When Intent Makes All the Difference in the World: Economic Sanctions on Iraq and the Accusation of Genocide

Abstract

The U.N. Security Council responded to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait with a comprehensive regime of sanctions. This Article examines the claim that the highly planned policy contains elements of genocide and critically examines the international legal definition of genocide and its central requirement of specific intent. It argues that the conception of genocide contained in the 1948 Genocide Convention ignores whole categories of atrocities, exculpating certain actors who have committed acts of massive human destruction and removing the acts themselves from the sphere of moral judgment and accountability. The Article describes the devastating human costs that the Security Council and the United States have knowingly imposed upon the people of Iraq through the sanctions regime. It suggests that because the policy is justified with claims of international peace and security or denials of moral agency, it cannot meet the Genocide Convention's requirement of specific intent. Drawing upon the work of philosophers such as Arendt and Nietzsche, the Article concludes by charging the Security Council and the U.S. Government with something that will not fit within the Genocide Convention at all, something best described by Plato's concept of "perfect injustice," which occurs when atrocities are made at once invisible and good.