The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), a British think-tank, released a report this week entitled Shared Responsibilities - A National Security Strategy for the United Kingdom. The central policy recommendation of the report was that Britain needs to rethink its role on the world stage, to move away from the idea of Britain as a “mini me” United States and towards closer strategic military cooperation with its European allies. The report does not call for Britain to abandon its “special relationship” with the US, nor does it call for European defence and security cooperation as an alternative to NATO, rather it is of the view that Britain and Europe could play a more effective role in the alliance and on the world stage by working better together. For a very great many reasons, this analysis is absolutely spot on.

In 1962, then US Secretary of State Dean Acheson famously remarked that “Great Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role”. Almost half a century later, Britain resolutely maintains its shoulder-to-shoulder relationship with the United States as the most effective method of enhancing its global influence, though its European policy has been decidely more mixed. British foreign policy towards Europe has, at times, closer resembled a scene from Yes, Minister, in which Britain continues its centuries old European policy of divide and weaken on the continent, as opposed to treating its liberal-democratic European partners with the respect they deserve.

In assessing the direction any country’s foreign policy should take, it is necessary to take a more philosophical approach, grounded in historical lessons and current realities, than perhaps some people do. Those who oppose closer European security integration need to ask themselves why.

“The Global Village” is an apposite simile to describe how technology, the era of instantaneous communications and the ever closer economic integration of states have contracted the world  to the point that social and commerical relations can be had with someone on the other side of the earth as easily as if they lived in the same village. No nation is an island any longer, and those that try to be, such as North Korea and Iran, quickly discover that there’s nothing splendid about isolationism. Yet every coin has two sides, and just as the benefits of living in a global village are evident, so too the dangers posed by far away countries of which we hitherto knew nothing are also much more real than they used to be. In the 21st century, regional conflicts are much more likely to produce global shockwaves. Instability in Iran can produce a spike in global oil prices; conflict in Africa leads to hundreds of thousands of refugess fleeing to the West for asylum; the US housing market sneezes, and the global economy catches a very severe cold.

The bad news, given all this, is that the world is becoming a less, as opposed to a more secure and stable place. Global history since the end of the Second World War has given meaningful weight to the idea, first put forward by Immanuel Kant in his 1795 essay Perpetual Peace, though subsequently refined and modified, that democracy is much the most stable and benign form of government. Unfortunately, however, according to data from Freedom House, the number of liberal democracies in the world stands at just 89, a mere 46 per cent of the world’s 183 countries. Worse is the fact that global freedom suffered its third year of decline in 2008, and two of the countries named as heading in the wrong direction fastest, China and Russia, are also two of the world’s most influential, nuclear armed states, both with permanent, veto-wielding seats on the United Nations Security Council.

The decline of the West, relative to emerging nations is not yet terminal, but it is happening. If the United Kingdom wants to play its part in remaining influential on the world stage and promoting liberal democracy abroad, then it needs to realise that liberal democracies work best together. For all their historic differences with Europe, the British need to realise that closer economic, political and military integration is a guarantee, not a threat to their cherished way of life. In Britain, there is in some quarters an almost paranoid phobia of closer European integration as somehow a threat to everything honest, freedom-loving Britons hold dear. But let’s sit back for a moment and reflect on what exactly that way of life that we hold so dear actually is. Surely tolerance, freedom of speech and association, freedom of the press, and a legally enshrined respect for fundamental human rights are close to the top of the list. Working with, as opposed to competing with Europe will actually strengthen all these things. The EEC/EC/EU has proved itself to be hugely effective at maintaining peace amongst democracies within its borders, and encouraging liberal democratic reforms in those states outside the union that desperately want in. The likelihood of Europe threatening those other great British traditions, cricket on the green, warm ale and the freedom to complain about the weather, is unlikely to say the least. The greatest threat Europe poses to the British way of life is a sustained challenge to the imperial system of weights and measures.

