Russian Bombs Usher Ukraine’s UN Address

Human nature itself must be attuned to walking out before a speech by political leaders who intentionally have enemy civilians killed and severely injured, and to being attracted to hear leaders who represent the victims. So, at the UN in September, 2026, many delegates at the UN’s General Assembly walked out before a speech by Israel’s Netanyahu, who was wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in Gaza (and arguably even in the West Bank), and Russia’s Putin did not even attend the opening session of speeches, whereas the address by Ukraine’s President Zelensky was to a full room. The contrast between Zelensky and the other two men could not be starker, and yet the UN was open to all three, serial violations of the UN Charter notwithstanding. The international organization can be said to have its legs wide open, and paradoxically to be impotent even with regard to enforcing its own charter. As a visiting research scholar at Harvard in 2025, I had the opportunity to speak personally with former UN officials, all of whom admitted that, given the vetoes in the Security Council, the UN itself could not even be reformed so the organization could even pass meaningful resolutions against a powerful member’s ally; something stronger at the global level would be needed if international law stood a chance of being enforced rather than merely given lip service. In 2026, even the notion of international law risked being relegated as an oxymoron, assuming that law itself—to be considered law rather than guideline or policy—requires a viable enforcement mechanism. To say that something is a law but is not enforced is to say that something really isn’t a law.

Flaunting the UN appearance of Ukraine’s president, Russia’s president unleased bombs in Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine as if to dare the UN to take action on Ukraine’s behalf. Not by accident, “Russia hammered Ukraine’s capital Kyiv with drones in daylight attacks . . . hours before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to address world leaders at the UN General Assembly. Two people were killed and 23 were wounded in Kyiv, and palls of black smoke floated above the city following the latest in what have been daily Russian attacks that torment Ukrainian civilians.”[1] Whereas Ukraine was targeting Russian oil facilities, Russia was going after civilians. The difference constitutes legitimate war from war crimes. For Russia to committing such crimes just hours before a highlighted address by Ukraine’s president at the UN is as if to dare the UN, and the world, to take military action to stop Russia from attacking Ukraine. That Russia had invaded Ukraine without the latter having provoked Russia militarily is itself a war crime, and in violation of the UN Charter. Indeed, at the time, Russia’s President Putin had an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, but as no means of automatic enforcement had any credibility, the ability of the ICC to issue warrants deservedly warrants ridicule. Hence Russia’s Putin felt free to dare the UN to take notice and even action.

In spite of representing a people serially victimized by a military aggressor, Zelenskyy could only hope to speak of half-measures at the UN. In his address, he said, “When someone gives Russia more money through trade, they give this war more time. And that is exactly why we insist on limiting trade with the aggressor, and why we are burning Russia’s revenues ourselves.”[2] This strategy differs significantly from that of killing and wounding Russia civilians so the Russian people might pressure Putin to remove his military forces from Ukraine; but going after trade is indirect at best at getting Russia out of Ukraine militarily. Even though insisted, the governments represented at the UN could trade with Russia nonetheless, and with complete impunity from the UN, as Russia held a veto in the Security Council and could thus exploit a conflict of interest by thwarting any resolution contrary to Russia’s geopolitical and economic interests. At the core of the UN’s impotence and thus lack of credibility can be said to be a structural conflict of interest, wherein even violators of the UN Charter (and their allies) could block any unfavorable resolutions.

So, Russia’s President Putin could taunt Ukraine and, in effect, make fun of the world, by serially bombing Ukraine just hours before Zelensky’s address at the UN without worrying in the slightest that the UN or a coalition, or bloc, of sovereign countries might ascend on Ukraine to rid it of Russian military equipment and troops, or even send anti-missile weapons to Ukraine. Thus it could be said that by 2026, the post-World-War-II world order had virtually collapsed even though its institutions were still standing and even moving, like the limbs of some insects that still kick just after death and thus such insects appear to still be alive.

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1. Gavin Blackburn, “Russian Pounds Kyiv with Drones, Killing Two and Wounding 23 Hours before Zelenskyy’s UN Address,” Euronews.com, 23 September 2026.
2. Edith Lederer and Jennifer Pelitz, “Zelenskyy, at UN, Urges Leaders to Keep Choking Russia’s Revenues and Impede Its War Efforts,” APNews.com, September 23, 2026.

A Hobbesian World of Might-Makes-Right

In his famous text, Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes describes the state of nature as one of might, or raw force, being the decider of what is rightly and determinatively so. If one person physically harms another person such that the latter’s food may be taken by the former, then that food belongs to the victor even without any overarching normative, or moral, constraint that says that the food still belongs to the vanquished. If Trump's statement that Putin has "won" some regions of Ukraine by military means is correct, then those occupied lands will have been decided by might as if that constitutes right. That Israel has physically decimated Gaza's cities and placed its indigenous residents in concentration camps without enough food or access to medical care with impunity means that the plight of the Palestianians has been decided by might, not right. 

In short, possession is really 99 percent of ownership. Might makes right. Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief-of-staff, described this world "order" in responding to questions on whether the U.S. planned to invade Greenland. "Nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland. . . . We live in a world, in the real world, . . . that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time."[1] In this system, the International Criminal Court, or ICC, simply does not exist or is a target. Evolution has not changed human nature from the hunter-gatherer “stage.” To be sure, not all of humanity is on board with this sort of global order, even if guns have a way of pushing down or even silencing the more progressive elements of the species. The Trump administration’s attacks on the ICC represent a case in point.

The absolutist interpretation of national sovereignty feeds into the functioning of a might-makes-right world. “Global standards for how civilians must be treated and how to wage war are often, in the eyes of the Trump administration, a hindrance and a violation of national sovereignty.”[2] The implication is that unimpeded national sovereignty not only comes without danger, but is also the best system for international relations and thus the prosperity and happiness of the species. Rather than merely criticizing Trump’s “unprecedented campaign against a core institution of international law, the International Criminal Court,” the assumptions underlying a global system of unfettered national sovereignty merit critique, given the unnecessarily unheeded power-aggrandizing actions of Stalin and Hitler in the twentieth century. The military exploits of the Empire of Japan can be added to the list as well. In the next century, the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the mass-killing and starvation of Gaza’s indigenous residents by Israeli Zionists demonstrate the fallacy of a stable world to be brought about by unrestrained national sovereignty, given the underlying human nature that manifests too easily as the instinct of power-aggrandizement. In short, the Israeli genocide in Gaza demonstrates that the Nazi holocaust was not a “one off” deviation from human nature, but rather is closer to mainstream human nature than was realized during the last half of the twentieth century. Indeed, the genocide in Gaza may be reckoned by history as yet another holocaust writ large.

