New York Times on the Web Forums Science

Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 12:25pm Apr 9, 2001 EST (#2100 of 2105)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I feel that the following essay by William Safire argues imporant points in international relations, and copy it here in its entirety, because I think it is so important -- as it relates to missile defense and other issues requiring negotiation on the basis of fact. I'll makes some comments about it now, but also want it available after it may no longer be freely available on the web. Note what he says. What might be done to meet his reasonable objections, and yet subject the US, like other nations, to a reasonable international discipline in an interdependent world that requires, and will increasingly will require, complex cooperation ?

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/09/opinion/08SAFI.html April 9, 2001 .... The Purloined Treaty

"WASHINGTON — You will be relieved to learn that France's copy of the Treaty of Fontainebleau — signed by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814 but which mysteriously vanished from the French national archives in 1988 — has been safely in F.B.I. hands for five years.

"That's how long it has taken Mary Jo Molasses, the dilatory U.S. attorney in New York, to prosecute a couple who tried to sell the treaty through an auction house in 1995. In the document, Napoleon — crushed by Prussia, Austria and Russia — abdicated as emperor before being exiled to Elba.

"I discovered the Case of the Purloined Treaty in a little gem of an article by Robert D. McFadden, the patron saint of rewrite men, who next month will celebrate his 40th anniversary at The Times. McFadden's story invites the question: What is an international treaty worth?

"At its best, a treaty is worth a nation's honor. What Germany's Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg derided in 1914 as a mere "scrap of paper" was Britain's guarantee of Belgium's neutrality, which took the British into World War I. A long generation later, that Western reputation for sticking by agreements to stop aggression gave credibility to NATO, thereby averting a war.

"But sometimes treaties are worthless. In bellicose statements just after the Aries collision, China — seeking to extend its territoriality far from its shores — evoked the Law of the Sea Treaty. That was a product of the Carter era, almost turning ownership of the ocean's resources over to a new U.N. bureaucracy supposedly representing "all mankind."

"Some of us derided that treaty to undermine free enterprise by using its unfortunate acronym — LOST — and Ronald Reagan saved the U.S. from signing it. We adopt as custom useful provisions in LOST about free passage, but the U.S. is not signatory to its socialist aims and we were not obliged to attend to China's fulmination.

rshowalter - 12:27pm Apr 9, 2001 EST (#2101 of 2105)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

"Another attempt to draw the U.S. into a protocol against our national interest was pressed a few years ago in Kyoto, Japan.

"That would have forced the U.S. to roll back its emission of carbon dioxide in this decade to 7 percent below 1990 levels — at immeasurable cost in economic growth and jobs — while countries like China, India, Mexico and Brazil go on apparently hotting up the planet. President Clinton, after milking the issue for the publicity, never submitted the global deal to the Senate for ratification.

"Let's stop and think this through, said George W. Bush, thereby outraging environmentalists. The new president had erred in a campaign document by including carbon dioxide as a pollutant, a "promise" not much noted last summer. When he corrected himself last month, greens turned purple, accusing him of breaking a solemn pledge. But is it wise to leap into signing treaties, which become the supreme law of the land, without full knowledge of real sacrifices required?

"Another international agreement attracting those afflicted with treaty- itis is to establish an International Criminal Court. Its goal sounds noble: to make permanent a process begun in Nuremberg to bring war criminals to justice. Three years ago, at a U.N. conference in Rome, 116 nations signed up. But not us, and not Israel.

"That's because the agreement empowers a global court to arrest, try and imprison American, Israeli and other citizens of democracies for an undefined crime of "aggression." With no Security Council veto to restrain the I.C.C., its prosecutor would surely accede today to an Arab League request to indict Israeli soldiers, and tomorrow to indict any U.S. officeholder or servicemember who dared to offend a local dictator.

"An international prosecutor, answerable to no nation and unrestrained by any Bill of Rights, is the rest of the world's weapon to bring the too-sovereign superpower to heel. Were we to subject ourselves to the rule of the lawless, no U.S. sailor or president could travel abroad without becoming vulnerable to arrest by a politically motivated prosecutor.

"Multilateral treaties that weaken the U.S. do not strengthen freedom abroad; uni- is not iso-. In our reluctance to appear imperious, we could all too quickly abdicate leadership by catering to the envious crowd. After his calamitous retreat from Moscow, Napoleon said with rue, "From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step."

*******

The last paragraph expresses an interesting sense of the fragility of the USA's "unassailable" position as a superpower beyond international law and international norms whenever she chooses to be. The piece as a whole expresses specific status and usage stances on which much depends.

Mechanisms for establishing facts to closure are very important for the issues here, whether international groups can arrest anybody directly or not. Facts, when they are clear, have a way of influencing decisions, in the complexly articulated world.

(4 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense