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    ‘Clear evidence’ Russia is committing war crimes, says Pentagon – video

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    The Pentagon has accused Russian forces of committing war crimes in Ukraine, saying the Kremlin had carried out indiscriminate attacks as part of an intentional strategy in the conflict. ‘We certainly see clear evidence that Russian forces are committing war crimes and we are helping with the collecting of evidence of that,’ Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told a news briefing. ‘But there’s investigative processes that are going to go on, and we’re going to let that happen. We’re going to contribute to that investigative process’

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      in World Politics

      How the Legal Landscape Is Changing for War Crimes

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      War crimes, genocide, torture, forced disappearances, crimes against humanity and other serious violations of international law have been characteristic of conflicts in the Arab world since even before they were codified in law. These crimes still occur in many Arab countries, most notably in Syria and Yemen. Not only do perpetrators often go unpunished, but they also find themselves rewarded and promoted.

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      So, when on November 30, 2021, a court in Frankfurt, Germany, handed down a life sentence to an Iraqi man who joined the Islamic State (IS) group for genocide against the Yazidi minority — the first time a former member of IS had been convicted of genocide and the first verdict for genocide against Yazidis — it was celebrated as a landmark case in the fight for justice and accountability. Taha al-Jumailly was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity resulting in death, war crimes, aiding and abetting war crimes, and bodily harm resulting in death.

      “Today, ISIS member Taha AJ was convicted of genocide and sentenced to life in prison. This is the first genocide verdict against an ISIS member. This verdict is a win for survivors of genocide, survivors of sexual violence, & the Yazidi community,” tweeted Nadia Murad, a 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner and a Yazidi survivor of IS enslavement.

      Universal Jurisdiction

      The trial was also the first in Germany based on the principle of universal jurisdiction addressing crimes under international law committed abroad by a perpetrator who is not a German citizen and was only extradited on the basis of an international arrest warrant. Universal jurisdiction is the principle that some crimes are so serious that states should be allowed to claim jurisdiction over an accused person regardless of where they were committed or any other relation with the prosecuting entity. None of the crimes in the Jumailly case were committed in Germany, and neither the victims nor the suspect were German nationals.

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      Though universal jurisdiction has been practiced in just a few countries in recent years, it has become an increasingly important tool for achieving accountability and justice for the survivors and victims of international crimes. Hundreds of investigations are ongoing and dozens of convictions have been obtained.

      The blossoming of universal jurisdiction is attributable to several factors, one of which is that the alternative route to prosecuting international crimes through the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has effectively been closed by geopolitics. The Syrian conflict, for example, has never been appraised by the ICC because Russia backs President Bashar al-Assad.

      The Pursuit of Cases

      In recent years, there has been a greater capacity and willingness on the part of some domestic authorities to pursue cases involving international crimes, at least in certain circumstances. More and more countries have also passed laws allowing them to conduct the kind of landmark prosecution that took place in Frankfurt. More countries are following the Dutch example in setting up specialized units within the police, prosecution and even immigration services dedicated to identifying perpetrators of international crimes and bringing them to trial.

      Another important factor in the power of universal jurisdiction is that victims and their advocates can contribute to investigations and prosecutions, and sometimes even influence the direction they take. In some countries, such as France and Belgium, victims and NGOs can initiate criminal proceedings. Even where this is not possible, victims and their advocates can still drive cases forward in other ways, such as by tracking perpetrators’ movements, sharing information with the authorities and exerting pressure on them to act.

      Dutch authorities have even issued directions for Syrians in the Netherlands on how to file a criminal complaint against other Syrians relating to violations in Syria. In February, after Germany’s top court ruled that war crimes committed abroad can be tried in the country, a court in Koblenz became the first court outside of Syria to rule on state-sponsored torture by the Assad regime when it sentenced a former member of the secret police to four and a half years in prison for being an accomplice to crimes against humanity. Another former Syrian intelligence officer is currently on trial in Germany for overseeing 58 counts of murder and at least 4,000 cases of torture, rape or sexual abuse.

