America threatens an epidemic of freedom

Well, at least the claim that it's all about oil has collapsed. Even Martin Amis has to admit that. In a richly comic contribution to the debate, published in yesterday's Guardian, Mr Amis pronounced that the war in Iraq will not be an "oil grab", but an expression of "pure power".

Translation: the argument that America was interested in overthrowing Saddam only to get control of Iraq's oil supplies has proved rather embarrassing, since it has come out that France and Russia have a great vested interest in Iraqi oil and in keeping Saddam in power. As it turned out, oil was at the heart of the motives of the peace party's favourite leader, Jacques Chirac, at least as much as those whom the Left likes to call the "oil men" of the Bush Administration.

So now this war has to be all about "pure power" - which is to say, American power to do what it likes to the rest of the world, regardless of something called "international law".

I have lost count of how many times I have heard "the rule of law" flung against the Anglo-American cause, with varying degrees of precious self-righteousness, by anti-war protesters. They use this totemic phrase, which summons up one of the sacred notions of democratic political culture, in a way that is either meaningless or systematically misleading.

International law seems to amount to nothing more than corruptly manipulated decisions by the UN Security Council, many of whose members are totalitarian countries (and whose permanent members received this status on the basis that they were on the right side in the last world war).

I assume that we all accept the principle that, when we speak of "the law", we mean the body of legislation adopted by an elected government of the people and by the people (as opposed, say, to religious law as laid down by scripture). In this tradition, which dates from the Enlightenment and is the basis for all modern free societies, there are two possible senses to the concept of the rule of law.

One is that laws take their legitimacy from the active consent of the people in a given society. The populace elects a government on the understanding that it will accept and obey the laws that that government passes in its name. In a democratic country, the electorate tacitly agrees to a form of civil contract with the state: to keep the laws in return for the right to choose who will govern.

On this interpretation, an international "rule of law" is a nonsense. For it to have moral credibility, world law would require representative world government in which the entire population of the planet would have to have a vote. Whatever the "rule of law" is, it certainly isn't that.

The other interpretation is a concept of natural law that embodies certain inalienable human rights. This more metaphysical view rests on the moral assumption that certain principles are inherent in the human condition: that "all men are created equal", and that they are born with rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", for example.

This notion of "natural rights" has been a hot topic of debate among scholars for generations. It has its champions and its detractors in academe and the judiciary. But regardless of its logical difficulties, it probably constitutes some part of the received wisdom of most people's political and social attitudes.

On this account, it might be plausible to argue that there is such a thing as "international rule of law" based on the idea of liberty as a birthright. One of the most obvious things that it would prohibit would be the oppression, torture and murder of his own people that is routinely practised by Saddam Hussein. (It would also come down rather hard on some members of the Security Council whose consent the peace party is so adamant we obtain before invading Iraq.)

If this is your version of "international law", then you must be on the side of the Americans and the British who wish to free the Iraqi people from Saddam's rule. You must believe that it is the right of every person to be governed by his own consent, and to live without fear of persecution. Any international law worthy of the respect of free countries would entail the extension of that freedom to all of the people of the world.

It is precisely this brand of right and liberty that George W Bush and Tony Blair are advocating. To the extent that there can be any foundation for waving the book of international rules at them, it can be only on procedural grounds. They are in breach of the voluntary code that the nations that won the last war decided to adopt for themselves and to impose on the rest of the world through a mixture of coercion, bribery and power-broking. The phoney peace that the UN has presided over for most of our lifetimes was, in truth, dictated by the fearful logistics of the Cold War and the nuclear threat.

Now, as everybody keeps saying (even Martin Amis), we are on the verge of a new world, in which the communist bloc no longer provides a check on American power. For some bizarre reason, this seems to be regarded as a matter of regret, even by people who are not actually old Stalinist reprobates.

America untrammelled by the Soviet threat is about to unleash - what? An epidemic of freedom? A destabilising onslaught against dictatorship and terrorism? Oddly enough, the critics are almost right in their self-contradictions: America is both interventionist and isolationist. What its people want is to be left alone to enjoy their freedoms and their prosperity in peace.

Since September 11, they have realised that the only way they can achieve this is by bringing the chance of those freedoms to those who would threaten them.

I am very pleased (and surprised) to read such an article printed anywhere.

Here in America, we are inundated by our media with the words "democracy, democracy, DEMOCRACY!" In Iraq, we are "fighting for democracy". It's everywhere.

The words "individual rights" or "natural rights" are nowhere to be heard or seen. But of course the difference between a democracy and a constitutionally-limited republic is as day is to night, not that the American people understand those concepts any more...

Thanks for posting this. In return, allow me to post a little of what we colonists thought about democracy. (I have taken the liberty of emphasizing the last part):

Democracy is when the people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
--H. L. Mencken

"Democratic" in its original meaning [refers to] unlimited majority rule...a social system in which one's work, one's property, one's mind, and one's life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at any moment for any purpose.
--Ayn Rand

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.
--Winston Churchill

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.
--Gilbert K. Chesterton

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
--John Quincy Adams

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
--Bill Vaughan

Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.
--Marquis de Flers Robert and Arman de Caillavet

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.
--H. L. Mencken

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.
--Alan Coren

The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.
--Art Spander

Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is blissfully ignorant.
--John Simon

A country which proposes to make use of modern war as an instrument of policy must possess a highly centralized, all-powerful executive, hence the absurdity of talking about the defense of democracy by force of arms. A democracy which makes or effectively prepares for modern scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic.
--Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
--James Russell Lowell

Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
--Robert Byrne

The American system is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. A democracy, if you attach meaning to terms, is a system of unlimited majority rule; the classic example is ancient Athens. And the symbol of it is the fate of Socrates, who was put to death legally, because the majority didn't like what he was saying, although he had initiated no force and had violated no one's rights.
Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom....
The American system is a constitutionally limited republic, restricted to the protectrion of individual rights. In such a system, majority rule is applicable only to lesser details, such as the selection of certain personnel. But the majority has no say over the basic principles governing the government. It has no power to ask for or gain the infringement of individual rights.
--Leonard Peikfoff

"The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections."
--The US Supreme Court, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 1943.

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