Imperialistic reaction: involution of International Law (XVII)
XVII – Imperialistic reaction: involution of International Law
Iñaki Aginaga and Felipe Campo
The “Perpetual Peace” (Immanuel Kant), achieved through the coordination or consent of the dominant Powers for “the peaceful, international, super-imperialist, ultra-imperialist or inter-imperialist sharing” of the Globe, was an old and cherished dream to which the reality, namely: a whole century of incessant conflicts, wars, terrorism and carnage among the States, has given the same credibility as that of Three Kings, Santa Claus, or the Kingdom of Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table.
The World Wars and their post-war periods, the Movements of National Liberation, the Russian Revolution, the Fourteen Points of President Woodrow Wilson, the International Pacts (from the League of Nations to the United Nations), the decolonization of the Third World, the influence of the Soviet Union, the hegemonic nuclear duopoly and the Cold War, were factors that gradually led to formulate the terms of a new international order concerning international crimes, aggression, war, fundamental human rights, and rights of self-determination and of legitimate defence of all Peoples.
The United Nations Organization (UNO): an instrument of the victorious States in World War II (excluded the “States enemies”), set forth the principles of this New World Order of contemporary International Law. It thus recognized the right of self-determination or independence inherent to all Peoples; condemned as imprescriptible and international crimes the aggression, the “right” of conquest, State Terrorism, and imperialism and colonialism in all their forms; and defined the difference between aggression and legitimate self-defence, and between terrorism – either individual or of State – and the legitimate struggles of Peoples’ liberation, carried out by their “fighters for freedom and self-determination”.
In this way, the international, fundamental and inherent rights of independence, free disposition or self-determination of all Peoples, and of their legitimate self-defence against imperialistic aggression, as well as those of independence and integrity of their States legitimately constituted and “conducting themselves in compliance with the principle of equal rights and self-determination of Peoples” (UN General Assembly Resolution 2625 [1970]): an essential part of International Law, were formulated, voted, formally recognized – not constituted – and inscribed in the UN Charter since 1945 (that is, under the conditions of the post-World War II and after the abortive attempt of the League of Nations carried out after the First one), on the initiative of the USSR – which did not annul the domination of Russian imperialistic Nationalism over its subjugated Peoples and States – but under the pressure of the Peoples and States of the so-called Third World.
From its founding Charter of San Francisco there follow the rules constantly formulated and not implemented by the UNO; without having the multiplication and profusion of declarations, resolutions, decisions and conventions – either sincerely or hypocritically repetitive but deliberately and stubbornly mocked and betrayed – been able so far to achieve the suppression and eradication of the imperialistic plague: shame of the “civilized” world and first source of conflicts and threats to the peace and freedom of Humanity.
Imperialistic aggression consists of criminal, original, unilateral and eminent Violence; and the crimes committed in that imperialistic aggression, namely: crimes against the laws of war, crimes against the peace and security of Peoples and – where appropriate – of their legitimately constituted States, and crimes against Humanity, are imprescriptible and unforgivable, if we truly wish to seek their eradication.
In the face of all this, the international right of legitimate self-defence: recognized in Article 51 of the Charter, is timeless and permanent, and its realization does not imply a violation of peace but a restoration of the conditions of peace, which must necessarily be based upon the indefeasible human rights that were violated by the original aggression of imperialism. This is a permanent aggression, and a continuous, endless and immanent chain of crimes, conflict, oppression, persecution and Terrorism that can never be prescribed. Therefore, the repression of the aggressor against the timeless right of legitimate self-defence of the attacked People is a continuation of the original crime of aggression, and in no way “self-defence”.
Yet, nowadays, the practice and – increasingly more – even the theory of the UNO deny the existence of the Peoples and of their legitimate States as the most radical means of fighting their freedom and their rights of self-determination or independence and of legitimate self-defence; attribute those rights to the recognized States (which makes of the right “of the Peoples” a mere rhetorical reference); recognize the imperialism and fascism – homologated under a crude and cynical label of “democracy” – as legitimate forms of international policy; and describe those who resist them – in the exercise of their right of legitimate self-defence – as bandits, thieves, murderers and terrorists in the ad hoc, reductive and super-extensive sense that, according to its convenience, the dominant imperialistic and fascist ideology attribute to such qualifications. (On this ideological and terminológica manipulation, see, among others, Chapter 8 – ‘Ideological camouflage of criminal Violence and State Terrorism’ of our work ‘Violence and Terrorism.- Their ideological mystification at the service of imperialism’.)
The UNO has abandoned its own principles of International Law. Thus, the affirmation of the right of Peoples’ self-determination: incorporated in the Charter by “We, the Peoples of the United Nations” as a right “of all Peoples”, could lead into error. Indeed, the principle that reads “All Peoples have the right of self-determination” did never intend to translate the truism: “Do have right of self-determination all the Peoples which have the right of self-determination”. However, the practice of that Organization leads to interpreting it in this way and to recognizing this principle only to some Peoples – which would be Peoples in the strict and full sense of the word – but to denying it to others; thus being the right of self-determination constitutive only of some Peoples, and not attributive of all Peoples.
In short, in the practice currently observed by the imperialistic conglomerate on a global scale: made up of the hegemonic Powers – or aspiring to be so – and their Allies, the admission of fundamental human rights and above all the right of self-determination or independence of all Peoples: which according to contemporary UN International Law is the first and the precondition for the full enjoyment of them all, as well as of the Peoples’ inseparable right to the independence, integrity and legitimate self-defence of their States lawfully constituted upon the aforementioned “respect for the principle of equal rights and free Self-Determination” or Independence of all Peoples established since 1951 (UNGAR 545), “is selective: it is reserved to those with whom one sympathizes”. Which does ultimately depend on the respective interests and even affinities of the Powers towards certain actors to the detriment of others; all this independently – if not in violation – of those fundamental human rights and, finally, of authentic Democracy.