      Many Challenges

      Despite this recent progress, enormous legal, evidentiary and logistical challenges remain before international criminal cases can be brought to trial. Investigating and prosecuting international crimes in domestic courts is not straightforward, especially in a complex conflict such as the Yemen war where crimes have been committed over many years by different actors.

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      Foreign investigators cannot easily gather evidence on the ground, so they have to rely on the cooperation of different parties to the conflict to build cases. UN bodies like the group of eminent experts, international organizations, local NGOs, and organizations such as Airwars assist with investigations.

      Even if evidence linking an individual perpetrator to war crimes can be established, the suspect still has to be apprehended. In some countries practicing universal jurisdiction, those accused of committing war crimes do not need to be within reach of authorities for an investigation to be opened, but they need to be physically brought to court before any trial can take place.

      Though international cooperation can be used to apprehend and extradite international pariahs like IS militants, pirates and slave traders, war criminals who are still serving members of Arab regimes are not about to be handed over. Only when they set foot in a country practicing universal jurisdiction — whether for work, vacation, claiming asylum or for any other reason — can they be arrested immediately, providing they do not benefit from immunity.

      Jumailly’s conviction “sends a clear message,” said Natia Navrouzov, a lawyer and member of the NGO Yazda, which gathers evidence of crimes committed by IS against the Yazidis. “It doesn’t matter where the crimes were committed and it doesn’t matter where the perpetrators are, thanks to the universal jurisdiction, they can’t hide and will still be put on trial.”

      *[This article was originally published by Arab Digest, a partner of Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Inside the CIA’s secret Kabul base, burned out and abandoned in haste

