The Worden Report - International Relations

Thursday, September 5, 2024

Pope Francis on Families and the Environment

On a trip to Indonesia in early September, 2024, Pope Francis signed a declaration on religious harmony and environmental protection at the Istiqlal mosque in Jakarta with the mosque’s grand imam. The Pope said that our species was facing a “serious crisis” bought about by war and the destruction of the environment.[1] Of war, the tremendous destruction of civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and Gaza that had been taking place was doubtless on the cleric’s mind. Of the environment, climate change was undoubtedly on his mind. In addition to volcanoes and wild fires, human emissions of carbon into the atmosphere were poised to push the global temperature increase above the critical threshold of 2.5 degrees C above the pre-industrial level. What connects the two problems at the root—the source of the two problems—went unmentioned. In fact, the Pope made a statement that, if acted upon, stood to exacerbate the underlying problem: the exponential explosion of growth of the human population in the twentieth century.

The full essay is at "Pope Francis on Families and the Environment."

1. Joel Guinto, “Pope and Top Indonesian Imam Make Joint Call for Peace,” BBC.com, September 5, 2024.

Monday, September 2, 2024

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.

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.

Sunday, August 18, 2024

Nuclear Power: Rendering War Too Dangerous in a World of Nations

Increasing integration of the global financial and business sectors and the global need to combat climate change by restricting carbon emissions are just two reasons why the impotence of the UN, which has not touched the doctrine of absolutist national sovereignty, has become increasingly problematic. The risk to nuclear technology in power-generation from war argues strongly for not only the obsolescence of war between countries, but also the benefits of transferring some governmental sovereignty from the nation-states to a global-level government, which the UN has never been. The case of the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, in the midst of Russia’s invasion in 2024 is a case in point.

In August, 2024, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) notified the world that safety at Zaporizhzhia was deteriorating. A drone strike had recently hit a perimeter access road used by employees, and a fire had been set at the plant. The plant had been subject to repeated attacks since the invasion began, with both sides accusing the other of carrying out the attacks. So it is significant that the IAEA’s director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said in August, “Yet again we see an escalation of the nuclear safety and security dangers facing . . . the power plant.”[1] It was not as if the plant had been in a safe condition, so the escalation is significant. With both sides of the war having been blaming the other for the attacks on the plant, there was a real danger that both sides would see continued blaming as a way to ignore Grossi’s call for restraint. “I remain extremely concerned and reiterate my call for maximum restraint from all sides and for strict observance of the five concrete principles established for the protection of the plant,” he stated.[2] Especially because of the option of simply blaming the other side, it could be said to be utopian to have confidence that those principles would be upheld in the context of the war.

In fact, as Hobbes theorized in The Leviathan, without one sovereign, whether a single person or an assembly, the chances for peace are nil, with life being short and brutish. It was in the context of the wars in the 17^th century that Hobbes lived, and he wrote to obviate war by urging all political and religious power be vested in the same person or body. In Ukraine in the midst of the war in 2024, the country was not under the control of one sovereign, as the Russian incursions prove. In such a state of nature devoid of an overarching sovereign power, the danger to the nuclear plant was very real.

Given the magnitude and severity that a nuclear accident can inflict on land and human beings, taking such a risk is arguably so much to be avoided that it is worth it to countries to delegate some of their sovereignty to an international body. Although Kant advocated a world federation, by which world peace would only be possible but not probable, it is not clear whether such a federation would have any of its own sovereignty apart from that of countries. Without such a delegation of sovereignty, I’m not sure peace would even be possible, given the impotence of the UN as belligerent countries have easily been able to ignore resolutions and even verdicts from the UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice.

Of course, even were a world government to have some sovereignty and thus to ability to enforce its resolutions against warring countries, Hobbes would say that unless that sovereignty is complete, with countries no longer having any, war would be likely. But Hobbes lived prior to the invention of modern federalism in Philadelphia in the 18^th century, and so he could not have been able to consider the checks-and-balances feature by which a federal government and state governments can hold each other accountable or at least within limits such that neither devolves into tyranny. In the early 21^st century, both the E.U. and U.S. federal systems contain internal structural and procedural checks on federal and state power, though the U.S. had come so close to consolidation by the U.S. Government that it could hardly be argued that the state governments could act as a constraint on the federal government. So splitting governmental sovereignty between a world government and national governments would not be without its own risks and weaknesses.

Even so, the conduct of war in a state of nature amid nuclear power plants is such a toxic cocktail that the impotence of the UN as against the Russian invasion (and the Israeli onslaught in Gaza) could no longer be tolerated by 2024. Dangers in advanced technology in the context of a war argue against unfettered war being tolerable by our species any longer, and the UN sans any governmental sovereignty could not be the solution, given how easy it has been for belligerent members of the UN to ignore resolutions and verdicts with impunity and even continued membership in good standing. In short, technology even aside from that which is used in weapons had fundamentally changed the danger from war to the species itself, even as the world has continued to rely on the feckless UN in failure after failure as if the status quo were working anyway. It is unfortunate that so much energy of political will is necessary for a leap in political development for the species; we are so much better at incrementalism.

