Abstract

Occupiers and the Law

An explosive legal obstacle, currently ignored, lurks beneath the surface of the Iraq war debate--international law likely to ensnare and possibly crumple the American conqueror's grandiose plans to transform the nation it now occupies. Despite what many people, including many Washington officials, seem to believe, the US government is prohibited from simply seizing Iraqi oil revenues and spending the money however it chooses. The obstacle is the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which codified in greater detail the principles of "occupation law" first framed by the Hague Convention of 1907--rules of warfare meant to prevent a military power from plundering a defeated nation or reordering the country (as Hitler repeatedly did) to conform to the conqueror's ideology and economics. Bush may think he can safely blow off international law, as he has before, but once Iraqis have re-established a sovereign government they will be free to sue the US government for damages and reparations. "Occupation law imposes high performance standards on an occupying military power, and liability can arise quickly," David Scheffer, Bill Clinton's former ambassador for war crimes, has warned. Scheffer says that if the United States and Britain had obtained a specific resolution from the United Nations beforehand, spelling out the concrete purposes and justifications for the action, the two would have been relieved of their legal vulnerability.