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      The ObserverAfghanistanInside the CIA’s secret Kabul base, burned out and abandoned in haste A Taliban commander invited the media to inspect the site where America plotted killing raids and tortured prisonersEmma Graham-Harrison in KabulSun 3 Oct 2021 01.00 EDTThe cars, minibuses and armoured vehicles that the CIA used to run its shadow war in Afghanistan had been lined up and incinerated beyond identification before the Americans left. Below their ashy grey remains, pools of molten metal had solidified into permanent shiny puddles as the blaze cooled.The faux Afghan village where they trained paramilitary forces linked to some of the worst human rights abuses of the war had been brought down on itself. Only a high concrete wall still loomed over the crumpled piles of mud and beams, once used to practise for the widely hated night raids on civilian homes.The vast ammunition dump had been blown up. Many ways to kill and maim human beings, from guns to grenades, mortars to heavy artillery, laid out in three long rows of double-height shipping containers, were reduced to shards of twisted metal. The blast from the huge detonation, which came soon after the bloody bomb at Kabul airport, shook and terrified the capital city.All formed part of the CIA compound that for 20 years was the dark, secret heart of America’s “war on terror”, a place were some of the worst abuses to sour the mission in Afghanistan would fester.The sprawling hillside compound, spread over two square miles north-east of the airport, became infamous early on in the conflict for torture and murder at its “Salt Pit” prison, codenamed Cobalt by the CIA. The men held there called it the “dark prison”, because there was no light in their cells, the only occasional illumination coming from the headlamps of their guards.It was here that Gul Rahman died of hypothermia in 2002 after he was chained to a wall half-naked and left overnight in freezing temperatures. His death prompted the first formal CIA guidelines on interrogation under a new regime of torture, eviscerated in a 2014 report that found that the abuse did not provide useful intelligence.The base has for two decades been a closely guarded secret, visible only in satellite photos, navigated by the testimony of survivors. Now the Taliban’s special forces have moved in and recently, briefly, opened up the secret compound to journalists.“We want to show how they wasted all these things that could have been used to build our country,” said Mullah Hassanain, a commander in the Taliban’s elite 313 unit, who led the tour of destroyed and burnt-out compounds, “burn pits” and incinerated cars, buses and armoured military vehicles.Taliban special forces include suicide attackers who recently marched through Kabul to celebrate seizing the capital. Vehicles now emblazoned with their official “suicide squadron” logo escorted journalists around the former CIA base.It was a grimly ironic juxtaposition of the most cruel and ruthless units on both sides of this war, a reminder of the suffering inflicted on civilians by all combatants in the name of higher goals, over several decades.“They are martyrdom seekers who were responsible for the attacks on important locations of invaders and the regime. They now have control of important locations,” said a Taliban official, when asked why suicide squads were escorting journalists, and if they would continue to operate. “It is a very big battalion. It is responsible for the security of important locations. They will be expanded and further organised. Whenever there is a need, they will respond. They are always ready for sacrifices for our country and the defence of our people.”They planned to use the CIA base for their own military training, Hassanain said, so this brief glimpse of the compound is likely to be both the first and last time the media is allowed in.The men guarding it had already changed into the tiger-stripe camouflage of the old Afghan National Directorate of Security, the spy agency once in charge of hunting them down. The paramilitary units that operated here, based in barracks just near the site of the former Salt Pit jail, included some that were among the most feared in the country, mired in allegations of abuse that included extrajudicial killings of children and other civilians. The barracks had been abandoned so fast that the men who lived there left food half-finished, and barracks floors were littered with possessions spilled out of emptied lockers, cleared in an apparent frenzy.Mostly they had taken or destroyed anything with names, or ranks, but there were 01 patches, and one book that was filled with handwritten notes from weeks of training.Nearby, the site of the Salt Pit jail had apparently been razed a few months earlier. A New York Times satellite investigation found that, since spring, a cluster of buildings inside this part of the CIA compound had been levelled.Taliban officials said they did not have any details about the Salt Pit, or what had happened to the former jail. Rahman’s family are still searching for his body, which has never been returned to them.Other torture techniques recorded at the site included “rectal feeding”, shackling prisoners to bars overhead, and depriving inmates of toilet “privileges”, leaving them naked or wearing adult diapers.Construction equipment was abandoned on the site, with concrete slabs half poured. Next door, a building that had once been fortified with high-tech doors and equipment had apparently been firebombed, its interior as totally destroyed and reduced to ash as the cars outside.Destroying sensitive equipment at the base would have been complex, and there was evidence of several burn pits where everything from medical kits and a manual on leadership was put to the flames, along with larger pieces of equipment.The Taliban officials were jumpy about letting journalists into areas that had not been officially cleared. They had found several booby trap bombs in the rubble of the camp, Hassanain said, and were worried that there might be more.For days, helicopters ferried hundreds of people from the base to inside the airport, where men from the 01 force – aware they were likely to be prominent targets for reprisals – helped secure the perimeter in return for evacuation in the final hours, under a deal struck with the US.Untouched nearby was a recreation hall with snooker, ping-pong, darts and table football gathering dust. A box in the corner held brain teaser puzzles. It was unclear what the Taliban, once so austere that they even banned chess, would do with the trappings of western military downtime.TopicsAfghanistanThe ObserverTalibanCIACIA torture reportSouth and Central AsiaTortureWar crimesfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in World Politics

      The US Needs to Uncancel the ICC

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      When the loony right gathered at the Conservative Political Action Conference back in February, the theme of the Trump-heavy gathering was “America Uncanceled.” Speaker after speaker railed against “political correctness” in American culture, from “woke mobs” to “censorship” in the mainstream news media. Incredibly, they tried to transform so-called cancel culture into the single greatest problem facing a United States still reeling from COVID-19 and its economic sucker punch. And yet, time and again, it has been the loony right that has been so eager to hit the delete button.

      These supposed defenders of everyone’s right to voice opinions attempted to cancel an entire presidential election because it failed to produce their preferred result. They’ve spent decades trying to cancel voting rights (not to mention a wide variety of other rights). They’ve directed huge amounts of time and money to canceling social benefits for the least fortunate Americans. Throughout history, they’ve mounted campaigns to cancel specific individuals from Colin Kaepernick and Representative Ilhan Omar to the black lists of the McCarthy era. They’re also not above canceling entire groups of people, from the transgender community all the way back to the original sin of this country, namely the mass cancelation of Native Americans.

