CANA (Christians Against NATO Aggression) Conference: London, 24th November 20

[Nancy Hey]

HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
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CANA (Christians Against NATO Aggression) Conference: London, 24th November 2001

Presentation by Paul Davidson

My presentation will focus on three regional conflicts, Cuba, the Balkans and Central Asia. I will offer opinion as to the linkages between these conflicts in terms of the geo-political strategy of the US and implications of this strategy for international law.

Cuba:. Since the beginning, the conflict between the United States and Cuba has been regional if not hemispheric, part of the Cold War. But following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US sought to further internationalise the conflict and in so doing challenged international law and the rights of nations.

Incidentally, they say this current war is about terrorism but if they were sincere in combating this they would not have to fly all the way across the world to Afghanistan for many of the world¹s worst terrorists are Cuban-American renegades who live in Miami. Cuba has lost over three and a half thousand citizens to terror planned and carried out from US soil.

To continue, in 1992 the US Congress passed the Cuban Democracy Act which forbade any ship from entering US waters that had visited Cuba within the previous 6 months, a severe infringement on international shipping rights. For example a British ship docking in Cuba could then be impounded in the US. This law also forbade foreign-based subsidiaries of US companies from trading with Cuba. For example when the Swedish pharmaceutical company, Farmacia, was bought up by a US firm its valuable trade with Cuba was terminated. The requirement that a Swedish subsidiary should be governed by US rather than Swedish law is an infringement of Swedish legal and economic interests, quite beyond its cruel impact on Cuba.

In 1996 Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act, which as well as codifying all previous policy sought unilaterally to create international law. The Act proclaimed it illegal for anyone in the world to trade with Cuba where that trade involved property previously owned by any US citizen. So, for example, the UK Embassy in Havana, housed in a building expropriated after the revolution, is regarded as stolen property and the Queen of England could be brought before a US court for the crime of trafficking in stolen property. This may seem far-fetched but it is the case that countless deals between European companies and Cuba have been thwarted by this law. The Spanish Sol Melia hotel group is presently being pressed under this law, as is the Sherrit International mining company of Canada.

It has been noted by some that the passing of Helms-Burton was the first act of a de facto world government. It was without precedent.

What was the European reaction to this law? The EU regarded it as an attack on free trade and took the US to the WTO. The consequent threat by the US to scupper the WTO was taken most seriously. A deal was struck when Clinton waived certain provisions where they affected Europe. The waiver is renewed every six months. In return the EU agreed to help set up an International Property Court, in effect making state nationalisation an international crime.

There is a word that describes when nations enact legislation enforceable on other nations. The word is extra-territoriality. And this tendency is growing. Extra-territorial legislation is the opposite of international law. It is the legislative imposition by one or more nations on others. It is a practice increasingly and exclusively used by the rich nations against the poor.

International law is based upon international, broad-based, voluntary treaties between sovereign states. The United Nations is the major body that practically alone has had the moral authority to guide the process. For example the effort to establish an international court has taken many years and has still not been achieved because, quite rightly, each nation has its own ideas and the discussion has been lengthy. There is no alternative to this if the aim is to create a body that is international accepted and whose verdicts would be adhered to.

It is now fast becoming the position of the West that the world is in such a perilous state that it cannot wait for collective decisions but instead, the world¹s leading powers should enact legislation themselves to solve our problems. The great danger is that the most powerful nations, led by the United States, will usurp international law and lead the world to the very precipice we seek to avoid, because such process has no moral authority.

I will now turn to the Balkans.

The 78-day bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 was illegal. No authorisation came from the United Nations, the only body empowered to take such action. Yugoslavia was not attacking anybody. There was an internal conflict. NATO intervened with the purpose of breaking up Yugoslavia and Serbia and subjugating its peoples.

But the bombing did not end in a Yugoslav surrender. Yugoslavia was not forced to give up its sovereignty nor its constitution. A deal was struck (under threats of the total destruction of Belgrade) in which Serbian sovereignty was formally acknowledged but, de facto, Kosovo became a NATO protectorate.

