The corrosive power of national impunity: Why states must be held to individual moral standards

“ But when it comes to the discussion of the acts of nations, there seems to be less clearness of conception, less uniformity of standard of right and wrong, honor and dishonor. It is necessary, therefore, in charging a government or nation with dishonorable conduct, to show that its moral standard ought in nowise to differ from the moral standard of an individual; that what is cowardly, cruel, base in a man, is cowardly, cruel, base in a government or nation. ”

“ These extracts from unquestioned authorities on international law prove that we may hold nations to standards of justice and good faith as we hold men; that the standards are the same in each case; and that a nation that steals and lies and breaks promises, will no more be respected or unpunished than a man who steals and lies and breaks promises. ”

“ Revolutions have no law; but a great wrong, deliberately inflicted in times of settled order, is more mischievous to the nation than even to those who suffer from it. History has shown us what follows from such gratuitous and wanton wrong in the bitter feeling of defeat and humiliation lasting through generations. But worse than this is the effect on the political morality of the nation; the corrupting and fatal consciousness of having once broken through the restraints of recognised justice, of having acquiesced in a tempting but high-handed wrong. ”

“ No country ever so great and rich, no nation ever so powerful, inventive and enterprising can violate them with impunity. We most grievously delude ourselves if we think that we can form an exception to the rule. ”

“ All attempts to bring the Government to reason proved fruitless, and the great world-war into which our country was drawn by the enemy found it in a state of moral disorganisation, with a Government separated from the people, indifferent to the fate of the country, and sunk in the disgrace of vices of every kind.... ”

“ In these reflections, it has been the object not to ascertain a precise measure to which corruption has risen in any of the nations that have attained to eminence, or that have gone to decay; but to describe that remissness of spirit, that weakness of soul, that state of national debility, which is likely to end in political slavery; an evil which remains to be considered as the last object of caution, and beyond which there is no subject of disquisition, in the perishing fortunes of nations. ”

“ Delusive, perverse, and misleading as are these principles, they cannot possibly have any inherent power to perfect the human race and fill it with blessing, for sin maketh nations miserable. [1] Such principles, as a matter of course, must hurry nations, corrupted in mind and heart, into every kind of infamy, weaken all right order, and thus, sooner or later, bring the standing and peace of the State to the very brink of ruin. ”

“ Now this morality of interests, of which it is proposed to make the ground-work of our government, has done more to corrupt the people in a space of three years than the Revolution in a quarter of a century.
"That which destroys morality in the nations and, with that morality, the nations themselves is not violence, but seduction ”

“ They have taught the heads of nations, with audacious insolence, to turn the arms of society against itself, and to build upon mercenary avidity the fabric of political despotism, or they have a more hypocritical and deep-laid project, that imposes, as the dictate of heaven, lying [Pg 111] sanctions and a sacrilegious yoke, thus rendering avarice the source of credulity. In fine, they have corrupted every idea of good and evil, just and unjust, virtue and vice; they have misled nations in a labyrinth of calamity and mistake. ”

“ The labor of strengthening these foundations of society belongs to the Catholic voter, and to him we must look for future safety, peace, and permanence. Every principle of justice is assailed, every bulwark is undermined.
Social eminence, literary ability, exalted political station, and so-called religion combine to give public sanction to unblushing and monstrous adultery, and brand the scarlet letter upon a soul already crimson with guilt as it trembles on the verge of eternity. ”

“ With what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one-half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots and these into enemies—destroys the morals of the one part and the amor patriæ of the other? ”

“ He who violates his treaties, violates at the same time the law of nations, for he disregards the faith of treaties, that faith which the law of nations declares sacred; and, so far as dependent on him, he renders it vain and ineffectual. Doubly guilty, he does an injury to his ally, and he does an injury to all nations, and inflicts a wound on the great society of mankind. ”

“ The law of international good faith,—the absolutely indispensable foundation for any international fabric,—would be abolished, if a single criminal state could defy it with impunity, and could profitably disregard treaties, oaths, Geneva Conventions, Hague Declarations, if these interfered with its own selfish advantage. ”

“ No nation, however great, and no group of nations, however strong, can do wrong with impunity. The very doing of wrong works the ruin of those who are guilty, no matter how powerless their victims may be to protect or avenge themselves.
Most of the crimes committed by nations are due to an attempt on the part of those in authority to establish for nations a system of morals totally different from that which is binding upon the individual. Nothing but a real belief in God and confidence in the immutability of His decrees can stay the arm of strength in individual or nation. ”

“ I mistake the American people if they favor the odious doctrine that there is no such thing as international morality; that there is one law for a strong nation and another for a weak one, and that even by indirection a strong power may with impunity despoil a weak one of its territory. ”

