The Slaughter of Innocents

International Peace Camp 2004

The Slaughter of Innocents

State Terrorism and Genocide in Our Time

Presented by Park, Eun Hong

Sungkonghoe Univ, Seoul

We have recently left perhaps the bloodiest and most terrifying century of human

history. The tragedies are too numerous to mention in full, but a short list will suffice:

the Armenian genocide, the Soviet gulag, the European Holocaust, the Nanking

Massacre, the fire bombings of Tokyo and Dresden, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima

and Nagasaki, the repressions of Maoist China, the nightmare of the Khmer Rouge, the

slaughter of the Kurds, the “dirty wars” waged by Latin American governments upon

their own people. Killing fields dot the landscape of human history. But in the 20th

century, we developed the techniques to realize our most murderous tendencies.

The end of the Cold War in Europe in 1989 led to much speculation that great historical

passions were finally put to rest and the world would settle down to a bureaucratic state

of ever increasing political entropy – the EU-ification of the world. But the 1990s were

just as brutal as the previous nine decades. The mass slaughter in Rwanda, the targeting

of civilians in the former Yugoslavia, ethnic cleansing in Sudan, the ruthless suppression

of uprisings in Iraq, and countless bloody disputes throughout Africa, the Middle East,

and Asia all suggested that those initial expectations were naïve.

The 20th-century atrocities that I’ve mentioned, both before and after 1989, share two

things in common. They involved the large-scale death of civilians – non-combatants

who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time or were killed for not having

the right ethnicity or religion or ideas. And the perpetrators of these crimes were states,

for only states possess the means to plan, carry out, or inspire such large-scale killing.

If the 18th and 19th centuries witnessed all the bloody sacrifices associated with the rise

of states – consider the French Revolution, the forging of Germany out of “blood and

iron,” the making of the Meiji state in Japan – the 20th century provided a cautionary

tale of the consequences of mature state power.

In the 21st century, some argue that the threat from states has largely retreated, and it is

non-state actors – terrorists – who most threaten individuals and the world order. The

Bush administration has used this argument to justify recent attacks. It was the

Taliban’s sheltering of Al Qaeda that served as the explicit rationale for U.S.

intervention in 2001. And the administration, to rally public support for invasion,

1


attempted to link Saddam Hussein to its larger “war on terrorism” by suggesting links

that did not exist to Al Qaeda. Both Iran and North Korea, the two other members of

the “axis of evil,” are demonized not so much for what they can do directly to the

United States (though the United States frequently worries about the reach of North

Korean missiles), but for their alleged capacity to service terrorist organizations with

material support or even weapons of mass destruction.

For all this talk of the terrorism of non-state actors, however, states have not suddenly

become benign in the 21st century. States, both large and small, continue to wage war

both externally and internally. Indeed, in terms of sheer numbers, states continue to be

responsible for the overwhelming number of civilian deaths around the world – in the

millions over the last decade compared to the thousands killed by terrorists.

Approximately 5,000 people died in terrorist attacks from 2001 to the end of 2003 – a

record number because of 9/11 – but that compares to an estimated 9,000 civilian deaths

in the Iraq occupation alone. This is not to excuse or justify or minimize terrorism.

From the point of view of the victim, an atrocity is an atrocity, regardless of the

perpetrator or the scale of the act.

As the largest and most powerful state in the world, the United States plays a

particularly troubling role, as much for its acts of war as for its stubborn adherence to

unilateralism. This unilateralism predates the Bush administration. Linked to a

tradition of American exceptionalism, this “go it alone” ethos is hard-wired into the very

practice of U.S. foreign policy.

This presentation will look at the role of the state in perpetuating violence against

citizens, both in the form of “state terrorism” and “genocide.” I’ll also briefly look at

what has been done to curb the excesses of the state, largely through popular

movements and legal action at both the national and international level. And I’ll look

at how the United States, despite many excellent organizations and committed

politicians, has a disproportionately negative impact on creating international standards

to prevent human rights abuses.

But the central questions I’ll be posing today will be the following. Is it naïve to expect

that states can be transformed, or are they, like colonial systems, constitutionally

disposed to large-scale, unjust actions? Is it equally naïve to expect that we have any

sane or effective alternatives to the modern state? And what can we expect from the

most powerful state in the world, regardless of who is in the White House?