Still, the Western powers refused to be bound by this deal. Instead they fomented a coup in Yugoslavia which cut short the election. Given the $100 million that went to the opposition under the US Serbian Democracy Act, given the threat of new military action with US ships sent to the region, given the promise of billions of dollars in reconstruction aid, given the upsurge in KLA violence, given the inhuman blockade which was devastating the Yugoslav people, given this huge manipulation which turned the election into a Western imposed fraud ­ the US and its allies were truly amazed at the closeness of the vote. Nothing more could be risked at that moment. The coup took place.

That was last October. In March President Milosevic was arrested. It was said that his alleged crimes would be tried in Yugoslav courts. But money was again waved at the governing clique and despite a ruling from the Yugoslav constitutional court that no extradition should be carried out, despite a vote against extradition by parliament, those leaders sent their President to the NATO court at The Hague aboard a British RAF plane and there he remains, a political prisoner. Of course they are still waiting for the famed reconstruction billions.

This International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia in The Hague, or more accurately the NATO tribunal, has no legitimacy in international law. It is the offspring of an unsanctioned liaison between NATO and the UN Security Council and it represents the geo-political interests of one or two powerful nations who control those bodies. It is not international, it is a US or NATO court, the judicial arm of the New World Government.

Neither is it a tribunal. For if it was, it would be truly unbiased in representing the interests of all the people. But the tribunal has refused to hear evidence of war crimes committed by the major protagonists in the conflict, Germany, the US and Britain and it has concentrated 99% of its attention on one ethnic group, the Serbs.

When the Security Council was set up it was never the intention of the UN to give that body legislative functions. Only the UN General Assembly could have that role through the evolution of international treaties. But the Security Council citing a provision in its statutes giving it the power to "take measures to ensure regional security," ignored the collective rights of sovereign states to make international law and legislated to create these Criminal Tribunals.

The Hague Tribunal in deciding all its own rules and procedures is entirely beholden to those who hold the purse strings and appoint the officials, judges and prosecutors, namely the US alliance. The prosecution is a court position having special rights and privileges not shared by the defence. It can deny evidence to the defence and has endless finance at its disposal.

Watching Milosevic before that kangaroo court one really begin to feel the Serbs must share some blood with the Swiss for, like William Tell, Milosevic refuses to bow and scrape before the statue in the square. And for this they refuse him access to legal council and media contact.

We should be demanding that if this is a Tribunal, the people should have access to the thoughts of the protagonists. If this is a court of justice then there should be equality between defence and prosecution, in finance and in role. If this is an international body then it should be able to judge on the dropping of cluster bombs and blowing up of TV stations no matter which party has committed such vile crimes.

But due to the blood lineage of this court and its genetic structure it would be impossible for it to be a vehicle for justice. We should therefore demand its complete abolition.

In March this year an International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic was established and in Britain we have set up a national committee to aid this work. Because Milosevic has been denied access to the press while the prosecutor has full access. Because Milosevic has been denied the right to defend himself and the British judge continually turns off his microphone so that he cannot be heard. Because he has been denied the right to consult legal advisors of his choice and has had a phoney defence council imposed on him. Because he is held illegally in defiance of Yugoslav law. Because the charges against him are trumped up with the aim of smearing all Serbs as a race of Nazis in order to justify the NATO bombing and the break-up of Yugoslavia. We believe the real crime he is being tried for is the stand he took to defend his nation. And it is clear that what they have done to Yugoslavia they could do to any other nation that chooses to stand up to the Empire.

The International Committee held a meeting in Belgrade on October 21-22 in which 600 people participated from around the world and it passed a declaration which I have here and would like to quote from:

The statement points out that "(Milosevic) is the firstdemocratically elected head of state to be jailed in the dungeon of the New World Order . . .The idea of creating a court that puts on trial the leaders of resistance to aggression, while white-washing those who instigated and waged terrorist-secessionist wars and naked aggression, dismembering and punishing Yugoslavia, could only be born of the most distorted minds. The Hague 'Tribunal' is a political instument of genocide and the satanisation of the Serbian people, and not a court of law."