“ It obscures Morality, renders its principles arbitrary, and subjects it to the caprice of the gods or of their ministers. It converts the art of governing men into a mysterious tyranny, which is the scourge of nations. It changes princes into unjust, licentious despots, and the people into ignorant slaves, who become corrupt in order to merit the favour of their masters. ”

“ For want of having a proper knowledge of these truths, or for want of applying them when known, some nations have become unhappy—have contained nothing but a vile heap of slaves, separated from each other, detached from society, which neither procures for them any good, nor secures to them any one advantage. In consequence of the imprudence of some nations, or of the craft, cunning, and violence of those to whom they have confided the power of making laws, and carrying them into execution, their sovereigns have rendered themselves absolute masters of society. ”

“ Individuals, like nations, who substitute in the management of their servants, confidence and authority for an inquisitive scrutiny and a strict responsibility, are exposed to pillages, which justly transfer their estates to those whom they have thus corrupted.
As the guilt of nations in betraying posterity to oppression by yielding to authority, is inevitably punished by their own subjugation, the severity of this punishment constitutes a proof of the badness of the principle, satisfactory to all who believe in a superintending providence. ”

“ Conscience dies in the conflict where personal safety is so often endangered that its preservation at length usurps the mind. Religion dies where the religious man is so often the victim of the unprincipled. Violence and vice are soon found to be the natural instruments of triumph in a war of the passions; and the more relentless atrocity carries the day, until selfishness—the mother of treachery, rapine, and carnage—is the paramount principle. Then the nation perishes, or is sent forth in madness and misery, an object of terror and infection, to propagate evil through the world. ”

“ The spectacle of an innocent man robbed by the process of law of his money and peace of mind, yet left with no redress, is humiliating to every person who loves justice. A nation may sometimes err on the side of mercy with safety, but no government can afford to be guilty of a palpable injustice even to one of her humblest citizens.
Still another illustration of Pharisaism comes to my mind, a case peculiarly deplorable, because the individual stands so high in the councils of our nation, as well as occupies so prominent a seat in the Christian synagogue. ”

“ It is a curious thing that the prophet assumes the role of a moral censor, and devotes much the greater part of his energies to confusing the moral issues, to obliterating moral distinctions, and to blunting the ethical sense.
To condemn all war, which is a congenial theme for a moralist, is rank immorality; for it puts the nation that attacks, and the nation that repels the invader, in the same category, and refuses to make any distinction between the burglar, the householder who resists him, and the policeman who overpowers him and drags him away to jail. ”

“ He discerns the fine, imperceptible shades of difference that divide evil from good, vice from virtue, which but for him would have been confounded, to the hurt of the fatherland and freedom, he marks out before him the thin, inflexible line outside which lies, to the right hand and to the left, only error, crime, and wickedness. The Incorruptible teaches how men serve the foreigner equally by excess of zeal and by supineness, by persecuting the religious in the name of reason no less than by fighting in the name of religion against the laws of the Republic. ”

“ Yet this excellent endeavour will remain almost or wholly barren if at the same time an attempt is not made to establish in the hearts of men the laws of justice and charity. The peace or the strife of civil society and of the state depend less on those who govern than on the people themselves. When the minds of men are shut out from divine revelation, no longer restrained by the discipline of the Christian law, what wonder if many, with blind desire, rush headlong down the road to ruin, persuaded by leaders who think of nothing but their own personal interests. ”

“ Is it true of us, that we carry the seeds of our own destruction as a nation in our own bosom? Are we to die as a nation, over the ballot-box? Shall we be so foolish? Let statesmen and politicians look well to the essential elements of the nation's life, by the advocacy of reform at this point where reform is most needed. And let Christians of every name plead for morality as an essential qualification for a place at the head of so great affairs as belong of right to the people of counties, states and nation. Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. ”

“ It will be said, perhaps, that these formal arguments in proof of the wrong-doing involved in war, and of the unjustifiability of the policy which nations constantly adopt in defence of their apparent interests, carry very little conviction; that a state is not an abstract complex of institutions for the maintenance of rights, but a nation, a people, possessing such institutions; that the nation has its passions which inevitably lead it to judge all questions of international right from its own point of view, and to consider its apparent national interests as justifying anything ”

“ And yet, evidently, it is only upon such assumptions that anybody can claim the right to punish the vices of others, and at the same time claim exemption from punishment for his own. The greatest of all crimes are the wars that are carried on by governments to plunder, destroy and enslave mankind. ”

“ That such a barbarous condition should exist in the civilized world is painful to every lover of humanity and to every believer in the great brotherhood of man.
Every civilized country of the world requires its subjects to submit their differences and disputes to tribunals and courts that have been organized under the forms of law for their settlement and yet these same nations violate the principle of law which they compel their subjects to obey. The citizen must maintain his rights and settle his grievances before tribunals organized according to law, upon principles of justice and of right. ”