      Then there’s foreign policy. The Trump administration never met an international agreement or institution — the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal, the World Health Organization — that it didn’t want to cover with “cancel” stamps.

      One institution that has elicited particular ire from the far right has been the International Criminal Court (ICC). On April 2, the Biden administration took a step toward mending the rift between the United States and the ICC. It didn’t go far enough.

      Blocking the International Criminal Court

      In 2000, the Clinton administration signed the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court, which has focused on bringing to international justice the perpetrators of war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and (beginning in 2017) crimes of aggression. In 2002, the Bush administration effectively unsigned the agreement and Congress pushed to shield all US military personnel from ICC prosecution. Although the Obama administration cooperated with the court, it was still worried about possible investigations into the US “war on terrorism.”

      Ambivalence turned to outright hostility during the Trump years. National Security Adviser John Bolton made it his special mission to attack the ICC as “ineffective, unaccountable, and indeed, outright dangerous.” Among Bolton’s many spurious arguments about the court, he claimed that the body constitutes an assault on US sovereignty and the Constitution in particular, a favorite hobbyhorse of the loony right. But the “supremacy clause” of the US Constitution (Article VI, clause 2) already establishes the primacy of federal law over treaty obligations. So, can someone please get those supposed legal scholars to actually read the pocket constitutions they carry around so reverently?

      Bolton’s off-base analysis came with a threat. “We will respond against the ICC and its personnel to the extent permitted by U.S. law,” he warned. “We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States. We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and, we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system. We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans.”

      In 2020, the Trump administration began to implement Bolton’s attack plan by imposing sanctions against ICC officials. Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and senior prosecution official Phakiso Mochochoko were placed under travel restrictions and an asset freeze because they were investigating possible US war crimes in Afghanistan. This blacklisting of ICC investigators sent a chilling signal that the United States would attempt, much like a rogue authoritarian country, to obstruct justice at an international level.

      An equally vexing issue involves a war crimes investigation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Although the ICC investigators looked at atrocities committed by Israelis and Palestinians, both Israel and the US condemned the investigation, arguing that Israel isn’t an ICC member and so the international body lacks jurisdiction. The United States has made the same argument about the investigation into the conduct of American soldiers in Afghanistan, since the US is not a party to the ICC.

      But the ICC’s jurisdiction is quite clear: it extends to crimes “committed by a State Party national, or in the territory of a State Party, or in a State that has accepted the jurisdiction of the Court.” Palestine, an ICC member since 2015, requested the investigation. And Afghanistan is also an ICC member.

      Biden’s Response

      Earlier this month, US President Joe Biden lifted the Trump administration’s sanctions. European allies, in particular, were enthusiastic about this additional sign that the United States is rejoining the international community. “This important step underlines the US’s commitment to the international rules-based system,” said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

      But the Biden administration’s move comes with an important caveat. In his statement on the lifting of the sanctions, Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted that “we continue to disagree strongly with the ICC’s actions relating to the Afghan and Palestinian situations. We maintain our longstanding objection to the Court’s efforts to assert jurisdiction over personnel of non-States Parties such as the United States and Israel.”

      When it comes to the ICC, then, a disturbing bipartisan consensus has emerged on its supposed encroachment upon US sovereignty. It’s OK for the ICC to prosecute the actions of countries in the Global South, but hand’s off the big boys, a status the United States generously extends to Israel. In the Senate, Ben Cardin and Rob Portman put out a letter last month criticizing the ICC’s investigation in Palestine, which attracted the support of 55 of their colleagues (down from 67 for a similar letter last year).

      Together with Israel, the US continues to abide by an exceptionalism when it comes to international law that it shares with several dozen states, including quite a few that the United States generally doesn’t like to be associated with, such as North Korea, Myanmar, Russia, China, Egypt, Belarus and Nicaragua.

