The Belmont Club begins a debate over how we should change Internaional Law engendered by a speech given by John Reid, UK Secretary of State for Defense: "20th-Century Rules, 21st-Century Conflict".
This is vitally important since America's ability to defend its citizens depends very much on it's political figures ability to detect and react to threats before thousands of us are killed.
The Liberal position defense parallels the Hollywood version of the shootout in “westerns:” the good guy always drew last (and the bad guy was either slower or always missed.) This is not only not the way gunfights happened in the real old west, it’s not the way I want our government to act.
Excerpt:
Mr Reid said that the strategic landscape and its threats were new and unprecedentedly complex, with interlocking uncertainties in the ecological, economic, political and social spheres. The barbarism and lack of constraint of our terrorist opponents made it necessary to consider considering the legal framework in which they and we operated .[snip]
Reid's points taken together comprehensively call into question the international constitutional system. It is unlikely the issues raised by those questions will be resolved any time soon because those issues are typically addressed by the victors after a war (Utrecht, Westphalia, Vienna, Versailles, etc) to codify a consensus that has emerged in the course of events. All one can say with the conflict still in progress is that current concepts of the Rules of War, pre-emption and territorial sovereignty will be called into question; that they will change under the pressure of future events is all but certain; but what they will change into is anybody's guess.
Read the whole thing...
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