A Short History of the State and Terrorism

2


Life before the State was not a great deal of fun, if we are to believe the English

philosopher Thomas Hobbes. It was a “war of all against all,” and the average person’s

experience was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” The State might be an

awesome and fearful force – a “Leviathan” in Hobbes’s biblically inspired words – but

it was generally preferable to the alternative of chaos.

To prevent challenges to its authority that might return society to this “war of all against

all,” the modern state has sought a monopoly on violence. It reserved for itself the right

of both foreign military activities and the maintenance of internal order. And the state,

with occasional consultation with religious authorities and even less frequent resort to

treaties, determined whether any particular use of force was just or not. The history of

the formation of states can be viewed romantically (Garibaldi and the creation of

modern Italy) or with a more jaundiced eye (the slaughter of indigenous peoples, the

ruthless suppression of minorities). But today, however you would like to believe a

given state was constructed, the 180-odd existing states in the world are legal facts

backed up by force of arms. The poorest states, like North Korea, have armies. Neutral

states like Switzerland have armies. And even Japan, which was governed by the

world’s only “peace constitution,” is lobbying hard to have a “normal” military. (Costa

Rica, the only country without a standing army, is the exception that proves the rule).

The history of the modern state is also a history of bureaucratic control. This control

has been maintained through institutions such as the military, schools, and the civil

service. To the extent that state and nation do not coincide – and this is the case

throughout the world with only a few exceptions – the state has also used its institutions

to create national sentiment as a legitimizing force – to turn “peasants into Frenchmen”

in Eugen Weber’s characterization of the breaking down of minority (Breton, Provencal)

affections to build support for central French power in Paris.

The state, in other words, is the great homogenizer. Violence has been used to maintain

borders (or expand them), but it has also been used to enforce loyalty domestically. No

state tolerates rebellions, revolts, and revolutions. Governments may come and go,

depending on the democratic nature of the country, but states with very rare exceptions

– East Germany, Gorbachev’s Soviet Union – do not disappear gently into history.

Those who are not loyal to the state – in the form of individual traitors or collective

rebellions – are subject to criminal penalties in the first case (including death) and war

in the second case (the crushing of uprisings such as the one in Kwangju or the

suppression of the National League for Democracy in Burma).

Much has been written of the economic origins and justifications of the state. But when

it comes to state violence and genocide, economic rationales have rarely played a

3


critical role. Certainly the mass slaughters associated with colonialism – the millions

who died, for instance, in Congo at the hands of the Belgians in the 19th and early 20th

centuries – were motivated by greed. But desire for wealth cannot explain the rampages

of the Tutsis in Rwanda, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, or the Nazis in Europe. These

campaigns required some conception or ideology of enforced homogeneity based on

race, political beliefs, or a combination of the two. Genocide can be understood as an

extreme corruption of the homogeneity that all states require and which goes by various

names – patriotism, nationalism, political loyalty.

It has been common to contrast states and terrorists. States are a legitimate part of the

world order, and their violence is legal and expected and governed (to a certain extent)

by international law. Terrorists form an illegitimate force whose violence is unexpected

and illegal. This facile contrast, repeated by most state leaders, does not hold up to

close scrutiny.

Let’s look first at several definitions of terrorism. The American Heritage Dictionary

defines it as “the use of terror, violence, and intimidation to achieve an end.” The FBI

puts an emphasis on the illegal nature of terrorist acts and throws in attacks against

property: "the unlawful use of force against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a

government, the civilian population or any segment thereof, in the furtherance of

political or social objectives." The United Nations has so far been unable to achieve

consensus on a definition, but there has been a good deal of support for defining

terrorist acts simply as the “peacetime equivalents of war crimes.”

Even with the FBI definition, it should be clear that terrorism can be a technique used

by both state and non-state actors. The Nazi state was a terrorist state, as was the Soviet

state under Stalin and the Japanese state of the 1930s – they all used violence against

civilians to further political goals. But democracies, too, have used terror and violence

against citizens to achieve ends. During the 20th century, for instance, large-scale terror

attacks against civilians became a legitimate strategy of war. The Allied fire bombings

of Dresden and Tokyo were specifically designed to kill civilians in large numbers and

reduce popular support for the respective governments. U.S. use of nuclear weapons in

Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II and the bombing of dams in North Korea

in the Korean War were a logical continuation of this trend. The continued development

of weapons of mass destruction during the Cold War must be considered in this context

of state-sponsored terrorism; nuclear deterrence, a cornerstone of the current world

order, is a technique by which states balance each other’s institutionalized terrorism.