In this regard it is paradigmatic: because of its being incomprehensible and absurd, the blind, gratuitous and finally criminal support that – for almost eight decades now – the hegemonic Power has been giving to the supremacist, racist, theocratic and totalitarian Zionist Entity (whom it does not need at all while the opposite happens the other way round), whatever the latter does and no matter how many crimes against Humanity, genocide and constant violations of UN General Assembly Resolutions it perpetrates. Which, and in exchange for unnecessarily earning the aversion of the true democrats throughout the world because of the aforementioned support, has been occurring since the forced creation of this Entity against the rights and the very existence of the indigenous and Semitic Palestinian People: which was criminally expelled without mercy from its lands and homes in 1948 by the Zionist Entity – with the complicity of the UNO and the “great” Powers – after the infamous secret agreements of the United Kingdom with France and the betrayals against its assumed Protectorate of Palestine, and which to this day continues to be criminally massacred, destroyed and expelled from its last homes by the Sionist Entity thanks to the obscene total support of the hegemonic Power. (For more details on this question, see Chapter 15 – ‘Introduction to Imperialism’, of our above-mentioned work.)
On the international geopolitical chessboard, the small, weak and isolated Peoples and States are of no strategic importance, even though they may reach to be tactically, provisionally and locally taken into some consideration by the great Powers, should the former manage to become inserted in the latter’s organizational schemes of contradiction, conflict and balance; thus giving rise to more or less diverse or narrow variants of satellites, clients and protectorates.
As a last resort, a subjugated People can only rely on its own resources, and not expect help from anyone. Every Nation confronted with its aggressors must abandon illusions in this regard; and know that, besides being obliged to develop a Resistance of strategic level and to avoid at all costs fatal errors, it can only count on its own forces in order to preserve national freedom or to reach to it: the precondition for to gain access to all the other freedoms. That Resistance must be based first and foremost on the ABSOLUTE rejection of any recognition/acceptance of the legitimacy of the imperialistic and fascist régime of military occupation. There is no other basis for alliance or negotiation with others.
In the reality of the International Law and the UNO law, not all Peoples are admitted or recognized, and in fact, for that Organization there only have rights the Peoples that are strong and capable enough so as to impose themselves upon the others or resist imperialism and colonialism; either by themselves, or with the alien assistance, protection or suzerainty. The others exist only as objects of policy and positive monist “law” of the State or States that have dominated them. Under such conditions, and whatever their values and material and cultural contributions may be, those dominated Peoples are discarded, repudiated and condemned to be persecuted, destroyed, assimilated and replaced by their “great” predators, with the blessing and assistance of those international institutions.
Thus, the original aspiration to found the law for all the Peoples of the world has been discredited by the incapability of this international Organization to establish, develop and implement it. In its absence, the international political relations are founded on the antagonistic violence between Nations and States, without any “higher” instance of order and power. The alleged protecting “international laws” do not exist or protect any one, because no one imposes them and the States interpret them as it suits them better. Under such conditions, the “international community” does not and cannot exist.
The so-called “international law”, part and product of international policy, is the order of violence that the opposition of political forces determines among the Nations, that is to say: the institutionalized domination of the strongest Peoples over the weakest ones. Inside this order of violencie, the strategic selection of ends and means depends on the rapport of forces, the situation, the moment and the international context, and on the absolute or relative interests of the imperialism.
“The law is equal for all; all are equal before the law; no one is above the law” etc., are aphorisms – both domestic and international – as formally false as ideologically trivialized:
“Second Fisherman. Help, master, help! Here’s a fish hangs in the net, like a poor man’s right in the law; ‘twill hardly come out.” (W. Shakespeare; ‘Pericles, Prince of Tyre’, II, i, 126/8.)
In reality, the law is made by the mighty and suffered by the weak; and the violent and the rich have not been and will never be equal to the peaceful and the poor before the law, and above all – as we have already explained – before making the law. As for the International Institutions, although they are capable of opposing smaller States for the benefit of the larger ones, yet they have always revealed their inherent and constituent incapability to condition or oppose the Great Powers, to which they have neither will, interest or means to incorporate, curb or oblige.
Even among the States recognized by the International Organizations, the proclaimed equality of rights between Nations and States is an ideological trick that is being really and formally debunked by their own institutions, which formulate and support the right of the Great Powers to rule the world. Such egalitarian pretence is in flagrant contradiction with the international reality; and the UN’ Charter itself did establish, bluntly and from the start, the exorbitant privileges of five Member States in current or near possession of nuclear weapons of mass destruction, which individually and unilaterally had “international right” to do whatever they wanted and to impose their law on others, which is what everyone does when they can.
Apart from the conflicts between themselves, the impunity of the Great Powers and their auxiliaries is assured. No Great Power and no dignitary of a Great Power have ever been brought for their crimesbefore an international court; only the weak and the vanquished are persecuted, arrested, tried and condemned as criminals by the “international justice”.
For the current inverted and perverted international model of the Great Powers and their satellites, any defence or vindication of the national freedom and the fundamental rights of self-determination/independence and legitimate defence of the subjugated Peoples, and of free expression and information, is criminal banditry and terrorism. Whereas, on the contrary, all persecution and repression, through criminal Violence and State Terrorism, of freedom and Resistance – either it be armed or unarmed, political or ideological – of those Peoples against imperialism is legitimate “natural” and international right. The Security Council, the Secretary-General and the High Commissioner for Human Rights: blind to the crimes of imperialism and hostile to any manifestation of Resistance, do confirm the absolute triumph of lies, cynicism and hypocrisy over real conscience.
