While innocent people are massacred in Syria day after day, members of the UN Security Council are lulled into inaction. They think they can do nothing to uphold the law when faced with prospective vetoes from Security Council members Russia and China, both friends of Bashar al-Assad's government. But this is not an accurate understanding of the issues.
Russia and China have said they object to external military intervention against Assad; they don't reject existing international laws that prohibit mass murder. They also oppose negotiations focused on the removal of Assad, but they don't oppose negotiations to end the violence if both the government and its adversaries participate. They see U.S.-supported and even Arab League proposals as "unbalanced." Yet they don't want the violence, because it weakens their ally and increases the prospect of jihadists gaining a stronger foothold on Russia's southern flank.
If the Security Council were to ask the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate all alleged crimes in Syria -- Council authorization is the only way the ICC could have jurisdiction there -- this would not directly contradict the main objections from Russia and China. The goal of the investigation would not be the ouster of any government but rather enforcement of the law. It would examine alleged crimes by all parties engaging in violence. An impartial court would not interfere with Russian intentions to be on good terms with whoever governs Syria in the future.
Many anti-Assad governments say quietly that they don't want an ICC investigation and a possible indictment of Assad, because the prospect of a trial would make it more difficult to remove him from office. This is not a convincing argument. Assad has not indicated any willingness, however slight, to leave office without being forced out. He has rejected every overture from friend and foe alike. No government should oppose the possible indictment of top Syrian officials based on an illusion that non-indictment makes it easier to remove them from office.
Similar arguments were made, and discredited, in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Many governments unofficially opposed the indictment of two notorious Bosnian Serbs, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, because they believed that indicting them might interfere with the Dayton negotiations to end the war. Similarly, during the Kosovo war in 1999, critics of indicting Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, claimed that his future leadership was necessary to make a settlement possible.
These fears never materialized. Instead, peace and justice both advanced because of these three indictments. Karadzic and Mladic turned out not to be necessary for arranging a Bosnian peace; once indicted, they became pariahs and then fugitives because they did not want to stand trial. Not long after Milosevic was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal Yugoslavia, Serbian forces agreed to withdraw. Indeed, although consequences do vary, history shows indictments of senior political, military, and rebel leaders can delegitimize those who obstruct conflict resolution and weaken them politically.
An ICC investigation could produce other benefits: It could focus international attention on the crimes and reaffirm the standards for legal conduct. It could clarify that it is the killing of innocent people that is the problem, not U.S. or Saudi or other opposition to Assad. And because the conflict is attracting Sunni extremists, and Al Qaeda is attempting to hijack the Syrian revolution, emphasizing the illegality of the killings would establish a foundation for discrediting all varieties of extremists, as much as any Syrian government official who violates the law.
Holding a Security Council vote on a referral of Syrian crimes to the ICC would sharpen the call for Russian and Chinese responsibility. They might not vote in favor of a Council request to refer all Syrian crimes to the ICC, but they might abstain -- which would allow the Court to proceed with authorization by other members. Russia and China would be more likely to abstain if this referral were combined with proposals for negotiating an end to the violence.
If Russia and China vetoed a referral, they would be appropriately embarrassed for refusing to uphold existing international laws prohibiting mass murder. In this case, the rest of the international community should together point out that these heinous crimes are subject to universal jurisdiction and that they will seek to enforce these laws, even without Security Council action, on behalf of the people who have been killed.
During transitions after revolutionary wars, instability and violent reprisals are often likely, so efforts to establish a rule of law should be instituted as soon as possible. Given its years of dictatorship, Syria probably will not be able to set up a domestic judicial system quickly enough to convey confidence to fearful Syrians that they will be protected from reprisals by impartial procedures to deter crimes. For this reason, it is all the more important for the ICC to play an important role now.
If the Security Council referred alleged crimes to the ICC, the Court's investigations and indictments would not suddenly end the war. But they would almost certainly reduce the number of people who will be killed in coming days. They might even open the way to negotiating a political settlement based on honoring the rights of all people in the conflict.
Robert C. Johansen is professor emeritus of political science and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.
The powerful were massacring the weak with impunity during the medieval times and the powerful are massacring Syrians with impunity today?
Since Security Council is tied up by China and Russia, the steps to contain Assad' regime have to come thru' other venues. Like NATO.
Unfortunately, we lost EU leadership when capable and forceful Sarkosy lost his post. His pale and wan substitute is incapable of any coherent action on this matter.
