EXPLAINS AIMS OF WAR CRIMES. TRIBUNAL
[The following interview with the French philosopher and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre on the subject of the scope and aims of the International War Crimes Tribunal that was initiated by Bertrand Russell appeared in the November 30 issue of the Paris weekly, le Nouvel Observateur. Because of its special interest to opponents of the war in Vietnam, particularly in the United States, World Outlook has translated the full text, which appears below. ]
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Question: It has been said of” the Bertrand Russell "tribunal" that it could: only
ist, “It's:like ‘Alice oa Geadonlesd first the sentence, then the trial."
J.P.Sartre: Here is the meaning of what our "tribunal" proposes to do and its limits: It is not up to us to.determine whether American policies in Vietnam are bad -most of us do not have the least doubt about that -- but to see if they come within the purview of international legislation on "war crimes."
It would be meaningless to condemn, in the juridical sense of the term, the struggle of American imperialism against the countries of the third world that are trying to break loose from its domination. This struggle is in fact only an extension of the class struggle to the international’ level and it is determined by the structure of the groups involved. The politics of imperialism is a necessary historical reality and, by that fact, it is beyond any juridical or moral condemnation. You can only combat it, either as an intellectual, showing its mechanism, or politically by trying to get away from it- (despite appearances, the French government does not really do this), or by armed struggle. I acknowledge that like other members of the "tribunal" I am a declared adversary of imperialism and that I feel in solidarity with all those who are combating it. And the commitment, from this point of view, must be total. Everyone sees the struggle as a whole and lines up with one side or the other according to motives ranging all the way from his objective situation to his ideas on human life. On this level you can hate the class enemy. But you can't judge the class enemy in the juridical sense of the term. It is even difficult if not impossible, insofar as one takes a purely realistic’ view of the class struggle, to submit one's own allies to a juridical test and rigorously define the "crimes" committed by their governments. This was quite clear with the problem of the Stalinist camps. Either you brought in a moral judgment, which was completely beside the point, or you confined yourself to evaluating the "positive" and the "negative" in Stalin's politics. Some said, "The positive tilts the scales"; for others it was "the negative." These were not good grounds either.
In fact, if the development of History is not guided by law and by morals -which on the contrary are products of it -- these two elements of the superstructure do exercise a "feedback action" on this development. This is what enables us to judge a society in the light of criteria which it itself has established. It is thus completely normal to ask, at a given moment, whether this or that action has not passed beyond the domain of the "useful" and the "bad" and fallen within the purview of an international jurisprudence that has been built up little by little.
In one of his prefaces to Capital, Marx said something along the following lines: "We are the last who can be accused of condemning the bourgeoisie, since we hold that
The whole problem is to find out whether, today, the imperialists have risen above it. ;
When Talleyrand said, "It is more than a crime; it is a blunder," he summarized very well the way in which, in the course of history, political actions were always considered; they could be skillful or clumsy, useful or bad -- they were always free from juridical penalties. There was no "criminal politics."
And then, at Nuremberg, in 1945, for the first time the concept of "political crime" appeared. It was suspect, of course, since it was a matter of the conqueror imposing a law on the conquered. But the condemnation of the heads of Nazi Germany by the Nuremberg tribunal was meaningless unless it implied that any government which, in the future, committed punishable acts, would be held accountable before an analogous tribunal. Our "tribunal" proposes today only to apply to capitalist imperialism its own laws. The arsenal of jurisprudence moreover is not limited to the Nuremberg laws; before
that there was the Briand-Kellog pact, there was the Geneva Convention and other international accords.
Once again, it is not a question here of condemning a policy in the name of history, of judging whether it is contrary or not to the interests of humanity, but:of seeing whether it comes under the purview of existing laws. For example, you can criticize the current politics of France, you'can be completely opposed to it, as I am, but you cannot characterize it as “criminal." This would be meaningless. You could do it, on the other hand, during the Algerian war. Torture, the organization of regroupment camps, reprisals against civilian populations, executions without trials were identifiable with certain crimes condemned at Nuremberg. If, at the time, a "tribunal" had been set up like this one conceived by Bertrand Russell, I would certainly have agreed to take part in it. Because it was not done in the case of France is no reason for not doing it today in the case of the United States. : z
Q: It can be asked by what law, since you are invoking the law, you set yourselves up as judges, which you don't happen to be...
