GRENADA AGAIN: LIVING WITHIN THE LAW

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000404440106-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 29, 2010
• Sequence Number: 106
• Publication Date: December 14, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/29: CIA-RDP90-00552R000404440106-0
ARTICLE APPEARED
01; PAGE.' O
WALL STREET JOURNAL
14 December 1983
Grenada Again: Living Within the Law
BV ARTHUR. SCHLESINGER JR.
In the dozen years since The Wall Street
Journal nobly opened its pages to periodic
heresies by me, nothing I have written has
brought down on my head such a torrent of
hilmination and abuse as a recent column
questioning the virtue of the sneak Ameri-
car, military attack on Grenada. I have
been vilified in unprintable. language, in-
structed to go back to where I came from
(Columbus, Ohio, actually) and denounced
as an agent of the Kremlin.
At the risk of provoking the customers
still more, let me try again; for I think an
important point is involved for all who love
America. So please, everybody, stay calm
for a moment, and let us reason together
or, the question of the relationship between
law and foreign policy.
Until recently, most Americans re-
garded the establishment of neutral stan-
dards of international behavior as vital to
the interests of the U.S. International law
is far from omnipotent. But it is far from
negligible, too, and the steady extension'of
its reach is the necessary condition of last-
ing peace. It surely continues to be in our
national interest to uphold the rule of due
process in the world, however imperfect
that rule may be. It is surely not in our
national interest to set an example to the
world of the subordination, when it may
please as, of law to force.
Pearl Harbor
Six months before the U.S. launched its
sneak military attack on Grenada, Sen.
Daniel P. Moynihan observed in a speech
at the National Humanities Center, "A
measure of the current disorientation in
American foreign policy derives from our
having abandoned, for all practical pur-
poses, the concept that international rela-
tions ... can and should be governed by a
regime of public international law." The
New York Democrat cited his service on
the Senate Select Committee on to i-
ce, where CIA covert operations, in
their nature violative of treaty law, were
under constant review. "To mv recollec-
tion," he said, "in six and more years of
seeming v intermiitab e --closed_ hearings
and briefings, I do not ever recall hearin
a discussion of lezal o igations o any
kind." In abandonin a conception of world
or er that, if arguab e, was none tress
_coherent. Mr. Moynihan concluded, the
M 'asnotrz.K ej
conception. No normative conception. t at
is. If we don't believe in law, then what do
we believe in?
This mon I marks the 42nd anniversary
of Pearl Harbor. Why is Dec. 7, 1941, a
date that will live in infamy? Because on
that day the Japanese launched, without
warning, a sneak attack against the U.S.
But at least Japan was picking on someone
its own size. In Grenada we attacked, with-
out warning, a hapless island of 110,000
people possessing neither army nor navy
nor air force. Judging by the popular jubi-
lation that followed this glorious victory,
by the self-satisfaction of the administra-
tion and by the ignominious collapse-with
a few brave exceptions like Pat Moynihan,
Alan Cranston, George McGovern, Gary.
Hart-of the Democratic opposition, the in-
vasion of Grenada is esteemed as "one of
the proud moments of American history.
Are we to conclude that Pearl Harbors are
splendid when we are the perpetrators and
wicked only when we are the victims?
The administration has submitted the
need to rescue American citizens as the
pretext in international law for its action.
The protection of U.S. citizens would in-
deed be a legitimate reason for a rescue
mission. But in this case the danger to.
American citizens was not in advance of
the invasion, but in consequence of it.
President Reagan himself in his ad-
dress to the nation confessed that the in-
ya ers "had little intelligence information
about conditions on the island." In any
case, rescue missions-there have been at
least 80 of them in our history-never be-
fore required the invasion of a country, the ,
overthro ernment and the mili-
ta occupation of its soil. Had the Soviet
pion carried out a similar operation on
the same pretext, no one would have been
more rightly and righteously indignant
over Soviet lawlessness than the current
president of the U.S.
The legal fig leaves offered by the ad-
ministration have been so perfunctory as
to imply a conviction that law is irrelevant
to the American conduct of the Cold War.
The Grenada invasion provides the answer
to the question with which Sen. Moynihan
concluded his speech in April. The Rea.
gan administration has replaced the con-
cept of a regime of public international law
with the concept of the U.S. as a law unto
itself.'
Worse, some of us rejoice in the very
boldness of the U.S. in liberating itself
from the shackles of legal procedure. Even
this admirable newspaper declared that
the world's judgment of Grenada must not
be confused by the scruples and technicali-
ties of international lawyers.
Now it may well be that the assump-
tion by the U.S. of a lawless role in inter-
national affairs will have in the short run
an admonitory effect. H.R. Haldeman has
STAT
told us that President Nixon used to es-
pouse what he called the "Madman The-
ory," according to which other countries, if
they thought the U.S. was capable of any-
thing, would be more likely to do what we
wanted. Doubtless the Madman Theory
can -work for a while. It worked well en-
ough for Hitler and Stalin. The invasion of
Grenada has very likely had a chastening
effect on Nicaragua and Cuba. But is it
really the example we wish to set for the
world? Are Hitler and Stalin now to be
American models? The Madman Theory is
degrading and corrupting for us. It de-
means and disgraces the nation of Wash-
ington and Lincoln. It can never form the
basis for honorable and lasting peace.
There are moments in history when the
law of self-preservation must override all
other considerations, whether of interna-
tional or domestic law. As Justice Arthur
Goldberg once wrote in a Supreme Court
decision, the Constitution is "not a suicide
pact." But these moments are exceedingly
rare. Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba in
1962 represented an infinitely greater
threat to the U.S. than anything that took
plate in Grenada, but the Kennedy admin-
istration rejected the idea of a sneak mili-
tary attack. What might the outcome for
world peace have been had the current
crowd been in power in 1962?
No one in his senses can claim that the
life of the U.S. was at stake in Grenada.
What we end up with, rather, is the situa-
tion well described by Abraham Lincoln in
1848: "Allow the President to invade a
neighboring nation, whenever he shall
deem it necessary to repel an invasion .. .
and you allow him to make war at plea-
sure..... If, today, he should choose to
say he thinks it necessary to invade Can-
ada, to prevent the British from invading
us, how could you stop him? You may say
to him, 'I see no probability of the British
invading us' but he will say to you 'be si-
lent: I see it, if you don't.'
It is perhaps a measure of our decline
as a democracy that we would no longer be
much surprised if we picked up the news-
paper tomorrow and read that President
Reagan had invaded a new country-Nica-'
ragua or Syria. For the Reagan Doctrine is
dangerously elastic. Nearly every country'
in the world contains American citizens to,
be declared in potential danger. Nearly ev-
ery country in the world can be defined as
of strategic importance to American secu-
rity-if not directly in itself, then indirectly-
through the convenient doctrine of "credi-
bility," by which every local conflict is in-
vested with global significance and be-
.c0n7uvUFo
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/29: CIA-RDP90-00552R000404440106-0