essay and my ...
When I saw the media in Serbia reporting about Donald Trump’s alleged condemnation of the 1999 NATO attack on then-Yugoslavia, also known as the Kosovo War, I shrugged it off as disinformation. Most of them, I’m sad to say, are almost entirely dedicated to gaslighting the general populace, and as likely to spread confusion and cognitive dissonance as actual news.It turns out that Donald Trump did talk to Larry King about Kosovo – but everyone is leaving out that this took place in October 1999. That is sort of important, though: by that point, the Serbian province had been “liberated” ...
The DEBKA website, close to Israeli military intelligence, knows well all the behind the curtain details of regional politics. A few days ago it reported about basically new turns of the way the events unfold in Syria. According to it, the Syrian extremists received a load of heavy weapons for the first time since the war started. The senders are the groups from Kosovo and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina linked to Al Qaeda. The package includes Kornet and Fagot anti-tank systems delivered by the Soviet Union to former Yugoslavia in the past. The weapons ended up in the ...
On 23 June 2017 in the Parliament Square of Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, an official celebration of the uprising of 23 June 1943 against Soviet rule took place. The event was orchestrated mainly by veterans of the Lithuanian Freedom Fighters Association, a far-right militia group. During these celebrations an exhibit of more than 12 posters were hung which presented the anti-Soviet insurrection one that “drove terror into the Bolshevik occupying army and the lackeys of the occupation forces.”Some historical context is needed here.In June 1941, Hitler had launched a surprise attack on the Soviet Union, overrunning the Baltics in a ...
Kosovo and Metohia, two central regions of perennial Serbia, are the very essence of Serbian spiritual, cultural identity and statehood since Middle Ages to date. Fertile and clement planes of Kosovo with mild climate, and reach in water resources, with high mountain chains bordering with Albania have been good-blessed environment for a fruitful development of the highest achievements in all fields in medieval Serbia. The cultural and demographic strength of the Serbs is best illustrated by the presence of 1.500 monuments of Serbian culture identified so far. Numerous outstanding noble Serbian families used to live in these regions, as families ...
On November 3, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) informed the court's Pre-Trial Chamber, "[T]here is a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in connection with the armed conflict in Afghanistan."In what Amnesty International's Solomon Sacco called a "seminal moment for the ICC," Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda asked the court for authorization to commence an investigation that would focus on US military and CIA leaders, as well as Taliban and Afghan officials.Bensouda wrote in a November 14, 2016, report that her preliminary examination revealed "a reasonable basis to believe" ...
The role of the United States in the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is often overlooked by people who are critical of Washington’s intervention in the internal affairs of independent, sovereign countries.For it was in the former Yugoslavia that the precedent was set for future American intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo provided the launch pad for the West’s concept of humanitarian intervention, which, in reality, is a pretext for safeguarding and enhancing US global hegemony.However, intervention by Washington in the Balkans in the 1990s served a more immediate objective for the ...
When considering United States President Donald Trump’s decision to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, we learn many things about him:+ He is desperate to hold onto his base, which includes so-called Christian fundamentalists, who unquestioningly support Israel;+ His interest in ‘the ultimate deal’ between Palestine and Israel is non-existent;+ He has no regard for the opinions of the U.S.’s closest allies;+ His knowledge of international law is limited, at best;+ He holds the safety of U.S. personnel abroad in disdain;+ His understanding of the complexities of the Middle East are far beyond his interest or ability to ...
The legal and diplomatic arguments for granting “Kosova” independence, whether “supervised” or unsupervised, are totally spurious and unfounded. There is no basis in international law or international agreements or the UN Charter for dismembering Serbia by allowing a minority population to secede. The only argument is the argument of force, “the spoils of war”, seeing Kosovo as a spoil of war. This is the only “argument”. But since this is an unpalatable and unconvincing argument, it must be buttressed and camouflaged with the discredited and disproved “genocide” construct, which acts as a convenient obfuscating smokescreen. This argument runs as follows: ...
On this day in 1973 the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, was overthrown by General Augusto Pinochet. In the aftermath, 3000 leftists were murdered, tens of thousands tortured and hundreds of thousands driven from the country.Since it doesn’t serve to justify further domination by the powerful few in the Canadian media will commemorate the ‘original 9/11’. Even fewer will recognize Canada’s role in the US backed coup.The Pierre Trudeau government was hostile to Allende’s elected government. In 1964 Eduardo Frei defeated the openly Marxist Allende in presidential elections. Worried about growing support for socialism, Ottawa gave $8.6 million to ...
,Gavrilo Princip was first buried in secret in an unmarked grave at the Theresienstadt or Terezin prison following his death on April 28, 1918. His remains were exhumed and transferred to Sarajevo on July 7, 1920. This was Gavrilo Princip’s grave until 1939 when a Chapel was built to replace the grave.The other conspirators were also interred in this grave. Bogdan Zerajic’s remains were also reburied here.The assassination occurred on the Orthodox holiday, Vidovdan or St. Vitus’ Day, Sunday, on June 28, 1914. For this reason the conspirators were called the “Vidovdan Heroes” and the Chapel memorial was named “The ...
On the 70th anniversary of Tokyo’s fire bombing, relatives are asking for a real tribute to its victims.It was just after midnight when the rumble of B-29 bombers was heard, jolting Tokyo awake. The incendiaries that fell from their bellies, full of jelly petroleum, were like nothing anyone had ever seen.They turned canals and rivers into flame and if the jelly stuck to you, it kept burning till flesh turned to bone. “The planes filled the sky like dragonflies,” recalls Michiko Kiyoka. “Everywhere you looked there were charred bodies.”Today, Ms Kiyoka, now 91, will join a small group of elderly ...
Ironically, the attack itself was claimed by its perpetrators as enforcement of legality, not of its obliteration. For example, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called the alleged use of chemical weapons by Syrian forces “a clear breach of international norms and agreements” that “calls for a collective and effective response by the international community.”
Still, anyone with a set of eyes and ears and an ability to think on his own can have little doubt that the Syrians did not use chemical weapons at Douma. This is evident in the haste of the countries attacking Syria, just as a team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had arrived in Syria and would soon be in a position to shed important light on what actually had occurred. What did Washington, London, and Paris fear would come to light?
