National Affairs: Justice & Law in Status-of-Forces Agreements

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Special Cases, Special Care. In practice, foreign courts have dealt so gently with G.I.s that the U.S. has rarely felt the need to intervene. Of 4,437 American servicemen, dependents and civilian auxiliaries brought to trial in foreign courts in a one-year period, 275 were acquitted, 3,876 got minor fines and reprimands, 178 drew sentences of imprisonment, which the foreign courts forthwith suspended. In all, 108 Americans were imprisoned—a year's total which, considering that it applies to 700,000 men, amounts to a remarkably low crime rate and one of the highest leniency rates in the world. Foreign court sentences are usually much lighter than U.S. sentences. Last year, for example, German newspapers hounded seven G.I.s accused of raping a 15-year-old girl, but they fell silent when a U.S. court-martial handed down four life sentences, three for 40 years; the maximum sentence under German law for first-offense rape is three years.

At last count there were 88 G.I.s serving prison terms in foreign jails—including 38 for robbery, larceny and related offenses, 18 for aggravated assault and related offenses, eight for murder and manslaughter. And in jail as well as in the courthouse, allied officials make a practice of going to extraordinary lengths to favor the U.S. In Japan's Yokosuka prison, for example, 36 Americans are serving Japanese sentences of from three to 15 years for robbery, rape, manslaughter or murder. They get special food, vocational training, athletic equipment, a 900-volume library, armed-forces network radio, etc.; even the two murderers stand an excellent chance, say the U.S. officers who watch over their prison conditions, of getting paroles for good behavior after five years.

Rights Conceded, Rights Gained. Argument over status of forces does not end, of course, with the pragmatic fact that it is working well. Ohio's Senator John Bricker takes a stand upon "150 years of national policy and international law" to argue that every sovereign government has exclusive jurisdiction over its own forces in all circumstances. The Justice and State Departments flatly deny this interpretation, hold that in law the host state has the last word; they add that status-of-forces agreements guarantee rights to the U.S. that it would not otherwise legally possess. Bricker adds that allied countries that want the protection of U.S. forces must in the final analysis accept U.S. military laws—or forego the protection. But this hard-boiled position neglects the fact that G.I.s are deployed in the interest of the U.S. as well as of the allies, at strategic land, sea and air bases around the non-Communist world.

Actually, under the status-of-forces agreements, the U.S. is dealing with the intricate problems in a positive way that is perhaps unique in the history of global powers; it is following the rule of law rather than of prideful chauvinism. In heeding the natural desire of its allies to uphold the integrity of their laws, the U.S. is contributing to allied self-respect and thereby to the strength of the coalition. By watching vigilantly over the lot of its men in foreign courts, the U.S. is extending around the world its concern for and its principles of justice and law. And under the status-of-forces agreements now operative, the U.S. conveys to the world that it is not in the empire-building business, that its concern for legal right is couched in its own example.