Q&A with Dr Steinbock on The Obliteration Doctrine: Part 2
DG Team
( Difference Group ) – The second part of Dr Steinbock’s highly topical new book, The Obliteration Doctrine, examines the West’s long struggle against genocide prevention which has set the stage for mass atrocities.
In the second part of The Obliteration Doctrine, Dr Steinbock examines the pioneering activities of Raphael Lemkin, the founder of the Genocide Convention, and genocide politics amid the Cold War. In particular, he highlights the inadequate enforcement of the Convention, the failure of genocide prevention and the long path to the Obliteration Doctrine.
Question (Q): Was this catastrophe inevitable?
Dr. Dan Steinbock (DS): Absolutely not.
Gaza catastrophe as a policy choice
Q: Could the Gaza catastrophe have been stopped?
DS: Of course. It could have been stopped in the past 22 months; and it could be halted today; overnight.
Q: How?
DS: Right after October 7, 2023, President Biden, during his visit in Israel, warned the Netanyahu cabinet about US “mistakes” following September 11, 2001. If the Biden administration had ceased the arms flow to Israel soon after the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) first initiated the massive bombardment of Gaza, the Strip would still be habitable. More than 65,000 Palestinians would still be alive. Up to 155,000 would not have been injured or maimed. And hundreds of thousands of indirect deaths could have been avoided – these deaths and debilitating health conditions will ensure that the nightmares of Gaza will prevail for decades to come.
Q: So, it all takes us back to the question why this all happened -…
DS: Or why it was allowed to happen… Passive tense blurs complicity and hides responsibility. There is nothing automatic about Gaza’s obliteration. Every step has been a result of a choice. Every day the carnage prevails is another vote for genocide.
Q: Will the Netanyahu cabinet’s looming “new Gaza war” change the equation?
DS: Yes, for the worse. It is set to compound the devastation, multiply deaths and accelerate the involuntary transfer of surviving Palestinians – the not-so-secret objective of the Netanyahu cabinet since its ground assault in late fall 2023.
Compromise and complicity
Q: The Prologue of The Obliteration Doctrine outlines South Africa’s genocide case against Israel and shows how the case was thoroughly diluted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) even before the onset of the judicial process. Was it censorship?
DS: It was exclusion, dilution and erosion of South Africa’s original genocide case. A prelude for things to come.
Q: South Africa’s case focuses on Israel, but you analyze others, too.
DS: Yes, starting with the Palestine et al. v. Biden et al. in the U.S. District Court. Eventually, it was rejected on the basis of the “political question doctrine,” which goes back to a Supreme Court case in 1803. According to the doctrine, legal questions are deemed justiciable, while political questions are nonjusticiable.
Q: One could say that it is a convenient doctrine to courts that seek to insulate themselves from the real world.
DS: In general, yes. Except that, in the Palestine case, the judge did not reject the genocide argument, which opened the Pandora’s Box for new legal initiatives in the future. Moreover, there have been other cases challenging political leaderships whose action or inaction led to the Gaza catastrophe, including DAWN v. Biden et al. in the ICC, GIPRI v. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Nicaragua v. Germany, and so on.
Q: Against the Biden cabinet and European political leaders?
DS: From the standpoint of international law, perpetrators are perpetrators, on both sides of the Atlantic.
Follow the money
Q: Who are the beneficiaries of the genocide in Gaza?
DS: The US accounts for two thirds for arms transfers to Israel, but Europe – Germany and Italy, the UK and many smaller players – supply the rest. Israel depends on US for arms and Europe for trade. In Gaza, Israel pulls the trigger, but the supply of bullets and arms, financing and intelligence comes from US-led West.
Q: Has war profiteering overridden the humanitarian catastrophe?
DS: In the post-9/11 wars world, the stock prices of the major US defense contractors have soared. With the Ukraine War and the Gaza catastrophe, these prices have multiplied. Worse, revolving doors prevail between the US administration, the Pentagon and the Big Defense, and their preferred think-tanks, such as the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in the Biden era. These generate huge moral hazards and conflicts of interests. With the Trump cabinet and its oligarchic base, these linkages are even more prominent.
