Prologue to truth: Argentina’s National Commission on the Disappeared and the authority of international law

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Valeria Vázquez Guevara
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Law ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Law And Literature ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
National Commission ◽  
Truth Commission ◽  
Anglo American

Abstract Argentina’s 1980s transition to democracy is globally admired for pioneering a state-led process addressing the 1976–1983 dictatorship’s state-violence. The role of international law in the transition is well documented, especially through human rights and crimes against humanity. Yet, the extent to which Argentina’s transition was intertwined with international law and subject to its jurisdictional force deserves greater attention. This article analyses how the Argentinian truth commission (TC) accounts for the dictatorship’s state-violence, and how international law is implicated in the making of this account. It argues that the TC’s account draws on the authority of international law to establish the unlawfulness of the dictatorship’s state-violence. In turn, the TC subjects the meaning and interpretation of the dictatorship’s state-violence to a Eurocentric/Anglo-American lawfulness embedded in, and mobilized by, international law in the late-Cold War. To examine this, the article re-reads the Prologue to the TC’s Report as a literary text that does international legal work, harnessing the authority of international law in a way that has enabled the TC to deploy an authoritative, internationally acceptable, account of the unlawfulness of the dictatorship’s state-violence. This reading is based on original archival research, on scholarship in the fields of ‘law and literature’ and the history and theory of international law.

Catching an Atom Spy: MI5 and the Investigation of Klaus Fuchs

2010 ◽  
pp. 554-567
Author(s):  
Timothy Gibbs
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
High Risk ◽  
Klaus Fuchs ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Successful Approach ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Atomic Espionage ◽  
Signals Intelligence

This article focuses on M15 organization and Klaus Fuchs, a German-born physicist and Soviet “Atom Spy” who was arrested in 1950 and served fourteen years for offences related to atomic espionage. It examines how Fuchs was identified as an “Atom Spy” in 1949 and describes the MI5's investigation, which ended in the early 1950 with the successful arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of this highly significant Cold War figure. Key issues discussed in this article include the difficulties encountered by MI5 and the budding British atomic program in the sphere of security. It also discusses the role of Signals intelligence (SIGINT) in the investigation of Fuchs, and the high-risk but ultimately successful approach taken by MI5's key interrogator, William Skardon. This case study highlights both the unparalleled level of international intelligence cooperation between the British agencies and their American counterparts, which made the resolution of this case possible, and some of the frailties in the Anglo-American alliance that were brought to the fore by the exposure of Fuchs as an Atom Spy.

State Violence, Justice, And The Suffering Of Others

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Sandrine Sanos
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
French Writer ◽  
Painful Experience ◽  
Tzvetan Todorov ◽  
Nazi Camps ◽  
Do So

In 1955, Alain Resnais's now canonical documentary, Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog) ended with an ominous question, asking “who, among us, is keeping watch from this strange watchtower [of the ruins of Auschwitz] to warn of the arrival of our new executioners” who might bring about the return of the “concentrationary plague?” One man had already made it his mission to do so: the French writer and former political deportee David Rousset. Rousset had shaken the French world of letters and politics with the 1946 publication of L'univers concentrationnaire (The Concentrationary Universe), which warned of the civilizational and moral cesura that the Nazi camps had been. The term quickly became a widely used conceptual framework. Former deportee and Catholic writer Jean Cayrol borrowed from it to write his voice-over to Night and Fog. In 1949, Rousset published another text that created a scandal in Cold War France: an Appeal to “fellow deportees” calling upon them to “investigate the USSR's concentrationary universe” (Kuby, 46). This indictment fiercely divided the French left. In 1950, he brought a libel suit against another former deportee, communist writer Pierre Daix, who had accused him of amnesiac “apoliticism” (Kuby, 65–6; Dean, 61). Just before, in the wake of his Appeal, Rousset had founded an organization against concentrationary regimes with those, like him, who had been political deportees. In 1951, it put the Soviet Union on trial for crimes against humanity. Rousset and his organization were involved in many trials, eager to denounce the “new executioners” who had revived the “scourge of the camps” in the postwar world. For many today, he is an “exceptional” man because, as philosopher and critic Tzvetan Todorov argues, he was not paralyzed by the memory of “this painful experience”; instead, he harnessed it into action against dehumanizing state violence. For Todorov, Rousset had allowed morality to prevail over base political considerations.