J.P.Sartre: That's so. Right now, one could say, anyone can be the judge of anything he wants! And then doesn't the undertaking face the danger of falling on the one hand into petty-bourgeois idealism (a certain number of well-known figures. are protesting in the name of cherished values) and on the other hand into fascism, through a vengeful side reminiscent of. Arséne Lupin and all the fascist literature?
To this I would answer first of all that it is not a matter of sentencing anyone to any penalty at all. Any judgment that is not enforceable is obviously absurd. I don't see myself passing a death sentence on President Johnson. It would be ridiculous.
Our aim is something different. It is to study all the existing documents on the war in Vietnam, to hear all the witnesses possible -- American and Vietnamese -- and to determine solemnly and sincerely whether certain actions come under the purview of the laws I have mentioned. We will not make up any new legislation. We will only say, if we establish it, which I don't say in advance that we will:."Such and such acts, committed ab such and such places, constitute a violation of such and such international laws, and are, consequently, crimes. And those responsible are as follows." Which would, if a genuine international tribunal existed, make them liable, for example under the laws applied at Nuremberg, to such and such a penalty. Thus it is not at all a matter of giving vent to the indignant disapproval of a group of honest citizens, but of providing a juridical measure of international political acts, in order to combat the tendency of the majority of people to pronounce only practical or moral judgments on the behavior of a social group or a government.
Q: Doesn't this compel you to admit that there is a way of conducting war that should be condemned and another way that shouldn't be?
J.P.Sartre: Certainly not! The struggle of imperialism against certain peoples of the third world is a fact that I recognize. I am opposed to it with all my being, to the extent of my feeble means, but I don't have to say whether there is a good or bad way of conducting it. The truth is, although the good peaceable people of our societies of consumption prefer to ignore it, the world is in flames and we can have a world war at any time. I have to take part in the struggle but I don't have to humanize it. We only need to know, as this struggle unfolds, if there are people who have "risen above it," if the imperialist policy comes under the purview of laws enacted by imperialism itself. .
The question can be raised, obviously, whether or not it is possible to conduct a war of imperialist repression without violating international laws. But that is not our concern. As a:mere citizen, a philosopher, a Marxist, I have the right to believe that this kind of war always leads to the utilization of torture, the creation of concentration camps, etc. As a member of Bertrand Russell's "tribunal," this is of no interest to me. My task is only to seek to determine if laws have been violated, in order to revive the juridical concept of international crime.
We must ask ourselves if our ideas of political policies, however correct our ideas may be -- namely, that policies must be judged from a realistic point of view, that they are determined by the relationship of forces, that the aim sought for must be borne in mind, etc. ~- do not lead us, as they did many people in Stalin's time, to consider policies only from the angle of their effectiveness and to fall into a passive complicity by not judging the acts of a government except from a practical viewpoint. Doesn't a political deed likewise have an ethico-juridical structure?
In this field, our judgments cannot be rendered in advance, even if we are com-
mitted, as indivuals, in the struggle against imperialism. Once again, I combat the de Gaulle government with my ballot but it never occurs to me to say that Gaullist policies are criminal. You can speak with indignation about a crime in connection with the Ben Barka affair, but I'don't know what law would be applicable if we sought to sentence the French government in this affair. It is completely different in the question of judging this or that act of war carried out by the Americans in Vietnam, this or that bombing, this or that operation ordered in high quarters. To seek to set up a real tribunal and levy penalties would be to act like idealists. But we have the right to meet, as citizens, to again give vitality to the concept of war crimes by showing that policies can and must be judged objectively in the light of existing juridical criteria.
When someone shouts in a meeting: “The war in Vietnam is a crime," this pertains to the field of passions. This war is certainly contrary to the interests of the immense majority of men but is it criminal juridically? This is what we will try to determine without being able to say in advance what our findings may be.
