During the 1950s I grew up in a family who rooted for the success of African Americans in their just struggle for civil rights and full legal equality. Then in 1962 it was the terror of my own personal imminent nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis that first sparked my interest in studying international relations and U.S. foreign policy as a young boy of 12: “I can do a better job than this!”
Med eskaleringen av Vietnam-krigen i 1964 og militærutkastet stirret meg rett i ansiktet, foretok jeg en detaljert undersøkelse av den. Til slutt konkluderte jeg med at i motsetning til andre verdenskrig da min far hadde kjempet og beseiret den japanske keiserlige hæren som en ung marinesoldat i Stillehavet, var denne nye krigen ulovlig, umoralsk, uetisk, og USA var nødt til å tape den. Amerika begynte akkurat der Frankrike slapp ved Dien Bien Phu. Så jeg bestemte meg for å gjøre det lille jeg kunne for å motarbeide Vietnamkrigen.
In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson gratuitously invaded the Dominican Republic, which prompted me to commence a detailed examination of U.S. military interventions into Latin America from the Spanish-American War of 1898 up to President Franklin Roosevelt’s so-called “good neighbor” policy. At the end of this study, I concluded that the Vietnam War was not episodic, but rather systemic: Aggression, warfare, bloodshed, and violence were just the way the United States Power Elite had historically conducted their business around the world. Hence, as I saw it as a young man of 17, there would be more Vietnams in the future and perhaps someday I could do something about it as well as about promoting civil rights for African Americans. These twins concerns of my youth would gradually ripen into a career devoted to international law and human rights.
Så jeg begynte mitt formelle studium av internasjonale relasjoner med avdøde, store Hans Morgenthau i den første uken av januar 1970 som en 19 år gammel college-andre ved University of Chicago ved å ta hans grunnleggende introduksjonskurs om dette emnet. På den tiden ledet Morgenthau de akademiske motstandskreftene mot den avskyelige Vietnamkrigen, og det var nettopp derfor jeg valgte å studere med ham. I løpet av ti år med høyere utdanning ved University of Chicago og Harvard nektet jeg å studere med åpenlyst pro-Vietnam-krigsprofessorer som et prinsipp og også på det ganske pragmatiske grunnlaget at de ikke hadde noe å lære meg.
In the summer of 1975, it was Morgenthau who emphatically encouraged me to become a professor instead of doing some other promising things with my life: “If Morgenthau thinks I should become a professor, then I will become a professor!” After almost a decade of working personally with him, Morgenthau provided me with enough inspiration, guidance, and knowledge to last now almost half a lifetime.
Historically, this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898. Then the Republican administration of President William McKinley stole their colonial empire from Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war against the Filipino people; while at the same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the Native Hawaiian people (who call themselves the Kanaka Maoli) to near genocidal conditions. Additionally, McKinley’s military and colonial expansion into the Pacific was also designed to secure America’s economic exploitation of China pursuant to the euphemistic rubric of the “open door” policy. But over the next four decades America’s aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the “Pacific” would ineluctably pave the way for Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 194l, and thus America’s precipitation into the ongoing Second World War. Today a century later the serial imperial aggressions launched and menaced by the Republican Bush Jr. administration and now the Democratic Obama administration are threatening to set off World War III.
By shamelessly exploiting the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, the Bush Jr. administration set forth to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the Muslim states and peoples living in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf under the bogus pretexts of (1) fighting a war against international terrorism; and/or (2) eliminating weapons of mass destruction; and/or (3) the promotion of democracy; and/or (4) self-styled “humanitarian intervention.” Only this time the geopolitical stakes are infinitely greater than they were a century ago: control and domination of two-thirds of the world’s hydrocarbon resources and thus the very fundament and energizer of the global economic system – oil and gas. The Bush Jr./ Obama administrations have already targeted the remaining hydrocarbon reserves of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia for further conquest or domination, together with the strategic choke-points at sea and on land required for their transportation. In this regard, the Bush Jr. administration announced the establishment of the U.S. Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) in order to better control, dominate, and exploit both the natural resources and the variegated peoples of the continent of Africa, the very cradle of our human species.
This current bout of U.S. imperialism is what Hans Morgenthau denominated “unlimited imperialism” in his seminal work Politics Among Nations (4th ed. 1968, at 52-53):
De fremragende historiske eksemplene på ubegrenset imperialisme er den ekspansjonistiske politikken til Alexander den store, Roma, araberne i det syvende og åttende århundre, Napoleon I og Hitler. De har alle til felles en trang til ekspansjon som ikke kjenner noen rasjonelle grenser, lever av sine egne suksesser og, hvis den ikke stoppes av en overlegen styrke, vil gå videre til den politiske verden. Denne trangen vil ikke bli tilfredsstilt så lenge det gjenstår hvor som helst et mulig gjenstand for herredømme – en politisk organisert gruppe menn som ved selve sin uavhengighet utfordrer erobrerens maktbegjær. Det er, som vi skal se, nettopp mangelen på moderasjon, aspirasjonen om å erobre alt som egner seg til erobring, karakteristisk for ubegrenset imperialisme, som tidligere har vært opphevelsen av den imperialistiske politikken av denne typen ....
On 10 November 1979 I visited with Hans Morgenthau at his home in Manhattan. It proved to be our last conversation before he died on 19 July 1980. Given his weakened physical but not mental condition and his serious heart problem, at the end of our necessarily abbreviated one-hour meeting I purposefully asked him what he thought about the future of international relations. This revered scholar, whom international relations experts generally consider to be the founder of modern international political science in the post World War II era, responded:
Future, what future? I am extremely pessimistic. In my opinion the world is moving ineluctably towards a third world war—a strategic nuclear war. I do not believe that anything can be done to prevent it. The international system is simply too unstable to survive for long. The SALT II Treaty is important for the present, but over the long haul it cannot stop the momentum. Fortunately, I do not believe that I will live to see that day. But I am afraid you might.
The factual circumstances surrounding the outbreaks of both the First World War and the Second World War currently hover like the Sword of Damocles over the heads of all humanity. It is imperative that we undertake a committed and concerted effort to head-off Hans Morgenthau’s final prediction on the cataclysmic demise of the human race.
Francis A. Boyle, Champlaign, IL.
Professor i internasjonal rett
Legal Advisor to the Palestinian Delegation to the
Middle East Peace Negotiations (1991-93)