Part 1 The Cold War Era (1945–89), 13 The Intervention in Czechoslovakia—1968

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hafner Gerhard
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Valid Consent ◽  
The Cold War

This contribution discusses the intervention of five member states of the Warsaw Pact Organization under the leading role of the Soviet Union in the CSSR in August 1968, which terminated the “Prague Spring” in a forceful manner. After presenting the facts of this intervention and its reasons, it describes the legal positions of the protagonists of this intervention as well as that of the states condemning it, as presented in particular in the Security Council. It then examines the legality of this intervention against general international law and the particular views of the Soviet doctrine existing at that time, defending some sort of socialist (regional) international law. This case stresses the requirement of valid consent for the presence of foreign troops in a country and denies the legality of any justification solely based on the necessity to maintain the political system within a state.

Part 1 The Cold War Era (1945–89), 5 The Soviet Intervention in Hungary—1956

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lieblich Eliav
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Law ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Warsaw Pact ◽  
Jus Ad Bellum ◽  
Soviet Invasion ◽  
The Cold War

In late October 1956, the Soviet army crushed a burgeoning rebellion in Hungary, ostensibly upon the invitation of the Hungarian government, and allegedly in conformity with the provisions of the Warsaw Pact. While the intervention was widely condemned, international law could not prevent the Soviet invasion nor secure the USSR's withdrawal from Hungary. Seven decades later, this Chapter analyses the Soviet intervention under jus ad bellum. It focuses on the positions of relevant actors in real-time, as well as on the enduring aspects of the affair. As the Chapter reveals, the Hungary intervention presented dilemmas that plague the law on the use of force even in contemporary times. It raised questions that remain burning today, such as the role of consent in legalizing external forcible intervention, the ability of international law to face superpowers, and the dialectics between effectiveness and legitimacy in the determination of lawful authority during internal strife.

Transnational Law and Literatures: A Postcolonial Perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 1050-1068
Author(s):  
Amanda Lagji
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Law And Literature ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Transnational Law ◽  
Literature Reading ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Supreme Court ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Colonial Histories ◽  
Political Commitments

This chapter argues that a transnational law and literature approach, paired with the insights and political commitments of previous postcolonial law and literature approaches, allows us to attend to transnational parties and entities (below and above the figure of the “state” in international law) with a critical eye toward the colonial histories embedded in Anglo-American, and Eurocentric law and literatures. In what follows, the chapter first discusses law and literature as it emerged in the 1970s, more recent postcolonial critiques, and the lacunae that a transnational law and literature approach might address differently. The chapter concludes that a transnational law and literature reading of Louise Erdrich’s The Round House shows how this approach can facilitate a decolonial understanding of sovereignty and knowledge, as well as a fuller appreciation of the novel’s representation of US federal law and the US Supreme Court opinions that have yielded the fragile sovereignties of contemporary tribal law.

Transitional (In)Justice: An Exploration of Blanket Amnesties and the Remaining Controversies Around the Spanish Transition to Democracy

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (2_3) ◽  
pp. 75-135
Author(s):  
Alexandra García
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Authoritarian Regime ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Spanish Transition ◽  
Successful Transition ◽  
Criminal Offenses ◽  
History Of ◽  
Jus Cogens