1. Saskia O’Donoghue, “IAEA Says Safety at Ukraine’s Nuclear Plant Is ‘Deteriorating,” Euronews, August 18, 2024.
2. Ibid.

Tuesday, August 6, 2024

On Europe’s Nonlinear Climatic Future

The probable impacts of climate change are anything but straightforward, and thus predictable. From the standpoint of mid-2024, huge changes could be in store for Europe and other continents. The magnitude of the shifts is particularly worthy of notice, such that the changes being unleashed even as of 2024 and especially in the decades following the 2020s will be difficult to reverse or even change even if a Green revolution were to take hold. It bears noting that in 2023, the increase in energy usage globally outstripped contribution from alternative or clean energy, such that even more fossil fuel was used to meet the post-pandemic demand. A look at Europe provides a good case study of the unstoppable magnitude of some of the changes already underway.

I cropped Duncan Porter's photos so the area covered in the background would be the same.

Duncan Porter took a photo of the Rhone glacier in Europe on August 4, 2024. He had taken a photo fifteen years minus one day earlier at the same spot. The loss of ice is palpable, reflecting the fact that Europe was as of 2024 the world’s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures running 2.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels whereas the global increase stood at 1.3 degrees higher—very close indeed to the baleful planetary threshold of 1.5 degrees.[1] In short, Europe had already crossed that boundary set by scientists, and the empirical evidence could be seen in the massive loss of ice at the Rhone glacier.

When Porter took his “after” picture in early August, 2024, Europe was in the midst of “one of the most prolonged and intense” heatwaves on record, with temperatures consistently exceeding historical averages, “with some areas experiencing unprecedented highs. This prolonged heat . . . led to significant ecological stress, particularly on heathlands, which are critical stopover points and breeding grounds for migratory birds.”[2] With temperatures at 2.3 degrees higher on average than the pre-industrial level, Europe could expect such heatwaves as a matter of course, or the new normal, with significant ecological shifts resulting.

Lest linearity be assumed, Western Europe also faced the prospect of the end of the Gulf Stream, which is part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). That current sends warm ocean water over to Northern Europe from Florida and warms Western Europe, especially during the winter. Should this current cease from an influx of melted fresh water, European winters would be much colder (think Moscow). By 2024, it had been well established that melting freshwater from Greenland’s ice sheet was slowing down the Gulf Stream, and earlier than climate models had suggested. The question was when rather than if. In 2023, Politico reported, “A collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) was likely to occur ‘around mid-century under the current scenario of future emissions’—perhaps as soon as 2025 and not later than 2095, said Peter Ditlevsen and Susanne Ditlevsen from the University of Copenhagen in a per-reviewed study published in Nature Communications.”[3] In other words, for Europeans sweating out the long heatwave during the summer of 2024, the perplexing news was that “Atlantic Ocean current that keeps large parts of Europe warm could come to an abrupt and catastrophic stop any time in the coming decades.”[4]

From the vantage point of 2024, prolonged heatwaves during summers and much colder winters could thus be the volatile, nonlinear climate-future of Europe. Uncharted territory is a good way to describe the possible, even probable changes in the offing. I don’t believe even scientists knew how the colder ocean water during the summers would impact the heatwaves, and how the average 2.3 degree temperature increase would impact winters that would otherwise be colder the loss of the Gulf Stream. Such interaction effects may pale next to severe heatwaves and no Gulf Stream, such that hot summers and very cold winters could run for decades through the 21^st century.

Meanwhile, in North America, the Midwest was projected to get much hotter, with some places in the Southwest possibly becoming uninhabitable, while Florida and the East Coast would be cooler than otherwise if the Gulf Stream shuts down. So, Europeans were not alone in being beset with unknown interaction effects. Going into uncharted territory may be titillating, but when the reality of a changed world sets in, the excitement will likely quickly wear off. With such huge changes as the Gulf Stream shutting down, climatic shifts will be of such magnitude that shifting back would not be likely.

1. Euronews Green, “It Made Me Cry,” Euronews, August 6, 2024.
2. Luke Hanrahan, “Heathlands under Siege,” Euronews, August 5, 2024.
3. Karl Mathiesen, “Gulf Stream Shutoff Could Happen this Century, Scientists Warn,” Politico, July 25, 2023.
4. Ibid.

Sunday, July 21, 2024

Turkey on Cyprus: Sidelining the E.U.

