Political assassinations were once unthinkable. Why the US killing of Soleimani sets a worrying precedent

The assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani has sparked protests in a number of countries – both Muslim and non-Muslim.
RAHAT DAR/EPA

Ben Rich, Curtin University

Since the US assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, the immediate crisis appears to have dissipated. However, the wider ramifications pose a worrying precedent for international affairs.

For many, the killing was unexpected. But this was no Trump administration miscalculation. It’s the latest in a wider decay of the liberal norms that underpin diplomacy, conflict resolution and the day-to-day functioning of interstate relations.

Once championed by Washington, these rules have become increasingly rejected under President Donald Trump. That threatens to inject even more instability into our global system.

What are norms in international relations?

“Norms” is the term foreign policy people use to mean actions that are implicitly or explicitly acknowledged as reasonable for states to undertake – like a rulebook that guides the conduct of international relations. Norms influence everything from human rights protection to when and how it is appropriate to use force.

Norms differ from laws, as they lack formal enforcement mechanisms. Nevertheless, there can be major repercussions when they are violated.

Norms change over time, often shaped by dominant cultural, ideological and political trends.

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For instance, in previous centuries, war was seen as a natural part of statecraft and something to be celebrated. However, this view has changed markedly, largely due to the catastrophic great wars. Today, war is viewed by most countries as something to be avoided, and only used as a last resort.

This has led to an overall decline in major conflicts and the establishment of a range of international bodies designed to prevent, constrain and moderate war.

Norms provide a kind of “standard operating procedure” for states, which is especially pertinent in times of crisis and uncertainty. Understanding that one’s rivals generally wish to avoid conflict allows states to formulate policies aimed at deescalation and détente.

When countries deviate from these norms, however, it injects unpredictability into the system. This can lead to miscalculation, panicked escalation and, ultimately, violent conflict.

The US was once the biggest proponent of the rules-based international order. Not anymore.
Michael Reynolds/EPA

The rise of the ‘liberal international order’

The most influential body of norms today are encapsulated in what foreign policy analysts call the liberal international order, which emerged from Western consensus after the second world war.

This order does several important things, such as:

• incentivises collective action over unilateralism;
• encourages democracy, dialogue and understanding over authoritarianism and aggression; and
• seeks to lessen violence by providing alternative means of resolving conflict.

The liberal international order rejects actions – such as the assassination of state officials like Soleimani – which are likely to inflame, rather than resolve, tensions.

Many scholars and analysts argue that such norms have been a significant factor in the period of relative global peace since the second world war.

The US and liberal international norms

Over the past 70 years, the US been at the centre of many of the institutions that promote these rules, including the WTO, NATO, UN and IMF.

While the constraints of the liberal international order have not always benefited it – Washington has lost numerous trade disputes in the WTO, for instance – the US has been able to shape the very nature of the international system.

It’s one thing to win in a game, quite another to dictate the rules by which that game is played.

As a result, the US has sought to promote itself not just as an adherent of liberal norms, but as an exemplar of them. Notable exceptions not withstanding, this has been a position held across both Republican and Democratic administrations, from Harry Truman to Barack Obama.

Mourners taking part in the funeral procession for Qassem Soleimani in Najaf, Iraq.
ALI Al-MUMEN/EPA

Why assassinations matter to international norms

The US abandoned the practice of political assassinations in the wake of the infamous Church committee of 1975.

This inquiry exposed repeated CIA attempts to kill foreign leaders and officials. Such clandestine activities were seen as out of sync with the strengthening liberal norms of the day. If the US was really committed to promoting the order, how could it engage in actions that flagrantly undermined peace and stability?

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After the inquiry, the US halted its assassination programs, and adopted alternative methods of dealing with troublesome regimes. These included sanctions and funding and training opposition groups.

In the modern era, the targeting of state officials in assassinations is understood to be strictly verboten and reckless. This position allows officials to engage with more confidence and good faith in diplomacy, and dissuades states from engaging in such activities.

Upsetting the balance of the world order

In retrospect, Trump’s willingness to reject liberal norms on assassinations hardly seems out of character for someone who has shown profound hostility for them.

Trump has undermined longstanding alliances and weakened important mechanisms of collective cooperation, all while encouraging the worst predilections of authoritarian leaders.

Trump’s blase attitude towards the importance of liberal norms and institutions has left traditional allies feeling increasingly insecure and unable to rely on the US.

Dictatorial leaders of rival states have felt empowered by Trump’s own penchant for authoritarian behaviour at home, and more confident to violate international norms without fear of significant collective reprisal.

Soleimani’s assassination presents a further worrying decline in the influence of liberal norms. Not only does it position the US as a transgressive state with little concern for the rules of the international system, it also provides precedent for states to engage in such activities themselves.

At the best of times, this would be an unpleasant development.

Within the chaos of our current world “order”, however, the resumption of political assassination poses serious concerns for the future stability of the entire international system.