Nevertheless, and as evidence that might-makes-right can continue even amid such atrocities in progress, the Trump administration “used America’s disproportionate global financial power and threats of further repercussions to hinder the [ICC’s] work and create a chilling effect—even as Palestinians [continued] to face U.S.-backed Israeli policies that ICC judges said could constitute grave crimes, and that could undermine Trump’s own stated vision of peace for Gaza.”[3] Rather than focus on the role of private investor-capital in planned development projects being planned for Gaza absent its indigenous population, I want to highlight the disproportionateness of a might-makes-right superpower as itself being a problem unless might-make-right is deemed salvific for humanity. For the ICC, the raw power in the disproportionate military and financial power of the Trump administration over other countries presented “an existential paradox: The ICC’s pursuit of accountability over Gaza is both the reason it has a target on its back, and proof that it [i.e., the ICC] is necessary.”[4] But to be necessary and largely impotent against the power of the disproportionate enabler of Israel (and perhaps even Russia) is to be in the worst of two worlds, as it were.

Put another way, the very existence of a partisan “world police force” presents the ICC with its greatest threat as well as its highest raison d’etre. With such a police force operating on the basis of might-makes-right internationally, that same rationale can be seized upon by other partisans internationally to engage in power-aggrandizement activities of their own, even against the global police-force itself. Such a system is inherently self-contradictory, in other words, and thus weak as a system in which the world order can be in order rather than chaos and upheaval. That the dogma of absolutist national sovereignty sanctions and protects parchment-constraints at the national level (and below) saves such a system from being chaotic from top to bottom, but as Trump’s second presidency demonstrated, a might-make-right foreign-oriented attitude can easily be translated into efforts to walk through constraints at the national level, such as legislatures and courts. 

Arresting and deporting a person deemed to be an illegal immigrant before one has the chance to challenge the actions judicially enjoys the default of a fait accompli. Quelle domage. The Trump administration could simply inform a judge that the suspect is no longer under U.S. jurisdiction so there is nothing that can be done. Such a tactic is well-known to the might-makes-right mentality.  This point should not be taken to excuse or accept illegal immigration as if it were not a crime and one worthy of punishment and expulsion by the rule and thus due process of law. 

Might-makes-right hates to be subject to, or constrained by the rule of law as the mentality sees itself as the law. It is easy for this mentality oriented to foreign affairs to be turned inward while using absolutist national sovereignty as a shield both domestically and internationally. Trump, "himself convicted of felonies, has promoted impunity for various violations of domestic and international law; in addition to opposing the ICC warrant for Netanyahu, Trump is supporting the Israeli leader's bid for a pardon over his corruption charges from Israeli prosecutors."[5]

I contend that such a world of both domestic and international impunity from the constraint of an externally imposed law represents a step backward for the species. Given the foregone benefits that political development could otherwise deliver, the phenomenon worthy to be examined goes beyond the legitimacy and functioning of the ICC and the American foreign policy on Israel and even Russia. The post-World War II international efforts to subject might-makes-right to constraints internationally were being cast off and even attacked a few decades into the next century with the implication being that nothing but might-makes-right might be left standing.

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1. Chris Cameron, "Miller Says Imperialism Is Justified in Greenland," The New York Times, January 7, 2026.
2. Akbar S. Ahmed, “Trump’s Pressure Campaign on the ICC Is Falling Apart,” The Huffington Post, December 3, 2025.
3.. Ibid., italics added.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., italics added.

Guidelines Puffed Up as Law: Should under the Subterfuge of Must

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 49^th 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.

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1. Maria Tadeo, “EU Calls for Respect of International Law as Trump Remains Vague on Venezuelan Transition Plan,” Euronews.com, 4 January 2026.

President Nicolás Maduro: Captured by the U.S.

In the early hours of January 3, 2026, the sitting president of Venezuela was captured by the U.S. military and sent to New York, where he would face a federal indictment involving the trafficking of narcotics to the United States. President Trump’s decision to go forward with the military plan no doubt had to do with the South American state’s tremendous oil reserves, just as President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq surely had something to do with that Middle Eastern state’s oil fields. Elected representatives at the federal level of the U.S. have known since 1974 that skyrocketing gas prices could easily result in voter-resentment. Whether the capture of Maduro was motivated by his drug activity reaching the U.S. or Venezuela’s oil, the invasion and capture by U.S. forces is in line with the Hobbesian notion that might makes right, and even that 90% of ownership of property lies in possession. Lest it be thought that President Trump broke with precedent internationally in capturing the sitting president of another country, his strategy can be understood as being along the trend that had been gaining traction because the post-World War II international order had become hamstrung in the impotence of international bodies including the International Criminal Court and the United Nations.

The various reactions of the leaders of other South American sovereign states provide a sense of the confusion regarding the “new way” that was taking hold internationally amid the power vacuum. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s reaction, for example, treated the U.S. military strike as crossing “an unacceptable line,” and thus as establishing a precedent wherein one country can legitimately invade another.[1] “Attacking countries, in flagrant violation of international law, is the first step toward a world of violence, chaos and instability, where the law of the strongest prevails over multilateralism,” Lulu wrote.[2] Apparently he was unaware of Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s genocide in Gaza—both of these cases being flagrant examples of raw military aggression in violation of international law. So, President Trump’s military action can hardly be described as a “first step toward world of violence, chaos and instability.” Furthermore, Lulu’s appeal to multilateralism flies in the face of the paralysis in the UN Security Council due to the five permanent veto-powers—at least one of which had been protecting Russia and another backing up Israel even in committing a holocaust against a people that at least some high officials in the Israeli government viewed as subhuman (i.e., dogs). It was not the first time in modern history that a people has been viewed as subhuman, and thus as deserving, like rats, of extermination. Unlike that case, no coalitions of the willing were willing to take on Russia and Israel in 2023 and even in at least the two subsequent years, which has allowed the naked aggression to take hold and actually become a precedent before the U.S. military captured Maduro.  

Also, apparently oblivious to the intractability of the post-WWII world order, Colombian President Gustavo Petro called for an emergency meeting of the Organization of American States and the United Nations. Because the General Assembly is militarily impotent and the U.S. has veto-power in the Security Council, and the Organization of American States has no actual power, Petro’s plan demonstrates the utter lack of redress against the “new way” of might makes right then gaining even more traction. Perhaps at least China could then stage a military strike in Israel to capture Netanyahu and his henchmen and deliver them to the International Criminal Court. At least then the Hobbesian state of nature would paradoxically be aiding in the enforcement of international law against genocides and holocausts. Waking up to such news on January 3, 2026 would indeed have been quite a Christmas present, albeit delivered late.

