Reflections

...Must we be passive witnesses to the ugly spectacle of a Congressional debate about the proper level of appropriations for conducting hostilities against a country with which we are formally at peace...

...In fact, the Court has been severely criticized by Third World nations for taking a consistently moderate to conservative approach toward the few controversial international cases it has been permitted to handle...

...To claim by way of justification that the United States is acting in defense of El Salvador is absurd...

...There has been no armed attack on El Salvador by Nicaragua, and shipping arms to the Salvadoran rebels is, at worst, an ambiguous act under international law...

...Whether by selecting an unabashed militarist like Jeane Kirkpatrick as our chief delegate to the United Nations or by unilaterally pulling out of the U.N...

...Will Congress be content to respond with mild resolutions of censure and temporary suspensions of financial support for such illegal and indecent undertakings...

...A claim can be made that in these circumstances, aid to the rebels is an instance of humanitarian intervention...

...But the CIA's failure to inform House and Senate committees about the mining of Nicaraguan harbors is far less significant than the ominous threat to world peace posed by this reckless act of official lawlessness on the part of the Government of the United States...

...The mine-laying was an act of war and a serious violation of international law...

...We have spurned that government's earnest efforts to negotiate an end to the bloodshed, and despite the lip service Reagan has paid to the peace efforts of the Contadora nations, Latin American diplomats make no secret of their conviction that the major obstacle to a peaceful settlement is to be found in the Reagan White House...

...Will the American people reelect Reagan and grant him a license to extend and expand his violent course of interventionary diplomacy...

...Perhaps the World Court controversy will help arouse Americans to the dangers posed by the entrenched forces of militarism and secrecy that'have steadily gained power in our country for more than three decades...

...position on the seizure of the embassy in Tehran...

...Even among critics of Reagan's policies, there is a tendency to insist that the World Court, as the judicial organ of the United Nations, is a hostile forum not to be trusted...

...REFLECTIONS Richard Falk Curbing a Lawless Government There was something hypocritical about the righteous reaction of Congressional liberals to the Reagan Administration's repudiation of World Court jurisdiction over disputes involving U.S...

...role in attempting to overthrow that nation's legitimate government...

...In any event, the United States has no legitimate basis for helping the Contras and other anti-Sandinista exile elements, or for its part in mining Nicaraguan waters...

...Congressional pique, it seems clear, emanated from a sense of outraged institutional dignity rather than from any real opposition to the substance of the Administration's actions...

...In 1982, the Administration caught the public off guard by repudiating the Law of the Seas Treaty that had been in negotiation for more than a decade, and that had enjoyed the consistent backing of Republican and Democratic leaders and of virtually every foreign government...

...Shouldn't we insist that our elected leaders abide by the constitutional system, especially when it comes to critical issues of foreign policy in the nuclear age...

...A majority of the World Court would certainly agree...

...At stake is the integrity of our constitutional system no less than our role in world affairs...

...If legal and moral sensibilities were so obviously offended by Washington's "covert" support for the Contras' war against Nicaragua, Congress had a constitutional obligation to step in and halt the Administration's improper course of conduct without awaiting review by an international tribunal...

...My fear is that unless our people are ready to take to the streets with an intensity of commitment that matches the resistance mounted in the later years of the Vietnam war, our leaders will continue to violate the law and the precepts of morality, without fear of public restraint or reproach, whenever they perceive any threat to the interests of our most reactionary elites...

...Since the beginning of the Reagan Administration, the United States has consistently rebuffed the premises of liberal internationalism that had previously enjoyed a large measure of bipartisan support...

...The Administration's conduct is a fundamental challenge to the American political process...

...The Reagan record on arms control requires no comment beyond the observation that when a President appoints such notorious hawks as General Edward Row-ney and Paul Nitze as his chief arms control negotiators, he obviously has no intention of curbing the arms race...

...The World Court voted unanimously to support the U.S...

...Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Reagan has sent an unmistakable message: The United States proposes to go its own way in the world, and will enforce its preferences and pursue its interests by resorting to any level of political violence that may be required...

...activities in Central America...

...But it requires no expertise in international jurisprudence to see that Nicaragua would prevail before any reasonably impartial panel of jurists looking into the U.S...

...Richard Falk is the Albert L. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice at Princeton University...

...Most authorities would agree that a technical condition of insurgency or belligerency exists in El Salvador, and that such outsiders as the United States and Nicaragua are in an equivalent legal relationship to the opposing sides in an ongoing civil war...

...Indeed, helping the government side—given its record of brutality and its reliance on Death Squads—seems, on balance, to be the legally more dubious position...

...When theiaw has been on the side of the United States—as it was during the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-1980—our Government has not hesitated to take its case to the international tribunal...

...Isn't it time for diligent legislators and citizens to raise the specter of impeachment proceedings...

...This is, of course, the message we are sending to the Sandinista government in Nicaragua...

...In a mid-April editorial, for example, The Washington Post intoned, "Of course the Sandinistas were seeking a propaganda festival when they decided to take their case to the World Court, which is not an impartial court as Americans know the term but a body of political manufacture...