Ireland uncomfortable with any criticism of US actions, even when they’re wrong The Irish Times

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The Irish naturally believe that everything that happens in Croke Park is of global importance. But one thing that happened there is truly of global significance: the UN Convention on Cluster Munitions hammered home at GAA headquarters in 2008.

In February last year, just days after Russia invaded Ukraine, then-White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked: there are reports cluster bombs and illegal vacuum bombs used by the russians…is there a red line for how much violence will be tolerated against civilians in this way its illegal and potentially a war crime ?

She replied: We have seen the reports. If true, it would potentially be a war crime.

PSAKI was right. And yet, the Biden administration is supplying thousands of cluster munitions to Ukraine to use in its counterattack against the Russian invasion.

This exposes a double standard that undermines Wests’ moral standing in this war. Without this moral position, there are only power games.

In 2008, 107 countries signed the United Nations Convention on Cluster Munitions. He not only banned the use of these weapons, but demanded that those who already possessed them destroy their stockpiles by 2016.

Ireland happens to have a special relationship with this convention, it was agreed at Croke Park at a conference hosted by then Foreign Secretary Michel Martin and chaired by the diplomat Irish Dith Ceallaigh. It is one of the finest achievements of Irish diplomacy and, incidentally, a good example of what constructive and committed neutrality looks like in practice.

The three countries that have not signed the convention, however, are Russia, Ukraine and the United States. The consequences of this failure are now all too apparent.

Cluster munitions are criminal because they are, as Human Rights Watch says, inherently indiscriminate. They open in the air and scatter dozens (in some cases hundreds) of small bombs over a wide area.

Many of these bombs do not explode on impact. Civilians, including children, step on or pick them up weeks, months, or even decades later, and are killed or maimed. This is why they are prohibited.

Can you credibly sue people for doing things that you yourself justify?

It is not surprising that this ban did not stop Vladimir Putin. Russia has fired cluster bombs at civilian targets, including an attack on a crowded train station in Kramatorsk last year that killed at least 58 people and injured dozens more.

But Ukraine has also used cluster munitions against Russian-held positions, including in urban areas. The UN and Human Rights Watch confirmed their heavy use by Ukraine last year against the town of Izyum and its suburbs, killing and injuring civilians and leaving unexploded bombs that will kill innocent people in the future.

Which raises a crucial question: is a given act a potential war crime only when the other party does it? It’s a question that hangs over the whole idea of ​​possibly prosecuting Putin and his henchmen for their appalling depredations: can you credibly prosecute people for doing things that you yourself justify?

As far as the use of cluster munitions is concerned, the worst case since World War II is what the United States did in its secret war against Laos between 1964 and 1973. It dropped 270 million , millions of which remain in rice paddies and forests. Fifty years later, innocent people, including children, are still being killed and maimed by bombs.

The United States has never fulfilled its duty to clean up these deadly dangers in Laos. What assurance can we have that, when the war in Ukraine is over, it will be more diligent in removing the deadly remains of the cluster munitions it sends there?

A similar problem arises with the campaign, led by the brilliant international human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, for the creation of a Special Tribunal for the suppression of the crime of aggression against Ukraine, targeting Putin and his entourage. .

There should indeed be such a tribunal, based on the precedents of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after World War II, in which crimes against peace were among the charges. But it must be recognized that there was no such tribunal after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which was also a fundamental violation of the UN charter and an attack to the fundamental rules of the international legal order.

Or consider the justified calls in my view for Russian leaders to be charged with the crime of ecocide for their devastation of large parts of Ukraine’s environment, including the breaching of the Kakhovka dam. Can we discuss this without acknowledging that the word ecocide was coined by American scientists in the 1970s to describe their own governments devastating the forests of Vietnam with Agent Orange and other toxic herbicides?

You have to avoid nonsense, of course. It is not because a crime has not been punished in a case that it does not cease to be a crime and the main criminal at the moment is indeed Putin.

But, in the case of Ukraine, public support in Western democracies for its struggle to defend itself rests on a clear distinction between right and wrong. Quite simply, the good guys should behave better than the bad guys.

No one is naive enough to think that war is glorious or that its conduct is free from moral ambiguity. This ambiguity, however, is what makes it crucial to maintain an overall distinction between those who respect international law and common decency and those who do not.

Otherwise, there are no principles, only propaganda. The Western public is already prone enough to cynicism to be open to the suspicion that Russian war crimes allegations are based, not on morality, but on momentary convenience.

It is dangerous for Ukraine. The more the moral difference between itself and Russia is blurred, the greater the risk that Western public opinion will tire of the whole bloody affair and withdraw into the comfort zone of both sides.

There is a Western government that is in a strong position to say this: ours. Ireland’s leading role in banning cluster munitions in 2008 gives us the right and duty to speak out now and say that it is not acceptable for the United States to supply them or that Ukraine uses them.

As host of the conference that gave birth to this historic convention, Michel Martin, who has again become Minister of Foreign Affairs, must surely feel that he has a personal interest in maintaining it. That’s why it was infuriating to see his initial reaction to last week’s US decision a sweeping condemnation of the use of cluster munitions that failed to mention either Ukraine or the Biden administration.

The Irish stance later hardened, with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar promising to raise objections directly with US officials. But the initial hesitation signaled states’ discomfort with any criticism of US actions, even when they are so clearly wrong.

It’s a real test of whether or not we still have an independent foreign policy. The value of such politics lies in moral consistency: we hold those we support to the same standards we demand of those we oppose.

That’s what the law means. If it doesn’t apply equally to everyone, it’s not a law. His power just disguised as principle.

Which of course is exactly what Putin wants the world to believe in liberal democracy and the values ​​proclaimed by the West. Nothing justifies his vision of the world better than to descend to his level.

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