Also oblivious to the military aggression of Russia and Israel, Chilean President Gabriel Boric stated, “Chile reaffirms its commitment to basic principles of international Law, such as the prohibition of the use of force, non-intervention, the peaceful settlement of international disputes, and the territorial integrity of States.”[3] Chile’s commitment means absolutely nothing, as that South American state had done nothing to organize an international coalition to push Russian troops out of Ukraine and Israeli troops, who were gangraping young Palestinian boys, out of Gaza (and the West Bank). A precedent for such a coalition can be found in U.S. President George H.W. Bush removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait in the early 1990s, without invading Iraq because the coalition did not support that. Unfortunately, the international community of nations did not act on that basis against Russia and Israel. Hence Boric’s demand that the “Venezuelan crisis must be resolved through dialogue and the support of multilateralism, and not through violence or foreign interference” can be likened to one hand clapping alone in a forest.[4] That such a demand is even made as the post-WWII world order laid wayward largely defunct as regards military invasions and even a genocide begs the question of why no governments were working constructively toward international institutions that could enforce international law against aggressive national leaders.

To acknowledge that the ICC and the UN had become utterly impotent and yet to do nothing to give rise to a new world order, especially as military invasions and even a holocaustic genocide were being allowed to run their respective courses unincumbered, was where the world was as 2026 began. In 2025, a former undersecretary of the UN admitted to me at Harvard that the UN could not be adequately reformed because the veto-powers in the Security Council would never divest themselves of that power. A new institution would be necessary for international law to mean anything more than a guideline for governments to voluntarily follow when doing so suits them. In the meantime, the U.S. and Israel could circumvent the International Criminal Court with impunity, and the E.U., mired in anti-federalist ideology, could not step up to push Russian troops out of Ukraine. President Trump had plenty of precedents for his military strike in Venezuela even though capturing a sitting president was admittedly novel. It is precisely through such incrementalism that a series of precedents becomes ensconced as a new status quo in international relations.

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1. Aleksandar Brezar, “Trump Hails ‘Brilliant Operation’ in Venezuela that Led to Maduro’s Capture,” Euronews.com, 3 January, 2026.

2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

On the Case Against Israel: The ICC and ICJ as Seeds

At first glance, the impotence of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice once an order has been willfully ignored by a government may seem overwhelming. The continued atrocities in Gaza and Ukraine even amid court challenges fueled the argument that might makes right. Even so, the willful sense of impunity of the perpetrators and their enablers in other governments may trigger enough of a public adverse reaction that the courts and international law itself eventually come out stronger.

In 2024, the jurisprudence on genocide was still new and has few cases. In its case against Israel, South Africa urged the International Court of Justice to order provisional measures that Israel would be obliged to take because an imminent risk of irreparable harm that is genocidal in nature exists in Gaza. Allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza is one such measure. With famine already in Gaza, South Africa asked the ICJ to direct Israel to do more in cooperation with the United Nations. Expanding the number of crossings for UN aid to enter the territory, and making that aid available at various points throughout Gaza are two examples of how Israel could cooperate with the UN, of which Israel is a member. The court issued such concrete orders as these two, even as the court had to consider the risk that Israel would violate the court’s provisional orders. In fact, in January, 2024, the court ruled that given the future risk of genocide, additional provisional measures were justified. This means that the court had found enough evidence of a risk of genocide—not that the court found evidence that genocide was taking place. This is a key distinction.

Moreover, the court had to ask itself whether the group being harmed—residents of Gaza—are a protected group?  The court found that the Palestinians constitute a national group. The court also had to assess whether there was destructive intent, meaning that Israel’s actions in Gaza were geared to eliminating the group rather than just killing individuals in the territory. South Africa charged Israel with four out of five types of acts that are genocidal in nature. By mid-April, 2025, Israel had been blocking aid trucks from entering Gaza for over 6 weeks. Crucially, the underlying action was being deployed against the group as a whole, as distinct from killing individuals by gun or bomb. Displacement, starvation, and destruction of medical facilities are the other types of acts that South Africa cited as being indicative of the Israeli government having a genocidal intent.

Even though Israel has ignored the court’s provisional measures, and in fact has gone in the opposite direction, such as by blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, that Israel has engaged with the court by sending a high-level legal team to argue before the court is a good argument for Israel being obligated to comply with the provisional measures. Why would the Israeli government engage at all with the court if doing so would make it more difficult to sneak out of any obligations? Israeli officials continued to believe that it is too hard for genocide to be proved in a court of law for the charge to gain traction at the court.

The arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for Israel’s sitting prime minister, Ben Netanyahu, and a former Israeli defense minister is not for having committed genocidal acts because proving genocidal intent is more difficult than is pursuing charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Proof of cause of death is required in the crime against humanity of extermination, and the prosecutor was looking only at starvation, so the arrest warrant is not for that crime. Of course, crimes against humanity and war crimes are not exhausted by extermination, and are serious nonetheless.

It is significant, therefore, that in April, 2025, Viktor Orban, the prime minister of the E.U. state of Hungary, ignored its treaty obligation to the ICC and even E.U. law as per the Rome Statute by refusing to arrest Netanyahu when he was visiting the state. The court dismissed Hungary’s excuse that the state’s legislature had not yet enacted a state law that would enforce the treaty obligation. Simply put, a treaty has the force of law, so domestic legislation is not needed for a government to act as obligated in line with the language of a treaty. As for the Rome Statute, it has the status of federal law because the E.U. itself has been delegated enumerated powers, or competencies, that the state governments are legally required to observe. Furthermore, that Hungary was planning to leave the jurisdiction of the international court does not mean that the treaty obligations could legitimately be ignored prior to pulling out of the court’s jurisdiction.

I contend that both Israel’s willful violations of the international court’s rulings and Hungary’s refusal to recognize the arrest warrant by hosting Netanyahu risked undercutting the legitimacy of international law and courts such as the ICJ and ICC because the disrespect could become an international norm.

There is not yet an international, multilateral treaty on crimes against humanity; there is a treaty against genocide. That the latter is being applied to powerful states may result in less progress in negotiating a treaty on crimes against humanity. On the other hand, South Africa taking Israel to court based on international law has strengthened such law; even the court’s provisional measures have made a dent in the public consciousness around the world. Even in just telling victims that their rights are being violated is significant. It may be that governments will recognize an obligation to thwart genocide in progress around the world.

Moreover, in addition to how easy it has been for governments, including Hungary, Russia and Israel, to ignore the orders of international courts, that Orban has repeatedly violated E.U. laws and various states, including Germany, have serially violated the state-budget deficit limits of the Growth and Stability Pact undermines federalism as a viable system of basic law. Even the checks and balances at a federal level, as in a judiciary being able to curb excesses by an executive branch, were under threat in the U.S. when a federal judge found sufficient evidence that the Trump Administration was guilty of criminal contempt by ignoring certain court orders. The inability of courts to enforce their respective rulings is a vulnerability that was being exploited by governments at various levels of jurisprudence and governance. The danger of such intentional breaches becoming a norm was nothing short of the rule of law itself becoming too easily expendable.