      Of course, it hasn’t just been Bolton and a few outlaw states that have criticized the ICC. African countries in particular have accused the institution of bias. The Court has indeed opened investigations in a disproportionate number of African states: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, the Central African Republic, Sudan, Kenya, Libya and Uganda. Preliminary investigations also took place in Gabon, Guinea and Nigeria and were slated to start in Burundi. All of the 46 individuals facing charges before the court are African.

      In response to this perceived bias, the African Union, in 2017, called for a mass withdrawal of its members from the ICC. Burundi left the court that year, the first country in the world to do so (other countries, like the US and Russia, “withdrew” but hadn’t actually ratified the treaty in the first place). Two other countries that seemed on the verge of withdrawal, South Africa and Gambia, ultimately changed their minds.

      Bias or Backbone?

      The ICC was supposed to put an end to the era of imperial justice by which the winners determine who is guilty of war crimes, a bias that pervaded the Nuremberg trials. It has appointed judges and investigators from the Global South: Fatou Bensouda is Gambian, for instance, while Phakiso Mochochoko is from Lesotho. Still, the preponderance of investigations in Africa should give pause. The ICC has obviously had some difficulty making a transition to this new era. But let’s point out some obvious counter-arguments.

      First, the ICC doesn’t have an anti-African bias. It discriminates against African dictators and warlords. If anything, the court has a pro-African bias by standing up for the victims of violence in Africa. Other continents should be so lucky to have the ICC looking out for them. Second, the ICC has more recently begun to challenge major powers, including Russia for its actions in Georgia and Ukraine. It has also investigated the actions of Israel and the United States. These moves come with considerable risks, as the Trump sanctions painfully revealed. Third, the ICC has considerable jurisdictional restrictions. It can’t investigate crimes against humanity in North Korea since the latter isn’t a member. The same applies to China and its actions in Xinjiang.

      Instead of complaining about the ICC’s blind spots and shortcomings, the United States should get on board and put pressure on other countries to do likewise. Americans can’t pretend to support the rule of law, to loudly promote it around the world, and then turn around and say: Oh, well, it doesn’t apply to us. If the American justice system can prosecute perpetrators in blue like Derek Chauvin, the US can permit an international justice system to prosecute perpetrators in khaki who have killed civilians on a larger scale.

      So, Biden deserves praise for reversing the Trump administration’s brazen and embarrassing attack on the ICC. But that doesn’t constitute actual support for international law. It’s time for the United States to uncancel the International Criminal Court.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Will Biden Overturn Sanctions on the ICC?

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      From the get-go, US President Joe Biden’s administration has focused on reversing the worst of Donald Trump’s policy decisions. One of the very worst was the imposition of sanctions on individual officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Trump administration was so enamored of sanctions as a weapon of mass intimidation that it extended the policy beyond the traditional response to hostile governments to target individuals who failed to show the US sufficient respect.

      This was a logical consequence of Trump’s vaunted “America First” policy. This translates as national interest first, international law last. In September 2020, Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, singled out ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda for sanctions. He “announced a freeze on assets held in the US or subject to US law by Bensouda and the court’s head of jurisdiction, Phakiso Mochochoko.” Even Rodrigo Duterte, the thuggish Filipino president who unilaterally withdrew the Philippines from membership in the Rome Treaty after the ICC received a complaint of crimes against humanity resulting from his brutal and chaotic war on drugs, never imagined imposing sanctions on the chief prosecutor.