Q: You also look at the money chains.
DS: In the long view, ex-President Biden has a special place in the fund flows of the Israel lobby to U.S. senators since the early ‘90s. Coupling Biden’s Senate data from 1990 and his presidential campaigns since 1988, his total amounts to $11.2 million. He is followed by ex-Democrat Robert Menendez, convicted for corruption, and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Q: … based on data by?
DS: Reputable NGOs, OpenSecrets and bipartisan research organizations. Different messengers, but the same message.
Obliteration first tested two decades ago
Q: The Obliteration Doctrine has a long history, yet it differs from precedent military doctrines. How?
DS: In historical view, the Obliteration Doctrine combines lethal forms of warfare — particularly scorched earth destruction, collective punishment and civilian victimization — with massive and indiscriminate area bombing and counterinsurgency operations. What’s new is the chilling mix of artificial intelligence (AI) in genocidal atrocities violating all humanitarian principles related to the conduct of war. What happened in Gaza won’t stay in Gaza.
Q: You show that the Obliteration Doctrine was known well before it was deployed in Gaza, starting in late fall 2023.
DS: There’s wide consensus on these matters among military analysts. Though building on ancient military tactics and modern bombardment canons, the Obliteration Doctrine was largely perfected nearly two decades before October 7, 2023. It was first piloted by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) in Dahiya, a predominantly Shia Muslim neighborhood in Beirut.
Q: No proactive intervention by the international community, despite the looming nightmare?
DS: There was no effective intervention in the subsequent time period by the international community. There was no major effort to preempt the impending execution of the lethal doctrine, even as its Israeli proponents pledged that they’d deploy it in their “next war.”
Instead of prevention, recording genocides
Q: One of the most intriguing aspects of your book is the argument that, in contrast to Raphael Lemkin’s wishes, the Genocide Convention has been deployed in a way that enables rather than preempts genocides.
DS: The Genocide Convention was shrewdly diluted and tailored by the Western powers to erode measures of genocide prevention. It is what broke Lemkin’s heart as it undermined his quest for a comprehensive Genocide Convention.
Q: So, this all goes back to the early days of the Cold War…
DS: … when Truman buried the Rooseveltian legacy of an effective United Nations. Instead, Lemkin’s quest for genocide prevention was initially supported mainly by the developing countries of the Global South, not by the Western countries whose delegates sought to undermine it.
Q: Why?
DS: Motives differed, but colonial legacies were the common denominator. London had little interest in genocide investigations in the British Empire. Washington was concerned about international attention being directed to its racial segregation, the many lynchings of African Americans, and the genocidal massacres of Native Americans. Such concerns were also typical to other former colonial states, including France, the Netherlands, Canada and Sweden, and the defeated Germany, Italy and Japan.
Q: What about Lemkin’s goal of preemption?
DS: Lemkin was originally focused on “preparatory attacks” and early warning signals, to preempt mass atrocities before they could take place. Yet, today instead of preempting new mass atrocities, the goal is to name, condemn and record genocides but only after they have taken place. So, it follows that a genocide is required to trigger a mechanism to prevent, belatedly.
Toward new “final solutions”
Q: You are uncomfortable with the term “Gaza war.”
DS: Usually, war is a battle of armies or various non-state actors. In Gaza, up to 70 percent of the killed and wounded – more than 100,000 – are women and children who have nothing to do with hostilities. Many have been targeted by Israeli snipers. That’s not war. That is mass butchery.
Q: What’s the way out?
DS: Effective genocide prosecution will ensue only when Genocide Convention can deliver its ultimate purpose: To prevent and punish the crime of genocide.
Q: You call this the shift from “victors’ justice” to “victims’ justice.”
DS: Yes. But it won’t be viable until and unless the countries of the Global South will have an adequate voice and representation in genocide prevention in particular and in global governance in general.
Q: .. and without such effective countervailing forces?
DS: … the Obliteration Doctrine is setting an atrocious precedent and provides a brutal blueprint for far, far worse to come.
Via Difference Group
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