If Britain wants to find genuine challenges to its traditional way of life, it needs to look beyond Europe’s borders, towards China, Russia, rogue states such as Iran and North Korea and trans-national terrorist organisations. In attempting to tackle all of these challenges, Britain will achieve far more by working with the EU, and other like-minded countries generally, than by pursuing, or even wishing to maintain the ability to pursue, a unilateralist foreign policy.

On the issue of combating terrorist activity it should be made clear from the outset that this is, overall a much bigger and more multifaceted problem than can be dealt with here. However, on a purely strategic level, it should be clear that multilateral cooperation is far more effective than unilateral action. Terrorists do not respect state borders, and countries serious about combatting terrorist activity need to be committed to cooperation on all levels, right from intelligence sharing up to coordinated military action. The reluctance of the Pakistani government to cooperate more fully with NATO in its efforts to combat the Taliban operating in the Hindu Kush has been greatly to the detriment of both, and Pakistan’s recent and well documented volte-face on this issue is a clear, if belated, realisation of this fact.

On the issue of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea, it is also the case that the United Kingdom cannot operate alone, and in fairness, it does not try to do so. As regards North Korea, there is little that anyone can do to alter the course of that regime, short of somehow persuading China that supporting a highly unstable, poverty-stricken, nuclear armed totalitarian dictatorship on its border is not in its best interests, even if doing so does spite the West. What influence can be had with China is most certainly better projected through the EU as a whole. Likewise on Iran, it is the case that the EU already seeks to coordinate its efforts, though it does not do so well enough. Iran is more dependent on the EU, even with all the existing sanctions, for imports than any single country, including China. If Europe were to use this influence in a bolder, and perhaps more creative manner, then it could wield greater influence in Tehran than it does at present.

On the issue of Russia and China, the challenges are multifaceted, and stem not only from their recent growth in wealth and power, but also from the increased ambition to exert influence abroad that generally accompanies such growth. None of this would be a problem, but for the fact that neither Russia nor China could be counted amongst countries with any meaningful respect for civil liberties and other democratic norms.

China has never made much of a pretence about the repressive nature of its regime. Russia, by contrast, puts up the pretence of being a democracy, whilst in actuality appears to be sliding backwards. In 2005, Freedom House declared Russia “Not Free”, down from “Partly Free”, citing the virtual elimination of opposition parties in the county, and the ever-tighter grip of the executive’s hold on power. The stage-managed 2008 presidential election, which the OSCE went so far as to boycott, and the fact that Russia still ranks as one of the most lethal countries in the world for journalists to operate in, does little to convince skeptics that Freedom House was mistaken in its judgement.

In and of itself this is bad enogugh, but as just mentioned, what is worse is that both countries are currently in the process of seeking to align themselves as alternatives to the United States as poles of global influence. Russia’s recent hosting of the BRIC conference (Brazil, Russia, India and China) in Yekaterinberg, though failing to agree on much, nonetheless signified an overt desire to look for alternatives to the current, Western-led global economic status-quo. Likewise, President Medvedev was candid in his declaration of Russian intent to gain greater influence in Africa, during his visit to the continent that almost immediately followed the BRIC conference. China, likewise, has been increasing its influence in Africa for a number of years, and its booming economy, perhaps most vividly demonstrated by the fact that as a January 2009, it holds a staggering 24 per cent of US public debt, make it a country the West can no longer ignore.

Where this becomes a problem is that both countries, if not actively promoting their political systems abroad, are becoming increasingly assertive in their opposition to Western efforts to promote liberal democratic progress in the developing world. Russia has been traumatised by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the seemingly unstoppable gravitation of former Soviet republics Westward, first into NATO, and then, in many cases, into the European Union itself. Its invasion of Georgia in August last year, and the de facto annexation of the semi-autonomous regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, sent a clear message that Russia is no longer willing to tolerate the perpetual Westernisation of what it sees as its neighbourhood. Likewise, Russia has proved itsef increasingly willing to use its huge gas and oil reserves as a political weapon, particularly against Ukraine since its so-called “Orange Revolution” of 2004-05.

