Human rights: Food for a deadly thought ‘HR and war’
HRR 755
[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about factors that lead to the inevitability of wars from the perspective of those who benefit from them. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
–While the dead of most wars so far could be counted, those of the next one will probably have no one to count them. (Fernando Ayala)
1. The preparation for war begins in the minds of the citizens. Suddenly, leading politicians from the ‘international community’ (really meaning the USA and the European Union) begin to suggest the idea that war is inevitable in order to defend the values of Western civilization.* There is no question about what these values are or what the threat consists-of, but the solemnity of the speeches suggests that the threat is serious and that swift action is needed. (Boaventura de Sousa Santos)
*: Wars can be prevented! See war could have been prevented if the UN-Charta had been observed (Michael von der Schulenburg)
2. You see? Wars, in one way or another, are nothing but an extension of the free market, a business opportunity …i.e., business as usual. (Louis Casado)
3. War is at the service of Capitalism and colonialism in many forms. It is always the result of a massive manipulation of fear and the creation of conditions of vulnerability, deprivation, precariousness, and the erosion of social rights that affect ever larger populations. Above all, it results from the fragmentation of those that struggle to resist all this. The greater the fragmentation, the more invisible power and dominance become.
4. The role of capitalist corporations in promoting global militarism cannot be overlooked. Corporate interests are profiting immensely off of wars and the arms industry has long benefited from the rise of the so-called ‘war on terrorism’. (escr-net) [Nothing new here].
The rhetoric to promote war goes through several stages
5. Warlords always start by promoting war in the name of preserving peace. They aggravate conflict situations, justifying them as measures to stop conflict from spreading. They take offensive measures while claiming they are defensive. This rhetoric serves to numb the consciences of peace activists. When this objective is largely achieved, a new phase begins: the demonization and persecution of those who remain steadfast in the struggle for peace. Suddenly they are discredited as being in the service of the enemy (and, God forbid, in the service of human rights), financed by the enemy, traitors to the patriotic cause of the noble war effort to preserve peace and Western civilization. Discreditation is followed by active persecution.** Finally, electoral processes are manipulated so that the promoters of militarism always win. (B. de Sousa Santos)
**: On the other hand, what was not said above, the exponential profits of arms companies are now hailed as a sign of the strength of the economy, whereas before they were pejoratively considered ‘the merchants of death’ or ‘war profiteers’.
6. We must also keep in mind the effects of what is called external war pressures, because the concept of ‘war’ does not only mean war in the traditional style —a war of soldiers and conventional weapons— but also the use of all kinds of means to overthrow a political regime and its rulers. This pressure wields disproportionate power in undermining human rights (HR) and international law. (Ramon Soriano)
Speaking of international law
7. The Geneva Conventions are contradictory, because their underlying ethos tolerates war while striving to make war humane. However, the reality is that wars are always hellish. The absurdity of humanizing wars is obvious. As our television screens testify to it: there are few clean ways to fight. [Meanwhile, where do the Geneva Conventions stand on those providing weaponry and related lethal assistance to various theatres of combat?]. The application of the Conventions’ provisions is absurdly ambivalent and the sponsors of wars take advantage of this. (Mukesh Kapila)
8. Empires in decline (like that of the United States), assert themselves through war or the threat of war –when it is not actually dominated by the permanent war machine fed by the industrial-military complex: All in the name of defending the economic relevance of neo-liberalism despite all its failures and the emergence of extremist versions (Javier Milei in Argentina, Daniel Noboa in Ecuador, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, to name just a few in Latin America). Empires on the rise, like that of China, proposes a non-neoliberal capitalism with strong state intervention and state control of financial capital —also dominated by a war machine? (adapted from B. de Sousa Santos).
9. Major Northern NGOs (some even HR NGOs) have aligned themselves with US foreign policy and applauded –even demanded— the use of force to protect HR [a contradiction?] Scholars and politicians have actually constructed legal and political justifications for interventionism that amount to using a singular focus on military force by international actors as the only way to protect populations from gross HR violations. (Ntina Tzouvala) [Hmm, something does not make sense to me here, does it?].
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com