The general involution of the fundamental freedoms and human rights, and of their institutional guarantees (an event subsequent to the end of the Cold War and to the new world order or disorder), has ended up by ruining the respective Resolutions and Conventions of International Law; which, without ever having been expressly declared void, are now ignored. Multiple principles and norms of “We, the Peoples of the United Nations”: established during the mentioned period of Cold War under the pressure of the Third World and the Soviet Union, have been relegated. Currently they are not worth the paper they are written on or are a hypocritical propaganda – so as to mislead the eternal naive – of institutions that actually serve the Nationalism, Imperialism and Terrorism of the great States and their satellites, faced – within their respective “Exclusive Hunting Zones” – against the subjugated Peoples’ freedom and fundamental human rights; with the consequent ruin of rights and guarantees in general. The Security Council does ignore, despise or openly contradict them; and the General Assembly is not even the Chamber that records and disseminates the decisions of the Executive and Administrative power, according to the model of the modern monarchical-republican “legislative” bodies.
In reality, the “International” Institutions do support and recognize the imperialism and colonialism in power, which enjoy the unconditional and unreserved recognition and support of the UNO; thus becoming all those Institutions permanent accomplices and participants in the aggression, Terrorism and genocide of the “great” Powers and the imperialistic States that maintain them. (Biafra, Nigeria, Palestine etc.)
In practice, never has an imperialistic or colonialist State accepted and applied the Peoples’ right of self-determination or independence in its ill obtained dominions, not even in the forms proposed by the UNO. The official recognition of the fundamental, inherent and customary right of self-determination of all Peoples, made by that Organization, is replaced in practice by a constitutive declaration case by case. In this way, the recognition of the general principle of self-determination or independence of all Peoples is replaced by the concrete declaration that contradicts and voids it. The defence of the imperialistic status quo is the trend and rule of behaviour of International Organizations.
Unfortunately, the UNO abandoned their own principles of International Law and did very early show its dark side. The States Members of the UNO – and the international Organizations themselves – do breach, falsify and deny, if they can and it suits them best, the Peoples’ rights that they have formally recognized. Especially with regard to the rights of self-determination or independence, and of legitimate self-defence of subjugated Peoples, examined their observance in actual practice, it is evident that the International Law of the United Nations – being this Organization in the hands of the “Great” imperial or hegemonic Powers – does still remain built upon the same “rotten floor” that had its predecessor the League of Nations, namely: the “classic international law” of European imperialism. In such circumstances, when it comes to evaluating the behaviour of imperialism towards the Peoples that are being subjugated, what results of it is that imperialism investigates and judges itself: a “logical” implication of an abstruse – and false – self-limitation of those States. The practice to the contrary is illusory, hypocritical and ridiculous.
Confronted with the dilemma of deciding whether the “national question” was to be solved by the liberation of the oppressed Nations or the continuity of imperialism, the new world order of the Great Powers did once again opt for the second solution. The States with still open national conflicts are those who appoint and choose the “international” Courts and Committees, and do it among “specialists” distinguished by their rabid and uncompromising imperialistic Nationalism. Those institutions cannot and do not want to see – let alone pursue – the crimes against fundamental human rights, which they do conceal, minimise and justify because just for that purpose their representatives were elected and appointed. They are “unable” to even raise the question of Imperialism and State Terrorism. As for the NGOs, they show off themselves so as to be hypocritically seen expressing their “concern” over the “non-systematic” attacks against some individual rights; always without upsetting against themselves the de facto powers, since otherwise they run out of the story and the party.
The new International Institutions have not changed much in the traditional law and policy. Their propaganda and behaviour do unfailingly – and more and more openly – participate in the imperialistic policy of domination and genocide carried out by the great imperialistic States and their protégés, which deny with facts the noble principles and norms so often ratified, namely: “the offences against the rights formulated by the United Nations are criminal facts; the violation of Peoples’ right of self-determination is an international crime”.
The UNO, in the hands of the Great imperial or hegemonic Powers, has abandoned or betrayed constantly in words and facts its own principles and norms formally recognized by the Organization, which were ratified by the Member States. Even though its theory and statements have often reflected the depth and continuity of the democratic ideas in the struggle of Peoples for freedom and independence, yet the Organization itself has increasingly remained more openly aside from such conflicts, recognizing and supporting in general the imperial and colonial States, and becoming sometimes an accomplice of imperialism, terrorism and genocide.
In fact, the International Institutions only recognize the existence and accept the independence of oppressed Peoples when these have already got it, usually against such Institutions: Algeria, Biafra, Bangla Desh, Chechnya, East Turkestan etc. were not the first cases nor will be the last ones. In open contradiction with their own Principles, Resolutions and Norms, they deny the Peoples’ existence as the most radical way of fighting their freedom and rights; conceal and falsify the reality of the infringements of the Mighty; support Fascism and State Terrorism and incriminate all democratic opposition – whether individual or collective – against them; and use lying and falsification as instruments of international policy.
Limit oneself to refraining, or to managing the crisis so as to prevent from happening what has already happened, does not give another result different from the one that we have. The international, military and humanitarian disasters do not occur overnight: they are incubated and prepared during years and centuries of oppression, with the complicity of the conservative or revolutionary Governments; which, meanwhile, preach without respite that the problems do not exist, or that do not already exist after they and their friends took the power. At the end, and in the wake of the crisis in Syria, the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights has strongly criticised the Security Council for its failure to prevent conflicts around the world:
“Conflict prevention is complex, but it can be achieved. [...] None of these crises erupted without warning. They built up over years – and sometimes decades – of human rights grievances: deficient or corrupt governance and judicial institutions, discrimination and exclusion, inequities in the development, exploitation and denial of the economic and social rights, and repression of the civil society and public freedoms.” (Ms. Navi Pillay, in her last Address to the Security Council; August 2014.)
