September 26, 1999

How to combat mass killing

M. SHANE SMITH;

(Shane Smith is a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations)

WASHINGTON - As reports of carnage make their way across the ocean, it is clear that the people of East Timor have joined that long and dreary list of nations recently scourged by civil turmoil. Once again, the international community moved in only after thousands of civilians were slaughtered and many more displaced. Another case of too little, too late.

In his address before the UN General Assembly last Tuesday, President Clinton - responding to recent horrors in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, and East Timor - called for strengthening the international community's capacity to

"prevent and, whenever possible, to stop outbreaks of mass killing and displacement." Yet, the United States continues to resist global efforts at developing a tool to deter such atrocities: an International Criminal

Court.

The half-hearted applause that the president's UN speech received was no coincidence. The contradiction between the president's calls for increased an UN role in prevention of mass violence and actions taken toward the ICC underscore a critical inconsistency in US foreign policy and adds fodder to charges of American exceptionalism.

The United States believes in justice and human rights, but only at its convenience. If it doesn't step to the plate and back its rhetoric with action, it will lose much of its credibility as a leader of securing human rights and international stability.

The ICC comes on the heels of a long history of US leadership in the creation of modern international law, dating back to the Nuremberg trials, where the United States led the first international effort to try and convict those responsible for crimes against humanity. Again in the 1950s, the United States was an active participant in establishing a provision in the Geneva Convention that legally obligates states-at-war to avoid directing violence toward civilian populations.

More recently, the United States has provided significant support for the UN-administered ad-hoc war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Both tribunals have enjoyed singular successes in rounding up those responsible - from the prison guard to the politically elite - for gross violations of human rights. However, these tribunals are limited in both duration and scope.

The treaty to establish a permanent ICC was signed by 120 nations in July 1998, confirming that individuals can now be held accountable for state-sponsored campaigns of terror, anywhere in the world. The court - still in its preliminary stages - will be tasked with investigating and prosecuting the most grievous of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. All of our major allies affirmed this objective. However, the United States, siding with the likes of Iraq, Libya, and China, voted against the statute.

Why the aberration from US efforts to build on international law? Critics of the court fear a standing ICC could be subject to abuse by those waging a political vendetta against the United States. This is particularly problematic with more than 200,000 US troops deployed abroad and the leading role its military plays in most international peacekeeping and enforcement operations.

However, in light of recent events, it is critical that the United States recognizes the benefits offered by an ICC and begin work with its allies to make changes that garner US support. To do otherwise risks scuttling a unique opportunity to establish an institution to deter precarious atrocities and potentially diminishing US leadership in the international community.

It has long been held that the use of force is an attempt to meet political ends through violent means. Therefore, if a leader intends to raze an entire people in the hopes of making political gains, does it not make sense to constrict those gains before the fact and reduce the incentives rather than addressing the atrocities after they have occurred? The ICC will serve notice to would-be transgressors that the international community will not tolerate genocidal actions and will do what it can to limit and rescind any political gain that is made through the illegitimate use of force.

Once indicted as a war criminal by the ICC, despots would be subject to political and economic isolation and would find no comfort from the international community.

To be sure, the current treaty is not perfect. There are reasonable concerns about the chance of politically motivated abuses of the court - dramatized by reckless suggestions of Serb and Russian authorities that the

NATO alliance committed war crimes during the Kosovo conflict.

However, the ICC is potentially too important an institution to combat perilous atrocities for the United States to simply abandon. Rather, the United States should express its provisional support for the court and vigorously engage our allies to ensure that the ICC can be an effective deterrent against future humanitarian crises.