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LAWLESSWORLD
A36-PAGE EXCERPT FROM
AMERICA AND THE BREAKINGOF GLOBAL RULES FROM FDR’SATLANTIC CHARTER TO GEORGEW.BUSH’S ILLEGAL WAR
PHILIPPE SANDS
       C     o       l       d       T     y     p     e
 
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America and the Breaking ofGlobal Rules from FDR’sAtlantic Charter toGeorge W. Bush’s Illegal war
(ISBN: 0670034525 Viking/ Hardcover/ 374 pages/ $US 25.95).
PHILIPPE SANDS
LAWLESS WORLD
 
PREFACE
I
nthe 1940s the United States and Britain led efforts to replace a worldof chaos and conflict with a new,rules-based system.Although theirviews were not exactly identical – one had an empire to protect andthe other did not,one had a constitutional order promoting individ-ual rights and the other did not – they hoped to make the world abetter place,free from fear or want.They proposed new internationalrulesto place limitson the use of force,promote the protection of fun-damental human rights,and enshrine free trade and internationaleconomic liberalization.Together with many other countries,they created acoalition under the banner of a United Nations.Their project was premised onabelief that the rules would create opportunities and promote values whichwere widely shared.Over the next fifty years the mission to deepen and develop internationallawwas,broadly speaking,successful.By the 1990s the cold war had been won,the United States was the most powerful nation on earth,and Britain wasfighting above its weight class.But it may have been too successful a mission.The ruleswhich were intended to constrain others became constraining of their creators.Human rights norms took on a life of their own.They came tobe applied in ways which were politically inconvenient,as the Pinochet caseshowed.Economic obligations began to undermine domestic decision-makingon jobs and the environment.And the rules prohibiting the use of force cameto be seen as insufficiently flexible to allow intervention when thought neces-sary,as Kosovo proved.At the opening of the twenty-first century the world was a very differentplace from the one restructured by Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchillhalf a century earlier.International lawhad wrought a revolution,with rules
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