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      In other words, Trump’s initiative can only be considered extreme. Bensouda, whose job consists of carrying out investigations related to procedures of justice, complained of “unprecedented and wholly unacceptable threats, attacks and sanctions.” Appearing to sympathize, the Biden administration issued this statement: “Much as we disagree with the ICC’s actions relating to the Afghanistan and Israeli/Palestinian situations, the sanctions will be thoroughly reviewed as we determine our next steps.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Thoroughly review:

      Examine an abusive practice with the hope of finding a devious way to justify its continuation

      Contextual Note

      The word “review” literally means “to look at again.” When politicians use the term, they imply that they will take a more critical look at the issue under consideration with a view to engaging remedial action. This is especially significant at moments in history where one party or political personality has been replaced by another with a highly contrasted worldview. Biden has already taken steps to return to the essential international treaties Trump so casually abandoned, as well as undo the former president’s complicity with the murderous Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. The Biden administration needs to show that it is free not just to review but to thoroughly overturn dangerous and sometimes criminal policies.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In reality, the promise to “thoroughly review” often serves a more devious purpose. It creates an expectation that whatever policy emerges — even if it is identical with that of the past — will be legitimized. Rather than remedy a mistake, it may stand as a ploy to seek a better argument in favor of perpetuating the effects of the mistake. Former President Barack Obama campaigned on the theme of ending the war in Iraq. After thoroughly reviewing it with the help of the Pentagon, he continued it.

      The question of the ICC is no ordinary political issue. It contains within it the very idea of justice and fairness that Americans like to see as the core of their “exceptional” ideology, a system of values that never tires of proclaiming its allegiance to the idea of “liberty and justice for all.” On that basis, it should be easy for the Biden administration to cancel Trump’s sanctions and apologize for his arrogance. In terms of PR, it provides a perfect pretext for a new president to demonstrate a willingness to correct the injustices of the past.

      But as with so many issues Biden has inherited from Trump, there is a hidden risk and potentially a serious embarrassment. By provoking the ICC, Trump shouted from the rooftops what previous presidents accomplished by whispering in private amongst themselves. The US has never demonstrated the intention of respecting the principles it so assiduously promoted when the victorious Allies launched the Nuremberg trials. The message those trials sent was that every nation on earth must answer the accusation of crimes against humanity and war crimes. The refusal to be judged by the legal criteria it uses to judge others may provide the best definition of the meaning of “American exceptionalism.”

      Because the nation that invented democracy “believes” with all its soul in everything that is good and just, it can never be held to account for being bad and unjust. At best, American individuals are sometimes guilty of a lapse of judgment, but the American nation as a whole is, as the song says, “a soul whose intentions are good.” Since “no one alive can always be an angel,” the nation feels justified pleading to the heavens, “Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.” 

      If Biden follows through and repeals Trump’s sanctions, the consequences could be serious. It would implicitly allow the ICC to pursue the complaints against both the US in Afghanistan and Israel with regard to Palestinians within its borders. Those were the two causes that prompted Pompeo to impose sanctions, citing the principle of national sovereignty. 

      That the US should defend Israel’s putative sovereignty — especially if it means shielding that nation from being prosecuted for war crimes — makes no serious legal sense. But it does reveal a basic truth about US foreign policy. If anything, the immunity the US claims for Israel can be compared with the principle in US law of someone who pleads the fifth amendment in a courtroom to avoid incriminating their spouse (“the spousal testimonial privilege”). Do both Trump and Biden consider the US and Israel a married couple?

      How far is Biden willing to go to undo Trump’s devilry? How much can he backtrack without exposing the US to the principle of universal justice? This is a serious quandary for a president who repeats in nearly every one of his speeches that the US must “not lead by the example of its power, but by the power of its example.”

      Historical Note

      Another issue has just emerged in the news cycle that also requires a thorough review. It concerns the production of semiconductors. The Verge offers this headline: “Biden signs executive order calling for semiconductor supply chain review.” American industry is facing a penury of chips, the essential component of nearly everything Americans buy these days (apart from fast food). From PCs and smartphones to cars, watches and refrigerators, chips rule the consumer economy. Will this be as “thoroughly reviewed” as the reconsideration of the ICC sanctions? It should be because it concerns a problem that affects the entire economy.

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      Not so long ago in recent history, the US was the world’s major manufacturer of semi-conductors. But because it became cheaper to outsource production to Asian nations, US manufacturers preferred to move their supply chain across the Pacific Ocean. Asia has since achieved a quasi-monopoly on semiconductor production.

