[Legality Challenge] Repeal "RAT III"

[Imperium Anglorum]

And this is part of the reason why people are asking for a rulings registry...

Believe it or not, I think one of those exists on an offsite forum. I'll look and see if the creator is okay with making it public.

I'm quite sure it's out of date too, since nobody has kept track of when rulings were made.

[Wallenburg]

*kick*

[Sierra Lyricalia]

Opinion pending. Awaiting formal agreement.

[Wallenburg]

*kick*

They gave you a reason when they declared it illegal gameside. Do you really need an essay and some fancy green text explaining it to you yet again?

First, it's part of GenSec's job. Second, yes, the author has made it clear that he wants a formal opinion on this, since that sets precedent on exactly what GenSec thinks the rules mean.

Opinion pending. Awaiting formal agreement.

Thank you for the update.

[Sierra Lyricalia]

*** Official Ruling of the Secretariat ***

We find the challenged resolution illegal for an Honest Mistake violation. Sierra Lyricalia wrote the majority opinion, joined by Christian Democrats, Bears Armed, & Separatist Peoples. Sciongrad recused.


Majority Opinion (4-0):

We are asked to determine the legality of the proposal "Repeal 'Responsibility in Transferring Arms.'" On examination we find an Honest Mistake violation, and the repeal is illegal as submitted.

Simply put, the repeal proposal is misleading because a war cannot be a war of conquest unless the warring nation seizes territory. If one nation invades another in order to stop "genocide, slavery, and other human rights violations" without taking territory, that war is not a war of conquest by definition. This renders the clause regarding humanitarian interventions (below) a clear Honest Mistake.

Arguing that war intended to halt blatant abuses of World Assembly prohibitions on genocide, slavery, and other human rights violations may still be considered conquest if the offending nation does not pose a persistent or existential threat, or has not taken territory from the attacking nation.

However, we must ask whether the phrase "may be considered" (emphasis added) gets that clause off the hook. Institutions have incorrect opinions all the time, and the repeal might not be arguing that these "just wars" will by the WA be considered conquest; simply that they may be so considered by some WA or national bureaucrat. This would render the Honest Mistake so minor as to be not worth troubling about.

But we cannot so rule. The basis of the repeal cannot be that someone might crazily misinterpret the definition of conquest (that fact is true, trivial, obvious, and its type has been an invalid argument for repeal since NS Antiquity). This is not a valid argument, essentially. No nation substantially engaged in the arms trade is going to accept that a humanitarian intervention is actually a war of conquest without serious evidence - on the order of outright annexation or some similar, perhaps even political, process. Especially since there are plenty of unjust wars, that nevertheless do not constitute "conquest," that remain legally supportable/suppliable under RTA. This is very basic Reasonable Nation Theory.

Therefore the argument that nations might misinterpret things to their own disadvantage can be either a random useless fact (of no consequence for the repeal); or an outright Honest Mistake (assuming that it actually means something for the repeal argument). The author has actually argued the former in the challenge thread. But if we accept the premise, that still doesn't make the repeal legal. If the premise is not an Honest Mistake, it's gibberish because it bears no relation to actual national practice, and therefore doesn't belong in a repeal argument, while if it does claim relevance to national practice it is false and therefore an Honest Mistake.

The only way to save this, in short, is to assume the author is naively asserting that nations just blunder through the ages without bothering to try to set policy, gain advantage, or frame international disputes to help them come out ahead. In other words, either the statement itself or its underlying premise violate RNT. The argument is simply not credible. Therefore the Honest Mistake is inescapable and the proposed repeal is illegal as submitted.

[Sciongrad]

A fair ruling. Thanks all.

[Excidium Planetis]

Simply put, the repeal proposal is misleading because a war cannot be a war of conquest unless the warring nation seizes territory.

This is obviously true. The target resolution clearly states this.

If one nation invades another in order to stop "genocide, slavery, and other human rights violations" without taking territory, that war is not a war of conquest by definition.