Here are other grievances that Ms. Pillay did not mention and which, no doubt, the Members of the Security Council would have been much less willing to listen without exercising their right of veto, because they directly denounce the structure of world imperialism that causes the disasters of Humanity, namely: immediate application of the principle of efficacy or effectiveness, as it is understood by the imperialism; “tendency” to the maintenance and protection of the imperialistic status quo; protection of the fait accompli; selective reserve – for the recognized States – of the rights to aggression and war of conquest; submission of the Peoples to the Governments; precedence of the interests of imperialistic Nationalism over the fundamental human rights; denial of all Peoples’ rights of self-determination/independence and legitimate self-defence; and – as the safer means to completely succeed in it all – radical denial of the occupied Peoples and States and their reduction to the “national unity” of the occupying States.
All of them: ideological-political instruments characteristic of European imperialism (formulated by its “classical” school of “international law” and generously supported by the representatives of the official “Left”), are still present in the behaviour of the Great Powers and their protégés and satellites, which have nothing to fear from repressive Institutions whose sentences are reserved to the Weak and Vanquished. (Incidentally, the “principle of efficacy or effectiveness” allows as many interpretations as sides there are in a conflict.)
In international relations everything is imposed, stolen, negotiated, sold and bought: whether it be the recognition or the hunting and fishing licenses. The recognition of Peoples, States and Governments is granted to those who have, are supposed to have or are meant that will have the power: either immediately or in the short term. In the practice of international policy, the “constitutive recognition” is intended that it precedes the essence and the existence, which is absurd, since the recognition is a discretionary act. The very “notion” of “constitutive recognition” is a misunderstanding or a contradiction in terms. Its current resurgence in the international propaganda, diplomacy and policy demonstrates the retreat of the postulated International Law of the UN, towards the elementary and undisguised imperialistic Nationalism that preceded it and – despite the pretence to overcome it – transcended it.
(For a greater clarity, we reproduce here again the exposition of this point made in the previous Chapter XV ‘Imperialism versus International Law’:
The recognition is a declarative, unilateral, free, discretionary and optional act. The “obligatory recognition” of rights, Peoples, Nations, States or states of war, as well as other statements and official approvals, is a juridical and logical absurdity for purely ideological purposes of intoxication and psychological warfare. Recognition cannot constitute reality.
Indeed: what does not exist, cannot be recognized; what is recognized, did already previously exist and therefore cannot be constituted. The recognition can constitute rights, but not the rights it does recognize. If the rights were to depend on their recognition in order to exist, then there would be no rights. The “obligation” to recognize or not recognize – as well as to make other mandatory or enforced statements, confessions, declarations and condemnations – is a formally useless, superfetatory detour; even though it can eventually be an effective means of publicity, guarantee, pressure, intimidation or humiliation. Neither does the purported “healing” or “purging” of the illegality by means of the recognition make a greater sense: the recognition does not heal or purge the unlawful or illicit act; it only makes it legal by changing a law by another one. The “constituent, obligatory or premature declarations and recognitions of Peoples, Nations, rebels, insurgents, belligerents, Governments and States” do reveal the interested and variable indeterminacy, evolution and adaptation, the criteria and hesitations, the appreciation and interpretation of situations, as they are being perceived according to the different parties in conflict.)
The new “international law” sees in the right of national freedom of the subjugated Peoples its most undesirable disruptive element. The maintenance at all costs of the imperialistic status quo, the fear of precedents, and the containment of the Movement of National Liberation are today master guidelines of the general policy of the Great Powers and the hegemonic League; and these lines determine their specific and coordinated strategy: be that in Yugoslavia or Ireland, in Chechnya or the Kingdom of Nabarre. To combat, distort and destroy theoretically and practically the principle and the right of freedom of the Peoples in the occupied territories of the Country of the Basques, does demand to combat, distort and destroy them also everywhere where an aggression occurs against the freedom of Peoples.
With the passing of time and the change of strategic constellation, the “Member States” of the UNO already do not hesitate to deny officially and ever more openly, when and where it suits them, the fundamental rights that they accepted in their Accession Treaties, taking their role as individual and collective perpetrators of the corresponding crimes. The UNO has with this placed itself on the same line of the criminal States that constitute it.
The theoretical and practical attack on the fundamental and inherent right of self-determination of all Peoples, conquest of the struggle of Peoples for their freedom, is a central and permanent task for the imperialistic reaction that has followed the events of greater political importance since the Second World War, namely: the two great waves of decolonization, and the end of the Cold War and the nuclear duopoly in the world, subsequent to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Great Dominant Powers, with the assistance of medium-sized and small ones, have seen arrived the moment of paralyzing the progress of so problematic a right, and are trying to stop or reverse it through its theoretical denial or reduction; looking in the freezing of the imperialistic status quo of States and borders, or in its discretionary alteration in their own benefit, the solution to the instability and conflicts that the same imperialism creates and disseminates. With this aim in mind, they have propitiated, organized and invoked the “theses” of liquidation developed by the ideological agents of the imperialistic Nationalism, in order to ruin the right of self-determination of all Peoples.
The reduction/denial of the right of self-determination of Peoples is the great fraud of the UNO, the greatest delusion of the imperialism towards the subjugated Peoples. The institutional imperialism has so destroyed the contents of the international right of self-determination of all Peoples. It has distorted the fundamental, common, inherent, inalienable, constituent, unilateral, unconditional and immediate right of self-determination or independence of all Peoples, “turning” it into a secondary, exceptional, constituted, granted, accessory, subordinate, conventional, subsidiary, bi or multi-laterally agreed, conditioned and deferred right; all this on the basis of its dependence on imperialism and of the acceptance of its aggression, occupation and colonization. This sabotage and forgery of the cardinal terms and concepts in the struggle against imperialism, forged so as to hide the real content of the collaboration and complicity with the fascist régime of military occupation, is part of the ideological and political liquidation of the strategy of liberation of the subjugated Peoples.
