Renouncing the Illegal Use of Force

Reading the essay in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs, titled Might Unmakes Right; The Catastrophic Collapse of Norms Against the Use of Force, by Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro. Oona, a professor of law at Yale Law School; Scott, a professor of law at Yale Law School and a professor of philosophy, cast a light on the reality we now face. We are seeing a “catastrophic collapse of norms against the use of force” which threatens the future of the world. The essay reminded me that there have been steps to outlaw war as an instrument of policy. Prior to World War I, it was commonly recognized, even international law, that war was a legitimate means to settle grievances. It was not “outlawed.” The horror of World War I led to the creation of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Kellogg was the American Secretary of State, Briand the Prime Minister of France. The pact was formally called “The General Treaty for Annunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy.” It acquired 58 signatories, including the United States. It established the principle that aggressive war was illegal, the parties agreed to “condemn recourse of war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in the relations with one another.” They pledged to settle any disputes between them “by civic means.” This pact has been widely mocked as naïve and ineffective because it did not stop World War II. But in truth, as this essay points out, “It set in motion a process that gave rise to the modern international legal order. The authors of the pact, for all their ambition, failed to appreciate the scale of what they had done.” When Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, it took U.S. Secretary of State Henry Stimson, a year to draft a response consistent with the pact’s principles. Stimson decided the United States would refuse to recognize Japan’s right to the land it had illegally seized, and the members of the League of Nations soon followed suit. What became known as the Stimson Doctrine became a turning point: Conquest, once lawful, could no longer be recognized. Even if Japan could force China to sign a treaty to give the Japanese the illegally seized land, it would not be recognized as lawful. “Gunboat diplomacy would no longer give rise to valid treaty obligations.” Although Germany and Japan were both parties to the Kellogg-Briand Pact, they flouted it by launching World War II, and they eventually faced its consequences, losing all the territory they conquered by force, and their leaders stood trial at war crime tribunals. The UN Charter extended what the Kellogg-Briand Pact had set in motion, “prohibiting the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political interventions of any state. During the next eight decades after the charter entered into force, the kind of interstate wars and territorial conquests that had shaped and reshaped national borders for centuries became rare. Great powers had not openly fought a war against one another since 1945, and no U.N.-member state has permanently ceased to exist as a result of conflict. Conflict, of course, has not disappeared, but it has become far less prevalent. The century that preceded World War II saw over 150 successful territorial conquests; and the decades afterward, there have been fewer than 10. A lot of factors have underpinned this result. Certainly, nuclear deterrence and globalization, but this commitment to rule out the use of power cannot be discounted. This is being unraveled by the Trump administration. Threats to take over Greenland and Panama for willy-nilly reasons. And, of course, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We have stood up to that invasion and so has the West, so far. We do not recognize it. However, Russia today is asking us to recognize it. Ukraine has not. We are going to have to recommit ourselves to a revamped, renewed international system of renouncing force as a means of achieving political ends; reinforce the integrity of every state, and to provide the enforcing mechanism which will have to depend on much more than just the United States to do it. This was the task faced by leaders coming out of World War I and World War II. This is the task leaders will face going forward tomorrow post the insidious impact of the Trump administration and its policies, which amount to “might makes right.”

What Albert Einstein Has to Teach Us--Or At Least Me--Today

Wisdom from Albert Einstein, drawn from his book of essays, Out of My Later Years I’m going to draw here on extracts from several of Einstein’s essays which contain nuggets of truth which are too good not to write down. In his essay, On Education, written in 1936 he writes modestly, “What source shall I, in the realm of pedagogy, drive courage to expound opinions with no foundations except personal experience and personal conviction.” But that doesn’t give him pause fortunately. “The school has always been the most important means of transferring the wealth of tradition from one generation to the next. This applies today in an even greater degree than in former times through modern development of economic life, the family is bearer of tradition and education has been weakened. The continuance and health of human society is therefore in a still higher degree dependent on the school than formerly.” If true as he asserts then in 1936, how much truer it is today. Einstein goes on to say that it is wrong to think of the school simply as “the instrument for transferring a certain maximum quantity of knowledge to the growing generation.” Rather, it must acknowledge that knowledge is dead and that the school “serves the living.” It should develop in the young individuals “those qualities and capabilities which are of value for the welfare of the commonwealth.” He goes on to make it clear that that doesn’t mean that individuality should be destroyed. On the contrary, he writes, “The aim must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, see in the service of the community their highest life problem.” You don’t only view this by moralizing; Einstein writes; no, you do it by stimulating critical thinking. Today, we see all kinds of things happening that work against this. The State bill being advanced in Ohio that will limit the ability of teachers to teach. Texts in schools that are legitimate to stimulate broad thinking and critical thinking are being banned. “The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost, not the acquisition of special knowledge", Einstein asserts. The realization of this is what made my four years at Yale University so meaningful to me and my contact with the professors at that university and my reading ever since so continually meaningful. ***** There is this painful message from Einstein in his essay, A Message to Intellectuals, written in 1946. He laments the tragedy that, “While mankind has produced many scholars so extremely successful in the field of science and technology, we have been for a long time so inefficient in finding adequate solutions to the many political conflicts and economic tensions which beset us. Man has not succeeded in developing political and economic forms of organization which would guarantee the peaceful coexistence of the nations of the world. He has not succeeded in building the kind of system which would eliminate the positivity of war and banish forever the murderous instruments of mass destruction.” Einstein celebrates that in “the smaller entities of community life, man has made some progress to breaking down the antisocial sovereignties. This is true, for examples, of life within cities and, to a certain degree, even a society with individual states. But in relation to separate states (nations), complete anarchy still prevails. I do not believe that we have made any genuine advance in this area during the last few thousand years.” Written about 80 years ago, Einstein’s verdict would remain the same. There have been a few examples of progress, the European Common Market being the chief one, in my view, but our overall progress has been abysmal. Can we ever overcome the acquisitive, selfish elements of our human nature, the competitive elements that will lead usform the structures and way of working together and mindset that will allow us to live in peace in the centuries to come? It has only been crisis that has brought nations together. We have a crisis today, but we don’t recognize it as such. Is it possible that somehow, against all contrary evidence, we will have the wise and courageous leadership to prevail? Einstein previewed these sentiments on an essay he wrote 13 years earlier, in 1933: Science and Civilization. In this he lamented: “The questions which concern us are: How can we save mankind and spiritual acquisitions of which we are the heirs? How can one save Europe from a new disaster?" He closed on the hopeful thought: “Only through perils and upheavals can nations be brought to further developments. May the present upheavals lead to a better world. Above and beyond this valuation of our time we have this further duty, to care for what is eternal and highest among our possessions, that which gives life its import and which we wish to hand on to our children fewer and richer than we received it from our forbearers.” We’ve had periods of peace since then, triggered importantly by the specter of destruction wreaked by World War II, but those periods have not lasted, they have not been sustained with a new mindset and government structures which would flow from it and which we and this world we live in need to not only thrive but survive.