There aré cases where the violation of international law is clearly apparent. When the government of South Africa, which exercises a mere mandate over Southwest Africa, refuses to carry out a decision of the United Nations requiring it to give up this territory, open international delinquency is involved. Everyone can see it.
In Vietnam the situation is different --' there certain deeds occurred that can be established -- our objective is to see if they are in the purview of a law.
Q: Some people accuse you of not judging the Vietnamese at the same time as the
J.P.Sartre: I refuse to put on the same plane the action of a group of poor, hunted peasants, compelled to maintain iron discipline in their ranks, and that of an immense army maintained by a superindustrialized country with 200 million inhabitants. And then it is not the Vietnamese who have invaded America and are raining down a deluge of fire on a foreign people. During the war in Algeria, I always refused to draw a parallel between bombs placed by terrorists, which was the only weapon the Algerians had, and the actions and exactions of a wealthy army of 500,000 men occupying the whole country. It's the same in Vietnam.
: On the possibility, open to you during the "trial," of including in the evi-
Yn the possibilit x in the evi:
J.P.Sartre: Obviously. But that could only occur later. On the basis of our inquiry -- if it results in a condemnation -- demonstrations, meetings, marches, signa-— ture campaigns could be organized. Our first job is to get materials, information, and our "hearings" will obviously be public. .
We have been accused of petty-bourgeois legalism. This is true and I accept the objection. But whom do you wish us to convince? The classes that are struggling against capitalism and that are already convinced ("crimes" or not) that imperialism must be fought to the bitter end, or the very broad fringe of the middle class that is hesitant at present? It is the petty-bourgeois masses that must be aroused and shaken up today, because their alliance -- even on a domestic level -- with the working class is desirable. And it is via legalism that their eyes can be opened. It is not bad either to remind the working class, which is only too often trained to consider only what is effective that every historical action has an ethico-juridical structure. In the post- Stalinist period in which we are living, it is very important to bring out-this structure. — ; ‘ : :
Q: How do you explain the fact that demonstrations against the war in Vietnam have been more numerous and more vigorous in West Germany, England, Italy and Belgium than in France?
J.P.Sartre: In France, actually, a certain callousness in the conscience of the petty bourgeoisie and even the working class at times has been evident. This, I think, is due to the fact that we have only just emerged from a long period. of colonial wars. We were "cut off" for a very long time from all the problems of world importance -particularly those of the third world ~- because we were the ones oppressing Indochina, then Algeria. That was the time, you will recall, when the entire world was disturbed by the development of nuclear arms. The French never paid any attention. They never understood that their country, which opened its territory to American bases, would be annihilated like the others in the event of a nuclear war. They didn't understand it because their attention was constantly centered on our colonial problems. —
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There is another reason for the French apathy, this is the confusion resulting from de Gaulle,'s success in passing off. purely verbal affirmations of independence as a genuinely anti-imperialist. policy. The Phnom-Penh speech consisted of nothing but words, since de Gaulle, while condemning American policies, provided no economic means domestically for breaking loose from American tutelage. a .
.But the. fact ‘that. de Gaulle is the. only head of a capitalist state to denounce the policies of the United States gives the French a clear conscience. The same citizen who was hostile to independence for Algeria and then only too happy that a venerated. chief. brought.to an end a. war that could not possibly be.won.is today very satisfied with the definitive words of a great man, with whom he identifies, furnishing him with a justification for his. passivity:."Since de Gaulle is so firm on Vietnam, there is no need for me to do more." ; ; i
‘If the parties of the left were united, they could show that the Gaullist ambition to convert France into a serious adversary of American imperialism is meaningless, since it is not backed by:a domestic policy capable of really freeing us from the American grip. ; .
France today.is only a rebellious. slave who remains subject to American commands. The NATO general staff is going to locate its headquarters somewhere else, it seems, but the Americans.can throw the French workers out of their jobs whenever and wherever they want; they can paralyze our economy merely by withdrawing their computers; they can wield enormous pressures against which we are defenseless.
The first point of.a program for the left should de to struggle, through an | investment policy establishing priorities ~~ largely public ones -- against the invasion of American capital. This would be very difficult, I know, and France could not do it alone. It would be. necessary to utilize the Common Market and get the- partners in it to follow the same policy... They. too, are dominated right now. by American economic power but one could imagine certain countries, Italy for- example, being led to revise their. attitude if France followed. a policy of genuine economic independence...