As for the regional organization of the “European Union” and its Member States: purported “spiritual” reserve of the Western World and of the new “human dimension” of policy and law, they go still further in the express denial of the right of self-determination. A denial formulated by its official “jurists”, hypocritical defenders of human rights, and notorious agents of the Nationalist-imperialistic radicalism against the Peoples’ freedom and right of self-determination.
If, on the one hand, the UNO showed soon its dark side as a factory of dreams, illusions, vain words, ideological fallacies and servile complicities, for its part the European Imperialistic Union (EIU) does combat by all means at its disposal the freedom and the right of self-determination of Peoples. The EIU has not betrayed anybody and has always been what it is: a mere instrument of the imperialistic Nationalism and Terrorism of the dominant States who maintain and govern it. Councils, Courts and guarantees of human rights of the EIU are an added insult to the oppressed and persecuted Peoples by those criminal States that wield the continental supremacy.
Commissions and Courts: supposed guarantee of human rights, do support and approve the Imperialism, Violence, Repression and Terrorism of those criminal States; and persecute the Peoples who suffer from them. The accelerated regression of freedoms and human rights on a European and global scale, after the end of the Cold War, has boosted this process by effect of the totalitarian offensive of the great States and their satellites, which do reserve fundamental human rights for themselves. The Communitary opposition to the Peoples’ freedom and right of self-determination, and its total support to the domination and repression against those Peoples, re-orientate the attitude of the Member States. (The draft of European Constitution did even formally ignore the UN Conventions and Resolutions on Human Rights, which the Member States had hypocritically ratified.)
For the States of the EIU, which do themselves recognize to each other, the Peoples and Nations that have the right of self-determination within their own sphere of domination are always and necessarily those of themselves and no one else, since just for that purpose have the corresponding concepts been pre-cast and appointed. For them, and by virtue of mere decision-making constructions and definitions they themselves do establish, there are no other “nations” than the recognized States, nor other “peoples” than those ones constituted by themselves; whereupon the imperialism, the unsolved national question, and the right of self-determination of all Peoples disappear from “the privileged European space of freedom, security and justice”.
The support to the consolidation of the imperialistic status quo over the Basque People and to the preservation of the French-Spanish border, established as an intangible fact by the annexations of Most Christian France and Most Catholic Spain imperialism: alleged “moral reserve of the West”, has fatally conditioned the denial – maintained by the European Community bodies – of the right of self-determination and legitimate self-defence of all Peoples; with the bombings under the NATO tag as supreme and “democratic” demonstration. The EIU: Western Colonial Reserve, has thus helped to consolidate between the Rhine and Gibraltar what it failed to preserve and fully block in the débâcle of the East.
The French-Spanish imperialism, which because of the maintenance of its criminal objectives against the Basque People has shown itself capable of lefting even the UNO Security Council open to ridicule before the whole world with its resolution 1530 [March 11, 2004], adopted at the proposal of Spain and of France to condemn the Eta due to the jihadist attacks carried out in Madrid on that same day, does unscrupulously poison the policy imposed by bureaucracies beyond all popular control and at the service of the world fascist reactionary backlash.
The denial of the right of self-determination of all Peoples exposes the “European Union” as a Western bunker of the imperialism, or as “heart of colonialism”, according to an expression coined by Countries with extensive experience of the issue. This denial shows the capacity of the imperialistic Nationalism to destroy from the root all international democratic construction, and to ruin the peaceful coexistence among Peoples, comforting in its place imperialism, colonialism and military occupation over subjugated Countries, criminal Violence, Repression and the State Terrorism, and hatred between Nations, with Fascism as an ineluctable result. The imperialistic bunker of the “European Union” does fatally enclose in its formal “Constitution”, but above all in its real constitution, the virus of national oppression, which has ended up with so many Unions stronger than it.
The disintegration of the Russian and Yugoslav Empires was for the Community Institutions – which present themselves as a model of human rights – a favourable opportunity for getting rid of the right of self-determination in general: falsified, demoted and replaced by the norm of the status quo and the freezing of the imperial and colonial States. But the rhetoric about the “human dimension”: displayed in the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe – with its final Act of Helsinki of 1975, and the Charter of Paris of 1990, a European imitation of the Charter of the UN – and even in the European Convention on Human Rights, does not deceive anyone.
The Renaissance European tradition of ideological manipulation of principles and laws: performed by specialists hired and at the service of “Princes” and Governments, has been again highlighted on occasion of the Peace Conference and the Arbitration Commission on the Yugoslav crisis. Incapable of any initiative, contribution or measure to resolve it, and always in tow of the events, the “European Union” seized instead that opportunity to launch an attack against the right of self-determination or independence of all Peoples.
The Peace Conference on Yugoslavia, and its Arbitration Commission (1991), were created by French initiative and according to the interests of the Western Governments directly affected by national claims in their own areas of domination The opinion on the qualification of the conflict and the determination of rights was in charge of a Committee of “experts”: the Presidents of the Spanish, French and Belgian Constitutional Courts (“experienced” in national problems), under the chairmanship of a French National-socialist politician, Robert Badinter, known for his ultra-Nationalist stance and his radical denial of the very existence of the annexed Peoples and States, and hence of their rights. To entrust the theoretical development of Peoples’ right of self-determination in such hands amounted and was equivalent to ask and adopt the opinion of crocodiles on the right of self-determination of gazelles. The real objective was to achieve a subterfuge or a trick to indirectly and fraudulently distort and weaken the right of all Peoples’ self-determination or independence, maliciously establishing as fundamental right the imperialistic status quo, against the freedom and the right of self-determination of Peoples in general and against reality itself. The Committees and Judges of the States with national problems, charged with the task of edicting the new “international law”, did thus contribute on an urgent basis to preventing the extension to the West of the crisis and the process of liberation in Eastern Europe. (The Basque People does indirectly determine the policy of the EIU and its Member States, in any place where a conflict between the Peoples and the alien domination occurs.)