To be sure, there were signs of seeds sprouting that could someday result in national laws requiring governments to take action against a power-aggrandizing government reaching the level of extermination and genocide. The ICJ was hearing South Africa’s case, especially after South Africa had been guilty of refusing to enforce an ICC arrest warrant in Africa, and Nicaragua had brought Germany to the ICJ on the charge of supplying weapons to a genocidal government in Israel. Although the case law was still limited, public interest in the rulings of the ICC and ICJ was growing globally in the early 2020s. It could be that the governmental attacks on the international courts by refusing to respect their orders were the last gasps of opposition before a global step forward in holding otherwise absolutist-sovereignty in check. Just as climate change had entered public discourse around the world, the obligation of governments around the world to stop one government from exterminating a people could represent a progressive step in our species’ political development.  

The ICC Indicts Israeli and Hamas Officials: On the Perils of Absolutist National Sovereignty

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Ben Netanyahu, former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and the military commander of Hamas on November 21, 2024. With the world having had centuries wherein national sovereignty has been the basis of the international order, the heads of national governments could be expected to instantly bolt from just being indicted by an international court. Since the world woke up in 1945 to learn of the Nazi atrocities against Slavs (20 million), Jews (6 million), intellectuals and gays, whether murdered in concentration camps or on the proverbial street, as well as reading as years went by of Stalin’s mass-graves from his government’s mass-murders of Ukrainians, Poles, and even Russians, the hegemonic doctrine that the sovereignty of a state should be absolute has been barely subject to any resistance. So, when the ICC has issued arrest warrants, it has been up to national governments around the world to enforce the warrants by arresting the heads of other governments charged with having violated international law. This weakness in the constraint on what would otherwise be absolutist national sovereignty attests to the marginal degree to which that doctrine has actually been questioned since 1945. In other words, the international order can be said to occupy a rather uncomfortable ‘betwixt and between’ position with respect to whether the sovereignty of countries should be constrained internationally. Not until international law comes complete with real enforcement powers will the world be able to say that heads of governments (and of state) are no longer in a state of nature as described by Thomas Hobbes in his tomb, Leviathan.  

In the case of Israel and Hamas, the nature of their respective crimes is such that the doctrine of absolute national sovereignty can legitimately be discarded and replaced by a doctrine of relative national sovereignty. The ICC’s judges said there were “reasonable grounds” that the three defendants bore “criminal responsibility” for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity since October 7, 2023,[1] when Hamas murdered 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped a couple hundred more. In (over) response, or retribution as “punishment,” the Israeli military had killed over 44,000 residents of Gaza and made over a million more homeless by the time the ICC issued its warrants. Israel even dropped bombs on the tents being used by the homeless residents. The scale alone of the suffering can be seen as an indictment on the doctrine of absolute sovereignty, which had been able to protect more than one head of a national government in the world.

In fact, during the very month in which the ICC announced the three warrants, Russia’s President Putin signed a revised, more flexible government policy on when the country’s military could use tactical nuclear weapons and was still having the military bomb civilian targets. Even the U.S. Embassy in Kiev was no longer safe from becoming a target. To be sure, the ICC had already issued an arrest warrant for Putin, but it was an easy matter for him to avoid being arrested. Netanyahu too could be expected to easily evade capture. Besides being able to stay in their respective countries, they could safely visit the respective allies. Often missed is the hesitancy that other, third-party governments, have in arresting the heads of other governments. Besides not wanting retaliation, it is easy for a country’s government to ignore the ICC’s requests. The ICC’s enforcement mechanism has been, in short, like a bad joke.

The weakness of the E.U. federal system only made the arrests of the three defendants within that territory especially unlikely. Put another way, that the ICC would have to depend on the E.U. to hold its states accountable demonstrates just how weak the court’s enforcement mechanism was when the court issued the warrants. Hence, the BBC noted at the time, “Netanyahu and Gallant do not face any immediate threat of prosecution.”[2] Even though “if either of them set foot in any [signatory country to the ICC’s jurisdiction], the two men “must be arrested and handed over to the court.”[3] The E.U.’s foreign minister, Josep Borrell, “said the ICC decision was binding on all E.U. member states.”[4] Nevertheless, “Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said . . . he would ignore an arrest warrant issued by [the ICC] for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”[5] Orban’s refusal to recognize the validity of federal law would imperil the E.U. were his decision to go against the E.U. requirement to eventually become the norm with respect to E.U. law in the state governments; it could turn into something akin to the Nullification Crisis in the early 1830s in the U.S., when it too had a young federal system and had to contend with South Carolina’s Nullification Acts. Orban’s disrespect for E.U. law (including regulations and even directives, which the states have some discretion in implementing) is a microcosm of the disrespect for international law (and arrest warrants) that had become the norm at the global level by 2024; otherwise, coalitions of countries would have literally pushed Putin out of Ukraine and Netanyahu out of Gaza, as the U.S.’s coalition had pushed Saddam Hussain out of Kuwait in the early 1990s.

It is precisely such a lack of respect for the international court and international law itself that led Netanyahu’s office to condemn the ICC’s warrants against the prime minister and the former defense minister as “antisemitic.”[6] Of course, the warrant against the commander of Hamas’s military was not said to be a case of prejudice against Muslims. In fact, Gallant, the former Israeli defense minister, objected that the ICC was placing “the State of Israel and the murderous leaders of Hamas in the same row, and thus legitimizes the murder of babies, the rape of women and the abduction of the elderly from their beds.”[7] The ICC was not legitimizing the events of October 7, 2023 because the court issued a warrant for a Hamas high official too.

The court found reasonable grounds that Hama’s Deif was “responsible for the crimes against humanity of murder; extermination; torture; and rape and other form[s] of sexual violence; as well as war crimes for murder, cruel treatment, torture; taking hostages; outrages upon personal dignity; and other form[s] of sexual violence.”[8] While this may seem duplicative, crimes against humanity are legally distinct from war crimes. Regarding Netanyahu and Gallant, the court found reasonable grounds to believe that they “each bear criminal responsibility for the following crimes as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”[9] If the Israeli government officials still needed an explanation for why the court was putting them in the same criminal category with the Hamas official, perhaps contrasting 44,000 dead and over 1 million homeless with 1,200 dead and only a few hundred homeless (i.e, taken as hostages)—many of whom had been able, unlike the Gaza residents, to return to find a house or apartment building still standing. Just the fact that Israeli officials objected to the equivalence in the ICC’s charges leveled against Israeli and Hamas officials even though Israel’s military response had been disproportionately aggressive and destructive suggests just how warped human judgment can be, and just how dangerous the doctrine of absolutist sovereignty is as applied to national governments under which government officials can act with the sense of impunity from international law having “teeth” internationally. Even that such a misplaced doctrine had by the 21^st century become a part of the status quo in the global order does not bode well for human nature, which the doctrine contradicts.  That both the presidents of Israel and the United States called the ICC arrest warrants against Israeli officials “outrageous” boggles the mind, given the scale of destruction wrought by Israel in Gaza.[10] Put more directly, a species capable of such mental feats devoid of reason should not grant absolute sovereignty to any human being. Giving absolute sovereignty to people heading a government that has nuclear weapons is a bad idea, and yet the world, out of fear, has not stood up to keep that from continuing.