If you want to be in contact with the committee we have a mailing list which you can join and there are two excellent websites: the first is the website of the International Committee the address for which is www.ICDSM.com and the second is that of The Emperors New Clothes, which is www.emperors-clothes.com 

Finally on the current war in Afghanistan.

Again, no legal basis was sought and none given. They just do it. And now we see an international drive to curtail the civil and human rights of all peoples as they have done with Milosevic.

Earlier this week an anti-terrorism bill was passed in the British parliament, which imposes internment without trial with no judicial review on foreign suspects. If we want to see where this is heading we have only to look to the United States. Last week President Bush issued an emergency Presidential order imposing military drumhead courts on foreign suspects. These courts can be set up anywhere in the world and can impose the death penalty. Trials will be conducted in secret with no reviews and no appeals to either US courts or international bodies. Prisoners can be sentenced to death on a two-thirds majority. Defendants cannot choose their legal council and can be denied access to prosecution evidence while defence evidence can be rejected unheard. This amounts to a Presidential coup over the US constitution replacing the rule of law with military kangaroo courts
 

When the US can invade any country and set up US courts there to try foreigners, even Presidents, in secret and execute them we are dealing with a new stage in extra-territorialism, as opposed to international law.

This development which is tied in with the evolution of neo-liberal global rules such as those envisaged in GATS and the new round of WTO trade talks, leads us to a future world where the poor countries are even more under the thumb of the rich and where international law is replaced by arbitrary imposition, quasi-judicial and biased bodies, tribunals, commissions and multilateral conventions imposed on the rest.

In other words the rule of law is being quickly broken down and replaced by de facto rule. If we take the desperate act of September 11th and the response to it as an example, we can see the face of the future ever clearer. It is a world of violent eruptions, war, insecurity and arbitrary rule based upon extreme social inequality and a consequent devastating drop in world culture.

In order that we can do something to stop this we should know what forces we are up against. What powerful dynamics are pushing us towards the abyss?

Firstly, they tell us that the Twentieth was The American Century. In the post second world war, post Marshall Plan world, the US dollar ruled as the main international currency giving the US tremendous privileges. In 1973 Nixon pulled the dollar off the gold standard as he had used all the gold in fighting Vietnam. The world financial system had no anchorage. It depended on confidence in the US economy. While the US dominated its allies during the Cold War the dollar¹s hegemony was assured and the world¹s financial system was stable.

But now things have changed. At the moment of its victory in the Cold War the sole remaining super-power was already past its apogee and its economy was heading downwards. The much trumpeted US productivity gap over Europe was a myth. Europe and in particular Germany has been growing faster than the US for years. And now the dollar has to compete with the Euro. Whatever the ups and downs of the currency exchange, this is a real issue.. The US is fighting, a life and death struggle to maintain its hegemony and therefore its privileges. If things begin to slip they could slip fast.

The main schism in the world today is between this shaky US Empire and the rising force of Germany. The worst fear for the US is of a German-Russian alliance. This would give Germany a huge edge over the US, giving it access not only to Russia¹s untapped natural wealth but also its military might, making Germany a qualitatively different type of competitor. It is the US vision to totally dominate the world militarily and have all its allies wholly dependent through NATO. The rise of an independent military force in Europe is seen as a severe threat by US planners.

The dominant element guiding US strategy is not revenge or anger, as we are told is behind the present war. The US in its foreign policy is a cold calculating machine that plans ahead on a scale of twenty-five years. The US asks, "where do we need to be twenty-five years from now?" And it has strategic committees to plan this out. We have already heard about the strategic review entitled "Joint Vision 2020" where the military planners envisage the US ruling space in the 21st Century in the same way Britannia ruled the waves in the 18th and 19th.

What are the US main strategic aims?

As quickly as possible it seeks to consolidate its hold over Latin America. The plan for a the Free Trade Area of the America¹s is an effort to create a vastly enlarged dollar zone which would be 1) a reservoir of cheap labour, 2) an arsenal of raw materials including all the bio-diversity of the Amazon and Central America, 3) a depository for excess capital that can be invested to take over economies and withdrawn at a moment¹s notice the first sign of trouble and 4) a fire-break to separate the US economy from any contagious financial crisis spreading from the south.

