Lefty Lawyers' Wank-Fest As Marshall Islands Sues Nuclear States In ICJ

The Republic of the Marshall Islands (pop 68,000) has decided to sue the nine nuclear weapons states in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Why?

Because Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) states that:

“Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

The Marshall Islands’ claim is that the five nuclear states who have signed the NPT: USA, Russia, China, Britain and France have violated Article VI by “not pursuing nuclear disarmament negotiations in good faith” and “instead, taking actions to improve their nuclear weapons systems and to maintain them for the indefinite future”.

Despite not actually being signatories to the NPT, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel are also included in the suit.

The claim is that signing the NPT makes these states legally liable to attempt to enact all of its articles. They must therefore be bound by the ICJ to do so.

Hmm … could there possibly be a flaw in this line of reasoning?

Oh yes, that’s right … international law and the ICJ are largely a fantasy of international socialists and pompous, hubristic lawyers like Geoffrey Robertson.

Read about the structure and function of the ICJ, in particular, its jurisdictions and it is immediately obvious that any authority the ICJ has is derived from either:

1.      The UN Security Council being able and willing to enforce its judgements.

2.      The mutual consent of both parties in a dispute to be bound by the Court’s decision.

The Court has in the past been used to provide a layer of legal legitimacy to diplomatic actions, such as its first ever case, in which Britain sued Albania over two of its ships hitting mines in the Corfu Channel. The ICJ found in favour of Britain and awarded damages of £843,947. Of course, the Albanians refused to pay, which the British always knew they would. However, Britain was also holding 1,574 kg of Albanian gold, which they kept.

The Court can be useful if both parties intend to employ it in good faith, such as in the Gulf of Maine maritime border dispute between the USA and Canada.

However, one party may simply withdraw its consent after a verdict it doesn’t like. This would then require the UN Security Council to implement some enforcement action, such as diplomatic and economic sanctions, or even military action.

Of course, if the party which withdraws its consent, or otherwise chooses to ignore the ICJ’s decision is one of the five permanent members of the Security Council with veto powers (the five nuclear weapons states listed above), or one of their allies, or even one of the other four nuclear armed states, a contrary ICJ decision is effectively unenforceable.

A case in point is Nicaragua’s complaint against the USA resulting from the United States’ continuing support of the Contras. The Court found in favour of Nicaragua and awarded reparations against the USA, which predictably ignored the judgement.

An easier route is for states to withdraw or modify their declaration of consent to submit to ICJ arbitration. An example is Australia, who modified their declaration in 2002 to exclude disputes on maritime boundaries. Clearly, this was to prevent an impending challenge from East Timor, who gained their independence two months later.

Even in the case of the many international treaties which contain a compromissory clause providing for dispute resolution by the ICJ, if one party simply decides to ignore the Court and that party has sufficient military or economic strength, there is little in practice which can be done.

What do the Marshall Islands and their lawyers believe will be the outcome of their suit?

Have a look at the list of the 15 current ICJ judges. Although it’s not compulsory within the ICJ articles, there has always been one judge from each of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (there cannot be more). So, I suppose it’s diplomatically compulsory. India also has a judge on the current panel. I think we can guess which way these 6 judges will vote. The concept of judicial independence from their respective governments is laughably naïve, especially in the cases of Russia, China and India. The British, French and American judges may possibly vote against the policy of their current governments if they were appointed by the previous ones, but in this matter, I doubt it.

Even if all 9 of the remaining judges find in favour of the Marshall Islands’ claim, does anyone believe this action will achieve anything meaningful?

In reality, the USA, Russia, China, Britain and France have violated Article VI from the moment they signed it. This facile statement was never anything other than “do as I say, not as I do”; arch diplomatic hypocrisy. But did anyone bar the most naïve internationalist expect otherwise? India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel aren’t even signatories to the NPT, so what the Marshall Islands and their lawyers believe the ICJ will say in relation to them is beyond me.

Is their goal to use the Court as a vehicle for exhibiting the nuclear powers’ hypocrisy? This hardly requires the ICJ.

In reality, this whole charade is an exercise in legal and academic onanism. A bunch of international socialist lawyers, self importantly strutting about, debating or rather, preaching on the wrongs of nuclear weapons, all at taxpayers’ expense.

Because who is footing the bill for this pseudo-intellectual wank?

The taxpayers of the countries who fund the ICJ. Even if the Marshall Islands pays a significant amount of the cost of its suit, look at its economy. The majority of its GDP is US foreign aid, although much of that could be viewed as compensation for the nuclear tests. Any ICJ legal bill will be paid by the American taxpayers.

I’m not entirely convinced the Marshall Islands should even be an independent nation. Material steps toward independence began under that great and decisive American leader, Jimmy Carter. Why the Reagan administration allowed them to follow through to actual sovereignty, I’m not sure. Perhaps there was a more cynical reason. If the Marshall Islands were formally annexed by the United States, it may have opened the way for more law suits and even larger compensation over the environmental damage from the atomic tests on Bikini Atoll.

Of course, whatever the ICJ says, it will be ignored by any state with nuclear weapons. In the event the ICJ decides to hear the suit AND finds in favour of the Marshall Islands, some sanctimonious, delusional wanker will probably write an article for the Guardian, in which they will claim that Britain is now not only morally, but legally obliged to take meaningful steps to eliminate its nuclear arsenal. Some middle class twat might start a petition on change.org.

But nothing meaningful will happen as a result. Nor should it.

What would you think if your government abrogated its right to maintain a nuclear arsenal to a court which “as a whole must represent the main forms of civilization and the principal legal systems of the world”?

Thankfully, the majority of Western citizens still expect our governments to defend our own civilization against the vastly more corrupt and oppressive civilizations of Asia, Africa and the Middle East and their so called “legal systems”.