“Blanket amnesties” have generally been declared to be incompatible with international law due to the fact that they shield perpetrators of serious crimes from accountability as well as conflict with established principles regarding the applicability of statutory limitations to certain criminal offenses. The repeal of theFull StopandDue Obediencelaws in Argentina set a crucial precedent in the process toward the abrogation of legislation leading to impunity for those responsible for grave violations ofjus cogens.Additionally, permitting the prosecutions of Nazi officers Klaus Barbie and Erich Priebke in Europe confirmed the customary principle of the non-applicability of statutory limitations to crimes against humanity. However, for nearly 40 years, Spain's amnesty legislation continues to preclude any investigation or prosecution of the crimes committed during the civil war (1936–1939) and the Francoist regime (1939–1975). Spain's 1977 Amnesty Act has been widely characterized as a blanket amnesty and remains in force today despite allegations of noncompliance with international law and numerous requests from United Nations bodies to repeal it. This article explores the history of Spain's 1977 Amnesty Act, compares and contrasts it with other nations with similar amnesties, and makes the case that a successful transition from an authoritarian regime to a peaceful democracy is feasible without the use of overly broad “blanket” amnesties.

1 Law and force

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gray Christine
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Legal Questions ◽  
Legal Constraints ◽  
The Government ◽  
Repressive Regime ◽  
The Right ◽  
Second World

This introductory chapter provides a background to the renewed debate about the legal constraints on the use of force imposed by the UN Charter after the Second World War. The increasing conflicts within states have raised legal questions, first, as to whether there can be a right of unilateral humanitarian intervention to protect citizens from their own governments, second, as to the content of the more recent doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (R2P)—the responsibility of the ‘international community’ to protect a population from war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity by the government, and third as to the existence of a right to intervene to overthrow a repressive regime. Even more controversially, the conflict in Syria has brought renewed debate about the scope of the right to self defence in counter terrorism operations. This chapter discusses the problems with the identification of international law on the use of force, the role of international law in this area, and the complexities of any inquiry into its effectiveness.

Secession Revisited: General Framework and Lessons From the Referenda in Catalonia and Kurdistan

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-214
Author(s):  
Enrico Milano
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Law ◽  
General Framework ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
First Century ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Regulatory Function ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
New States

The recent referenda held in Catalonia and Kurdish Iraq have reignited the debate over referenda, self-determination and unilateral secession and over the role of international law as a legal framework capable of governing and channelling those dramatic changes towards desired ends. The debate has been ever present in the Post Cold War period, considering that the number of states has increased from just over 150 to 196, with many of the new states emerging from non-consensual processes of separation. The present article assesses the general international legal framework applicable to secession, including the scope and content of principles such as territorial integrity, self-determination and uti possidetis and tests whether and to what extent the two recent separatist claims in Catalonia and Kurdistan fit into that framework. The lessons drawn are that international law is increasingly relevant to the regulation of secession and yet the practice related to the referendum in Catalonia highlights international law’s subsidiary regulatory function and the fact that, indeed, even in the twenty-first century, international law may, in some cases, remain neutral in secession attempts.

scholarly journals Chords of the «Cold War»: Music as a resource for representing the «image of the other» in Anglo-American cinema

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-358
Author(s):  
Kirill A. Yudin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Sound Effects ◽  
Media Construction ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Cold War

The article is devoted to the study of the role of music and sound effects in the Anglo-American cinematograph. An attempt is made to assess the political and symbolic potential of media resources for representing the «image of another». To this end, the author examines a number of specific films created at different stages of the Cold War. Conclusions are made about the use of the following methods of media construction: noir representation, political-satirical spectrum, modes of address-local or mixed/combined borrowing of compositions, imitation of a «different» culture.

Pandora's box?: humanitarian intervention and international law

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aidan Hehir
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Law ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

The three books reviewed here all address the question of the efficacy of international law and advance concerns about its future trajectory, albeit in contrasting ways. As has been well documented, the role of international law – specifically in the regulation of the use of force – has undergone significant scrutiny in the post-Cold War era. To a much greater extent than during the Cold War, contemporary conflicts and crises are invariably discussed with reference to international law, and the legality of a particular use of force has become a significant factor in assessing its legitimacy; one need only think of the importance placed on the legality of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This increase in prominence suggests that international law has become more important, and unsurprisingly those used to the discipline's previous role as exotic curio have welcomed this sudden promotion (Robertson, 2000).

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