The aforementioned Committee of jurists-ideologists did opine just what it was commissioned that it should opine. Thus, its pronouncement – conventional and “arbitrational” – in favour of the freezing and conversion into national borders of the administrative boundaries imposed by military occupation and colonization (boundaries that in addition were constantly reviewed on the basis of the respective military advances and setbacks on the ground, and by virtue of a calculated and fraudulent extrapolation – applied now to Europe – of the doctrine based on the principle uti possidetis juris ita teneatis, that is: “According to the law with which you possess, so shall you possess”), was elevated, “unless otherwise agreed”, to a fundamental right of custom superior to the right of self-determination of Peoples, reduced in turn to a subordinated “right”. The theoretical emptiness of such a pronouncement did not prevent that, coming up next, that Arbitration Committee’s opinion were erected in a kind of supreme ruling against the right of self-determination. It would have been easier to openly abolish the Peoples’ right of self-determination; but the Europe of human rights does not yet dare to do so.
The “European Union” did thus abandon and supplant: expressly, surreptitiously and cunningly at the same time, the right of self-determination of all Peoples, so often formally proclaimed, and once more sacrifice it to the preservation of the borders imposed by imperialistic occupation and colonization. It was, again, the consecration of the imperialistic status quo, the substitution of the Peoples by the States that dominate them, and finally the ideological liquidation of the fundamental right of self-determination or independence of Peoples, replaced by a conventional and arbitrational opinion converted into a purported fundamental right.
Of course, classical socialist literaturehad left unavoidable opinions in this regard:
“[...] The policy of Marx and Engels on the Irish question serves as a splendid example of the attitude the proletariat of the oppressor nations should adopt towards national movements, an example which has lost none of its immense practical importance. It serves as a warning against that “servile haste” with which the philistines of all countries, colours and languages hurry to label as ‘utopian’ the idea of altering the frontiers of states that were established by the violence and privileges of the landlords and bourgeoisie of one nation.” Etc. (V. Lenin; The Right of Nations to Self-Deterination, 1914.)
“[...] Can Social-Democrats be against the use of force in general, it may be asked? Obviously not. This means that we are against annexations not because they constitute force, but for some other reason. Nor can the Social-Democrats be for the status quo. However you may twist and turn, annexation is violation of the self-determination of a nation, it is the establishment of state frontiers contrary to the will of the population.” (V. Lenin, The Discussion On Self-Determination Summed Up, 1916.)
The Yugoslav conflict had provided the French “specialists” in human rights the opportunity of updating their ideological apparatus against the right of self-determination of all Peoples, making of this right, which is fundamental and inherent, a conditional and subsidiary “right”. Spanish ideologues do in general follow the French ones, in their mission of justifying and sublimating their National-imperialistic domination. The Government of General Franco, of which the current one is a continuation, adopted in words– albeit officially – the Charter of the United Nations and with it the right of self-determination of all Peoples. And in the process of adapting the régime of the Second Francoism to “Western democratic standards”, the “State Official Gazette” (BOE) of April 30, 1977, that is, on the eve of the “general elections”, published the “Instrument of Ratification of Spain of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, done in New York on December 19, 1966. JUAN CARLOS I KING OF SPAIN. Whereas on September 28, 1976, the Plenipotentiary of Spain, appointed in good and due form for that purpose, signed in New York the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, [...], I come to approve and ratify what is provided in it, [...] promising to fulfill it, observe it and make it fulfilled and observed punctually in all its parts, [...]. Given in Madrid on the thirteenth day of April, one thousand nine hundred and seventy-seven. JUAN CARLOS. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Marcelino Oreja Aguirre.” (BOE 1977 / 10733)
Down below, the International Covenant is reproducedin its entirety, whose Article 1 (PART I) runs as follows: “1. All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” Etc. [UNGAR 2200 (1966)]
However, the current Spanish National-socialist Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has said that “the purported right of self-determination of all Peoples is not a right but a mythical and unreal principle, which compels the totalitarian States but not the democratic ones”. In spite of it, that is the champion of “Spanish democracy” whom the armed and unarmed “Basque moderates and radicals”, that is, the mafia-liquidationist bureaucracy Pnv-Eta and its satellites Ea-Ehbildu-Sortu-Geroa bai etc., are condemned to support, once they have admitted to liquidating any strategy of National and State affirmation of the Basque People so as to integrate themselves into the Spanish fascist imperialism of military occupation that they, like the current neo-Francoist régime, do at all time call “Spanish democracy”. A régime within which they say they will be able to carry out their feigned aims of liberation of the Basque People from French-Spanish imperialism that militarily occupies our Country. Now then, no one is that foolish. Certainly, their cretinism is enormous, but there occurs that their corruption and their intellectual and moral ruin: undauntedly maintained for almost half a century now, are even greater.
As to the French and Spanish imperialists(and leaving aside the functional ignorance – whether hypocritical or real – and the cynicism that as we have seen they have no qualms to show), they claim, as is natural, that the constructivist fictions and wiles asserted in their formal and secondary “Constitution”: which they presumptuously and pedantically refer to as “Magna Carta”, do consecrate its impeccable legitimacy. Yet, neither these gross and coarse theoretical forgeries, nor the “consensus” held around that “Constitution” by the terrorists and imperialistic political parties that have proclaimed and do sustain it (fascists parties all of them – whether in the traditional Francoist version, or in the transitive and National-socialist or National-communist one – that support the military occupationof our Country and call it “democracy”), can hide that their imperialistic State has been built in reality for centuries through criminal military aggression, armed occupation and annexation against the legitimate State of the Basque People, the Kingdom of Nabarre; nor can they legitimize the underlying crimes and imperialism, i.e. the real and primary constitution, which that formal and secondaty “Constitution” is founded upon.
