Quitting skiing led Palisadian Carl Q. Christol, 91, to write his latest book. In 2001, a friend of his was in a skiing accident and Christol, a lifelong athlete who still swims a half-mile every day, decided it was time for him to give up skiing also because it was too dangerous. His book, ‘International Law and U.S. Foreign Policy,’ is the result. ”Christol, a Distinguished Emeritus Professor of international law and political science at USC, would like citizens to be well-informed and to participate in the formulation of American foreign policy. He will be sign and discuss his new book at Village Books this Sunday, October 17 from 2 to 4 p.m. ”The book was designed for both a general audience that would like to understand foreign policy better prior to November’s election and also for university students who are interested in public policy and foreign policy, international law and U.S. Constitutional law. ”Drawing on his athletic life, Christol offers an analogy between international law and the rules for sports contests. International law, he explains, ‘is the product of the collective actions and decisions of countries wishing to fix rules for their international relations. These rules are designed to serve their basic interests and to promote a maximum world order.’ ”Comparing this to a football game, he says: ‘A football game is played on a gridiron with fixed boundaries. Players must stay within the boundary if they want to make gains or to score.’ ”The book is divided into 10 chapters with sections on international criminal tribunals, environment and climate change, anti-personnel land mines, arms control and disarmament, the Middle East peace process, the war in Iraq and terrorism. In fact, Christol has been concerned about terrorism for a long time and brings the perspective of years of study to his view of the problem. ”In 1987, Christol was quoted in USC’s Daily Trojan that ‘now terrorism is getting to such a boiling point that we ought to be taking a look at it. Unfortunately, the more freedom a country has, the more open it is to terrorism.’ At that time he was the organizer of a conference on terrorism, whose principal speaker was L. Paul Bremer, the Department of State Ambassador-at-Large for terrorist activities. Bremer’s work emphasized preventing aerial hijacking, the protection of U.S. government personnel serving abroad and the effective criminal prosecution of terrorists. ”Christol says the controversial part of his new book is about the war in Iraq, which President Bush has been defending and Senator Kerry has called ‘wrong war, wrong place, wrong time.’ ”Based on his own World War II experience as an infantry officer, Christol has been a careful observer of military policy. ‘You cannot have troops in a standby position in the blazing hot heat of Saudi Arabia and Iraq at a time when periodic sandstorms begin to travel at high speeds. Why? Sand gets into tanks and guns’incapacitating or neutralizing their potential utility. It was very bad planning by the Pentagon to get troops in a precarious position before diplomacy, when desert storms started kicking up.’ ”The book addresses the approaches of unilateralism vs. multilateralism. ‘Unilateralists are also called realists, while multilateralists also claim they are approaching from a realistic basis, but they rely more on a legalistic-moralistic approach.’ Christol gives the example of Henry Kissinger as a realist and Woodrow Wilson as having a multilateral approach. ”The book acknowledges the important role of globalization and analyzes the manner in which the Clinton and Bush administrations have been committed to multilateralism and unilateralism. ”’My own biases are in favor of multilateralism and the need to give the United Nations another chance in the area of security, as well as to make evident contributions to education, social and health benefits, and the promotion of basic human rights.’ Christol is also a strong supporter of the International Criminal Court. ”Christol grew up in South Dakota, graduated from the University of South Dakota, and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and his L.L.B. from Yale Law School. He moved to the Palisades in 1967 with his wife Jeannette, daughter Susan and son Richard. This is his ninth book, including several on his specialty, space law. ”Christol taught at USC for 40 years and received the school’s Raubenheimer Outstanding Senior Faculty Award in 1982. In 1962-63, he held the international law chair at the U.S. Naval War College. ” ”A Palisades Rotary Club member and a member of the peacemaking committee of the Palisades Presbyterian Church, Christol is available to speak about his book to small groups in the Palisades area. In the book’s addendum, he encourages voters to influence foreign policy choices, by writing to their leaders, their newspaper, and by keeping abreast of current events.
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