63rd Annual Conference of the AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION, May 7-9,
2004, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
THE NEO-CONSERVATIVE AGENDA: HUMANISM VS IMPERIALISM
by
Rodrigue TREMBLAY
professor emeritus of economics
University of Montreal
I am happy to participate
in this 63rd Annual Conference of the American Humanist Association, for the
first time. I am used to annual conferences, since I had to organize more than
one as past president of the North American Economics and Finance Association
and of the Canadian Economics Society. I am now vice-president of the
International Association of French-speaking economists, whose next meeting is
scheduled to be held in Aix-en-Provence, in May of next year.
I consider myself both an economist and a humanist, and that is why I
feel somewhat distressed by what is going on in the world today.
This morning, I will not stress the economic side of the equation, but
will concentrate on the humanist side, and how certain basic humanist values
are now threatened in the USA today by the re-emergence of old political ideas
and old policies, especially regarding foreign policy, but also regarding
domestic policies.
I start with two political assumptions:
1- The first is that public policies in any country are a reflection of
a mixture of the ideology and of the interests of the policy-makers;
2- and second, in regard to foreign policy, it is in essence a
prolongation of domestic politics.
In other words, if one wants to understand a government's public policy,
one has to understand the ideology and the interests of those making the
policy, and one has to understand the functioning of the domestic political
market to understand a country's foreign policy.
My first basic observation is that the United States has been moving to
the right of the political spectrum for some time, in fact for at least 25
years, and is now at a crucial juncture and could move to the far right of the
political spectrum, as compared with the political climate existing in other
democracies, in Canada, in Australia or in Europe.
My second observation is that the ideology behind this fundamental shift
to the right is more and more antagonistic to humanist values.
I- As humanists, we share a commitment to some basic humanist values and
principles that we would like to be universal, even though they are not, i.e.
the respect for the dignity of human beings, for human lives, the
constitutional implementation of basic fundamental individual rights such as
freedom of thought and of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom of choice,
freedom of and from religion, freedom from governmental interference outside of
the due process of law and of justice, and basic collective rights such as the
embodiment of the sovereignty of the people in a democratic system, and its
corollary, the right of political self-determination, the right to have an
impartial, neutral and secular state for all; in summary, the right to live in
an open and free society and the right to pursue happiness as one sees it.
Such humanist values and principles can be viewed as idealistic since
their adoption and implementation are expected to improve the fate of humanity
and of human civilization.
These values do not contradict the reality that different peoples have
different interests and objectives, but they emphasize the point that the pursuit
of these legitimate interests must be accomplished within the framework of
individual freedom and in a climate of tolerance. That is why we have supreme
laws called "constitutions" in order to protect the interests and
choices of minorities, - and, in a democracy, everybody is a minority of one-,
from the tyranny of the choices and interests of the majority.
II- Of course, public affairs can be organized along other values, other
ideologies, and along other principles. In fact, throughout History, the
implementation of humanist values in public affairs has been an exception,
rather the rule. There is nothing inherently inevitable about the democratic
form of government with decentralized political power. Quite the contrary, the
Law of the Jungle favors much more strongly the concentration of power in a few
hands and the rule of despotism. Even the best democratic constitutions can be
violated when the people in power do not believe in their principles.
What are these other values and principles which compete nowadays with
humanist values and principles, not only in the United States, but in many
corners of the world? I would summarize them by saying they are:
theocracy; militarism; and imperialism.
Theocracy professes that all power in a society is ultimately derived
from abstract deities, and not from the people themselves.
Militarist supremacy professes that "Might makes Right" and
that laws ultimately and realistically consecrate the military superiority of
some over others.
Imperialism, of course, can be a mixture of the first two ideologies, in
the sense that it can argue that it is the "mission" of some peoples
to conquer militarily other peoples, for their own good and the good of
humanity. This was the credo behind the British empire in the 19th Century ,
following Kipling's 1899 poem, the WHITE MAN'S BURDEN , when it was said that
it was "The duty of the white man is to conquer and control, probably
for a couple of centuries, all the dark people of the world, not for his own
good, but for theirs.”[i]
In fact, for most of the 19th Century, from 1815 to the First World War
in 1914, the imperial system ruled the world. There was the British Empire,
which controlled a quarter of humanity. There was the Austro-Hungarian Empire
in Central Europe (Austria, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Poland,
Ukraine, Slovakia, the present Czech Republic), there was the Ottoman Empire
that allowed the Turks to control the Arab world, there were the French and
Belgian Empires in Africa, and there was the Nippon Empire (Japan, Taiwan,
Korea) in Asia. Such empires were supranational, imposing their rule upon other
nations from an autocratic center.