China, meanwhile, in seeking to exert its economic reach in the developing world, has operated on a strict policy of political non-interference in the states with which it seeks to trade, however unsavoury the regime. Nowhere has this policy been more in evidence than in Sudan, 80 per cent of whose exports go to China, and 85 per cent of those in the form of fuel and raw materials that China’s booming economy badly needs. The consequence of this live and let buy mode of foreign policy, which China regularly enforces by way of its veto power on the UN Security Council, is that the genocidal regime of Omar al-Bashir is able to cling to power. Both countries, indeed, regularly use the threat of their vetoes on the UN Security Council to water down meaningful resolutions that seek to promote democratic reforms and the protection of human rights in the developing world. As the humanitarian catastrophe began to unfold in Sri Lanka in April, China and Russia prevented even the discussion of the issue in a proposed resolution put forward by France, claiming it was a strictly internal matter.

Where does all of this leave Britain? On all of these issues, the United Kingdom will have more influence working with Europe than competing with it. Some people may well ask at this point, “Why should we care what happens abroad? How other countries govern themselves is none of our business, and the Iraq war has shown us the danger of foreign meddling.” Yet even if an altruistic concern for universal human rights does not sway such people, the simple equation, democracy equals peace equals prosperity, should. The fact is that efforts at democratic promotion are of proven economic benefit both to the promoters and those on the receiving end. Data from the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Peace Index puts figures on a fact that most people know to be true merely from the benefit of their own observations, namely that democracies are more peaceful than other forms of government, and that peace provides greater prosperity than conflict. Measuring the economic benefits of conflict against the economic benefits of peace, the Index has calculated that global conflict costs the world $7.2 trillion more than it generates. Add to this the fact that 19 of the 20 most peaceful countries in the world are democracies, the vast majority of those being amongst the world’s most prosperous nations, and the link between democratic forms of government and economic prosperity becomes evident.

Prosperous and stable states provide countries such as the United Kingdom with greater trading opportunities whilst simultanously reducing the vast economic and increasingly social burden of foreign development assistance, and absorbing refugees and asylum seakers from failed or conflict-ridden states. A much more robust commitment to the promotion of democracy in the developing world should not be seen as unrealistic idealism, but as the central plank of a pragmatic foreign policy.

In seeking such promotion, the EU is ideally placed. It posesses the foreign policy weapon to beat all others in the 21st century global village, one that it has already used to great effect in its eastern neighbourhood: Money. The EU accounts for a larger share of world trade, for both imports and exports, than any country, and it also has the largest economy on the planet bar none. Money talks, as the saying goes, and it has been the desire to get a larger slice of that prosperity that has seen so many ex-Soviet-bloc countries bending over backwards to implement the kind of civil and democratic reforms that would almost certainly not have been so quickly forthcoming had the economic incentives of EU membership not been in place. The EU needs to use all of the economic carrots at its disposal to encourage the developing world of the merits of democratic reforms, whilst concomitantly making the case that democracy is in the long term economic interests of such countries anyway. Unfortunately, Western efforts to promote democracy and the rule of law abroad are still seen by many in the developing world as thinly disguised attempts at neo-colonialism. Robert Mugabe has tried to fool his citizens with this mantra for many years, and the accusations currently being made by the Iranian government against the United Kingdom are clearly born of a similar objective. The EU, and the West in general, needs to learn to make the case far better that democracy is as much a rational pragmatic choice as it is an ideology.