Imagine if Japan had invaded and claimed (and successfully held) an island of Hawaii as a protectorate and a separate country due to the number of Japanese living there, and thus not as a part of Hawaii even though the U.S. recognizes all of Hawaii as a member state. Let’s say furthermore that the UN has proposed the unification of Hawaii as a republic composed of two federated states. Hawaii would be akin to Belgium in the E.U.—a federated state of two sub-states in a federal union. This arrangement would fit with Althusius’ early seventeenth-century theory of federalism based on the Holy Roman Empire: each level of political organization is a federation. While this exists in the E.U., none of the U.S. states is itself a federation of states. So, the UN’s proposal that Cyprus be united politically and be composed of two states even as the E.U. already recognizes the entire island as an E.U. state is not outlandish to a European eye. The problem with the proposal lies instead in Turkey, and this in itself can be interpreted as an argument against Turkey’s accession to E.U. statehood.

“Speaking at an event in the north [part of the island in 2024] to mark the 50^th anniversary of the Turkish invasion that [had] split the island along ethnic lines, [Turkey’s President] Erdogan ruled out resuming talks based on the Annan Plan which proposed the establishment of a United Republic of Cyprus.”[1] In rejecting the proposal, he was ignoring the fact that the E.U. recognized the entire island of Cyprus as a state in that union. He was thus unwittingly undermining the E.U. even as Turkey was still technically seeking statehood. I submit that this undermines Turkey’s chances of accession, and furthermore, that Turkey should not become a state. For at the very least, an aspiring state should respect the E.U., even and especially on matters that touch on that potential state. The case of the E.U. state of Hungary being found in wanton violation of E.U. law by the E.U.’s supreme court, the European Court of Justice, demonstrates just how harmful a disrespectful state government can be within a federal union.

Erdogan’s establishment of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is only recognized by Turkey’s government and was rejected in a 2004 referendum by more than 75% of the Greek Cypriots in the south, would, if accepted by the E.U., limit the E.U.’s common market to the south and thus create the need for customs checkpoints inside the island. While not as complicated as the case of Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K. and yet also part of the Irish island—Ireland being an E.U. state—politically splitting the island of Cyprus permanently would make things more difficult for the E.U. with respect to its state of Cyprus in the south. Again, it would be a case of Turkey making things more difficult for the E.U., and yet presumably also wanting to become a state to enjoy the economic advantages of the union’s unfettered interstate commerce. This combo must surely strike Europeans as unsavory and thus as a de facto argument against Turkey joining the union. In other words, the way Erdogan was playing his hand politically with respect to Cyprus showed the Europeans that they had been right to hold off on accession talks with Turkey because its government would not make a very good state government in the union. Already Hungary was enough of a problem. That 90% of Turkey is not in Europe and the culture is not European may be what is behind not only the tension in Cyprus, but also why Turkey would be a problematic state in the European Union.

Lastly, Erdogan’s insistence on a “two state” solution for Cyprus, as if the difference between the north and south were as great as those between the Palestinians and Israelis in Israel, discounts or even perhaps dismisses the mollifying effect that Cyprus being a state in a union would have on the tensions on the island, and thus shows a lack of confidence in the E.U. in its mission to forestall war in Europe. In other words, the president of Turkey didn’t seem to have much faith in the federal institutions, including the E.U.’s court of justice, to protect minorities within the union and assuage tensions domestically, by which I mean within the union. Just as the rationale of the U.S. as a federal union of dual sovereignty was in part to use federal power to step in to stop Shay’s Rebellion in Massachusetts and the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania, so too the E.U. has the means at its federal level mediate any excitements within the state of Cyprus. Yet Erdogan did not seem to trust Brussels enough to recognize the entire island of Cyprus as an E.U. state.

Brussels already had Viktor Orbán of Hungary distrusting the federal institutions in 2024 and actively working at odds with E.U. foreign policy on Russia even as he held the presidency of the Council of the E.U. during the last six months of 2024. Taking note of the 50^th anniversary of Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus then, Brussels could have done worse than formally end Turkey’s proposed accession. A house divided cannot long stand, or at least cannot prosper and thrive as it could otherwise. With Russia belligerently knocking down Ukraine, Europeans could surely have benefitted at the time from a basic or fundamental unity that at the very least includes respect for and confidence in the European Union, given its rationale bearing on protecting Europe from war within.

1. “Erdogan Dismisses UN Plan for Federated Cyprus, Reaffirms Commitment to Two-State Peace Deal,” Euronews, July 21, 2024.

Unenforced Law: The International Court of Justice Declares Israeli Occupation Illegal

On July 19, 2024, the UN’s court rendered an opinion to the UN’s General Assembly on the legality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories including East Jerusalem. The Israeli government wasted no time in publicly dismissing the International Court of Justice even though the UN had created Israel. As if the creature is greater than its creator, which is a rather unbiblical view, Israel’s prime minister had dismissed two earlier verdicts of that court against Israel’s military incursion into Gaza, which resulted in the deaths of more than 35,000 and displaced over a million Palestinian residents. What are we to make of international law itself? Can we rightly call it law even though no enforcement mechanism necessarily exists for it? By necessarily, I mean something more than a voluntary coalition of willing countries, which of course cannot be counted upon.