During peace-time, too, democratic states practiced terrorism through both overt and

covert operations (for example, U.S. material and logistical support for death squads in

4


Latin America or Israel’s assassinations of its enemies).

But terrorism, conventionally, has been used to describe the activities of non-state

movements. The precursors to modern terrorists espoused violence to combat tyranny.

In the modern era, however, terrorist movements initially arose to either create states

(Israel, Macedonia), recreate states (Korea, Poland), or transform states (Russia,

Germany). To achieve these goals, movements that are outnumbered seek advantage by

breaking the “rules of combat.” In many cases, terrorism has only been a method of

equalizing power relations so that outsiders can win a seat at the table. Many

organizations that have been labeled “terrorist” – the precursor to Israel’s Likud, Sinn

Fein in Northern Ireland, the African National Congress – have since become political

actors in the mainstream.

The term “terrorism” is thus ambiguous. Both state and non-state actors use violence

against civilians to achieve political goals. The term can be stretched to encompass

virtually any group, from the “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan to the Contra rebels in

Nicaragua, from the Red Army Brigade in Japan to the Real IRA in Ireland, and even

(according to the Chinese government), the Falun Gong. And former terrorists like

Nelson Mandela have become world-renowned statesmen.

With the end of the Cold War, however, the categories have shifted once again. A new

construct for understanding international relations has emerged: market democracies

versus everyone else (rogue states, stubbornly communist countries, terrorist

organizations). Anti-terrorism has thus become the anti-communism of our generation.

State-sponsored violence, which was once directed against “communists” in Guatemala

or Indonesia or South Korea, is now directed against those engaged in “jihad.” What

was once a strictly political distinction, for communists were understood largely in

terms of their goal of seizing state power, now comes with a set of cultural assumptions

as well. Al Qaeda does not believe in “our” God. It rejects “our” social liberalism.

And it believes not so much in seizing state power as eliminating modern states

altogether in favor of recreating an ancient caliphate with mullahs in charge. The

political needs of the “war on terrorism” do not quite square with the cultural overtones

of the current crusade against radical Islam. To imagine that Al Qaeda has anything in

common with the IRA or the Basque ETA or with North Korea and Cuba or with non-

communist “rogue” states such as Sudan and Syria stretches “terrorism” beyond even its

previous malleability. Just as anti-communism saw conspiracies between disparate

movements – inveterate enemies such as China and Vietnam or feuding powers like the

Soviet Union and Yugoslavia or distant acquaintances like Chilean socialists and Cuban

communists – anti-terrorism has created an equally disconnected “axis of evil.”

5


Before I turn to the “war on terrorism” and current U.S. policy, though, let me discuss

the non-violent path to reining in the excesses of the state – popular movements for

democracy and human rights.

Democracy and Human Rights

The most profound transformation to temper the excesses of the state has been

democracy. Majority rule, with minority protections and transparent political

institutions, offers the promise of reaping the benefits of the state (stability, economic

growth) while avoiding the drawbacks (oppression). Democratic movements serve a

vital watchdog function on the exercise of state power, whether overseas or domestic.

Democratic institutions, through checks and balances, prevent any one individual or

group from using state power unjustly. At least, this is the theory.

Without going into the real world failings of democracy, suffice it to say that democracy

does not automatically spell the end of oppression. There is the problem of the tyranny

of the majority – German support for the Nazi party, Japanese-American internment

camps in the United States – which sanctions oppression through popular support.

Second, there is the problem of the “national security exception,” which exempts

questions of national security from democratic scrutiny. The budget and activities of

U.S. intelligence agencies, for instance, are not open to public control. Pentagon

strategy is not subject to Congressional control much less citizen oversight. The state

argues that the security of the country requires a measure of secrecy, and with this

secrecy comes a wealth of opportunities for abuse.

Democracy is a necessary condition for putting controls on state violence. But it is not

sufficient. Popular movements can organize domestically to improve democratic

controls over the army and intelligence agencies. But let’s look at another strategy –

applying pressure from the outside. This is where the human rights movement enters

the picture.

The human rights movement grew out of the experience of World War II and the

Holocaust. Developing countries, anticipating the break-up of colonialism, demanded

the creation of standards for economic and social justice. An incipient NGO movement,

numbering approximately 40 organizations, pushed for universal human rights for

individuals over and above the self-determination of peoples. As described by Mary

Ann Glendon in A World Made New, Eleanor Roosevelt guided the Human Rights

Commission toward reconciling these two approaches by asserting a set of basic human

values that transcended diverse cultural contexts. The UN Declaration of Human Rights

6


offered a potential check on states that engaged in cross-border violence or that turned

against their own citizens.

