The Gulf Crisis and African-American Interests Under International Law

Abstract

It has now been two years since the end of the United Nations Security Council’s military enforcement action against Iraq, popularly known as “Operation Desert Storm.” The glow of military success suffused the American atmosphere, and its aftermath is clearly shaping international expectations about the United Nations, its legal authority, human rights, and more general issues of power, wealth and loyalties of peoples. Also shaping expectations is the end of the Cold War, which left the United States as the sole “superpower.” How well the international community and the American polity are adjusting to the absence of the Soviet Union as a major state and convenient enemy remains open to question. International law is thus challenged to regulate an international community suddenly transformed in many ways.

“United” We Stand: Responses to the September 11 Attacks in Black and White

“…Consistent with Sidanius et al's (1997) connection between patriotism and ethnic inequality, Richardson (1993) found that African Americans responded to the Gulf crisis through the filter of racism. He delineates a number of reasons why they were significantly less supportive of U.S. policy during the crisis, including the decision to use military force to remove the Iraqi presence from Kuwait.…”

Contesting the New York Community: From Liminality to the “New Normal” in the Wake of September 11

“…But for many others, the public expression of patriotism involved a dilemma: How could patriotism's association with sentimental and exclusionary views of the nation align with the cosmopolitan, worldly image of New York City? Celebrating working-class heroes fit well with patriotism's working-class connotations, but the stigma of adopting a perspective associated with privileging whiteness and condoning exclusion (Lipsitz, 2002;Richardson, 1993;Sidanius et al, 1997) held sway as well. The following passage from one respondent, which conveys her uncertainty as she struggles to describe her opinion, juxtaposes these two oppositional positions well.…”

Different Paths

“…Their existence is contingent on being recognized as having governments with effective control over defined territories and populations, and their leaders must demonstrate the ability and willingness to play by the rules of an international legal order developed by current or former colonial powers (Saito 2020). Their borders, in many cases, were arbitrarily imposed by their colonizers and result in the continued internal colonization of many peoples (Mutua 1995;Richardson 1993;Mahmud 2010).…”