Re: Ron Paul's Letter of Marque, aka "screw the law!"

On Tue, Oct 16, 2001 at 10:14:20PM -0700, Art McGee wrote:
> > As if international law didn't even exist...
> 
> It doesn't. International "Law" is an illusion that has no
> enforcement power backing it up, nor is it considered to
> have authority over the sovereignty of the nation-state.

First, hi, Art, it's great to have you on this list.

Second, that's not my understanding. :> 

Yes, the UN Charter presupposes a shared or mutual security arrangement for
member states, one which has never been implemented, except on a regional
basis, i.e., NATO (and the Warsaw Pact, I think). I don't see why, in
principle, such an arrangement couldn't be implemented, given certain
changes.

However, treaties are legally binding on states that are signatory to them.
And states act as if this is true every day.  Even as imperial a state as
the US often limits its policies to fit the bounds of (some parts of)
international law.  And this is a pretty common facet of international
relations *ordinarily*, hence the WTO/WIPO, treaties and international court
rulings about underwater boundaries, and the like. (In other words, I don't
think to exist per se international law has to be taken to have "authority
over the sovereignty of the nation-state". I think the conceptual apparatus
used at this point is some kind of self-binding, self-obligating notion.)

When it comes to the use of force and "security", it's certainly true that
illegality, according to treaty or customary law, does not often prevent
states from doing as they please, but then municipal law often fails in
precisely the same way. The ratios are different and clearly if no one ever
respects the bounds of law, that's a limit situation.

> The only way to have real International Law is to dispose
> of the sacredness of the nation-state, but that won't be
> happening anytime soon.

Well, I confess to having been fairly convinced of the (at least) conceptual
possibility of a rational utopia, in which international law would play a
vital role, given the continued existence of states, by John Rawls's *The
Law of Peoples*, which I find both challenging and frustrating.

I might redescribe what I take to be your point thus: Empire necessarily
overawes international law, using it when and where it promotes imperial
interests (WTO, GATT, WIPO, UN Charter->NATO, etc), disdaining it where it
does not (World Court decision condemning US aggression against Nicaragua).

So I don't find the existence of the state to be a necessary impediment to a
functioning regime of international law, per se, but the existence of Empire
does necessarily impede such a regime (well, at any rate, I think I could
make such an argument, given sufficient latitude to characterize "empire",
"impediment", and "regime of international law" :> ).

But then I am in a more heavily Rawlsian than anarchist phase at the moment;
in fact, one of the things I mean to do is write a response to *Law of
Peoples* from a broadly Chomskyean perspective, which would 1) establish the
fact of US Empire and the necessity of Empire impeding the regime of
international law, and 2) push at Rawls's notion of rational utopia to see
if it could encompass an anarchist (for lack of a better term) "state". 

Best,
Kendall Clark