      The Associated Press recently reported on the “widening global shortage of semiconductors for auto parts” that has forced “major auto companies to halt or slow vehicle production just as they were recovering from pandemic-related factory shutdowns.” The penury of semi-conductors could send an economy already battered by the pandemic into a tailspin. 

      This would be especially true if the Asian countries that produce more than 80% of the world’s and America’s supply were unable or unwilling to deliver. The entire question has evolved into something even more dire. Business Insider summarizes the dilemma in a headline: “The global chip shortage is hurting businesses and could be a national security issue.”

      It is not hard to imagine a war, even a limited war, breaking out between the US and China over navigation in the contested South China Sea or Chinese threats against Taiwan. In such an event, the US could potentially be starved of the supply of essential components required both for its military capacity and its consumer economy. The Biden administration must be aware of this and ready to review it. But once the review is completed, what can they do to remedy it? Not much, at least in the time frame that would be required to lead a military campaign.

      Rather than challenge China and risk alienating nearly all of Asia, the Biden administration can only hope to solve the problem of penury through cooperation and the recognition of interdependence, in contrast with the attitude of confrontation nurtured by Donald Trump. The Biden administration may be forced to engage a particularly “thorough review” on this issue.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Was the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Mother of All War Crimes?

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      This year marks the 75th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is reason enough to mull over its meaning and its implications. In a recent article for Fair Observer, Peter Isackson has made a strong case that the annihilation of the two Japanese cities by American bombers represents the “mother of all war crimes.” Given the long history of atrocities committed during times of war, I find this a rather bold statement that should not go unchallenged.

      The Mother of All War Crimes

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      The case for the defense rests on two claims. First, the demonstration of American nuclear capabilities heralded in a period of stability, which quite likely saved Western Europe’s nations from being overrun and conquered by the Soviet Union and subjected to its rule. Second, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are far from exceptional as war crimes go, if indeed the bombing of the two cities was a war crime at all.

      Balance of Terror

      In my younger years, in a very different world, I served for a couple of years in the German air force. I never flew a plane. I spent most of my time on duty in a tower close to the border to what at the time was the Czechoslovakian Socialist Republic (CSSR), a member of the Warsaw Pact and a satellite of the Soviet Union. We did electronic surveyance of the CSSR airspace, following Czech and Slovakian fighter planes as they performed their exercises as best as they could (more often than not they couldn’t, lacking basic motivation). It was a tedious job, boring as hell, particularly when the weather was bad and the pilots were grounded.

      Excitement, however, surged once a month, when we waited for the arrival of Russian long-range bombers. They took off from Minsk in what at the time was the capital of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. Their mission: attack the towers along the West German border with the CSSR and the German Democratic Republic. We saw them coming, small dots on our radar screens. When they were in front of our tower, there was a small red blip, a fleeting flicker, and we knew if this had been der Ernstfall — an actual real-life attack — we would all be dead, gone up in smoke in a small nuclear mushroom.

      At the time, we did not think much of what had just happened. It was part of a game, along the lines of MAD magazine’s “Spy vs Spy” — inane, a waste of time, and somehow not very real. It was not until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the regime in Prague and the unraveling of the Soviet empire that we learned that the game had been much more serious and potentially deadly than what we suspected. There were plans on the other side of the border to overrun West Germany, conquer Western Europe and subject it to Soviet rule. Among the scenarios was a nuclear attack on Bonn, West Germany’s sleepy capital, designed to decapitate West Germany’s political elite.

      What prevented the Soviets and their toadies from carrying out their plans was not human compassion but a realist assessment of the distribution of military forces and the resolve of the Western allies to use them. At the time, this was called MAD — mutually assured destruction. It was grounded in the notion that any attack on the part of the Soviets would immediately trigger a full response of Western nuclear forces, resulting in the complete annihilation of the Soviet Union. The leadership in Moscow was fully aware of this logic. They did not like this “balance of terror,” but they ultimately submitted to its logic. Others, by the way, did not.