It cannot be emphasised enough that a vigorous and unified commitment to the promotion of democracy abroad should be at the very top of the foreign policy agendas of all liberal democracies everywhere. The greater the number of countries that share our value systems, the fewer the threats we have to face. As the Prussian soldier and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously observerd: “War is just politics by another means”. It is also the most costly form of politics, and more often than not, it is not a long term solution to the divisions that provoked the conflict in the first place. Better by far, if possible, is to use all the means at your disposal to persuade the opposing side of the benefits of your point of view, thus negating the need for conflict altogether. This will surely come as a statement of the blindingly obvious, and yet amazingly, so much of our foreign policy at present appears to be conducted without much consideration for what should be a guiding principle. Britain, like most other European countries, seems to spend most of its time seeking specific resolutions to localised issues, with little appetite for an overarching strategy of fundamental reform that could and should guide all such efforts. Britain needs to increase the ambition of its foreign policy efforts in this regard, and the obvious vehicle through which this might be achieved is of course the European Union.

In the interim period, Britain needs to accept that on a military and strategic level, Britannia now needs Europe if it wishes to rule the waves. This is not, as stated at the outset, to suggest that Europe should develop a military strategy that seeks to divorce itself from  NATO. Rather, Europe must establish itself as a stronger and more viable partner of the alliance than it is at present. Far too many Britons who oppose what they see as a European “challenge” to NATO seem to equate, whether they realise it or not, a wholehearted commitment to the alliance with a total dependence upon the United States for its continued existence.  NATO would be a far stronger entity than it is at present if European states worked harder at integrating their military systems and developing common foreign policy objectives that could more easily become those of the alliance.

The rise of China, and to a lesser extent the re-emergence of Russia, are demonstrations of the fact, already touched upon, that in the 21st century, the United States will not remain the unchallenged locus of global influence. The United Kingdom has not enjoyed such a position since the end of the 19th century. Yet in today’s world, neither Britain nor the United States needs to seek global influence independent of any other country. Liberal democracies can and should work more closely together to collectively enhance their global influence on a permanent basis. Geo-politically speaking, the countries of the European Union are particularly well placed to effect such an integration. Britain, in particular, needs to realise that in the 21st century global players work best in teams.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has begun his campaign for June’s presidential elections in typical style, calling Iran’s enemies “dogs” and exhorting his countrymen to stay the aggressive, isolationist course he has taken them down insisting “if you retreat, they attack. If you attack, they retreat.” The best possible attack the Iranian people could stage in June and the one that would be most likely to force the retreat of Iran’s “enemies”, would be to exercise the democratic rights Iranians still have and eject Mr Ahmadinejad from power. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a self-fulfilling prophecy, or rather, a self-fulfilling nightmare. He and others in the ultra conservative Iranian regime live in a perpetual siege mentality, convinced that all those around them seek nothing but their destruction. The policy and the oratory that this in turn perpetuates, mainly the relentless pursuit of nuclear capabilities, active support for Hezbollah and Hamas amongst others, and repeated calls for Israel’s destruction does nothing but add external pressure on Iran, in turn further convincing the regime that all the world is out to get them, and on it goes.

The possibility of successful external engagement with this regime is next to none. Only if the moderates and reformists in Iran can defy the Ayatollahs and vote in a president receptive to co-operation with the outside world can they hope to see the kind of foreign retreat that Mr Ahmadinejad and doubtless they themselves are looking for. This is by no means a wholly implausable possibility. Contrary to the images usually shown on Western televisions, of swarms of Iranians chanting death to America and death to Israel after Friday prayers, the majority of Iranians seek reconciliation with the West and others in the Middle East, as opposed to further confrontation. From reformers to conservatives, one of the latest reports on Iranian public opinion shows that more Iranians favour cooperation with other Middle Eastern countries than any other course, including seeing Iran the dominant power in the region. Likewise, over 60 per cent believe that it is possible to find common cultural ground with the West. Perhaps most revealing, however, is that more than 90 per cent of all Iranians wish to forego nuclear weapons. All of this is in very stark contrast with the public ravings of Ahmadinejad and it is also at odds with much popular Western opinion about ordinary Iranians.

