During the coronavirus
pandemic (2020-2022), Arizona’s Ducey administration allowed bus and light-rail
employees to go maskless even though they were in close contact with the public.
Bus drivers were even getting sick. The “rationale” of the Phoenix transit authority
was that the federal regulation is “just a mandate.” Because the word mandate
means “an authoritative command,” the rationale that being a mandate
renders a law or government regulation as optional can only be spurious at best;
this is a case of arrogant ignorance that can’t possibly be wrong about itself
in the member-state that ranked 49th out of 50 on public education. As
an authoritative command, a law, even as implemented in regulations, has what
Kant called necessity in that law itself cannot be bent; it stands firm
in itself as law. In contrast, a guideline connotes flexibility rather
than necessity. It follows that enforcement must pertain to laws (including
regulations) but not to guidelines. I contend that what are commonly referred
to as international laws are actually international guidelines. Such
“laws” lack viable enforcement mechanisms and thus are actually guidelines for
governments engaged in international relations.
Calls that governments need
to respect international law even though no enforcement mechanism exists are
actually expressions of a moral desire that such “laws” should be
respected in the international arena. That what is actually a should is
typically expressed in terms of must by government officials around the
world only adds to the mistaken belief that a viable world order exists and
thus that aggressors such as Russia’s Putin, Israel’s Netanyahu, and America’s
Trump—all of whom have wantonly disregarded international law—pose no threat. A
law without a credible means of enforcement—and not just by volunteer “enforcers”—is
not a law; as in Hobbes’ state of nature, such a “law” can be said to have the force
of an ideological moral desire against opponents.
In the wake of the U.S.
military’s capture of Venezuela’s sitting President Maduro, E.U. foreign
minister Kallas issued a statement, which reads in part: “The E.U. recalls,
that under all circumstances, the principles of international law and the UN Charter
must be upheld.”[1] The
word must implies at the very least that penalties apply if the must is
dismissed by a state that violates the law or Charter. As had been clear for
decades, even countries in the UN could easily ignore the Charter with impunity
within the UN, and the veto-powers in the Security Council need only veto a
proposal to see to it that it cannot be violated because it has not passed. So,
what Kallas really meant is that governments around the world should uphold
the principles of international law and the UN Charter. Notice that she used
the word principles, which do not constitute law, so she
contradicts herself in applying the word must. For someone to say, you
must follow that principle, is not the same as saying, you must follow
the law. Only the latter connotes or implies that violations will be
punished—not even that there might be penalties. Those exist even if law
enforcement does not catch a particular culprit.
Kallas’s statement can be
critiqued on moral grounds, which is certainly ironic because her foreign-policy
stance is laudable; I submit that militaristic heads of government should be
restrained internationally, lest the world falls back into the dark ages. In
using the word must, the E.U.’s foreign minister was doing exactly what
Nietzsche calls attention to in his critique of modern morality, in which “Thou
shalt not” is used as a club of sorts to beguile the self-confident strong into
unilaterally not acting on their strength. Were he alive, Nietzsche would
probably council the sitting U.S. president not to feel shamed or guilty from
Kallas’s infliction of must, which can only mean should in
referring to international law and anything to do with the United Nations given
the utter lack of enforcement. Without that, the world is left with
international guidelines rather than laws, and the UN is left standing
on the sideline utterly impotent from the self-inflicted initial wounds of the
veto-mechanism in the Security Council and the lack of any UN armed forces or
police adequately empowered as force to enforce UN resolutions. The same
goes for the International Criminal Court, the ICC, whose arrest warrants for
Russia’s Putin and Israel’s Netanyahu were being either ignored around the
world or even actively fought against (by the Trump administration). An arrest warrant
that depends on voluntary enforcement by third parties (i.e., governments
around the world) is not a warrant in any sense of that word. Again, a
misleading use of words.
A problem with using words that are bear on a global order misleadingly is that the appearance of there actually being an order internationally, as distinct from “might makes right” as the de facto default, is illusionary. In actuality, when Putin invaded Ukraine, Netanyahu inflicted an inhumane holocaustic genocide on the people of Gaza, and Trump captured the sitting president Venezuela, the status of international law was epitomized by the word should rather than must. The moral desire for international constraints on raw militaristic aggression is of course laudable, but that desire itself does not constitute recognition of there being international law. To portray the former as the latter is dishonest.
It is also counter-productive from the standpoint of what would be needed for the family of nations, or more practically a coalition of “the willing” among the political unions and sovereign states of the world, to design, approve, and activate institutions, including possibility a global federation along the times described by Kant, that are capable of instituting and enforcing law internationally. Officials of such institutions as have enough governmental sovereignty to enforce international law even with boots on the ground if necessary could indeed say must without merely expressing a moral desire. Out of such self-confident strength at the global level, albeit with institutional checks on tyranny at that level from a qualified majority of countries, which would all be semi-sovereign, the precedents being incurred in favor of “might makes right” by Putin, Netanyahu, and Trump could potentially be reversed and once again set as outliers internationally. Such rogue nations could be relegated and effectively expelled from the family of nations both economically and politically.
That a holocaustic—yes, holocaustic—severity of suffering was unleashed by a genocidal government in the
Middle East for years in the so-called modern era (after the Enlightenment!) is itself testimony enough that the post-World War
II global order’s international organizations, including the International Criminal
Court and the UN, including its top court, was by 2023 utterly impotent. Out of
this power vacuum, militaristic aggressors on the world stage could easily
sense that low-hanging fruit could be easily plucked with utter impunity. It is
precisely at such a point that the ground is fertile for a new world order to be
promulgated and enacted so as to constrain angry men who are bathed in power. Human
nature itself is the root cause behind the cycle of world orders through history
punctuated by intervals of unimpeded military aggression, such as by the three
blind men, driving drunk with power, in the mid-2020s.
1. Maria Tadeo, “EU
Calls for Respect of International Law as Trump Remains Vague on Venezuelan
Transition Plan,” Euronews.com, 4 January 2026.
