![](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Arrias.jpg\")
On July 3rd, 1950, 8 days after North Korea – with Russian and Chinese assistance (and prodding) – attacked into South Korea, Secretary of State Acheson advised the President to act on his authority as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces to respond to the attack, and not ask Congress for approval or a resolution or a declaration of war. President Truman accepted this advice. There was never a declaration of war nor a Joint Resolution.<\/p>\n
That precedent has held, and so, no wars since – Constitutionally anyway.<\/p>\n
It isn\u2019t clear to the outside observer, but in military jargon the term \u201cunlimited war\u201d has a different meaning than the general interpretation. It doesn\u2019t mean what the average dictionary says, to wit, a war fought with all means at your disposal. An unlimited war is one fought with unlimited goals, that is, the destruction of the enemy\u2019s government; think outcomes, not inputs. If your goal is to oust the other country\u2019s leadership, your goal is unlimited, no matter what size force you use to accomplish it.<\/p>\n
If the enemy understands that that\u2019s your goal, then they\u2019ll view the fight as an unlimited fight for survival, even if they began the war with very specific, limited goals. For a government so targeted, unlimited wars are existential, and they should be expected to act accordingly. If the enemy has nuclear weapons, planning should reflect that fact.<\/p>\n
Last March President Biden suggested that President Putin needed to be forced from office: \u201cFor God\u2019s sake, this man cannot remain in power.\u201d At the time the remark upset a number of people – leaders of European nations – as it appeared that President Biden was escalating the war. However, the President managed to \u201csteer around\u201d trouble, the remark being labeled as just an \u201cad lib,\u201d etc.<\/p>\n
However, during the Munich Security Conference this past week, in front of the defense ministers of more than 50 countries and with many of the leaders of those countries present, Vice President Harris said the following, in prepared remarks:<\/p>\n
“Russian forces have pursued a widespread and systemic attack against a civilian population\u2014gruesome acts of murder, torture, rape, and deportation. Execution-style killings, beating, and electrocution. In the case of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, we have examined the evidence, we know the legal standards, and there is no doubt: These are crimes against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t an ad lib, this is a statement of the position of the administration.<\/p>\n
Whether Russia is committing crimes against humanity is somewhat subjective as crimes against humanity haven\u2019t been codified under any sort of international treaty. Said differently, there\u2019s no accepted legal definition of crimes against humanity. But, after the Nuremberg trials the following definition was worked out by the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal:<\/p>\n
Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.<\/p>\n
At the time, the understanding was that these crimes could only be prosecuted as elements of war crimes or crimes against peace. They\u2019ve since been expanded, but in this case, it\u2019s pretty much irrelevant, as there\u2019s a war. Last March the International Criminal Court (ICC) began investigations to identify possible war crimes in Ukraine, which would include crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n
This suggests that sooner or later the ICC is going to charge President Putin with war crimes and crimes against humanity. There\u2019s been communication between various European governments and the ICC that suggests that many, perhaps all of them are leaning in that direction. Nearly every European government (perhaps all of them and I missed it), as well as President Biden, has endorsed President Zelenskyy\u2019s peace demands, which includes (#7) Justice, including the establishment of a special tribunal to prosecute Russian war crimes.<\/p>\n
President Zelenskyy repeatedly states there\u2019ll be no peace negotiations with President Putin, and signed a decree last October declaring that negotiations with Putin are impossible. No NATO heads of state have publicly balked at that decree.<\/p>\n
Returning to the main point, previously, NATO and the US appeared to be implying that the Russian government, the Putin administration, President Putin and certain key ministers, councillors and generals, be brought before the ICC.<\/p>\n
But this week Vice President Harris said that the US Government had examined the available information and made a \u201clegal\u201d determination that there\u2019ve been crimes against humanity. So, no longer is it implied; Harris explicitly stated that crimes have been committed.<\/p>\n
From Putin\u2019s perspective, and that of his lieutenants, this has just become existential. Before, it was implicit. Now, it is explicit.<\/p>\n
What next? There\u2019s the blinding flash of the obvious: President Putin isn’t going to voluntarily surrender himself to the ICC. Like Milosevic in Serbia, the only way he will ever appear before the ICC is if some future Russian government were to hand him over to the ICC. (Milosevic was turned over to the ICC by then Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Dindic, well after the breakup of Yugoslavia.)<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s also another facet to this: the Vice President just asserted that we want to bring the Russian government – the Putin regime – to trial. To do that they will need to be pushed from power. That is an unlimited war goal. We are now de facto in an unlimited war with Russia.<\/p>\n
Yet we\u2019ve had no formal, Congressional debate as to what we\u2019re doing and why, and what we really hope to accomplish. The Constitution says: \u201cCongress shall have the power to declare war\u2026\u201d But now, the Constitution seems to have been bypassed, and so has Congress. And we\u2019re headed into war, one Russia will view as existential.<\/p>\n
Doesn\u2019t that deserve Congressional debate?<\/p>\n
Copyright 2023 Arrias
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On July 3rd, 1950, 8 days after North Korea – with Russian and Chinese assistance (and prodding) – attacked into South Korea, Secretary of State Acheson advised the President to act on his authority as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces to respond to the attack, and not ask Congress for approval or a resolution or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arrian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25574"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25576,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25574\/revisions\/25576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}