Also, your technique of talking about mass-murder several times, inferring only one side's promoting it. It's easy: just mention Assad in the same paragraph - but not the rebels, the FSA, their supporters and all the mercenaries involved in this proxy war.
If the ICC opens an investigation and finds that mercenaries or whoever else are responsible for war crimes, the ICC could indict them as well, but its not like those people have any power to take away like Assad does so your comparison is not very well thought out at all. I don't see how this proposal is unfair or biased.
On the other hand the rebels are nothing to crow about. They hate democracy, they want muslim theocratic rule.
Russia and China buy much of their oil from Iran. So they do not want to make Ahkmadinijad angry. That's why the US and Canada - and the rest of the Middle East countries and most of the world cannot stop the bloodshed in Syria.
This is just the beginning of the big show down in the Middle East over oil supplies, with one power block (Russia/China) playing against another power block (America, Western Europe, India). This is the kind of local "spat" that can lead to world wars. That's why the Obama government, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been working so hard to bring about a peaceful settlement of the Syrian Civil War.
A long drawn out civil war in Syria will lead to more unastability in the Middle East.
Your "analysis" makes my mouth feel like MARBLES its so obnoxious. We are the ones destabilizing the ME, which indicates to me we have a very weak position where destabilizing is the only alternative to power loss.
Also, I would not include India in the US power block if I were you.
India and others "sided" with the US in the Cold War because they did not want communism, but India was always non-aligned.
Now Russia is not communist; China is not communist either, despite the fact that their elite remains in that party formation -- at least not in any sense of the practice of it up to 1980s. If they are communist, they are in a HUGE retreat.
Name of the game is "got oil?" Who has it, who is running out of it?
some of the MARBLES are your own.
If you want peace in the mideast you will need to get those in power, and that would include Israel, to stop using ignorance, xenophobia, and demagoguery to keep themselves in power. Of course this would mean major shifts for the traditional US allies, some who are barely better than Assad.
Well, it does not take a Professor Emeritus to provide an answer: nothing.
Why? Because the "United" Nations (they are anything BUT united) is nothing but a contemptible joke & assigning it any importance in terms of morality or law is plain foolish. The vast majority of UN "members" are undemocratic (and hence unrepresentative) regimes, which happen to rule a country by virtue of force. These "members" are each endowed with a vote in the UN General Assembly. Hence, UNGA is an undemocratic, unrepresentative body, devoid of any moral authority. As for the Security Council, it is even worse: not only are the ordinary members often drawn from the same undemocratic regimes -- but there are also "permanent" members endowed with the right of veto, because... because they are big enough & strong enough. The UN is at best & at worst, a mere tool in the hands of whoever can gather a majority based on interest and having nothing to do with morality or "international law". The same can be safely said of all UN committees & institutions, including the ICC; all of them derive from the same undemocratic mechanisms & membership.
It is imperfect and needs to be improved. But it is very difficult to change. In the meantime, it's better than the alternative - no forum to make international peace. At least the players are talking with each other - the first step to resolving "irreparable" differences.
The UN can't promote "peace & harmony", because it has no moral standing to do so. As I mentioned, it is made up of a majority of dictatorial regimes which represent only themselves.
I see absolutely no reason to credit the UN with avoiding either "a world war" or "a nuclear holocaust". Or ANY war, for that matter. Wars are avoided (if at all) through negotiations between the interested parties. As the Syrian example (and many others) shows very clearly, if the parties do not wish to talk, there is absolutely nothing the UN can do. As for the "nuclear holocaust", it has been avoided so far through the mutual destruction doctrine and partially through the fall of Soviet Union -- neither of which had anything to do with the UN.
The UN has no moral standing & can provide no moral leadership, because its membership is itself immoral. What the world needs is not a "forum to make international peace", but a provider of moral leadership. Which is why I militate for constituting the League of Democratic Nations (LDN), with rigorous membership criteria. The right to judge right from wrong should be given only to democratic, free countries, not to shameless dictators.
Libya is better off without Qaddafi... and not only is the overall death less than it would have been but also Qaddafi is gone.
Was it his seeming supplication to Medvedev asking him to relate to Putin to "have patience until after the election" that prevents him from responding to these massacres that far exceeds any death in Libya! Our president's non-response suggests Political convenience over "Moral Need." But, perhaps we should not expect more! Look at how he's hanging Israel out to dry.
at the expense of the US tax-payers
NATO should just forget the UN and flatten Assad's palace without the UN.