Strangely enough, imperialist supremacist thinkers and apologists, such
as Princeton historian Bernard Lewis, advance nowadays, at least for the Middle
East, the same crude idea that the Arab and Islamic culture and religion are
backward and that the 22 Arab countries of the region should be force-fed
"liberal democracy" through military action.[ii] It is, according to Lewis, because "most
Islamic countries have failed miserably at modernizing their societies" that outsiders, i.e. the Americans, must intervene and
invade them to change their politics and their cultures.[iii] Even
if one agrees with the first part of the reasoning, i.e. the backwardness of
many Muslim countries, it does not follow that the second part, i.e. outside
intervention, is justified.
Under a militarist and imperialistic regime, nations or empires which
devote a lot of resources to armaments such as the U.S., which accounts for
half of all annual military expenditures with less than 5 percent of world
population would acquire ipso facto the "right" to meddle in other countries' affairs under the
main pretext that they have the means to do so.
Because of this need for one nation to control other nations through
fear and violence, imperialism rhymes with militarism, unilateralism,
interventionism, expansionism, invasion, domination, exploitation and wars.
This is the nature of the beast. This is fundamentally contrary to the ideals
of democracy and of philosophical humanism which rhyme with liberty and dignity
for every human being, individual freedom of choice, participatory democracy,
economic and social progress, self-determination, multi-lateralism and
international peace.
Since empires find their legitimacy in guns and military might, they
cannot allow competing nations to encroach upon their controlled territories.
They must launch "preventive" wars of aggression to protect
themselves and their supremacy. They can maintain "order" and
stability for relatively long periods, as the study of the 19th Century
reveals, but as circumstances change, they ultimately result in huge
destructive wars, pitting empires against one another. The First World War was
such a war, pitting the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire against
the British and French Empires.
Regarding theocracy, (as I developed at a greater length in a recent
book, "The New American Empire"), most religions have historically
favored the feudal system with kings, princes or emperors, or diverse forms of
dictatorship, over the democratic form of government. This is true in the
Islamic world, but it has also been the case in the Christian world, that is
until the Renaissance in the 15th and 16th Centuries, and especially until the
18th Century, the century of the Enlightenment, which gave us the American and
the French revolutions. At that time, a revolutionary idea took hold, i.e. the
idea that the individual possesses absolute sovereignty and that political
power does not come from abstract deities, as all religions have historically
taught, but from the people themselves.
Nowadays, unbelievably, the idea that political power comes from God or
Allah is coming back in force and is being proposed, not only by Muslim
fanatics, but also by fundamentalist religious groups. At the same time, and
this is not necessarily a coincidence, the idea that power does not only comes
from God or Allah, but from also from guns and armaments, and, the
concomitant idea of an imperial form of world order, are all being
espoused and promoted by some ideologues as having validity and legitimacy.
There may be a coming war of ideas, when the democratic and humanistic
ideals will have to be defended. This new war of ideas will be camouflaged
underneath a "war of civilizations", "a war of cultures" or
a "war of religions", but basically it will be a war of ideas and of
values.
III-
When the totalistic ideologies of theocracy, of militarism or of imperialism
are advanced in some remote countries, with different histories and different
cultures, they are not a direct menace to humanist and democratic ideas in our
own democratic countries. However, when such ideas and principles are proposed
by people in authority in our own countries, this should, at the very least,
raise eyebrows and provoke a debate.
Sadly to say, such is the case in the United States today.
Since September 20, 2002, the United States government has officially
adopted an imperial doctrine, known as the "Bush Doctrine", which is
based on militarist and imperialistic values and principles, with some
theocratic overtones, even though such a doctrine was not debated during the
2000 Presidential elections, and therefore, was never endorsed by the American
people.
The Webster's dictionary defines democracy as " the government by
the people, usually through elected representatives".