Given the salience of greed the thirst for power that are so indelible in human nature, the U.S. was still selling military weapons to Israel and the Biden administration had not courageously resisted the notoriously strong American Israeli lobby (the AIPAC). So the U.S. Government had a vested economic and political interest doing two things at the expense of human rights and international law: 1.) being the single veto at the UN Security Council against a resolution the day before that would have stipulated an immediate ceasefire, the removal of Israel’s military from Gaza, and the unconditional release of the hundred or so remaining Israeli hostages being held by Hama; and 2.) rejecting the ICC’s warrants for the two Israelis (but curiously not the one against the Hamas commander)—both in the same week! Countering the vested interest of the U.S., the E.U., a third party to the dispute/war, more objectively stated that all three warrants should be respected and enforced.[11] Given the magnitude of killing and destruction in Gaza, going much beyond the heinous acts of Hamas on October 7, 2023, the position of the E.U.’s foreign minister could indeed be viewed as being relatively objective, mature, and even ethical.

Lest it be objected (as it was by Israel and its enabler, the U.S.), that neither the U.S. nor the sovereign state of Israel had signed documents agreeing to be covered by the ICC’s jurisdiction, “the court [had] ruled in 2021 that it had jurisdiction over the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza because the UN’s secretary general had accepted the Palestinians” constitute a member of the UN.[12] Just because Israel does not recognize the Palestinians politically does not mean that the UN and the ICC could and should not do so.

Lest it be objected that the ICC, as a court of last resort, is “supposed to act when domestic courts cannot, or will not, genuinely investigate or prosecute serious international crimes,” Israel had had a bit more than a year to do so, but had not even charged Netanyahu of war crimes and crimes against humanity.[13] Especially given the judicial reforms that the prime minister had successfully had the legislature adopt, it would be highly unlikely that the judiciary would ever hold Netanyahu accountable even for corruption.

In short, like Russia’s Putin, Israel’s Netanyahu and the U.S.’s Biden conveniently rejected the very validity of international law, and perhaps that position is fair because law without an enforcement mechanism can only really be a resolution or policy befitting an international realm with no sovereignty having been delegated to it from the world’s countries, whose government officials have gotten used to enjoying the doctrine of absolute national sovereignty serving as the bedrock of the global order. Reading slowly through the detailed charges promulgated by the ICC might get a person to reconsider whether, given human nature, the world hasn’t made a mistake in allowing it to become the status quo and thus enjoy considerable inertia even in the face of horrendous atrocities in Gaza as well as Ukraine with the perpetrators—national governments and their respective officials—being able to act with the smug sense of impunity. It is a pity that the national governments adopted, whether explicitly or by not rejecting it in action, such flawed doctrine as an important geo-political element of the status quo. Even if the world comes to realize that the squalid doctrine has enabled abuses of power by national governments, the very nature of the status quo suggests that the doctrine will nevertheless still be likely to enjoy considerable inertia as the power behind the thrones because of the political (and even military) energy needed to dislodge the artifice.

---

1. David Gritten “Arrest Warrants Issued for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas Commander Over Alleged War Crimes," BBC.com, November 21, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Tansin Paternoster and Evelyn Dom, “European Leaders Give Mixed Reactions on Netanyahu’s War Crimes Arrest Warrant,” Euronews.com, November 22, 2024.
6. David Gritten “Arrest Warrants Issued for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas Commander Over Alleged War Crimes.”
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.; Jaroslav Lukiv, “Biden Says ICC War Crimes Arrest Warrant ‘Outrageous,” BBC.com, November 22, 2024.
11. David Gritten “Arrest Warrants Issued for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas Commander Over Alleged War Crimes.”
12. Ibid. 
13. Ibid.

 

Facing a Hot and Hostile Planet

On October 24, 2024, Tjada McKenna, CEO of Mercy Corps, and formerly in the Obama administration working on global hunger, spoke at Harvard on wars, hunger, and climate change then going on around the world. The pandemic had been a setback. In a world of pandemics, climate change, war, and hunger, there is no us and them. Lest this utopia be taken too realistically, 200,000 more people worldwide were hungry after the pandemic than before it. Since 1946, the highest number of state conflicts was in 2023. It was then that Russia invaded Ukraine and Israel decimated much of Gaza. In 2024, the UN’s high court found both aggressors to be violating international law, but they continued undeterred and with impunity. In the context of an epic crisis of displacement of civilians, with 339 million people globally having to rely on humanitarian assistance in 2024, the impacts of climate change exacerbated hunger and conflict in several states, especially in Africa. I contend that a serious obstacle was systemic, specifically in an antiquated global order relying on an absolutist interpretation of the sovereignty of the nation-state. Even the E.U. was not immune.

In her talk, McKenna said that decades of conflicts on land-access in Africa had been made worse by the impacts of climate change.  By 2024, there had been four failed rainy seasons in Somalia. In northern Kenya, similarly occurring droughts followed by heavier rains causing flooding exacerbated hunger.  Progress against hunger and diseases such as polio had been made prior the pandemic, but even so, 2023-2024 could be characterized as a time of catch-up in terms of global humanitarian aid.

Meanwhile, voters worldwide in 2024 were most concerned then about increasing cost of living around the world. France and Germany decreased the global aid budgets in 2024, though I contend that focusing on E.U. states without considering the humanitarian spending at the federal level had by 2024 become  incomplete as well as antiquainted. Russia, by the way, was paying Moldovan voters and feeding them disinformation so to sabatoge Moldova in gaining statehood in the European Union while political opposition to supporting Ukraine's military was building in the United States. In short, politics was staying pretty close to immediate self-interest.

Therefore, the international system based on nations acting alone in self-interest (i.e., political realism) was not enough to address the global problems of political manipulation, climate and conflict. The U.S. Congress had dedicated $1.1 billion to preventing conflict around the world in 2019, but this was just a drop in the bucket. "A recommitment to international law and the international criminal court worldwide is necessary," she said in closing.

Thus far, I have presented McKenna’s views, albeit with a few caveats from myself. I submit that the talk was not utopian, for McKenna was hardly optimistic concerning countries taking on militaristic aggressors whether unilaterally or through global institutions, such as the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. “Conditions are right for bad actors,” she said, by which we might think of Putin of Russia and Netanyahu of Israel in going too far with impunity internationally. McKenna said the world order was cracking, especially in terms of accountability. Unabashed optimism would not be appropriate, given the failures globally in 2023 and 2024 to hold Russia and Israel accountable and stop the wholesale and deliberate militaristic attacks against civilians. 