At the end of 2022, the UN’s General Assembly requested that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) “render an advisory opinion” concerning “the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures.”[1] A year and a half later, the ICJ issued its landmark opinion. ICJ President Nawaf Salam said the court had found that Israel’s “continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal. . . . The State of Israel is under the obligation to bring an end to its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible.”[2] Accordingly, settlement activity should end and existing settlements should be given up in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The court also mandated the payment of reparations to Palestinians for damages caused by the occupation. The ICJ indicated that Israel’s “policies and practices amount to annexation of large parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” and that Israel was “not entitled to sovereignty” there.[3] Additionally, according to the BBC, “the court said Israeli restrictions on Palestinians in the occupied territories constituted ‘systemic discrimination based on, inter alia, race, religion or ethnic origin’” and Israel “had illegally exploited the Palestinians’ natural resources and violated their right to self-determination.”[4]

In reaction to the exhaustive opinion on which the court had been engaged since early 2023, Israel’s prime minister called the decision one “of lies.”[5] It is precisely on account of such jejune denial (frankly, that could be expected from a teenager) that international law and courts are necessary. Incidentally, lies, or fabrications, pertain to facts, whereas the court issued an opinion. Netanyahu’s category mistake may be indicative of a knee-jerk reaction. His other category mistake was to reference Jerusalem as the homeland of Jews, whereas the court’s opinion pertains to Israel and thus Israelis. A religious claim is distinct from a political or legal one, and the court (and the General Assembly) were solely concerned with the latter. The court also held that governments helping Israel in its occupation are also culpable, and the United States also promptly criticized the court’s decision, which was, at the very least, inconvenient politically.[6]

In issuing a judicial opinion for the General Assembly, the court noted the nonbinding nature of the decision. But is any international law, even if in the form of a verdict by an international court, binding on any sovereign country? The nonbinding feature of the court’s opinion is thus a red herring, sidestepping the proverbial invisible elephant in a room. The sheer fecklessness of international law itself begs the question of whether it is indeed law or something less, such as a guideline that governments can take or leave at will. To be sure, even immaturely dismissing a mere guideline as exhaustively undertaken—at least in terms of time—cogently (i.e., internal consistency) reasoned, and complete as that of the ICJ here is (or ought to be) blameworthy. Yet given the severity of the infractions committed by Israel in its longstanding occupation, something stronger than a guideline is warranted. So we have arrived face to face with the question of whether a law that cannot be enforced is nonetheless a law.

Kant refers to the law of reason owing to the necessity of reason. Two plus two simply cannot equal five. That the answer is four has necessity. So too does law, according to Kant. But a law does not have necessity if it cannot be enforced—if people can ignore a law with impunity. It can of course be objected that the kind of necessity that a fact of reason enjoys in the human mind does not apply to the sort of social reality that covers social organization. But it contracts reason to say, we’re passing a law and we know that it cannot and will not be enforced. In other words, to claim that something is a law and furthermore that no enforcement mechanism exists or can be counted on nullifies the something being a law.

Unless or until there is such a thing as international law, governments will be free to accept or reject the opinions of international courts as just that: opinions. Unless or until national sovereignty is qualified rather than absolute, governments will be subject to might, as that of Ukraine has been subject to Russia’s might since Russia began its invasion by taking Crimea in 2014. Indeed, Israel acquired Palestinian land as a result of the 1967 war, and the Israeli government was conveniently taking this result of might not only as right, but also as if it were a fact of reason immune to the error of falsification.

In the want of political development beyond the nation-state, the global system will remain stymied in a Hobbesian state of nature in spite of having an institutional infrastructure. Without international law, it is actually rather amazing that international relations are not more chaotic than they are. Even were there a global federation of nations, Kant claims that peace would merely be possible, rather than probable. I submit that it would be more probable were the federal level of such a federation to have the military (and economic) means to enforce international law. Without any such means, the UN cannot claim to have or much less to enforce international law. Heading into 2024, the governmental heads of Russia and Israel knew this only too well, and thus could exploit the common misconception that there is such a thing as international law.

See: "Israel Legalizes Illegal Settlements on Palestinian Land."

1. “Request for Advisory Opinion,” General Assembly resolution 77/247 of 30 December 2022.
2. Raffi Berg, “UN Top Court Says Israeli Occupation of Palestinian Territories Is Illegal,” BBC, July 20, 2021.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Kanishka Singh, “US Criticizes ICJ Opinion on Israeli Occupation of Palestinian Territories,” Reuters, July 20, 2024.

Monday, May 27, 2024

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.

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]

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.

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.