At the same time, the Commission was careful not to upset the principle building blocks

of the nation-state system, namely the notions of sovereignty and territorial integrity

established in the 17th century in the Treaty of Westphalia. As such, no state could use

the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to justify intervention in another state’s

affairs. Sovereignty has always been the last refuge of the state. If internal policies

cannot be justified on a moral or legal basis, the state in the end asserts that the policies

are not open to external challenge for all states have the right to do what they please

within their own borders.

Parallel to the work of the Human Rights Commission, however, were Raphael Lemke’s

efforts to secure a genocide convention. Here the goal was to establish a kind of

exception to the standard of sovereignty if and only if a state attempted mass murder

against an ethnic group within its borders. This was a radical move. Even at the

Nuremburg trials, Nazi defendants were charged with crimes against humanity only in

the cases of German invasion of other countries; what German citizens did in Germany

to other German citizens did not count. The convention, which passed in 1948,

deliberately excluded political groups from its definition of the potentially victimized.

The genocide convention has had more hortatory than actual effect. As Samantha

Power makes clear in her 2002 book A Problem from Hell, all states have acknowledged

the importance of the genocide convention but very rarely have invoked it. States are

large, unwieldy creations. They do not act with moral conviction (though an occasional

leader will do so, for better or worse). Only the most slender efforts were made to

prevent ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Even less was done to stop the killings in Rwanda.

Very little is being done today, as we speak, to prevent the Sudanese government and its

proxy Arab militias from killing non-Arab Africans in Darfur. Human rights

organizations can bring attention to genocide, but they cannot by themselves stop the

killing. Nor can the international community, such that it is, stop genocide. Only states

have the means to prevent (or authorize the UN to prevent) genocide.

Although they haven’t been able to stop genocide, the human rights movement has had

measurable impact on the activities of states. Human rights movements played critical

roles in democratizing Eastern Europe, transforming governments throughout Latin

America, and making a profound difference for millions of people throughout Asia. As

critically, human rights movements have affected how putatively democratic

governments behave, for such movements have challenged pragmatic alliances that the

United States or European countries have maintained with dictatorial regimes.

7


Although democratic institutions are more widespread and human rights organizations

have greater power today than every before, states continue to oppress. A large gap

remains between the state as guarantor of rights and the state as the violator of rights.

When the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention were written

in the 1940s, there were great hopes that a newly emerging set of international

institutions would make states behave. This did not happen. In the 1990s, hopes were

renewed that the UN would step into the void of power created by the end of the Cold

War. Let me turn now to one of the chief reasons why an international system has been

slow to replace the old, creaking nation-state system.

American Exceptionalism

Although U.S. civil society and elements of the U.S. government have taken strong

stands on human rights issues, there are four major problems in the overall U.S.

approach, all of which have made it very difficult to construct an international set of

standards that can serve as a backbone for a peaceful, rights-respecting global system.

Reluctance to combat genocide

Refusal to compromise on “sovereignty”

Inconsistent application of human rights standards globally

Extralegality in counterterrorism operations

.

Although U.S. citizens were instrumental in pushing for the genocide treaty, the United

States did not ratify the treaty until 1988. Even while they quibbled over the terms of

the treaty, U.S. politicians solemnly promised that the European Holocaust would

“never again” happen. Actions did not live up to these words. The United States

condemned the Khmer Rouge during its reign of terror, but then backed the deposed

movement after the Vietnam invasion of 1979 in order to achieve a “balance of power”

in the region. In a similar effort to balance the power of Iran, the United States sided

with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The U.S. agricultural lobby also

blocked consideration of economic sanctions against Iraq when news of the slaughter of

Kurds began to leak out (Iraq was the 9th largest importer of U.S. food). The Clinton

administration decried the acts of the Serbian government and Bosnian Serbs in Bosnia,

but tended to blame all sides. While Croatia was certainly guilty of atrocities (Bosnia

committed considerably fewer), this tendency to assess blame evenly prevented the U.S.

government from backing more resolute action – more UN peacekeepers, NATO

8


bombings of Serb military targets – to prevent, for instance, the slaughter of 7,000

Bosnians at the supposedly “safe haven” of Srebrenica.

And when very credible reports began to emerge from Rwanda of Tutsi atrocities

against the Hutu minority, the Clinton administration refused to invoke genocide for

fear of being required, by international law, to support intervention into the crisis.