“ It is idle to reply that such a comparison between public good and evil must needs be mistaken: that the harm, for instance, which violation of treaties does to mankind by sapping the foundations of international confidence, rendering impossible international co-operation, and bringing the very name of international morality into contempt, is infinitely beyond any good it can do in the shape of national aggrandisement. ”

“ They must also have in a great degree separate interests; and the more the one is loaded, the more the other may be eased. The infamy likewise of oppression, being in such circumstances shared among a multitude, is not likely to be much felt or regarded.—On all these accounts there is, in the case of one country subjugated to another, little or nothing to check rapacity; and the most flagrant injustice and cruelty may be practised without remorse or pity.—I will add, that it is particularly difficult to shake off a tyranny of this kind. ”

“ As it affects the external moral sentiment, or the public feelings of right and wrong, with respect to other nations; it's tendency is to obscure all the obligations of natural justice, and to dissolve all the principles of reasonable, proper, and equitable action. ”

“ To maintain justice as between individual men the power of the State is invoked, and we now recognise, after the failure of international law to avert the Great War, that there must be some power or, as the lawyers say, some sanction for the maintenance of justice as between nation and nation. ”

“ It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched. It is a cause of that magnitude that the United Nations will lay before Your Honors. ”

“ We must put ourselves and our rulers and our fellow men on trial. We must ask: "What have you done, what are you doing to help or hinder the peace and order of mankind?" A time will come when a politician who has wilfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own. The service of the world state calls for much more than passive resistance to belligerent authorities, for much more than exemplary martyrdoms. ”

“ This morality and this international criminal law, indispensable for the final establishment of peaceful co-operation and of progress on lasting foundations, are inconceivable to us today after the experience of past centuries and more especially of these last years, after the incredible and awesome sacrifices and the sufferings of men of all races and of all nationalities, except as built on the respect of the human person, of every human person whosoever he may be, as well as on the limitation of the sovereignty of states. ”

“ The same principle applies to those who violate international law by brutalizing their own people. When there is genocide in Darfur; systematic rape in Congo; or repression in Burma -- there must be consequences. And the closer we stand together, the less likely we will be faced with the choice between armed intervention and complicity in oppression. ”

“ And who can undertake to lay down a hard-and-fast rule with regard to the amount of inhumanity on the part of a Government that would justify intervention according to the Law of Nations?
No State will ever intervene in the affairs of another if it has not some important interest in doing so, and it has always been easy for such State to find or pretend some legal justification for an intervention, be it self-preservation, balance of power, or humanity. There is no great danger to the welfare of the States in the fact that intervention is de facto a matter of policy. ”

“ Similarly if a State stands on one side inactive while small nations are wantonly stamped out of existence, while treaties are violated, while International Law is defied, while unprecedented barbarities are perpetrated, it sinks to the level of an accomplice in crime, and proves itself worthy of the perdition which awaits those who make "the great refusal." ”

“ Affirms its strong opposition to impunity for serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law and emphasizes in this context the responsibility of States to comply with their relevant obligations to end impunity and to thoroughly investigate and prosecute persons responsible for war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity or other serious violations of international humanitarian law in order to prevent violations, avoid their recurrence and seek sustainable peace, justice, truth and reconciliation ”

“ The Panel has concluded that the Government’s notion of accountability is not in accordance with international standards. Unless the Government genuinely addresses the allegations of violations committed by both sides and places the rights and dignity of the victims of the conflict at the centre of its approach to accountability, its measures will fall dramatically short of international expectations. ”

“ The Security Council helped stabilize the occupying regime and supported it in the past 60 years giving them a free hand to commit all sorts of atrocities. It is all the more regrettable that a number of Western governments and the United States have committed themselves to defending those racist perpetrators of genocide while the awakened-conscience and free-minded people of the world condemn aggression, brutalities and the bombardment of civilians in Gaza. The supporters of Israel have always been either supportive or silent against the crimes. ”

“ At any rate, if no government can ever get rid of some bias in its own favour, there remains the possibility of mediation in cases of dispute by disinterested governments. With the abatement of national jealousies and the removal of those deeply-seated causes of war which, as we have seen, are connected with the deficient organisation of states, the dream of an international court with authority resting on the consent of independent states may come to be realised. ”

“ Such practice indicates that a state emerging from a period of large-scale violations, and seeking to build sustainable peace and a better future, cannot turn its back to the past but must confront it. In post-conflict or transitional settings, States have engaged a “full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempts to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses, in order to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation.” ”

“ But in all these cases there can be no great alleviation of the evils that now blacken and threaten to ruin human life altogether, unless all the civilized and peace-seeking peoples of the world are pledged and locked together under a common law and a common world policy. ”