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after a terrorist attack on a night club in Berlin frequented by American soldiers.
In 1983 President Reagan invaded Grenada, allegedly to protect American medical
students on the island and in response to the assassination of the Prime Minister
and several members of his Cabinet.
56
However, the president’s real intention was to
remove a Cuban-backed hardline faction that had orchestrated a coup and imposed
emergency rule on the island. The Grenada invasion was overwhelmingly condemned
by the United Nations General Assembly as a flagrant violation of international law.
57
President Reagan also supported anti-communist groups in Africa and Latin
America, whose wars brought untold suffering to civilians. After Nicaragua sued the
United States before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for mining its harbors,
the Reagan administration withdrew from the court’s Compulsory Jurisdiction clause
and boycotted the proceedings.
58
The court eventually ruled against the United States
but President Reagan disregarded the judgment.
59
The Reagan administration vetoed
several resolutions in the Security Council, calling on it to comply with the ICJ’s
judgment.
60
President Bush subsequently negotiated an aid package with the new
democratically-elected government of Violeta Chamorro to repeal the law requiring
compensation in exchange for a U.S. aid package.
The Reagan Administration refused to submit for Senate ratification the United
Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which the president deemed
contained provisions that were anti-free market. The president was particularly
concerned with the role of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) and the
requirement that wealthy countries had to transfer technology to developing
countries in order to allow them to participate in deep sea exploration.
61
Reagan
sent troops into Lebanon without Security Council authorization. He clandestinely
provided weapons and intelligence to Iraq to help it defeat Iran during the Iran-
Iraq war and blocked efforts in the Security Council to condemn Iraq for its use of
chemical weapons against civilians.
62
Reagan reflagged Kuwaiti oil tankers with the
U.S. flag to provoke an Iranian attack and to give him a justification to attack Iran in
self-defense. Reagan later destroyed Iran’s oil platforms in the Gulf and inadvertently
56
Christine Gray,
The Use of Force and the International Legal Order
, p.602, in
Malcolm D. Evans, ed.
International Law, (2003).
57
U.N. G.A. Res. 38/7 (Nov.2, 1983).The vote in the General Assembly was 109 to 9, with 27 abstentions.
58
supra
note 52.
59
Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States of America,
Judgment June 27, 1986, I.C.J. 14.
60
U.N. Security Council Document S-18428 (Oct. 28, 1986).
61
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick’s Testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, April 24, 2004, in which
she argued that “Viewed from the perspective of U.S. interests and Reagan Administration principles, it
was a bad bargain,” and that “its ratification will diminish our capacity for self-government, including,
ultimately, our capacity for self-defense.”
62
Joost Hilterman,
A Poisonous Affairs: America, Iraq and the Gassing of Halabja
(2007); Charles Tripp,
The Security Council and the Iran-Iraq War,
p. 374
,
in Vaughan Lowe, Adam Roberts, Jennifer Welsh
&Dominik Zaum, eds. The United Nations Security Council and War (2110).