Approximately 800,000 Hutus were killed, approximately 80 percent of the Hutu

population in Rwanda. In the middle of the genocide, the U.S. government actually

prevented the UN from deploying 5500 troops when the Security Council finally

approved a measure to expand its forces. Only 800 men were deployed. Why didn’t the

United States act? In part, it was reluctant to oppose France, which was aligned with

the Tutsis and blocked intervention at the UN level. The United States also did not want

to be caught in a long conflict that could cost American lives, especially so soon after

the Mogadishu disaster and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Somalia. Nor was there

a Tutsi community in the United States putting pressure on the U.S. president or the

U.S. Congress. This was a clear case of the necessity of a “humanitarian intervention.”

It has been estimated that a force of 5,000 well-armed soldiers deployed immediately

could have prevented the bulk of the atrocities. But the United States, like other

countries, did not feel compelled, either politically or morally, to intervene.

While it is easy to make judgments about genocide after the fact, the choices at the time

are not always so clear. Take the example of Kosovo. In March 1999, the Clinton

administration finally used genocide as a rationale for instructing NATO for the first

time in its 50-year history to wage an actual war. NATO conducted bombing raids over

Serbia during which not a single NATO soldier died. Indeed, planes bombed from

much higher altitudes than would otherwise be effective simply to avoid anti-aircraft

fire. This led to several costly mistakes, such as killing a busload of Albanian refugees

– overall, approximately 500 civilians died during the bombing, according to Human

Rights Watch. Did the bombing work? 2500 Kosovars were killed in the year before

bombing. Within 11 weeks of the bombing, Serb forces killed roughly 10,000 (the exact

figures are still under dispute). But how many might have died if the bombing hadn’t

taken place? Would fewer innocent civilians have died if American fighter pilots had

flown at lower but riskier altitudes? These are not easy questions to answer.

The second problem of U.S. policy is the government’s refusal to tolerate any formal

infringement of its sovereignty. This has led the U.S. government to reject numerous

international treaties (UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, UN Covenant on

Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, the treaty on landmines, the Kyoto protocol on

global warming, the International Criminal Court) and to sign others only with

9


“reservations, understandings, and declarations” that render U.S. participation largely

nominal. Large powers have shown no qualms about infringing the sovereignty of other

countries – invading them, establishing “no-fly” zones, and insisting that they conform

to international rules of conduct. But only large countries, the United States most

prominently, are powerful enough to remain within the Westphalian system, retaining

the right of exclusive control over what happens within their borders.

The refusal of the United States to “play well with others” means that the international

norms governing genocide, human rights, fair working conditions and so on remain

weak. The United States argues that U.S. laws are more robust than any international

laws, but this insistence in fact is self-fulfilling. U.S. unilateralism flows from an

“exceptionalist” tradition that argues that the United States is an exception to the rules

that govern all other nations. The United States has a special role in history (which is

God-given, according to fundamentalists), has not suffered from foreign wars on its soil,

does not have the baggage of feudalism, and has the moral authority to spread

American-style democracy (and culture and economics) worldwide. If other countries

don’t understand this role, then the United States must go it alone.

The third problem is inconsistency in application of human rights standards. No U.S.

government – even the Carter administration – has been immune from economic and

political considerations when formulating human rights policy. U.S. economic interests

in Uganda, for instance, contributed to the Carter administration’s reluctance to impose

sanctions against the brutal Idi Amin. The Reagan administration adhered to Jeanne

Kirkpatrick’s distinction between “authoritarian” and “totalitarian” governments when it

ignored the human rights abuses of the former (Chile) and focused on the abuses of the

latter (Soviet Union). Subsequent U.S. governments have followed a similar pattern of

selective application. For our allies in the war on terrorism – Pakistan, Indonesia,

Uzbekistan – human rights has taken a backseat to military aid and trade. When the

United States needed China’s support last year for the war on Iraq, the administration

conveniently neglected to introduce a resolution on the human rights situation in the

country at the UN Human Rights Commission (this year, to deny the Democrats an easy

campaign issue, the administration dusted off its resolution because of Chinese

“backsliding”). Julie Mertus, in her valuable book Bait and Switch: Human Rights and

U.S. Foreign Policy, argues persuasively that the United States has systematically

refused to apply to itself the human rights standards to which it insists other countries

adhere. “In no presidency to date can we say that human rights norms have been

pervasively or consistently embedded in thought and action,” she writes.