The economic and political consequences of Ahmadinejad’s wretched isolationism are clearly taking their toll. Yet in spite of the aspirations of most Iranians for a rapprochement with the outside world, many remain highly suspicious of it. The Iranian government still enjoys the support of most Iranians, and the truth is that just as Ahmadinejad is bringing about his own worst fears through the policies he pursues, so Western policy towards Iran can also be its own worst enemy.

For some reason, strategists, politicians and diplomats on both sides seem either unwilling or unable to put themselves in the other man’s shoes. Neither the West nor Israel seems to take sufficient account of why Iran pursues the policies that it does, instead focusing exclusively on how to stop those policies from being realised. This is nowhere more evident than in the West’s approach to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Clearly, the ambition for nuclear capability is not an end in itself but a means to an end. In the eyes of the Iranian regime, nuclear capability equals greater security and greater regional influence. But security from what and influence why? It is precisely because the regime believes that all the world is out to get them that they are so desperate to acquire a nuclear bomb. The harder the West pushes Iran, and the louder Israel rattles the sabre, the more convinced becomes the regime of the need for a bomb to silence them. The current regime is beyond redemption, and Ahmadinejad’s latest utterances show that. However, that is not to say that the Iranian people themselves cannot still be won round. Yet to do this, both the West and Israel may need to radically rethink their strategy towards Iran. It is here that Aesop’s fable of the sun and the wind comes to mind: the harder you push another to do something they do not want to do, the harder they will resist, particularly if they feel threatened.

This is especially true of Israel. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported yesterday that one in four Israelis would consider leaving the country if Iran got the bomb, reflecting growing concern that Iran’s nuclear ambitions may soon be realised. Israel has made it clear that it cannot and will not tolerate such a thing coming to pass, and has warned both Iran and the international community, in not quite so many words, that it will not hesitate to bomb Irananian nuclear facilities if the international community and the IAEA cannot convince the regime to give up its nuclear ambitions peacefully. With the election of Likud right-winger Binyamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister in March, the chance of a tempered Israeli policy towards Iran is smaller still. Yet the international community, and in particular the United States, cannot allow Israel to pursue this course, for if there is one thing that would unite Iranians behind Ahmadinejad and the need for nuclear capabilities, it would be military action against Iran. At present, most Iranians still believe that nuclear ambition is costing more than it’s worth. Nothing would change that view quicker than military strikes.

The campaign that the West needs to wage in Iran in the run up to the June elections, is one that convinces Iranians of the horrendous counterproductivity of the current regime’s actions. Iranians must be made to believe that the very things Ahmadinjad’s programme hopes to achieve - military and economic security and regional respect and influence - can only be achieved through working with, as opposed to against the international community. Unfortunately, an insufficient number of Iranians still believe this, partly because the United States and Israel have threatened Iran with too much stick, with very few real carrots in sight. The reason so many Iranians burn the American flag each Friday after prayers is because they see the United States as implaccably opposed to themselves and everything they stand for. Labelled part of the “Axis of Evil” by George W. Bush, there may have been truth in this under the previous administration. Obama needs to show Iranian’s that this is no longer so, and that means a huge PR campaign that reaches ordinary Iranians to convince them of this. There are signs that Obama is already working in this direction. Haaretz also reported yesterday that “Israel’s military option against Iran has died”, thanks to pressure from the Obama administration forbidding any such action. Whether this is actually so remains to be seen.

Either way, the first rule in politics is always that perception is as, if not more important than reality. In actually convincing Iranians that the West is not out to get them, the US and others need to make a much bigger effort.

The recent release of a video showing the brutal torture of a grain dealer accused of short-changing Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, one of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) 22 sheikhs, is a rare and graphic depiction of the reality of torture. The response of the US State Department, urging “all governments to investigate allegations of criminal acts” has been predictably tepid.  One of the greatest staines on the reputation of the Bush administration was allegations of torture by the CIA of terror suspects and secret renditions to third countries where suspects were allegedly tortured. To his credit, Barack Obama recently chose to declassify documents detailing CIA “harsh interrogation” techniques, techniques that he banned during his first week in office.

