[extropy-chat] Treaties ratified by the US Senate

[BillK]

On 6/25/05, Brett Paatsch wrote:
> Mike's post provides a link to the US Constitution. There is gold
> in that thar document and almost certainly at least part of the solution
> to what ails us. And, like the UN Charter, it is remarkably concise.
> 


Mike's post talks about legal theory and ignores what actually happens
in practice.
(Similar to followers of religions or political systems - they want
you to look at the theory only, not to look at what actually happens
in the real world).

This paragraph struck me as a really big get out clause

> In this respect, a treaty with another nation does not prevent the
> United States government from choosing to act to enforce or protect the
> rights of its citizens if that nation is violating them, because the US
> Constitution's Bill of Rights is clearly superior to any treaty the
> Senate may ratify, nor does it prevent the US gov't from enforcing any
> other provision of the US Constitution against the claimed
> interpretation of any treaty.
>

This clause is very useful for the US. In practice it means that the
US just has to engineer some 'incident' and whoopee! they can ignore
the treaty and invade.

I don't fancy doing the research to see how many treaties have been
broken, by *all* countries, not just the US.

But the US did make hundreds of treaties with the native Indian tribes.
"They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never
kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it."  --
Red Cloud, Oglala Sioux

"All warfare is based on deception." -- Sun Tzu
The US practice of using 'treaties' to deceive the enemy into defeats
goes back to the 1800s - the Indian treaties.
The white settlers would create an incident of Injuns harming whites
and blow it up into "Indian massacres" and demand the US government to
send in the cavalry to punish the 'savage murderers'.  In this way,
the white settlers killed off Indian tribes one by one until the Great
Plains was freed up.

Exactly the same technique continues into modern times. viz. the
Panama invasion, the Grenada invasion, the Puerto Rico invasion, the
Dominican Republic invasion, the Haiti invasion, the Afghanistan
invasion, the Iraq invasion. There are web sites that provide lists of
all the US armed interventions in other countries.
An 'incident' can always be found to justify the US actions (even if
the US was massing forces for months beforehand).

The problem with treaties and contracts is that the parties have to be
'equal'.  If a giant decides that you have something he wants and
makes you an offer that you can't refuse, what do you do? Say 'no' and
get wiped out? Unlikely. Instead you sign, and hope to get a little
more than the bleak alternative. If the giant decides to ignore,
cancel, withdraw from, declare it broken, etc. the treaty, then there
is nothing the little guy can do. At least signing the treaty bought
him a little time.

It is the old 'might makes right', and the victor gets to write the
history his way.


BillK