Ben Rich, Senior lecturer in International Relations and Security Studies, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Sterilize the unfit says British professor David Marsland

The mentally and morally “unfit” should be sterilized, Professor David Marsland, a sociologist and health expert, said this weekend. The professor made the remarks on the BBC radio program Iconoclasts, which advertises itself as the place to “think the unthinkable,” reports Hilary White, LifeSiteNews.com.

Pro-life advocates and disability rights campaigners have responded by saying that Marsland’s proposed system is a straightforward throwback to the coercive eugenics practices of the past.

Marsland, Emeritus Scholar of Sociology and Health Sciences at Brunel University, London and Professorial Research Fellow in Sociology at the University of Buckingham, told the BBC that “permanent sterilization” is the solution to child neglect and abuse.

“Children are abused or grossly neglected by a very small minority of inadequate parents.” Such parents, he said, are not distinguished by “disadvantage, poverty or exploitation,” he said, but by “a number or moral and mental inadequacies” caused by “serious mental defect,” “chronic mental illness” and drug addiction and alcoholism.

“Short of lifetime incarceration,” he said, the solution is “permanent sterilization.”

The debate, chaired by the BBC’s Edward Stourton, was held in response to a request by a local council in the West Midlands that wanted to force contraception on a 29-year-old woman who members of the council judged was mentally incapable of making decisions about childrearing. The judge in the case refused to permit it, saying such a decision would “raise profound questions about state intervention in private and family life.”

Children whose parents are alcoholics or drug addicts can be rescued from abusive situations, but, Marlsand said, “Why should we allow further predictable victims to be harmed by the same perpetrators? Here too, sterilization provides a dependable answer.”

He dismissed possible objections based on human rights, saying that “Rights is a grossly overused and fundamentally incoherent concept … Neither philosophers nor political activists can agree on the nature of human rights or on their extent.”

Complaints that court-ordered sterilization could be abused “should be ignored,” he added. “This argument would inhibit any and every action of social defense.”

Brian Clowes, director of research for Human Life International (HLI), told LifeSiteNews (LSN) that in his view Professor Marsland is just one more in a long line of eugenicists who want to solve human problems by erasing the humans who have them. Clowes compared Marsland to Lothrop Stoddard and Margaret Sanger, prominent early 20th century eugenicists who promoted contraception and sterilization for blacks, Catholics, the poor and the mentally ill and disabled whom they classified as “human weeds.”

He told LSN, “It does not seem to occur to Marsland that most severe child abuse is committed by people he might consider ‘perfectly normal,’ people like his elitist friends and neighbors.”

“Most frightening of all,” he said, “is Marsland’s dismissal of human rights. In essence, he is saying people have no rights whatsoever, because there is no universal agreement on what those rights actually are.”

The program, which aired on Saturday, August 28, also featured a professor of ethics and philosophy at Oxford, who expressed concern about Marland’s proposal, saying, “There are serious problems about who makes the decisions, and abuses.” Janet Radcliffe Richards, a Professor of Practical Philosophy at Oxford, continued, “I would dispute the argument that this is for the sake of the children.

“It’s curious case that if the child doesn’t exist, it can’t be harmed. And to say that it would be better for the child not to exist, you need to be able to say that its life is worse than nothing. Now I think that’s a difficult thing to do because most people are glad they exist.”

But Radcliffe Richards refused to reject categorically the notion of forced sterilization as a solution to social problems. She said there “is a really serious argument” about the “cost to the rest of society of allowing people to have children when you can pretty strongly predict that those children are going to be a nuisance.”

Marsland’s remarks also drew a response from Alison Davis, head of the campaign group No Less Human, who rejected his entire argument, saying that compulsory sterilization would itself be “an abuse of some of the most vulnerable people in society.”

Marsland’s closing comments, Davis said, were indicative of his anti-human perspective. In those remarks he said that nothing in the discussion had changed his mind, and that the reduction of births would be desirable since “there are too many people anyway.”

Davis commented, “As a disabled person myself I find his comments offensive, degrading and eugenic in content.

“The BBC is supposed to stand against prejudicial comments against any minority group. As such it is against it’s own code of conduct, as well as a breach of basic human decency, to broadcast such inflammatory and ableist views.”

Report from the Christian Telegraph

AUSTRALIA: BUSHFIRE ARSONISTS, LOOTERS AND FRAUD

As most Australians continue to be shocked by the bushfire crisis in Victoria, we are becoming even more shocked by the despicable behaviour of some in our communities.

Arsonists are believed to be responsible for many of the fires in Victoria, including those that have killed so many people. They have been branded as mass-murderers whom the authorities are pledging to bring to justice. Already there have been arrests and several good leads on some of the lowlifes responsible for the fires.

There have also been reports of looters taking what few valuables remain on the properties of those Australians who have practically lost everything – including some members of their families, if not their entire families. It is unthinkable that looters could be active but they are.

In some areas of Australia there have been those preying on the generosity of Australians by taking up so-called collections and selling raffle tickets supposedly for the benefit of fire victims – yet they are taking the money for themselves.

What some people will stoop to. We call this type of behaviour ‘un-Australian’ in this country and indeed it is something less than human.