Nor was McKenna at all optimistic on a system based on sovereign nation-states mitigating climate change. A record amount of carbon emissions by humans in 2023 had made a mockery of a global approach that relies on voluntary targets, the very notion of which presupposes the absolutist version of governmental sovereignty being applied to each nation-state. I would simply add to McKenna’s lecture more of an emphasis on the need globally to reform or reconstruct the global order, such that national sovereignty would no longer be the basis, given that inherently global exigencies had already rendered the post World War II world order deficient and obsolete. 

On the Reach of the International Criminal Court

Deeply hindered by the lack of enforcement mechanisms, international law can too easily be evaded or violated outright by government officials of countries who easily sense the ability to act so with impunity. Was the president of Mongolia such an official, and thus to be considered as blameworthy, when he did not have Russia’s President Putin arrested as soon as he touched down on Mongolian soil and sent to the International Criminal Court in 2024 for war crimes committed in Ukraine, including forcibly taking Ukrainian children to Russia? Is Mongolia’s acquiescence just another case of the implacable impotence of international law?

On September 2, 2024, Russia’s President Putin arrived in Mongolia. Despite “calls by the EU, the ICC, and Ukraine for him to be arrested, Putin was instead warmly welcomed.”[1] The International Criminal Court (the ICC) had issued an arrest warrant for Putin 18 months earlier, and, because Mongolia had signed the ICC Rome Statute, the country had “the obligation to cooperate with the court.”[2] In fact, the court relied on country signatories to execute the court’s decisions, “including in relation to arrest warrants,” according to ICC spokesman Fadi El Abdallah.[3] The E.U. position was that “Mongolia is a state party to the Rome Statute of the ICC since 2002 with the legal obligations that it entails.”[4] This would seem to put the government of Mongolia in a bind, but I contend that the government acted correctly from the standpoint of international law.

The argument that the government of Mongolia was in a bind runs as follows. According to the ICC spokesman, “In case of non-cooperation, ICC judges may make a finding to that effect and inform the Assembly of States Parties of it. It is then for the Assembly to take any measure it deems appropriate.”[5] In short, the Assembly could take punitive action against Mongolia for refusing to hand Putin over to the ICC. Even so, government officials were naturally hesitant to arrest the Russian president because Mongolia was “heavily dependent on [Russia] for fuel and electricity.”[6] Also, any measure adopted by the ICC Assembly would not come with an enforcement mechanism, since the ICC relies on the countries that have signed the Rome Statute for voluntary enforcement.

The tension between Mongolia’s economic reliance on Russia and the legal obligation under the Rome Statute to arrest Putin can be dissipated on a more fundamental level by realizing that Russia was not a signatory of the Rome Statute, and thus Putin’s arrest warrant was null and void. Mongolia’s obligation was to arrest anyone from a country whose government had signed the Rome Statute and was thus under the jurisdiction of the ICC. In such a case, the ICC’s deeply flawed enforcement of punitive measures enacted by the court’s Assembly would be the major issue.

At a basic level, the ICC is binding only on the countries whose governments signed the Rome Statute. Government officials of other countries are as though in a Hobbesian state of nature with respect to the court’s jurisdiction. So government officials like Putin and Netanyahu could legally dismiss the ICC and even that court’s signatory countries; it is not a question of the latter’s non-cooperation with the court, but, rather, the court’s own jurisdiction. To hold government officials like Putin and Netanyahu accountable, the world had, at least as of 2024, to rely on the voluntary economic, political, and even militaristic efforts of countries, signatories or not, to protect human rights from war crimes and crimes against humanity.  How much humanity there is in leaving such important constraints to the varying and shifting political and economic interests of countries around the world is a question whose answer, at least as of 2024, did not yet reflect well on our species. Even the UN’s court, the International Court of Justice, lacked an enforcement mechanism for its verdicts. Russia and Israel were countries in the UN, but not even a global international organization could constrain Russia and Israel as they allegedly committed war crimes in 2024.

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1. “Putin Arrives in ICC Member State Mongolia without Being Arrested,” Euronews, September 2, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

Euroskeptic Federalism: Obstructing the E.U.'s Recognition of Palestine

Just because U.S. federalism deposits foreign policy exclusively with governmental institutions at the federal level does not mean that that domain cannot be shared between state and federal governments in a federal system. This was precisely the case in the E.U. as it struggled to come up with a unified response to Israel having ignored the verdict of the World Court—the UN’s court—ordering Israel to cease and decease from invading Rafah from May 24, 2024 onward. Meanwhile, two of the E.U.’s states were poised to recognize Palestine. Such emphasis on the state governments playing the leading role is fraught with difficulties even though in theory there is on reason why foreign policy cannot be a competency, or domain, that is shared at the state and federal “levels.” In federalism, the federal and state governmental systems are on par, rather than one of the governmental systems being above the other, so “levels” is misleading. Even so, a lot can be said for delegating foreign policy to the federal level. This can be seen from the state and federal reactions in the E.U. as Israel continued its invasion of Rafah just after the World Court had ruled that Israel would be violating international law and the UN’s charter in continuing the offensive.

Two E.U. states, Ireland and Spain, were poised to recognize Palestine as a sovereign country—34,000 dead and 800,000 on the brink of starvation in Rafah had in the judgment of the two E.U. state governments paid sufficient dues to be recognized as a distinct nation rather than as a part of Israel. Rather than urging the European Council to meet to take a decision on a federal policy on Israel as it ignored the verdict of the World Court and even bombed a Palestinian re-settlement camp, the E.U.’s foreign minister, Josep Borrell, merely “threw his full weight to support the International Criminal Court,” whose prosecutor was “seeking an arrest warrant against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu” and Israel’s defense chief.[1] Borrell didn’t even mention the verdict of the UN’s court ordering Israel to cease its invasion of Rafah. Even so, Borrell’s criticism of the Israeli vitriol against the prosecutor may be sufficient to justify a federal response to Israel, especially considering its bombing of the resettlement camp. “The prosecutor of the [ICC] has been strongly intimidated and accused of antisemitism—as always when anybody, anyone does something that Netanyahu’s government does not like,” Borrell said.[2] Israel’s foreign policy chief even accused the government of Spain of continuing the Inquisition and even with “rewarding terror” in recognizing the Palestinian state.[3]

The accusation of “rewarding terror,” which alludes to the anti-occupation guerilla operation of Hamas on October 7, 2023, blatantly ignores the terror inflicted subsequently by Israel mainly on Palestinian civilians in Gaza that went well beyond the number of Israelis killed and taken hostage in October. The implication is that Israel had the right to inflict “collective justice” on an entire population many times over, and thus that any resistance internationally could only be borne of prejudice against Jews and an intention to reward Hamas for its October incursion. Were John Locke, a European philosopher of the seventeenth century, alive, he would doubtless tell the world, Look, I told you that a victim should not be entrusted with carrying out its notion of justice on a victimizer. I would add that the victimizer in this case had long been the victim because of the Israeli occupation of Gaza (and the West Bank). The E.U. could at least have taken a stance against Israel’s infliction of its warped notion of reciprocity, rather than leaving it to the state governments.