This is also true, but bears little relation to my argument. It occurs to me perhaps that my argument in the repeal was not well worded (maybe intentionally, I can't recall), but I never specified in the clause that the nation engaging in the humanitarian war was doing so without taking territory (indeed, I argued that it was multiple times).

If we examine the clause in question:

Arguing that war intended to halt blatant abuses of World Assembly prohibitions on genocide, slavery, and other human rights violations may still be considered conquest if the offending nation does not pose a persistent or existential threat, or has not taken territory from the attacking nation.

I suppose one might, in error, read "has not taken territory from the attacking nation" as "The nation engaging in just war has not taken territory from the genocidal/whatever nation". I meant it as "The genocidal/whatever nation has not taken territory from the attacking 'just' nation."

To make it clear that the "Just" Nation (Nation A) can indeed have actually taken territory (and thus engaged in conquest) even in my specific argument, I will reword the clause:

Arguing that war (carried out by Nation A) intended to halt blatant abuses of World Assembly prohibitions on genocide, slavery, and other human rights violations (perpetrated by Nation B) may still be considered conquest Nation A takes territory from Nation B and if the offending nation (Nation B) does not pose a persistent or existential threat to Nation A, or has not taken territory from the attacking nation (Nation A).

It's a little convoluted now, but the basic idea is this: If you ruled it illegal on the grounds that war cannot be conquest if no territory was taken (as it seems from the opinion), then I must disagree with the ruling on the grounds that the clause does not make such a claim. From my first post in this thread I made it clear that military offensives would be acquisition of territory and would meet the definition of conquest. This is a very different argument from saying that no territory was taken. If you had ruled that offensives did not count as taking of territory, that might be different, but still nonetheless not sufficient to rule the clause illegal in my opinion because the clause is not incompatible with even permanent occupation by the intervening nation.

[Sierra Lyricalia]

I'm failing to understand some of your thought process.

From my first post in this thread I made it clear that military offensives would be acquisition of territory and would meet the definition of conquest. This is a very different argument from saying that no territory was taken. If you had ruled that offensives did not count as taking of territory, that might be different...

I'm really not sure how to more explicitly deny this premise than the way we did:

Simply put, the repeal proposal is misleading because a war cannot be a war of conquest unless the warring nation seizes territory.

An offensive does not count as the taking of territory unless that territory is retained by the invader at the conclusion of hostilities. Therefore an offensive, in a vacuum, does not a war of conquest make; and the presence of offensive operations in a war does not by itself present sufficient evidence that the war itself has conquest as a motive.

I suppose one might, in error, read "has not taken territory from the attacking nation" as "The nation engaging in just war has not taken territory from the genocidal/whatever nation". I meant it as "The genocidal/whatever nation has not taken territory from the attacking 'just' nation."

I think we understood this.

Arguing that war (carried out by Nation A) intended to halt blatant abuses of World Assembly prohibitions on genocide, slavery, and other human rights violations (perpetrated by Nation B) may still be considered conquest if Nation A takes territory from Nation B and if the offending nation (Nation B) does not pose a persistent or existential threat to Nation A, or has not taken territory from the attacking nation (Nation A).

(Presumed conditional added - if not what you meant, please forgive).
In my view, this would probably avoid the honest mistake (especially if you added something like "permanently" or "to be retained post-intervention"), since you're actually talking about territorial acquisition on the part of Nation A (which was notably absent from the previous submission). In that case, there is no good-faith interpretation which a reasonable nation could use to avoid the conclusion that such a war is conquest. Recall going forward that nations in the arms business want to remain in the arms business and won't undercut themselves if there's any way they can avoid it - up to and including pointing to (say) a five-year force withdrawal plan and saying "See? Not conquest!" If the invader doesn't stick to that plan, that's different, but without evidence of deceit there is no evidence of conquest that an arms exporter is likely to accept.

the clause is not incompatible with even permanent occupation by the intervening nation.

I would indeed count "permanent occupation" to be a form of conquest.