Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

Patterns of Intervention
2. The Rule of Law and the Rule of Force
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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S
imilarly, the US refusal to accept World Court adjudication of its
conflict with Nicaragua in April 1984 was nothing new. The US
proxy war against Nicaragua is patently illegal unless justified by
the provision of the United Nations Charter that permits collective selfdefense
against armed attack, and indeed this absurd justification is the
one offered those partisans who even care to construct a semblance of
legality. International law is designed with enough loopholes to allow the
great powers to do virtually anything they like; otherwise they would not
ratify it. But the plain meaning of the law in this case is that if some
state considers that it is subject to an armed attack—aggression so
sudden and extreme that the necessity for action becomes “instant,
overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for
deliberation,” in a conventional formulation due to Daniel Webster and
relied upon in the Nuremberg judgments—then that state or its allies
should make a formal complaint to the UN Security Council, requesting
it to take appropriate action, and may defend the victim until it does;
under other circumstances, the threat or use of force is illegal. The
obligations under the Rio Treaty and the OAS Charter are much the
same.
Of the states of Central America, only Nicaragua could claim to be
subject to armed attack (namely, by the US-backed contras). The US is
unwilling to bring to the Security Council or OAS the charge that it is
engaged in self-defense against a Nicaraguan armed attack on El
Salvador and to call upon the Council to act, a fact noted by
conservative legal scholars such as Professor Alfred Rubin of the
Fletcher School, who comments that “El Salvador should be complaining