At this point, I need to get very precise to convey the depth of the sordid mentality that I contend calls out for both federal and state condemnation in the E.U. On May 24, 2024, the UN’s top court ordered: “Israel must immediately halt its military offensive and any other action in Rafah which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”[4] Months before, Michael Fakhri, the UN’s leading expert on food, had warned that Israel was intentionally starving Palestinians in Gaza by restricting aid even after the International Court of Justice had ruled that Israel could not do so. “Intentionally depriving people of food is clearly a war crime,” Fakhri said in February, 2024; “Israel has announced its intention to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, simply for being Palestinian.”[5] The Human Rights Watch organization had reported in December, 2023 that several Israeli cabinet ministers had made statements in public “expressing their aim to deprive civilians in Gaza of food, water, and fuel.”[6] Back in October after Hama’s attack, the president of Israel had publicly stated that every resident of Gaza could justifiably be blamed for the incursion. John Locke was right: given human nature, victims should not be allowed to enact their own sense of justice. In ignoring two rulings of the UN’s top court, the Israeli government demonstrates that Locke’s political theory can (and should) be extended to the international level.

Two degrees of separation exist between the ruling of the International Court of Justice on May 24, 2024 and Israel’s bombing of a resettlement camp just days later. “Footage obtained by CNN showed the camp in flames, with scores of men, women and children frantically trying to find cover from the nighttime assault. Burned bodies, including those of children, could be seen being pulled by rescuers from the wreckage.”[7] It should be stressed that the camp was for residents who had already been displaced. Literally, there was no where for the people already displaced to go. Because the attack, made incidentally without warning, occurred in clear violation of the UN court’s recent verdict—and the Israeli ambassador to the UN had just a week or so earlier shredded a copy of the UN charter at the podium of the General Assembly—the very validity of the UN itself and especially its court could not have suffered a more blatant defeat. The very notion of international law without an enforcement power had been reduced to being an oxymoron.

Just because U.S. federalism deposits foreign policy exclusively with governmental institutions at the federal level does not mean that that domain cannot be shared between state and federal governments in a federal system. This was precisely the case in the E.U. as it struggled to come up with a unified response to Israel having ignored the verdict of the World Court—the UN’s court—ordering Israel to cease and decease from invading Rafah from May 24, 2024 onward. Meanwhile, two of the E.U.’s states were poised to recognize Palestine. Such emphasis on the state governments playing the leading role is fraught with difficulties even though in theory there is on reason why foreign policy cannot be a competency, or domain, that is shared at the state and federal “levels.” In federalism, the federal and state governmental systems are on par, rather than one of the governmental systems being above the other, so “levels” is misleading. Even so, a lot can be said for delegating foreign policy to the federal level. This can be seen from the state and federal reactions in the E.U. as Israel continued its invasion of Rafah just after the World Court had ruled that Israel would be violating international law and the UN’s charter in continuing the offensive.

Two E.U. states, Ireland and Spain, were poised to recognize Palestine as a sovereign country—34,000 dead and 800,000 on the brink of starvation in Rafah had in the judgment of the two E.U. state governments paid sufficient dues to be recognized as a distinct nation rather than as a part of Israel. Rather than urging the European Council to meet to take a decision on a federal policy on Israel as it ignored the verdict of the World Court and even bombed a Palestinian re-settlement camp, the E.U.’s foreign minister, Josep Borrell, merely “threw his full weight to support the International Criminal Court,” whose prosecutor was “seeking an arrest warrant against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu” and Israel’s defense chief.[8] Borrell didn’t even mention the verdict of the UN’s court ordering Israel to cease its invasion of Rafah. Even so, Borrell’s criticism of the Israeli vitriol against the prosecutor may be sufficient to justify a federal response to Israel, especially considering its bombing of the resettlement camp. “The prosecutor of the [ICC] has been strongly intimidated and accused of antisemitism—as always when anybody, anyone does something that Netanyahu’s government does not like,” Borrell said.[9] Israel’s foreign policy chief even accused the government of Spain of continuing the Inquisition and even with “rewarding terror” in recognizing the Palestinian state.[10]

The accusation of “rewarding terror,” which alludes to the anti-occupation guerilla operation of Hamas on October 7, 2023, blatantly ignores the terror inflicted subsequently by Israel mainly on Palestinian civilians in Gaza that went well beyond the number of Israelis killed and taken hostage in October. The implication is that Israel had the right to inflict “collective justice” on an entire population many times over, and thus that any resistance internationally could only be borne of prejudice against Jews and an intention to reward Hamas for its October incursion. Were John Locke, a European philosopher of the seventeenth century, alive, he would doubtless tell the world, Look, I told you that a victim should not be entrusted with carrying out its notion of justice on a victimizer. I would add that the victimizer in this case had long been the victim because of the Israeli occupation of Gaza (and the West Bank). The E.U. could at least have taken a stance against Israel’s infliction of its warped notion of reciprocity, rather than leaving it to the state governments.

At this point, I need to get very precise to convey the depth of the sordid mentality that I contend calls out for both federal and state condemnation in the E.U. On May 24, 2024, the UN’s top court ordered: “Israel must immediately halt its military offensive and any other action in Rafah which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”[11] Months before, Michael Fakhri, the UN’s leading expert on food, had warned that Israel was intentionally starving Palestinians in Gaza by restricting aid even after the International Court of Justice had ruled that Israel could not do so. “Intentionally depriving people of food is clearly a war crime,” Fakhri said in February, 2024; “Israel has announced its intention to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, simply for being Palestinian.”[12] The Human Rights Watch organization had reported in December, 2023 that several Israeli cabinet ministers had made statements in public “expressing their aim to deprive civilians in Gaza of food, water, and fuel.”[13] Back in October after Hama’s attack, the president of Israel had publicly stated that every resident of Gaza could justifiably be blamed for the incursion. John Locke was right: given human nature, victims should not be allowed to enact their own sense of justice. In ignoring two rulings of the UN’s top court, the Israeli government demonstrates that Locke’s political theory can (and should) be extended to the international level.

Two degrees of separation exist between the ruling of the International Court of Justice on May 24, 2024 and Israel’s bombing of a resettlement camp just days later. “Footage obtained by CNN showed the camp in flames, with scores of men, women and children frantically trying to find cover from the nighttime assault. Burned bodies, including those of children, could be seen being pulled by rescuers from the wreckage.”[14] It should be stressed that the camp was for residents who had already been displaced. Literally, there was nowhere for the people already displaced to go. Because the attack, made incidentally without warning, occurred in clear violation of the UN court’s recent verdict—and the Israeli ambassador to the UN had just a week or so earlier shredded a copy of the UN charter at the podium of the General Assembly—the very validity of the UN itself and especially its court could not have suffered a more blatant defeat. The very notion of international law without an enforcement power had been reduced to being an oxymoron.