      Andrey Gromyko, the Soviet Union’s long-term foreign minister, claims in his memoirs that at one time, Chinese leader Mao Zedong tried to get the Soviet Union to launch a nuclear attack on the United States, arguing that “his country could survive a nuclear war, even if it lost 300 million people, and finish off the capitalists with conventional weapons,” thus guaranteeing the triumph of communism. Unsurprisingly, the Soviets were not convinced and increasingly distanced themselves from Beijing.

      The logic of mutually assured destruction fundamentally altered the behavior of great powers, at least with respect to each other. It is to be hoped that the logic of the “balance of terror” is going to be enough to keep the US and China level-headed in the future, despite rapidly growing tensions between the two.

      The Breakdown of Civilization

      Unfortunately enough, war crimes are the norm rather than the exception when it comes to armed conflict. The claim that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are ontologically different rests on a technological assumption. For some reason, nuclear weapons are fundamentally different from conventional ones. I am not sure what constitutes the basis of this assumption. Take the firebombings of the German cities of Dresden and Hamburg during the Second World War, which cost the lives of tens of thousands of ordinary people — women, children, the elderly. Take the massacre of Babi Yar, in Ukraine, where in two days nearly 34,000 Jews were killed by German Einstazgruppen. Or, going back further in history, take the death toll during the Thirty Years War, which cost the lives of half of the population of what is today Germany.

      Massacres of the most atrocious form are hardly an invention of the 20th century, as Goya’s renditions of the barbarities visited on his fellow countrymen during the war against the French between 1808 and 1814, depicted in most horrifying detail. This was a war against an enemy that invaded the country in the name of the Enlightenment and revolutionary fervor. Or, as the Germans would say, Und willst du nicht mein Bruder sein, so schlag ich dir den Schädel ein — If you don’t want to be my brother, I will smash your skull.

      For the victims of war crimes — more often than not civilians — it probably does not really matter how they were killed and why they were killed. It is quite understandable — human all too human, as Nietzsche would say — that horrendous deeds provoke retribution. The firebombing of German cities, the rape of German women caught be advancing Soviet armies — both are understandable given the atrocities committed by Germans during the war, in the name of Hitler and the Third Reich. Most Germans, or so most recent research suggests, were more than comfortable supporting a regime that guaranteed them a modicum of prosperity. Few asked where it came from.

      For that, Germans were punished in the most horrendous fashion. Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden and Cologne and many other towns and cities went up in flames, leaving behind a landscape hardly different from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombing of Hamburg was named Operation Gomorrah, after the Biblical city destroyed by “sulfur and fire” for its sins, and, according to historian Keith Lowe, was on completely different level than the German raids on Coventry and London, “comparable with what happened in Nagasaki.” It was a just retribution for the crimes committed in their name, a retribution for the tens of millions of victims who paid with their lives for Hitler’s ambitions to conquer the world.

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      I would suggest that the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the retribution for the crimes committed by Japanese forces, in the name of racial superiority hardly different from Nazi ideology, against the peoples subjugated during the war. I have grave doubts that the victims of the Nanjing massacre or of the hundreds of young Asian “comfort women” pressed into sexual slavery by Japanese forces would consider the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a war crime, but rather than an act of just retribution for Japanese atrocities committed during the war.

      Whether or not the United States was justified in meting out redistribution is a different question. After all, given America’s self-declared status as a leading Christian nation, it should perhaps have heeded the words of the Bible exhorting believers not to take revenge, “but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). But then, Americans have a tendency to pay lip service to the scripture while doing the opposite in real life.

      The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was one of these turning points in history that define a whole epoch. It demonstrated, once and for all, humanity’s ability to destroy itself. Had Hitler been in a position to get hold of “the bomb,” he surely would have used it to obliterate London, Moscow, perhaps even New York. The same goes for Stalin, only this time it would have been Berlin that would have gone up in a mushroom. If the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime, it was nothing more than another episode in a long history of atrocities committed in the course of wars, not more, not less — an episode which reaffirms once again the sad reality that the veneer of civilization is merely skin deep.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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