Mr. Speaker, this debate is a reprise of two earlier debates on October 7, 1998 and February 17, 1999.
I had posed some questions to opposition parties during the first debate. In a very real sense we can see law emerging from this process of discussion and give and take. We do not actually need a vote. Sometimes we get more consensus the other way.
It is elementary that the United Nations charter outlawed the recourse to armed force and military action except in the two extraordinary situations sanctioned by the charter; that is individual or collective self-defence or action under Chapter VII of the charter, the peacemaking sections. I temporarily overlooked Articles 53 and 107, the enemy states sections which authorize actions without any limits. They are still there against Germany and Japan but they are anachronisms.
It is also true that regional security organizations, being legal creatures of the charter and subject to the charter, cannot partake of any legal powers higher than or in conflict with the powers of the security council. That is explicit in Chapter VIII of the charter. In other words, a regional security organization cannot hoist itself by its own bootstraps into a legal power to use armed force that it does not have under the charter.
These were rules which, after the one exception of the Korean War in 1950, the world community was able to live under during the cold war because, in spite of some perhaps contemporary views, the cold war system of public order maintained a strong regulation of the political-territorial status quo of Yalta and the other wartime agreements.
What we have seen though at the end of the cold war is the breakdown of this post-war system of order and the breakdown in consequence of some of those artificial multinational states that were created by the Versaille treaty and maintained by Yalta and other instruments thereafter. The new century, contrary to the general view of a century of progress and enlightenment, may well turn out to be the century of inter-ethnic conflict. We are rediscovering in a very horrifying way the pre-1914 conflicts in which the Balkans, of course, were the cockpits of Europe as Bismarck said.
To go back to this general issue, what are we to do in a present situation where a crisis faces the world community, but where, in the view of many governments, action under Chapter VII of the charter is inhibited by the fear—which may or may not be unfounded until it is tested—of the exercise of a veto by a permanent member of the security council? Russia or China are the ones that have been fingered.
We should not forget that in the Korean War of 1950, President Truman and his secretary of state, Dean Acheson, developed in a very imaginative way the recourse to the UN general assembly, the Uniting for Peace Resolution. It was adopted by 52 to 5, with 2 abstentions. It basically stated that although the security council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, if it is blocked by wilful obstruction in the use of the veto then the general assembly has plenary powers to act.
I think that is a useful precedent. I wonder if it could not be used in the present situation if we are unable to take further action compatibly with the charter.
We must remember that there is no veto in the general assembly. An ordinary two-thirds majority applies and the general assembly can be called into being with a 24 hour notice in an emergency situation.
In the debates in the House, those two debates I referred to, I raised this new concept of humanitarian intervention. Admittedly it has some difficult antecedents. One was what might be called the colonialist power of intervention asserted in the 19th century by Britain, France, Germany and other countries, sometimes cloaked as reprisals. That is generally considered anachronistic. Some of us would also remember that during the cold war it was asserted by the bloc leaders on both sides. Everyone will remember the situation of the intervention in Hungary in 1956 and Prague in 1968, the so-called hegemonial intervention, that you can intervene to enforce solidarity within your own bloc.
However, there are other antecedents to this which should not be confused with those past interventions. One of the more interesting developments is the attempt to flesh out, to give new parameters defining modalities for this concept of humanitarian intervention which is likely to be the weapon we need to cope with this inter-ethnic conflict that is going to be with us.
I do regret that it has not been felt possible to involve the United Nations more firmly in the process to date. However, there is nothing to prevent the United Nations from being accommodated to the crisis problem solving as it develops.
The Minister for International Cooperation has already recognized the primacy of the United Nations in the general policy aspects of humanitarian care and control of refugees. One had hints which come close to some suggestions on the opposition side that it might be possible to accommodate, within a framework of an international military force now limited to NATO, non-NATO members. There is nothing to prevent the United Nations from authorizing an international force in which NATO might be the prime element but which could include Russian troops or other troops. It could even be put under U.S. command. If this sounds rather strange, it was in fact the solution found in the Korean War of 1950 with an American commander-in-chief but under the political control of the United Nations. When he exceeded his powers, and he was a very strong personality, he was fired by his president after consultation with the secretary general of the United Nations.
The possibility is there and it is possible in a phase 2 of the operations to control the crisis in Yugoslavia. That would be the best and most productive way to proceed.
I would also suggest the use of the world court. I listened carefully to the member for Beauharnois—Salaberry. He touched on this but I would like to suggest that the court is available and it can give decisions on very short notice, the reasons sometimes come later. Fleshing out the limitations to this concept of humanitarian intervention, it cannot solely be limited to one country's own conception of what is right and wrong. We get into the Latin legal phrase, quod licet Jovi, licet bovi. What is allowed to Jupiter on high must be allowed also to the humble ox. There are other countries around the world whose jurists have been in touch with me over the last few weeks saying, “Why can't we do this?” It suggests that we should put this as far as possible in the next phase into United Nations' hands.
I would also like to get a ruling on the limitations as to aerial bombardment. It is often forgotten that the rules of aerial bombardment are not what they were in World War II where members will notice it was not a count in the Nuremberg indictments. The additional protocols in 1977 in a very real sense limit the capacity to conduct aerial bombardment. I think it would help to have a world court ruling on this.
Why do I speak of law? It is simply because I am reminded of another American president, President Kennedy, who had advice from his security advisers, among others, to bomb those missile bases in Cuba. President Kennedy's answer was essentially that a great state is not armed solely with the law, it has its armed power, but the essence of wise decision making is to choose those modalities that solve the problem that are compatible with international law.
President Kennedy's peaceful solution to the Cuban missile crisis is a textbook case in all our university courses on United Nations law and it is a model to follow. I welcome the suggestions that I discern in the opposition and I discern in some of the government answers that there will be an increasing attempt to phase in the operations with the United Nations. That is the more traditional Canadian way, that we operate through the international authority, through the United Nations. In the particular circumstances, it may not have been possible to be so at the beginning, but it is possible to be so at the end.