Yet in spite of his repudiation of torture as a legitimate method of interrogation, Obama has refused to allow those responsible to be prosecuted saying that “those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice… will not be subject to prosecution”. In saying this Obama managed to violate not only the Constitution of the United States, which clearly separates the mandate of the executive and the judiciary, but also the United Nations Convention Against Torture of which the US is a signatory.

Article 1.1 of the convention clearly defines torture as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession”. Article 4 commits all signatory states to punishing those convicted of torture and crucially in this instance, Article 2.3 clearly states that “an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.”

The Convention Against Torture aside, Obama’s logic of sparing those accused of involvement in such acts on the grounds that they were only obeying orders is highly flawed and deeply dangerous. In saying this, what Obama has effectively done is endorsed the view that it is alright for citizens to violate human rights and international law on the ground that their government says so. This is not the way to go about running an accountable democracy with genuine respect for the rule of law, nor is it the way to set an example that you wish others to follow, not least the UAE.

Obama’s decision is all the more bizarre in light of his public condemnation of torture as a method of interrogation, and moreover, given his public desire to reintegrate the US back into the international human rights framework. At the end of March 2009, the US announced its  intention to join the UN Human Rights Council (UNHCR) and insodoing put forward its “Human Rights Commitments and Pledges“, a document that all UNHCR members produce. One of the first sentences declares:  “As the United States seeks to advance human rights and fundamental freedoms around the world, we do so cognizant of our own commitment to live up to our ideals at home and to meet our international human rights obligations”.

These lofty aspirations seem hollow in light of Obama’s recent statements. Some commentators have called on critics to be more “pragmatic”, arguing that terror suspects pose a very real threat to national security. Much public opinion appears to support this view. According to World Public Opinion, on average, just nine per cent of people support the use of torture as a legitimate method of interrogation. That figure balloons to 26 per cent if used “on terrorists to save innocent lives”.

Former US vice president Dick Cheney has called on Obama to release memos detailing the efficacy of torture at obtaining confessions. Yet to accede to this logic is to set another very dangerous precedent. By its very nature, torture operates outside the rule of law and serves as an alternative to legitimate interrogation as a means by which to extract information. It goes without saying that torture does not come with a fair trial. The reason members of the public believe it is more acceptable to torture suspected terrorists is that they cannot envisage themselves being included in that group. Yet, in the abscence of a fair trial, what is there to distinguish between a dissident and a terrorist, or to distinguish between a genuine and a false confession with any degree of certainty?

Likewise, those suspected of torture must be tried. To try is not automatically to prosecute. There are some who say that the methods used by the CIA fell short of actual torture because they left no lasting physical or psychological damage and were not intended to cause severe pain. If a court agrees then the accused will be acquitted and the CIA’s reputation would be greatly improved by submitting to the process. But justice must be allowed to take its course and to be seen to do so. If the rule of law is to have legitimacy then no-one can be above it, not even the security services. Furthermore, the investigation must be permitted to go to the very top if it deems it necessary, up to and including trying the  former president. If Barack Obama fails to allow an investigation into the CIA torture cases, then he cannot protest the actions of Sheikh Issa with any degree of legitimacy. This is not to say that those members of the CIA accused of torturing terror suspects went about it with anything like the same degree of severity and sadistic pleasure of Sheikh Issa. But torture is torture. Either it is permissable or it isn’t. The US cannot adopt a “do as I say, not as I do” approach to foreign policy; it must lead by example. Obama’s decisions to close Guantanamo Bay and to outlaw “harsh interrogation” were almost universally popular and in that sense they were easy. For Obama at least, the question of whether or not prosecutions should be permitted may not be so straightforward. But if he is not willing to take that decision then he cannot complain if and when the UAE’s “investigation” into Sheikh Issa’s behaviour fails to deliver justice. In fact, he might as well just tell the sheikh to carry on.