It also defines imperialism as "the extension by one country of its
authority over other lands and peoples by political, military or economic
means." In this definition, imperialism becomes the "government of a
few people, for a few people, by a few people."
This is a fundamental fact: an imperial regime is intrinsically
undemocratic. It concentrates political power instead of spreading it among the
people. In the case in question, only American citizens, and in fact, only
those who participate in the electoral system, would have a voice in the
running of this new American empire. There are no checks and balance in this
application of power. It becomes the privilege of a few persons, irrespective
of what millions or even billions of people think.
Six months after its enunciation, the new American imperial doctrine has
been applied to justify an unprovoked war against Iraq, which began on March
20, 2003.
Who are the proponents of this new imperial doctrine for the United
States, at least in modern times, and what are its ideological underpinnings?
The main proponents of this imperial doctrine for the United States have
been a relatively and astonishingly small group of well- connected
neoconservative ideologues who, in the spring of 1997, launched the American
imperial project under the name of "The Project for the New American
Century". Their main objective was to use "America's surplus of
military power" after the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991, to impose
a worldwide "Pax Americana", which would help promote U.S. interests
abroad and those of its close allies, such as the state of Israel, in the Middle
East region.[iv]
By now, everybody knows the main proponents of the imperial
neoconservative ideology, since many of them signed a letter to President Bill
Clinton, on January 26 1998, asking for the overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime
in Iraq. In their own words, they were asking that the U.S. foreign "strategy
should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from
power" in Iraq.[v] The main
argument put forward then was the threat the government of Saddam Hussein posed
to "the safety of American troops in the region, [to] our friends and
allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and [to] a significant portion
of the world’s supply of oil." There was no mention, at that time, of "weapons of mass
destruction", the rallying cry for the 2003 war against Iraq. The true
reasons for the proposed war were clearly enunciated, i.e. military control of
the Middle East, the protection of Israel and the control of oil supplies.
The neocon cabal has been led for more than a decade now by people such
as Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Douglas
Feith, -all high level officials surrounding the actual Vice President, Dick
Cheney, and the actual Secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld.
What is important is that their ideas have been translated into an
imperial unilateral foreign policy by the United States, characterized by
preventive aggressive wars, by the casting aside of the United Nations and
accepted international law, and by the adoption of a militarist posture by the
United States in the world.[vi]
Besides being actively supported by a few far-right think tanks, such as
the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, the basic
underpinnings of the new imperial doctrine go back to an obscure political
scientist at the University of Chicago during the sixties, Leo Strauss.
Let me quickly outline Strauss's main political ideas, to show how far
they are from traditional democratic ideas:
First, moral liberalism and moral relativism must be rejected and replaced
by some form of moral absolutism and a strategy of permanent confrontation with
what is perceived as evil;
Secondly, religion and faith, as representatives of such moral
absolutism, should be put back into politics, even though Strauss himself believed
religion to be a "pious fraud" which is useful only to exert social
control.
Thirdly, Strauss rejects individual rights in favor of state power. he
argues that classical and Christian natural law did not impose strict and
absolute limits on state power, but that the exercise of such power is better
left to the prudential judgment of the wise statesman.
Fourthly, Strauss proposes for the United States a
"farsighted" imperialism and the adoption of militaristic policies.
A fifth idea from Strauss states that political philosophers could lie
to their readers for the sake of the "social good".
Such totalistic ideas have rarely being openly discussed in the general
public, but their implicit acceptance forms the basis for many policies being
implemented by the Bush administration. The first one, and not the least, is
the ongoing war against Iraq.
III- I will conclude by
saying a few words about the legality and the morality of the war against Iraq.
1- First, about the legality of aggressive or unprovoked wars.
This first war of the 21st Century is a direct result of the 2002
"Bush Doctrine", which is incidentally a nearly identical reenactment
of the infamous 1968 Soviet Union's "Brezhnev Doctrine". Brezhnev
challenged then the United Nations and intended to justify, in retrospect, the
illegal invasion of Hungary in 1956, and justified the military invasions of
Czechoslovakia in 1968, and of Afghanistan in 1979, both of them equally
illegal.
The United Nations Charter admits only two circumstances in which
one sovereign country is allowed to use military force against another
sovereign country:
•- when a country must defend itself against an attack from
another country;
•- when the Security Council authorizes the use of military
force against a country that is in violation of the principles of the U.N.