It’s not a crime, as they claim, but a fundamental right of self-determination and legitimate self-defence, to actively or passively fight against such a “Constitution”; instead, the offence against the right of self-determination or independence of Peoples is a crime under International Law, implicated in the imprescriptible crimes of war, against Peace, and against Humanity committed in the historical enterprise of destruction of the Basque People and its State by the Spanish and French imperialism. According to the International Law there is no right of imperialism: there is crime of imperialism, and it is imprescriptible.
As it was already explained above (see Chapter XII ‘Human Rights and Democracy’), the right of self-determination of all Peoples is not strictly compatible or incompatible with Democracy but it does precede and constitute it: without the Peoples’ Self-Determination or Independence, there is not and there cannot be Democracy. Democratic States, where they really exist, and their Constitution – both real or primary as well as formal or secondary – are established/constituted and preserved by the free self-determination of Peoples; which presupposes their real and effective independence from any form of imperialism or military occupation or threat of occupation, that is: the full respect for their international right of independence, free disposition or self-determination of all Peoples, which is the first of fundamental human rights and the precondition of them all. The democratic States have nothing to fear from this right but quite the opposite, since the right of self-determination does constitute, legitimize and reinforce them. When the States do themselves declare to be opposed to it, as is the case of the French and Spanish imperialistic States, they also declare thereby the anti-democratic reality of their power; as well as the clumsy and shameless falsification that they do sustain, by presenting the crimes, the subjugation and annexation against Peoples and States which they are constituted upon as if it was about free and democratic adherence and integration.
In such circumstances, the official representatives of Spanish Francoism – whether traditional or National-socialist/communist – stroll themselves through Europe and, in the same places where they developed its atrocities the “Tercio of Flanders” (which they have never repudiated and are proud of), with all shamelessness and without fearing any response allow themselves to request from Europe support for its system that they call “of integration”, that is: of imperialistic, totalitarian and fascist destruction of the subjugated Peoples that, not having been as fortunate as those which could – under great sufferings – get rid of their yoke, still remain under its oppression.
The League of Nations (LN) succumbed because of its inherent and constituent inability to incorporate or oppose the Great Powers. Capable to maintain “peace and security” by opposing some smaller States, it nevertheless had no interest or capacity to incorporate, retain or compel the greater ones.
If the LN was unable to subject the great States under its norms, the UNO has not even attempted it, and its founding Charter does officially and in advance exclude them from the effective action of the so-called International Law. The Charter and the numerous Resolutions of the General Assembly of the UNO have been fought and falsified by all means, and the own Executive, Administrative and Judicial Organs of the Organization have never respected nor applied them, aside from the fait accompli of international policy. The accepted selective prohibition of weapons of mass destruction is actually the monopoly of Violence and Terrorism on a large-scale maintained by the Great Powers and their satellites or allies. The rights of self-determination of Peoples and of independence of States disappear, replaced by the perpetual imperialistic status quo, always revisable by the hegemonic Power in the framework of its “war against terrorism”. For the liberal and democratic tradition, the fundamental human rights were a prior and constitutive limitation of the positive law of the State. Now, however, “terrorism” and its repression are the limit of fundamental human rights. (See our article: ‘Violence and Terrorism’.)
Imperialism and Fascism do already dominate the own legislative, executive, administrative, judicial and advisory bodies of the UNO and the EU. Bodies that ignore, falsify and violate their own proclaimed formal legality; that serve without reservation the aggression, war, conquest, occupation, domination, genocide, colonialism, repression, Terrorism and propaganda of the dominant States that dictate to them the behaviour to be followed and the propaganda to be disseminated; and that put their resources and their officials at the service of the intoxication and the officially proclaimed lie as a weapon of propaganda in international conflicts.
Imperialism is the root cause of the ruin of human rights and democracy in national and international institutions. After the Second World War, and since the proclamation of “democracy” in the Western World (without prejudice to maintaining imperialism at the same time), Governments and International Organizations seek and claim for themselves the popular support; or, if they don’t have it, the best way to do without it and impose their own decisions. The separation of powers, and the relative traditional safeguards in judicial proceedings and enforcement of rights, become formal fictions.
When the will and the spontaneous resistance of Peoples hinder governmental action, these obstacles are surrounded and are remedied through “consensus”; and failing that, the problem is remedied by descending the scale of organic “delegations”: from the People to Parliament, and then to the Commissions and Committees, to the Government, to the Judiciary, and to the administrative channel. In the UNO, the General Assembly is replaced by the Commissions, the Security Council, the Secretary-General, and the Administration, which obey the order and the orders of the five Powers. In the EU, the Governments of the Member States, now far from the Peoples’ control, accumulate Councils and Commissions: new administrative apparatuses still more remote and uncontrolled. The European “Constitutional Treaty” is submitted to referenda of the “Peoples”; but if they rejected it, the consultations are eliminated and it is done anyway what it is wanted to. It is the only means they have – apart from the NATO bombs – so as to impose the continental norms that no People wants.
As indicated in the previous chapter, in International Law declared by the UNO, the right of self-determination or independence of all Peoples is not the right to autonomy, nor the right to federation or confederation, nor “the right to decide”, nor the right to secession or separation, since the occupied Country is a distinct Territory and is not part of the occupying State. Therefore, when it regains its independence, it does not separate itself – it cannot be separated – from an entity in which it was never integrated.