Right now, we must wait for the left to unite. And I do not see the gulf separating the partisans and opponents of the Atlantic Pact being filled in. The problem is partially masked because the Communists have made some concessions in the elections but it remains and it continues to paralyze the left. We had a perfect- example when Guy Mollet. sought to get:a motion last spring to censure the government's foreign policy. The Communists were annoyed because certain aspects of this policy correspond with their line and they said, "Instead let's condemn the government's policy as a whole, by_showing that it's just as unsatisfactory at home as abroad." Guy Mollet refused.:
In my opinion, opposition,to the Atlantic Pact should be the principal criterion for a left policy. I would even say that the only point in common between the abstract position of de Gaulle and what should be the attitude of the left, is the demand for national sovereignty: Sovereignty which should be regained not in.order to defend it jealously -- one can associate with equally sovereign countries and set up national bodies to which certain powers would be delegated -- but.in-order.to oppose American imperialism which is breaking down national. structures everywhere. .
_ Q: If the left were united, could it do something effective in the Vietnam situation?
_ J.P.Sartre: First of all, it could nobitse" publ te opinion. This is not easy,
but there are countries where it has been-done. In. France, a strike ofa certain amplitude unleashed in relation with economic demands but in which the real aim would be opposition to the policies of the Americans in Vietnam is inconceivable. In Japan -- I have just come from there -- a general strike took.place October 21 "against American imperialism." I.don't claim that it was: a complete. success, . but .it was. possible for it to take place.
The French, too, of course, are "against" the war in Vietnam, but they don't feel involved. They don't understand that they are threatened with being dragged into a world conflict by the development of .a struggle that is of interest only to the Americans. As for de Gaulle, he knows it. I was struck by the reaction of the Japanese to the Phnom- Penh speech. They. said, "De Gaulle is afraid." They meant that he had suddenly seen the danger of his country being destroyed because of something that did not concern it. It was.in fact..a speech expressing fear, and. from that angle it was a good speech. But a mere cry of alarm is not much. .
We must conceive our struggle today within the perspective of a long-lasting American hegemony. The world is not dominated by two great powers but by only one. And
peaceful coexistence, despite its very positive aspects, serves the United States. Thanks to peaceful coexistence and the Sino-Soviet dispute -- which is largely a result of it -- the Americans are able to bomb Vietnam with complete tranquility. The socialist camp has unquestionably suffered a setback due to the rivalries that have torn it and the policy begun by Khrushchev. The Americans today feel-that they have such free rein that Johnson made it known in a recent speech that he would not permit the: Chinese to develop their nuclear arms beyond a certain point. This alarming and cynical. threat. could not have been made if Johnson was certain that the USSR would come to the aid of ‘China.
The present hegemony of the United States does not exclude, however, a certain ‘vulnerability. In the absence of a direct confrontation with the socialist camp -- which is too gravely divided -- the solution can come from the weariness of the American : masses and the uneasiness of the Ieaders in Washington in face of ‘the growing censure of of the entire world and in particular all their allies.
Q: Do you think that acts like the one by. David Mitchell, the young American who cited the Nuremberg laws in refusing to serve in Vietnam, can contribute to stirring the American conscience?
J. P, Sartre: It was precisely from David Mitchell! ‘S action and that of several others that the idea of our "tribunal" was born. Our inquiry, if it finds the United States guilty, should enable all ‘the young Americans who: are combatting Johnson's policies to:invoke not only ‘the Nuremberg laws but also the judgment of ‘a certain number of free men who-do not represent any country, any party. It is much “better that we do not represent anything. What invalidates the Nuremberg judgments in the eyes of the neo-' Nazis is that they were handed down by conquerors whose law rested on force. We, in contrast, are not mandated by any power and no one can say that we are imposing our law on people under the boot. We are independent because we are weak. And our position is strong because we are not trying to send anyone to prison but, at a calamitous moment in-our history, are trying to revive in public opinion the idea that there can be policies that are objectively and juridically criminal.