Charter.
It would seem obvious that the new Bush Doctrine of
"preventive" and unilateral military intervention, just as the old
Soviet 1968 "Brezhnev Doctrine", goes against modern international law.
Article 2, paragraph 4, of the United Nations Charter clearly states that:
"All Members shall refrain in their international
relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or
political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with
the Purposes of the United Nations."
There is also Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which stipulates that it
is only in the case of legitimate self-defense following an armed attack, that
one country may attack another, and only "until the Security Council
has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and
security." The doctrine of
"preemption" and of "war on suspicion" is not a part of the
United Nations Charter and of international law.
Since March 1999, one could also invoke the Kosovo precedent,
which would seem to allow a coalition of countries to invade militarily another
country, if basic human rights of its population are violated, such as in the
case of a genocide. It remains to be seen if the Kosovo precedent will remain
an isolated case or if it is going to be incorporated formally into
international law.
If the 2002 imperial "Bush Doctrine" were to remain the
official foreign policy of the United States, we can say that the U.S. would in
fact be declaring itself to be above international law and be claiming the
right to provoke political changes in other sovereign countries, at its own
discretion. This would be an illegal and illegitimate objective.
(Sometimes, one can get away with an illegal act, if it is legitimate;
sometimes, one can get away with an illegitimate act, if it is legal; but, it
is most difficult to get away with an act which is both illegal and
illegitimate).
Regime change in a sovereign nation, as a goal of military intervention,
violates the system of international relations, not only since the advent of
the United Nations in 1945, but also since the Westphalia Peace Treaty of 1648,
which was signed after the devastating Thirty Years War of religion[vii].
[I do not have time to elaborate on the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, or on
the 1837 Caroline clause, or on the 1975 10 principles of the Helsinki Accords,
which are at the core of international law regarding national sovereignty and
regarding wars of aggression.] Suffice here to say that The Treaty of
Westphalia incorporated four basic principles:
1—The principle of the sovereignty of nation-states and the
concomitant fundamental right of political self-determination;
2—the principle of (legal) equality between nation-states;
3—the principle of internationally binding treaties between
states;
and, 4—the principle of non-intervention of one state in the
internal affairs of other states.[viii]
The creation of the League of Nations in 1920 and the establishment of
the United Nations in 1945 were attempts to enshrine the Westphalia principles
and to replace empires with democratic institutions. And thirty years ago, in
1975, these principles were solemnly proclaimed in the Helsinki Accords.[ix]
Practically, the implementation of the 2002 imperial "Bush
Doctrine" would mean a de facto neutralization of the United Nations, at least concerning the U.S. -The
U.S. could bypass the U.N. to wage unilateral wars, not only against stateless
terrorist groups, but also against sovereign states, each time its government
thought it was necessary for the defense of America's national interests. But,
once the United Nations is eclipsed, who will be left to prevent war?
2- Secondly, how about the morality, humanistic or otherwise, of
aggressive or unprovoked wars?
Regarding the morality of modern warfare, one useful set of criteria is
the 'Just War' theory which, following Augustine of Hippo in the 4th Century
and other scholastic philosophers during the Middle Ages established five
conditions for a "moral" war. I have summarized these
conditions in The Humanist in last year's May-June issue. Suffice here to
repeat them and apply them to the war against Iraq.
•1- the war must be undertaken for a just cause i.e. military
force may be used only to correct a grave threat, where the basic rights of a
whole population are at stake.
•2- The war must be waged with the right intention and for good
reasons; that is to say, it cannot be undertaken for revenge or for economic
gain and to acquire territories or riches, but to restore peace and not be
carried on for the sake of pursuing a victory won by violence ;
•3- the war must be authorized and declared by a legitimate
authority, that is, an emperor or a king. Today, when considerations of
international peace and good order are paramount, war can only be authorized by
an international authority, either an international organization or an
international court of justice;
•4- The war must be fought as a last resort, after all avenues of
peaceful negotiations have been exhausted; and,
•5- the war must be carried out in a proper manner, without
killing innocent people indiscriminately.
With the tremendous and awesome destructive power of modern weapons, it
is hard to argue that such principles of "Just War" can be invoked to
launch aggressive wars.
