[GA - Discarded] Repeal: "Ban on Secret Treaties"

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Repeal: "Ban on Secret Treaties"
Category: Repeal | Target: GA #408
Proposed by: Refuge Isle | Onsite Topic
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General Assembly Resolution #408 “Ban on Secret Treaties” (Category: Furtherment of Democracy; Strength: Mild) shall be struck out and rendered null and void.

The General Assembly,

Recalling how this chamber has previously affirmed that the nature and influence of secret treaties

pose an encumbrance on government leadership and their staff when members are excluded from an internal cabal to the detriment of making informed decisions,

cloud the realities of a diplomatic situation by presenting whatever conflicting information is necessary to negotiate, establish, and maintain secret treaties, and

create or exploit fractures within or between governments where discrepancies in a nation's foreign policy result in an international crisis,

Conceding that international agreements, beneficial to their members' stability, security, or economic well-being, can be the products of privately negotiated and established treaties when the challenges of conventional diplomatic exchanges would be politically or culturally insurmountable,

Believing the doors should remain open to world leaders and their diplomats who would only be willing to work toward a cessation of hostilities in a private forum, achieving steady progress through secret agreements, without fear of retaliation from their own citizenry or members of their own government,

Concerned that member states who are faced with mounting threats from a neighbouring military power are legislated out of the ability to establish defensive alliances in secret as a means of security against the risk of attack or invasion,

Lamenting that the resolution, which was sold on the premise of preventing subversive diplomacy, merely establishes a bureaucratic arm of the World Assembly by creating a committee to receive and publish documents indiscriminately, as submitted by member states in compliance with the resolution,

Aware that any nation may intentionally lengthen their treaties to include limitless volumes of text in order to obfuscate the agreement's true purpose during publication, or establish absurd quantities of treaties by this process in order to conceal which of the reported treaties are meaningful to parties with a vested interest,

Whereas such an alarming technique has already been used within the fourth clause of the resolution to establish an extraordinary redefinition of the words "secret treaty" to reference various felines and military weaponry,

The membership of this venerable body, in concluding that such an ineffective branch of its government merely adds paperwork to the desires of bad actors, while placing unfair and arbitrary restrictions on nations that rely on their diplomatic abilities to maintain the peace,

Hereby repeals GAR#408 "Ban on Secret Treaties".
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Voting Instructions:
  • Vote For if you want the Delegate to vote For the resolution.
  • Vote Against if you want the Delegate to vote Against the resolution.
  • Vote Abstain if you want the Delegate to abstain from voting on this resolution.
  • Vote Present if you are personally abstaining from this vote.
Detailed opinions with your vote are appreciated and encouraged!

Note: There is currently a legality challenge against the proposal, and as such the Ministry will not be issuing Information For Voters until the challenge has been resolved.
 
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Against. I have to say that I would prefer the original resolution without the joke clause, but there are a number of points made in the proposed repeal that I do not find convincing.

As regards the need for discussions to take place in private fora, I do not see that that goes to the original resolution. Its function is that the concluded, effective agreements need to be registered. It does not prohibit the negotiation of those agreements from being conducted in private. Nor, strictly, does it require all agreements to be published, only those that have force of law. It seems to me that provisional agreements reached between parties during negotiations working toward some final agreement could be kept secret until that conclusion. Such a final conclusion would then, to my mind, always necessitate publication in the example given of working towards a cessation of hostilities, as at the conclusion hostilities would cease, so there would seem to be no difficulty in the resolution applying then.

As to secret defensive alliances, again I think there is some difficulty in the terms of the proposed repeal. To my reading, it suggests that such alliances cannot be negotiated in secret, but they can and are only required to reveal such at the conclusion of them. However, if I am wrong on that point, I do think the proposed repeal is clearly right that keeping concluded treaties secret is prohibited, but I do not see that as a negative, overall. Being public carries the additional benefit of deterrence and that seems to me to be of greater benefit than a possible deterrence through uncertainty that could come about through secrecy.

As to the bureaucracy of the Judicial Committee, I disagree wholeheartedly with the proposed repeal on this point. In prohibiting secret treaties, such an organ is far more beneficial than requiring each nation to publish its treaties only. The existence of a central register of treaties is far more convenient and useful than 21,000+ separate registers that would exist under the alternative of simply requiring publication.

As to the potential for bad actors, I accept that the system is notionally open to abuse, though I question how many nations would choose to inconvenience themselves, given they are required to publish their documents to the same extent as the Committee. Nonetheless, I think this abuse by such bad actors is nonetheless preferable to the alternative. Such nations would, absent the resolution, presumably enter into detrimental secret treaties and the world would never know and would not be able to tell such bad actors from other nations, whereas with the resolution, such nations will be conspicuous by their publication of vast reams of meaningless nonsense.
 
Lamenting that the resolution, which was sold on the premise of preventing subversive diplomacy, merely establishes a bureaucratic arm of the World Assembly by creating a committee to receive and publish documents indiscriminately, as submitted by member states in compliance with the resolution
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This is one section that makes me like this repeal. As I have said, we need to stop this trend of bureaucratic entanglement in resolutions.

FOR
 
Against. I would definitely like a repeal of the said resolution, but I don't like some of the clauses mentioned. There was also a suggestion that the original bill banned secret diplomacy based on the way the repeal was written, but from my view I don't see how it is the case as it only explicitly requires publication of final agreement.


(On mobile now, so will rewrite with details and highlight with the clauses as I get back onto my computer)
 
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