The extradition of four men wanted by the Rwandan High Court was blocked today by two British judges on the grounds there is a “real risk” they will suffer a “flagrant denial of justice”.

The men, Dr Vincent Bajinya, Emmanuel Nteziryayo, Charles Munyaneza and Celestin Ugirashebuj are wanted on charges of Mass Murder committed during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu “sympathisers” were massacred in 100 days.

The concerns aired by the judges are not unreasonable, particularly since Rwanda is currently ruled by Paul Kagame, the Tutsi leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front that eventually overthrew the genocidal Hutu regime. The right of every human being to a fair trial, as proclaimed by Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights means they should not go.

However, it is a shocking indictment of the international criminal justice system that no other court exists in which they can be tried, meaning that these men have effectively been granted impunity for the forseable future. As things stand at present, only if the Rwandan government seeks, and obtains, an order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that the United Kingdom hand over the men will they stand trial in Rwanda. This does not, however, solve the problem that that trial probably would not be fair.

There has also been mention of an Early Day Motion being submitted to the British Parliament calling for a change in legislation that would allow for the men to be tried in the UK. This idea has actually been put forward by one of the four, Vincent Bajinya. However, the chances of this succeeding are slim and the suitability of such a course of action is anyway highly questionable.

The obvious alternative court in which to try the men would seem to be the UN mandated International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), but the ICTR’s jurisdiction only extends to high level figures in the genocide. Lower level figures such as the four men in question are tried by the national courts. Besides which, the ICTR has only managed to sentence 39 individuals to date, and it is due to wind up its work in 2010, though this date may be extended. It could reasonably be argued that perhaps the authority of the ICTR should be extended to cover lower level criminals, but that is not the case at present. Besides which, the ICTR is a very specific body with a very specific geographical and temporal mandate. There needs to be a permanent body with a mandate to try the most serious crimes no matter where and when they were committed. That body is, or rather should be, the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague.

Unfortunately the ICC is hamstringed in a number of different ways. The first problem is the so-called rule of complimentarity, which stipulates that the ICC can exercise jurisdiction over a serious international crime only if no state is willing and able to prosecute the crime itself. The second problem for the ICC is that its jurisdiction only extends to those citizens of the 108 countries that have signed up to the court or to individuals whose crimes were committed on the territory of a member state.  The only other ways by which the ICC  can derive the jurisdiction to prosecute a crime is through the express request of the United Nations Security Council or if a non-member state permits the ICC to exercise its jurisdiction in the case of a particular crime. None of these conditions are met in the case of the four men in question. Not only that, but at present the ICC is only mandated to prosecute crimes committed after it came into existance on 1 July 2002 or in the case of a new member, after it has ratified the Rome Statute.

As it stands at present, the international justice system is wholly inadequate for the task it is supposed to fulfil because the most inviolate principle of post-1945 geopolitics - the absolute sovereignty of the nation state - still trumps what is supposed to be the second great pillar of the post-war international consensus:  the universality of human rights.

Those who argue that, for practical reasons as much as anything else, the ICC cannot become the first court of redress for all the world’s ills are of course correct. The ICC must remain a place at which only those charged wirh the most serious crimes can be tried. However, the court’s raison d’être, namely bringing individuals to justice from states that are either unable or unwilling to prosecute, needs to be extended to the point that the court’s jurisdiction is truly universal. Furthermore, it needs to be given the authority to try crimes committed before 1 July 2002.

Doubtless many international lawyers would object to these suggestions. International law has been founded upon consensus. At present, no state on earth is party to any international convention or organisation that it has not chosen to sign up to. There are many good reasons for this modus operandi, not least of which is that social, religious and cultural differences mean that internationally, laws vary. Yet the ICC does not deal with such laws, its jurisdiction covers only the most serious crimes, namely the crime of genocide; crimes against humanity; war crimes and the crime of aggression. Surely it is not beyond the realms of possibility to achieve consensus on the point that those accused of such crimes must stand trial, no matter who they may be and where on earth they may happen to live. Ideally, the prosecution of such crimes will be the responsibility of the individual state, but where a state proves unable or unwilling to prosecute, there must be an effective court of last resort. The International Criminal Court will continue to be a misnomer so long as as its jurisdiction stops at the borders of states that don’t want to play ball.

