Dominique de Villepin Must Be Confused

Either that or he is deliberately lying

M de Villepin derided American hawks for believing that "democracy can be imposed from the outside" and that "international legal tools become constraints more than safeguards of international security".

Monsieur de Villepin, allow me to untwist your poor tangled mind.

Hawk: International legal tools are constraints.
Villepin: No they aren't. They are safeguards of international security.
Hawk: How is that?
Villepin: Well, international legal tools allow us to prohibit, outlaw, and focus attention on international issues which threaten security.
Hawk: Outlaw? As in, if someone does something against international law, they are arrested or punished for their actions?
Villepin: That sounds about right. For example, international law clearly describes what the United States is doing in Iraq as illegal. Therefore, the international community would be justified in punishing the United States Government for the invasion of Iraq. Hopefully, such repercussions would deter other countries from engaging in pre-emptive war in the future.
Hawk: But you just said that international legal tools shouldn't be viewed as constraints.
Villepin: Yes, I believe I did. Your point?
Hawk: My point is that what you described is a constraint. International legal tools, as you describe them, would place prohibitions and penalties on nations. By definition, those are constraints.
Villepin: No, you seem to have missed my point.
Hawk: Go on.
Villepin: International law exists in order to secure peace and prosperity. It allows societies to flourish and civilizations to grow, for they would be able to do so without the worry of external threat. Such conditions are not constraints.
Hawk: No, not those conditions. You miss my perspective, which is that from a nation whose activities you wish to prohibit and penalize. You would have a legal yoke placed on my country, assuming the responsibility of some duties and decisions. Moreover, if we were to make those decisions and assume the responsibility for our duties as we wish, your law would penalize us and threaten us with diplomatic, economic, and social sanction. If such a situation does not adequately describe a constraint, then I do not know what does.
Villepin: Now hold on. You can't demand total sovereignty for your nation. You don't exist in a vacuum. A nation's actions affect other nations and not always in a good or benign way. Some actions, such as war and aggression, the deployment of land mines, exessive greehouse gas emission, and so on have external consequences and therefore those kinds of actions should be illegal and punishable.
Hawk: That isn't what we are argueing. You said it is wrong to believe international law is a constraint. I have shown that it is. Either you didn't mean what you said, or you're just engaging in typical political overstatement in order to sound righteous to your constituencies.
Villepin: Thank you. No more questions.

Posted by Drizzten at March 27, 2003 11:41 PM