Cuba is the fly in the ointment, which has to be squashed. Right now Cuba and Venezuela and maybe Brazil are the hold-outs on the FTAA as Yugoslavia was the hold-out on NATO and EU enlargement as well as the unremitting push to break down Russia¹s southern flank.

If the US is trying to secure the best advantage against its competitors by consolidating control of its hemisphere, on the second front its aim is to stop its major competitors from doing the same in their hemisphere. Concretely this leads the US to divide Europe, create problems for Germany and move in on Russia. It is a positional war in which the US is carefully moving its pieces across the board to form a ring of steel around Russia, to prevent Germany from securing its liebensroom.

I will give three examples of this.
 

Some of the largest military and naval manoeuvres ever seen in Europe in peacetime took place around the Baltic States two months ago by the US navy and related forces. It was no coincidence that these exercises took place during the run up to the Presidential elections in Belarus. The US ambassador to that country stated that US policy towards Belarus is the same as policy towards Nicaragua under the Sandinistas. In other words the policy is to use surrogate forces to overthrow the Belarus government, which has been campaigning to resurrect unity between Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine. The US aim is to prevent any such re-emergence of unity. By reinforcing military power in the Baltic, the US is strengthening its domination over the northern flank of Russia, that great land mass that is almost bigger than the continent of Africa with much greater deposits of natural wealth and a powerful nuclear arsenal.
 

The war in the Balkans placed the US and NATO forces in control of weakened protectorate states occupying the southern flank of Russia in Europe. The US Camp Bondsteel in the Serbian province of Kosovo is now the largest military base of NATO in Europe. The US facilitated the positioning of Islamic fighters of bin Laden in Bosnia and in Kosovo, as they have in Kashmir and Chechnya.
 

In the present conflict whatever the outcome within Afghanistan itself the US has already achieved its main strategic aim. Its aim is not about securing oil or fighting fundamentalism, it is about encircling Russia. Firstly the US has established new relationships with the Central Asian states including military liaisons and use of military bases. Secondly it has cleared the roadblock to the north represented by the Northern Alliance.
 

The present war benefits the US by positioning its forces to the north, where it is now pointed, where it has being trying to achieve since the mid-70¹s. Recall that it was on July 3rd 1979, six months before the Soviet intervention that the CIA had set up what it called its bear-trap. The bombing of Afghanistan is the first in a series of wars to be fought on the southern front of Asiatic Russia and will probably include the repackaging of a moderate Taleban government in Afghanistan and the use of surrogate, irregular and regular forces.

As an aside I would add that it is difficult to understand how the media has so abjectly failed to investigate the facts around September 11th. What happened during the hour between when the twin towers were hit and the attack on the Pentagon? Why were military jets not scrambled from the Andrews Airbase ten miles from DC to intercept the incoming plane? Who gave the orders to countermand normal procedures for such an event? I put this point because it has been estimated that the US has over 80,000 full-time security operatives and not one, we are told, had any inkling of this attack. Is this possible? I also recall that only last month Operation Northwoods was revealed which was a 1962 project of the US military Joint Chiefs of Staff, which proposed setting off large bombs in major US cities, shooting down passenger jets over Cuban waters, blowing up a US ship and having mercenaries invade the US navy base in Guantanamo dressed in Cuban military uniforms, all to justify a US invasion of Cuba. Has that mentality changed?

To conclude, it should be reiterated that the aim in dominating Russia is not solely economic. The possibility of a grand German-Russian alliance would give Russia great economic advantages but it would also link the Russian military might up with German economic power. That is not where they want to be twenty-five years from now

Only by looking for the pattern in the series of wars and regional conflicts that we are passing through, will the governing strategies be discerned. It is only then that we, who are opposed to these wars and to the future they are preparing for us, can begin to discover the strategy we will need to oppose them.

Thank you

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