Meanwhile, the E.U. was hamstrung at the federal “level,” thus leaving it to a few state governments to take the heat from Israel—vitriol that itself could be characterized as reverse-prejudice. In no way, form, or manner could objections to Israel’s warped notion of collective “justice” and its abject dismissal of the two verdicts of the UN’s top court be characterized as anything akin to the Nazi prejudice against the Jews. Accordingly, the moral impetus of the German government to defend Israel had been paid in full and so even that state could act salubriously in recognizing a Palestinian state and castigating Israel’s government as an ongoing instance of state-sponsored terror. German guilt no longer needed to forestall a federal E.U. policy, and the stakes in terms of the severity of the Israeli government’s dangerous mentality practically demanded such a policy. For the E.U. could hardly count on the U.S. to be the world’s “policeman”; the Biden administration and the Congress had squandered that role in aiding and abetting Israel’s overkill. The U.S. president’s claim that prosecution of Netanyahu at the ICC would be “outrageous” is startling enough; Netanyahu’s need to one-up the president by claiming that such prosecution would be “beyond outrageous” just shows how right Locke was. The world should have the means to enforce international law against a government that is out of control, whose self-awareness is so abjectly warped in defensiveness, and such a government’s ally should by no means be tasked internationally with being the world’s policeman just because it carries a big stick. Indeed, the U.S. was enervating international law by shipping weapons to Israel and thus enabling a bruised bully on the world stage, thanks to the campaign war-chest of the AIPAC (American Israeli Political Action Committee) and the unprincipled fecklessness of the American federal government and the vast majority of its electorate. Clearly, the E.U. could no longer count on the U.S. to police the world, for the “policeman” had become an accomplice.

In short, if even such atrocious behavior as regard the International Court of Justice and the civilians in Gaza as Israel’s Netanyahu and his government relentlessly evinced with utter impunity could not bring forth a foreign policy at the federal level of the E.U., then something must surely have been wrong regarding the ability of the E.U. to have foreign policy at all. Making such policy too difficult at the federal level risks Europe being torn asunder by a foreign evil when it can be claimed that the E.U. has a moral imperative to act as the “adult in the room” to stop an evil power abroad, especially given the fecklessness of international law and courts at the time.  

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1. Raf Casert, “E.U. Ties with Israel Nosedive Ahead of Spain, Ireland Recognizing Palestinian State,” The Huffington Post, May 27, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Abbas Al Lawati, “UN’s Top Court Orders Israel to ‘Immediately’ Halt Its Operation in Rafah,” CNN.com, May 24, 2024 (accessed on May 27, 2024).
5. Nina Lakhani, “Israel Is Deliberately Starving Palestinians, UN Rights Expert Says,” The Guardian, February 27, 2024.
6. “Israel: Starvation Used as Weapon of War in Gaza,” Human Rights Watch, December 18, 2023.
7. Mohammad Al Sawalhi et al, “Israeli Strike that Killed 45 at Camp for Displaced Palestinians in Rafah a ‘Tragic Mistake,’ Netanyahu Says,” CNN.com, May 27, 2024.

8.Raf Casert, “E.U. Ties with Israel Nosedive Ahead of Spain, Ireland Recognizing Palestinian State,” The Huffington Post, May 27, 2024.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11.Abbas Al Lawati, “UN’s Top Court Orders Israel to ‘Immediately’ Halt Its Operation in Rafah,” CNN.com, May 24, 2024 (accessed on May 27, 2024).

12. Nina Lakhani, “Israel Is Deliberately Starving Palestinians, UN Rights Expert Says,” The Guardian, February 27, 2024.

13. “Israel: Starvation Used as Weapon of War in Gaza,” Human Rights Watch, December 18, 2023.

14. Mohammad Al Sawalhi et al, “Israeli Strike that Killed 45 at Camp for Displaced Palestinians in Rafah a ‘Tragic Mistake,’ Netanyahu Says,” CNN.com, May 27, 2024.

The U.S. Military in Iraq: Were Human Rights Ignored?

Philip Alston, a United Nations human rights official, warned the U.S. Government in 2006 that he had received information indicating that Iraqi reports of American troops executing an Iraqi family were true. Five of the victims were children five years old or younger. According to Alston, the troops “entered the house [after a 25 minute gun battle], handcuffed all residents and executed all of them.” He noted that the troops attacked the house in part because they suspected that the family was involved in the killing of two American troops earlier in March, 2006. If this is true, both the vengeful attack and the subsequent investigation by the U.S. military, which concluded that the report of the execution was false, demonstrate what can go wrong when conflicts of interest are ignored.

In his Two Treatises of Government, John Locke writes that government is necessary because victims cannot be trusted to act as judges in meting out sentences in their own cases. At the very least, the aggressors could be expected to receive unduly harsh punishments because of the weight of vengeance on the victims’ judgment. So too, American troops cannot be trusted to take matters into their own hands concerning the shooting of other American troops. Moreover, the U.S. military cannot be expected to judge its own. So too, regarding the massacre of 1,200 prisoners at Abu Salim prison in Tripoli on June 29, 1996, which would prompt the protests that ultimately led to the fall of Qaddafi, the question of an independent investigation even by the rebels themselves should involve making certain that the ex-guards and government officials are not allowed to vitiate an investigation or its verdict. “We want a fair investigation to discover what exactly happened,” Jamal Bashir al-Gorgi said. His brother Faraj was killed. It is the ethical principle of fairness that is so easily discarded from justice when the victims become the victimizers.

Besides the matter of a military, whether African or American, “taking care of its own,” there is a danger, moreover, in having violence itself coming to be tacitly accepted simply because vested interests eviscerate accountability—which itself can foster a culture wherein spontaneous violence is not sufficiently held back from a normative standpoint. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, it could be that the world had become so accustomed to the continued existence of standing armies that violence itself had come to be expected, or at the very least engrained in societal norms. Hence, the U.S. military was thrust into Iraq as a clumsy reaction of vengeance after the terrorist attack in New York City in September, 2001. Incredibly, the military itself was trusted to investigate “its own” while Alston’s letter that was submitted to the U.S. Embassy in Geneva 12 days after the killings in March 2006 was virtually ignored.

It could be that the very existence of a standing army relegates human rights while potential vengeance is given a ready instrument. Indeed, the U.S. is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the American union is one of the most militarized alliances in the world—ready to be engaged by a commander in chief who can de facto declare war on his own in spite of the conflict of interest. Perhaps if human rights were more valued in American society, such large standing armies as those in the U.S. would not be necessary. That is to say, perhaps there would be less hatred around the world directed at the American union.

Sources:

Richard Oppel, Jr., “Cable Implicates Americans in Deaths of Iraqi Civilians,” New York Times, September 2, 2011. 

Kareem Fahim, “Rebels Yank Open Gates of Infamous Libyan Prison, Seeking Clues to a Massacre,” New York Times, September 2, 2011.