Nevertheless, it is interesting to submit the on-going war against Iraq
to the test of the five traditional conditions for a just war.
In fact, such a war violated all five main criteria for a "Just War".
-First, it was not a just war because it was not a war of self-defense,
but an offensive war "on suspicion", a war of revenge and of
retribution to make a statement and to avenge the Islamist terrorists' attacks
of September 11, 2001.
-Second, this war was not authorized by the United Nations or the
International Court of Justice, and therefore it violated the second condition
for a just war.
-Third, notwithstanding the denials, the desire to control Iraq's riches
in oil reserves, as it has been amply documented in my book, "The New
American Empire", was a paramount preoccupation with the Bush-Cheney
administration. This violated the third condition for a just war.
-Fourth, this was not a war of last resort since Bush's war against Iraq
was launched without having given sufficient time to the United Nations
inspectors to complete their work of inspection and of disarmament of Iraq.
-And, fifth, the war against Iraq involved long range bombings, missile
launchings and tank blitzes that killed many thousands of innocent human
beings.
IV- In conclusion, we can ask if the
United States will resist the imperial temptation?
Ever since its foundation, the United States has shown a repulsion to
the imperialist approach to world affairs. The Declaration of American
Independence was a supreme attempt to escape from the centralized British
Empire, from its religious kingdom and from its colonialism.
During the twentieth century, in particular, the United States stood as
the main force behind the movement to rid the world of imperialism and of
colonialism. Successive U.S. governments remained faithful to the Jeffersonian
ideals of democracy, with each individual, rich or poor, having an equal voice
in national affairs. The U.S. has supported international law and multilateral
international cooperation, and rejected imperialism and colonialism as a basis
for international political order, and as a basis for U.S. foreign policy. This
is a political philosophy that traces its roots deep in the writings of the
Founding Fathers of the Republic (Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin
Franklin, George Washington...) and in the U.S. Constitution.
Nevertheless, the United States is not immune to the imperial
temptation. Indeed, each one hundred years or so, it seems, the imperialist
doctrine resurfaces in force, even though the Jeffersionian principles have
been inscribed in the U.S. Constitution.
From the very beginning, there was a clash between Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826), a firm believer in participatory democracy and in the republican
form of government, and Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804), Washington's Treasury
Secretary, who espoused a much more elitist form of government along imperial
lines. For instance, Hamilton proposed a presidency and a senate elected for
life, in a plutocratic and aristocratic way, whereas only the representatives
would have been elected for short terms. Hamilton was an admirer of the British
monarchial empire, while Jefferson wanted a government modeled along the lines
of the French republican ideas.
The imperialist doctrine was resurrected one hundred years later by
William McKinley (1843-1901) and Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) when the U.S.
undertook to replace Spain as a colonial power in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Panama,
the Philippines and the Pacific Islands of Guam.
Generally, however, the United States opposed colonialism and
imperialism during most of the twentieth century. one thinks especially of Woodrow
Wilson (1856-1924), who promoted the idea of the League of Nations in 1920 and
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) who actively supported the creation of the
United Nations, in 1945.
The 21st Century: Imperial or democratic?
As of today, I do not think that the 192-country modern world is ready
to accept a return to a 21st Century version of the 19th Century's imperialism
and colonialism -especially not a mere 15 years after the demise of the Soviet
Empire. It would be nothing less than scandalous for the United States, which
was founded on humanistic and democratic principles, to attempt to replace the
old empires of the past and to deny the fundamental democratic right of other
peoples and other nations to self-determination .
The strength of the United States is not in its military power, but in
its basic philosophy of government. The fact that the U.S. devotes more
resources to armaments than any other country -its military budget accounting
for half of total world military expenditures with less than 5 percent of world
population- does not give it the right to violate other nations' sovereignty
simply because it has the means to do so. This would be a throwback to a very
primitive world, indeed.
Like any other country founded on humanistic and democratic
principles. the United States should refrain from unilaterally wanting to exert
military, political, economic and cultural power over other foreign
populations. It should attempt to reinforce its own security through collective
legal means, such as is possible within NATO and within the United Nations, and
it should use foreign aid as the main lever to assist poorer countries toward
reform and democratization. Above all, it should not abandon the ideal of an
open and democratic world society. This should be, front and center, the
peaceful objective of the democratic world.