The normative, legislative or conventional texts promulgated by the UNO or within its framework are not precisely – for various reasons – a model of grammatical correctness, style, precision, systematics, conciseness and economy of exposition; but, even so, they are clear enough for those who want to understand them. This is not the case of the Member States, which have only seen in them – as in the Organization itself – an instrument of which to make use in some cases and from which to slink away in others, for the benefit of their exclusive and excluding national interest. No text, impeccable though it may be, will ever deter from doing anything they want to the beneficiaries and henchmen of imperialism and fascism, who will invoke or deny the same and the opposite when and where it suits them. The objective of imperialistic States confronted with International Law is not to submit to it but to interpret, falsify, modify, hide or circumvent it in their own interest. It is not a question of interpretative divergences. The agents of imperialism do not care a bit about “the proper interpretation” of the normative texts; they are only interested in what they can get out of them.
Most of the complaints and formal proceedings in International Law, as well as those of domestic law, concern the information and interpretation of facts and norms. The truth of the events and their true legal classification do not interest to the parties involved, which simply try to use or falsify both of them in their favour. If this were no longer the case, certainly most legal processes would not take place; but individuals, and especially Nations, seek their own interest without worrying about the formal norms, which they invoke in what suits them, to ignore and violate them in what harms them. Whatever the concerned law can be, its actors are generally counterfeiters, liars, cheaters and unscrupulous.
At present, the hegemonic Power and the other international actors do openly, expressly and officially use lying, defamation, slander and ideological intoxication as means of international political propaganda: procedures that were formerly the specialty of the Diplomatic and Secret Services. Nonchalant to such blatant resources, the theory and the practice of the Security Council and the Secretary-General of the UNO confirm the current predominance of cynicism over traditional hypocrisy. When the Government of the hegemonic Power has gone so far as to officially announce urbi et orbi that it will unilaterally decide on the uncontrolled and unlimited use of violence and war, and that it will use espionage and lying as an ideological means whenever suits it best, nobody could be deceived as for the fate that awaits the freedom of expression and the fundamental human rights.
The German National-Socialism and the Spanish Fascism have purged, re-occupied, refurbished and restored the ruins of the Christian Democrat and “socialist” Internationals. The new Berlin-Paris Axis with extension to Madrid runs the EIU, imbricated in the new and transcontinental American hegemony; with the suppression of the freedom of Peoples as a global fundamental objective: be that in Africa, the Middle East, Chechnya, Kurdistan, Yugoslavia, or the Kingdom of Nabarre in the “Euro-Community” West, as well as over East Turkestan/Uyghurstan, Taiwan and Tibet etc. in the Celestial Empire.
German National-socialism, which its former apologists, accomplices and beneficiaries of the Spanish or French Fascism present nowadays as an abominable reference, did always affirm that “it is moral and legal what there suits the German People”. On the same basis, the French-Spanish propaganda services can ponder their own Nationalism, Imperialism and Fascism as higher forms of political morality and legality. And similarly can the new interpreter, arbitrator, dictator and supreme prophet of the universal morality and legality proclaim – in fact it does not shy away from doing so – that “the USA stand for Good against Evil throughout the World”, by the installment of and support to the most reactionary imperialistic and fascist powers on the planet. Such a direct, sincere or cynical definition does perfectly suit the political practice and the ideology of the reality; even though it fits poorly with the needs of the ideology of illusion, essential to numb the Peoples.
The unilateral resort to Violence and Terrorism, as a solution of all the problems at a universal scale, continues to be the pattern of behaviour for all the Great Powers. With the new hegemonic or imperial universal order, Violence and Terrorism are more present than ever as constitutive functions in the practice of States. Nuclear Terrorism is the foundation of contemporary coexistence and international law. The end of the atomic duopoly of the two super-Powers has not caused the end of conflicts but the intensification and extension of imperialistic pressure, oppression and repression on the Peoples.
From the Hot or Cold War and the peace of balance, the world has moved to an attempt of hegemonic peace that is more alike to “anarchy” or the law of the jungle than to the peace of the Empire; an attempt that is accompanied by an economy of “continued growth and sustained development”, that is: of continuous and unsustainable crisis, of ecological disaster, and of globalization and ruin of the stable, friendly and peaceful relations between Peoples. The repartition of the world between the great planetary rivals has been relatively, provisionally and precariously stabilized through the mutual consent and recognition of the respective areas of hunting, exploitation and domination. This has resulted in a global imperial and hegemonic Axis to which the small and medium-sized “independent” States find themselves organized, associated, subordinated or hold in fief. Finally, the imperialistic status quo has replaced the right of self-determination or independence of Peoples, as a postulated condition and precarious foundation of International Law and world peace.
The idealism of the Founding Fathers has quickly turned into hypocrisy and reaction. The aggregate of idealism, illusionism, realism and opportunism, which usually characterizes the first stage of universal Organizations, has given way to the narrow and short-term “pragmatism” of a policy of fait accompli and status quo; and finally, to the decomposition, discredit and corruption accompanying the failure of such ambitious undertakings. “Sadly, in the new Law of the UNO on Self-Determination, the path has led ‘from enthusiasm to imposture’.”
It is an edifying spectacle, which is showing the ruin to which the hegemonic Power and its partners have led International Law! In these circumstances, either the hegemony becomes Empire, and the internal national positive law of the USA gets to be imposed as “international law”; or, otherwise, various national actors will unilaterally determine both their own “rights” of imperialism over other weaker ones as well as their own universal or local Terrorism, as the Nationalist Imperialism of Russia is doing since 2014 up to the present day with its aggression against the Ukrainian People and its State. (See our text ‘Agudización de la actual crisis geo-política: agresión del Imperialismo Ruso contra el Pueblo y el Estado Ucranianos’ [Deepening of the current geo-political crisis: aggression of Russian Imperialism against the Ukrainian People and its State], dated February 25, 2022.)
In both cases, the “international law” is the international and universal Terrorism of Imperialism; and it is fostered, encouraged and exercised by the insatiable lust for power of the “great” imperialistic States.
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