In its recent “war on terrorism,” the Bush administration has highlighted a fourth

10


problem in U.S. policy – extralegality. While other administrations have skirted the law

in the past, the current administration has used counterterrorism to justify a sweeping

rejection of international standards on such matters as preventive war, political

assassination, secret military tribunals, torture, and illegal detentions. In order to limit

my remarks, let me focus on political assassination.

After the Watergate crisis, a Congressional hearing into covert activities uncovered a

wealth of information on U.S. complicity in political assassinations world wide. Here

was concrete proof that the United States was engaged in the oldest form of terrorism –

plotting to kill leaders such as Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro, and Salvador Allende

and killing as many as 20,000 opponents of the South Vietnamese government in the

Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War. As outraged legislators prepared a bill to

prevent the United States from engaging in such activities, President Ford stole their

thunder by issuing an executive order to the same effect. But there was a big difference

between the legislation and the executive order. The president could make exceptions to

the executive order. In 1989, the Bush Sr. administration asked for legal clarification of

this order. As journalist Mark Danner describes the clarification in Killing Pablo, “a

decision by the president to employ clandestine, low visibility or overt military force

would not constitute assassination if the U.S. military forces were employed against the

combatant forces of another nation, a guerrilla force, or a terrorist or other organization

whose actions pose a threat to the security of the United States.” This interpretation

permitted the United States to go after drug trafficker Pablo Escobar, Libyan leader

Muammar Qaddafi, and Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.

The Bush Jr. administration has relied heavily on this particular interpretation to

expedite its “war on terrorism.” In November 2002, CIA agents used an unmanned

Predator drone to kill a suspected high-ranking Al Qaeda lieutenant along with five

others. The attack took place outside a war zone. The five other victims not connected

to Al Qaeda were considered “collateral damage.” No judicial proceeding determined

the guilt or innocence of the targeted victim. The United States simply acted above the

law.

The United States is not alone in its inconsistent application of human rights standards,

the use of extrajudicial killings, the refusal to compromise sovereignty, and the refusal

to intervene to stop genocide. But as the largest and most powerful country in the

world, the United States is in a special position to establish precedents, lead by moral

example, and help create international institutions that can enforce collective decisions.

Conclusion: Beyond the State?

11


The state is at the same time the greatest protector of human rights and the greatest

oppressor. Jews, East Timorese, Bosnians have all struggled to build states as a check

against genocide and large-scale human rights violations. But as we can see from the

example of Israel, even the experience of genocide does not prevent a people from using

the state apparatus as a tool of oppression.

In the world that we live in – as opposed to the world that we want to live in – states are

a given. But go back only a hundred years and you will find an era in which colonial

empires were a given. Colonial empires co-existed with the nation-state system. As

colonial empires broke apart, new states emerged, which strengthened the inter-state

system and, ultimately, made the United Nations possible.

We are nearing the end of this process. Yes, there remain some peoples who are

struggling to create states – Kurds, Basques, Kosovars, Tibetans, Xinjiang Muslims,

Chechens. But new regional and international institutions may soon be able to offer

stateless peoples the kinds of protections and guarantees that once only a state could

provide. The European Union offers Basques and Bretons and Flemish and Lombards

and Corsicans and Roma a level of representation other than national. International

covenants on human rights and genocide, if backed by a standing army of peacekeepers,

will be more than mere pieces of paper. Multilateral humanitarian interventions, rather

than unilateral decisions or hastily assembled “coalitions of the willing,” will enforce

the collective decisions of an international community.

Between today’s world and the world of tomorrow stands what may well be the last

empire in history, the United States. As in Hobbes, the United States claims that it must

act as a Leviathan in order to prevent the world from slipping into chaos, a war of all

against all. The U.S. Leviathan, with its refusal to abide by international standards, is

holding the world back from building a new global system in the same way that the

British empire prevented the emergence of nation-states in the developing world. In the

world that Hobbes described, people supported the Leviathan to escape the chaotic state

of nature. But today, the world over, people are increasingly uncomfortable with U.S.

misuse of power. And poll after poll reveal that American citizens, too, do not want to

bear the costs and responsibilities of empire.

In South Korea, you have thrown off dictatorship, built democratic institutions, and

created one of the strongest civil societies in the world. Recently you held one of the

most exciting elections of the last decade. Now it is our turn to do the same in the

United States: so that we can together build an international system that makes genocide

and terrorism of all varieties a thing of the past .

12


13

The Slaughter of Innocents

Documents

Transcript of The Slaughter of Innocents