American leaders would be well advised to meditate and embrace the wise
precepts of Benjamin Franklin regarding public policy in his seven "great
virtues" in public affairs:
These are: aversion to tyranny, support for a free press, a sense of
humor, humility, idealism in foreign policy, tolerance and respect for
compromise.
________________________________________________________
*Author of "The New American Empire", 2004
Dist. Infinity (Toll Free: 877-289-2665)
or www.bbotw.com/description.asp?ISBN=0-7414-1887-8
________________________________________________________
NOTES
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[i] The Spectator, 1899.
[ii] For Charles Krauthammer, for instance, a
member of the cabal in the media, writing in Time magazine, the "mission" of the U.S. armies
in the Middle East should be—no more, no less—than to bring about
the "reformation and reconstruction of an alien culture" and to
proceed with the reconstruction of the entire 22 Arab states in the region.
Charles Krauthammer, "Coming Ashore", Time, February 17, 2003, p. 37.
[iii] See Peter Waldman, "A Historian's Take on Islam Steers U.S,
in Terrorism Fight", The Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2004, p. A1.
[iv] As far back as 1992, neo-conservative
thinkers within the First Bush administration, led by Paul Wolfowitz, then
Undersecretary of Defense for policy under Dick Cheney, (and now Deputy Defense
Secretary under Donald Rumsfeld) wrote a Pentagon's policy document entitled "Defense
Planning Guidance, on post-Cold War strategy", whose main theme reverberates still today:
"Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new
rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that
poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union."
[v] The signatories of the letter were: Elliott Abrams, Richard L.
Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, John Bolton Paula
Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol,
Richard Perle, Peter W. Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, William Schneider, Jr., Vin
Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Robert B. Zoellick.
[vi] What the Bush administration and its neo-conservative
advisors want to change, above all, is the distinction that international
lawyers have traditionally made between a "preemptive" military
action against a clear and imminent threat posed by one country to another,
which is legitimate in international law, and another and more diffuse
situation where "preventive" military actions would be taken by one
country against another because of a developing and problematic threat in the
future.
[vii] According to the Caroline clause of 1837 of international law,
still valid today, preventive actions are permissible only when “the
immediate necessity of self-defense exists and is overwhelming and neither a
choice of means nor a possibility of negotiations remains... A war to nip in the
bud the appearance of a danger is prohibited...Preemptive war is de facto an offensive war.”
The USS Caroline was an American vessel that had been used to carry arms
and reinforcements to Canadian rebels. The British towed the ship at sea and
burnt it, arguing self-defense.
See Jurgen Wagner "From Containment to Pax Americana: The National
Security Strategy of the US", Sozialismus, November 15 2002, (published in
German under the title "Vom Containment zur Pax Americana: Die nationale
Sicherheitsstrategie der USA").
See also Robert Leicht, "With the Threat of a Unilateral Military
Strike, George W. Bush Forces His War Goal on the United Nations", Die
Zeit, 2002
[viii] A fifth principle was also present in the Treaty of Westphalia of
1648, and it is the idea that in order to achieve an enduring peace,
magnanimity, concessions and cooperation had to be shown by the victorious
parties. This was a prescription that the authors of the Versailles Treaty of
1919 forgot with disastrous consequences for the 20th Century.
[ix] On August 1st, 1975, the international
community adopted the ten Helsinki principles, which went further than the
United Nations Charter of 1945 in guaranteeing the borders and territorial
integrity of all existing states. The Helsinki principles, however, had a quid
pro quo. For their borders to be respected,
sovereign nation-states must respect the human rights of minorities within
those borders.
Nevertheless, the Helsinki principles, of which thirty-three European
countries plus the United States and Canada are signatories, are of paramount
importance because they played a fundamental role in opening up the communist
bloc to liberty and freedom. This was confirmed by former President Mikhail
Gorbachev who believed that the Helsinki principles ushered in basic reforms
within the Soviet Bloc, reforms that would not have taken place otherwise.
Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs, Doubleday, New York, 1995, 769 p.
Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics
at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com
He is the author of the book 'The
New American Empire'
Visit his blog site at: www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com/
Check Dr. Tremblay's coming book "The Code for
Global Ethics" at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/