Discussion board 8 - international relation - Essay Example

In the context of NEIO and CERDS, policies should be made that use an internationalist approach to economics, one that does not benefit rich countries at the expense of poor ones. According to activist Ward Morehouse (1998), CERDS must be supported by the economic policies of individual nations. CERDS makes it easier for nations to do things like impose tax penalties on foreign investment that does not help developing countries to protect and rediversify their local economies. Aid and trade rules should also be changed to ensure that this occurs.

The taxes that are imposed should tax domestic and global foreign exchange speculation, as well as on stocks and bonds. Governments should also reassert control over fiscal policies such as tax and public expenditures by re-regulating finance and banking and reintroduce exchange controls. Morehouse states that these practices, supported by CERDS, allow states to change their tax systems to serve the needs of the community. 2. Regardless of one’s opinion regarding the Bush administration’s compliance (or lack of compliance) with the international provisions governing the use of force with respect to, among other things, the use of torture, any state that has signed agreements and treaties prohibiting them should adhere to them.

If the United States or any other country that is a member of the UN that has signed these treaties violate them in any way, they should be held responsible. Of course, the controversy is if the Bush administration actually did that. Members of the U.S. government, especially in the Bush years, insist that they did not. The U.S. Supreme Court, in its 2006 Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld ruling, declared that military commissions for trying terrorist suspects violated both U.S. military law and the Geneva Convention (Brooks, 2006).

The Bush administration held that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention did not apply to Al Qaeda combatants because its protections applied only to conflicts between states. They reasoned that since Al Qaeda was not a state, the Geneva Convention did not apply to them. The Supreme Court disagreed, which potentially made high-ranking Bush administration officials subject to prosecution under the federal War Crimes Act, something that did not materialize. In 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder made noises to pursue indicting high-level officials such as Bush and his vice-president, Dick Cheney, for their part in torturing prisoners.

At the time, Cheney shrugged it off, and any investigation was eventually dropped. Several countries and organizations have called for the indictment of members of the Bush administration for sanctioning torture, but it seems that the Obama administration has little political will to pursue it. Again, if any official, no matter how high-ranking, is guilty of breaking any laws, no matter what it is, they should be indicted for it. 3. The UN and Collective Use of Force When the UN charter was signed by 51 countries, including the U.S., in 1945, one of their goals was preserving peace among nations.

The charter described a collective security system in which the Security Council (then made up of the UK, China, France, the U.S.S.R, and the U.S.) would be able to determine when a threat to or breach of international peace and