Chomsky antwortet einigen Kritikern: Über moralische Prinzipien und internationales Recht What's the basis of valid moral principles? Isn't the bombing a violation of international law? Is anyone bringing charges? What are the reactions to that in the U.S.?   Z-Magazine, Kommentar vom 9. Mai 1999   I'm afraid the first question is not a "genuine question," though there is a huge literature, for thousands of years, attempting to say at least something about these topics, without much success. It is no more a "genuine question" than such pseudo-questions as "why do things happen" -- far too broad to be addressed seriously, and very poorly understood. There are, however, a few moral truisms that are relevant here. They hold for any person -- let's consider one such person, call him/her X. The first truism is that X is primarily responsible for the likely consequences of his/her own actions, or inaction. The second is that X's concern for moral issues (crimes, etc.) should vary in accordance with X's ability to have an effect (though that is of course not the only factor). The two principles tend to correlate, even coincide, in the conclusions that X will draw -- that is, if X is a moral agent, someone worth paying attention to.   To illustrate, it may be worthwhile to study the crimes of Genghis Khan, but there is little moral significance to that; we can't do anything about them. Similarly, it is highly worthwhile to attend to US-backed atrocities (say, in Turkey, or Colombia, or East Timor, or Iraq, or many other places), because we are responsible for the crimes and can do a lot about them -- very easily; namely, by withdrawing our (often decisive) support. But attention to Pol Pot's crimes, while a worthy enterprise (if done honestly, which was rarely the case), had little if any moral significance because there was no hint of a proposal as to what to do about them -- and when they were terminated, the US was infuriated and severely punished the criminals (the Vietnamese) who carried out the clearest case of "humanitarian intervention" since World War II. We understand these truisms very well when we are thinking of others. Thus no one in the U.S. was impressed when Soviet commissars railed about U.S. crimes; we were much impressed, however, when dissidents in the USSR condemned Soviet crimes. The reasons were the two moral truisms just mentioned (which, as is commonly the case, coincided in their implications).   At this point it is useful to recall a psychological truism. One of the hardest things to do is to look into the mirror. It is also often the most important thing to do, because of the moral truisms. And there are very powerful institutions (the entire doctrinal system, in all of its aspects) that seek to protect people from engaging in this difficult and crucially important task. Every society has its dissidents and its commissars, and it's close to a historical law that the commissars are highly praised and the dissidents bitterly condemned -- within the society, that is; o the other hand for official enemies the situation is reversed. It's also worthwhile to recall other psychological truisms. Focussing attention on the crimes of others often gives us a nice warm feeling of being "good people," so different from those "bad people." That's particularly true when there is nothing much we can do about the crimes of others except to help make them far worse, from a distance. Then we can simply wail without cost to ourselves. Looking at our own crimes is much harder, and for those willing to do it, often carries costs, sometimes very severe costs. That's typically been true of dissidents in US client states, like the murdered Jesuit intellectuals in El Salvador. A useful experiment is to ask your friends to tell you their names, or to ask them how much they have read of what they have written, and then to compare the results with the same questions concerning Soviet dissidents, who were not treated anywhere near as harshly in the post-Stalin period. That's a way of looking in the mirror that can teach a lot, about ourselves, and about our institutions.   These are matters that have been endlessly discussed (see, e.g., the introduction to Herman's and my "Political Economy of Human Rights"). They are so trivial that it is kind of embarrassing to keep reiterating them. But perhaps that is useful as well. The application of these truisms is extremely broad. I think that you will easily find examples.   ---   That the bombings are in gross violation of international law and the founding documents of NATO itself (which subordinate NATO to the UN Charter) is not seriously denied. About a legal challenge, one has brought to the World Court by Yugoslavia. Similarly, the Indian commission of jurists has brought to the World Court a legal challenge to US/UK bombing of Iraq, also in gross violation of international law. Sudan has demanded a Security Council inquiry on the US destruction of half of its pharmaceutical and fertilizer supplies by terrorist bombing (also transparently illegal), but US pressure has succeeded in keeping the matter off the agenda.   As for reactions here, they are interesting. The U.S. has been radically opposed to international law since its modern foundations were established under U.S. initiative in 1945. In the early days, that was kept to internal (now declassified) documents, such as the first Memorandum of the newly-formed National Security Council (NSC 1/3), calling for military action in Italy if the left won the election (I've written about this in Z, reprinted and extended in "Deterring Democracy"). With the Kennedy Administration, disdain for international law became quite public, in particular, in speeches by senior Kennedy adviser Dean Acheson. The main innovation of the Clinton/Reagan years is that it has become entirely open. In fact, the US is the only country to have vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on all states to observe international law -- mentioning no one, but everyone understood who was meant. There's a brief review of these matters in an article of mine in Z in May. It's entirely obvious why the powerful should have contempt for international law, and why the weak (particularly the former colonies) should generally favor it. The powerful do what they want anyway; treaties and systems of world order don't offer them any protection. They do, however, offer at least some limited protection for the weak. That is why the real "international community" is quite commonly opposed to the resort to violence by the US/UK (and now their NATO partners). In the U.S. the term "international community" is used to refer to NATO, but we can surely dispense with that racist/imperialist jargon ourselves.   An intriguing aspect of the post-Cold War scene is that the US attack on the UN (which has been going on since Washington lost control in the '60s, with decolonization), the World Court, treaty obligations, etc., has become far more extensive. The reason is straightforward: the old pretexts ("the Russians are coming") had lost their utility, and in the absence of a deterrent, the U.S. was much more free to resort to violence than before. That was evident at once. And it is entirely obvious now -- even called a marvellous "new paradigm."   It's important to bear in mind something that even much of the left prefers to ignore. There is only one "really existing alternative" to the weak, fragile, and in many ways very defective system of world order: the powerful will do as they wish. Alexander Solzhenitsyn is not exactly my favorite commentator on world affairs, but he does have it basically right this time: "NATO is imposing on the whole world and the next century an ancient law...whoever is strongest is right." Hardly surprising, then, that the strongest are the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for the "new paradigm." We need only add another virtual truism: the task of the respectable intellectuals, as always, is to portray whatever happens as angelic, or maybe an understandable "mistake," if the consequences become too hard to suppress. That's as old as recorded history.