The issue of retroactive legislation is, if anything trickier still. One of the basic principles of law is that it must be certain. An action cannot be legal one day and then prosecutable the next. Legislation can be passed that makes an action that was once legal now illegal, but prosecutions of that action can and should only take place after the new law has come into effect. It would not be right for an individual to be hauled up on charges of filing his tax return incorrectly a year ago because the law on how to correctly file tax returns has changed since that point. Only if the tax return wrongly filed after the new law came into effect could that individual be prosecuted.

Yet this is not the case with the ICC. The crimes it was set up to try were crimes in 1994, they were crimes at the time of the inception of the ICC and they are crimes now. Some will point out that what constitutes the crime of genocide and what constitutes the crime of aggression is still not fully agreed upon, yet that is just as much the case now, after the establishment of the ICC with its authority to try such crimes, as it was in 1994.

It has been pointed out on more than one occassion that international institutions such as the ICC (or the UN for that matter) are only as effective as the most powerful states wish them to be. The biggest stumbling block for the ICC has so far been that for almost the entirety of its short existence it has been confronted by an American administration singularly opposed to the idea that any international institution should be able to exercise jurisdiction over American citizens without the express permission of the United States.

Such was the opposition of America to the notion of an ICC with universal jurisdiction under the Bush administration that on 30 June 2002, the day before the Rome Statute was to come into force, the US declared that it would vote against a resolution renewing for 6 months the mandate of the UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH) and threatened to do the same with respect to all other UN peacekeeping operations if US military personnel participating in such operations were not granted an exemption from the ICC’s jurisdiction.

The upshot of this was United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1422, which stipulated that in the case of UNSC mandated operations, any incidents involving personnel of contributing states not party to the Rome Statute would not fall under the jurisdiction of the ICC for a period of twelve months unless the UNSC (on which the US has a veto) expressly stated otherwise. Subsequent UNSC resolutions to the same effect have if anything weakened the authority of the ICC still further.

The announcement by President Obama on 31 March that America would seek a seat on the UN’s Human Rights Council has been hailed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon as indicative of “a new era of engagement” on the part of the United States. The fact that it would be a struggle to be less engaged than the former Bush administration should not detract from this.

However, if the United States is really serious about engaging with the international community, then it also needs to ratify the Rome Statute as a matter of urgency. That being done, the US needs to use its considerable global influence - and President Obama his considerable global credibility - to push for a renegotiation of the Rome Statute to make the jurisdiction of the ICC truly universal and applicable to crimes committed no matter what their date.

Not only that, but the hitherto mentioned rule of conditionality also needs to be modified. International lawyers such as Kevin Heller have argued persuasively that the “unable or unwilling” clause of the Rome Statute that allows the ICC to step in if a state proves itself unable or unwilling to prosecute only applies if a state is making it more difficult to prosecute an individual. The statute does not permit the ICC to step in if a state’s inequitable legal process makes a conviction less difficult, as would be the case in Rwanda at present. Though there is disagreement amongst international lawyers on this issue, the very fact of such disagreement is argument enough to modify the statute so as to extend beyond question the ICC’s authority to cases where an inadequate respect for due process on the part of a nation state would make a conviction easier to obtain in addition to a conviction being made too difficult.

There is an unpleasant imbalance in the international justice system at present. The issue of the four Rwandans whose extradition has been denied by the British courts is paradigmatic of the problem. Had the extradition been granted, the system at present stipulates that they must stand trial in Rwanda, though they would certainly not receive a fair trial. With the extradition request refused, it now appears that these men may not face a court at all. This is what is known as international injustice. What is worse is that it is unnecessary international injustice, and it needs to change.