BACKGROUND
1) Yaroslav Trofimov, “In a New Age of Empire, Great Powers Aim to Carve Up the Planet; After World War II, nations pledged to create a more equal and law-abiding world. Now Russia, China and the U.S. are returning to an older model in which powerful countries impose their will,” Wall Street Journal, January 17, 2025 (9:00 p.m. ET);
Yaroslav Trofimov of the wall Street Journal has written a balanced and thought-proking essay on the decay of the U.N. Cater-based international order built on the cornerstone of the United Nations Carter, Article 2 paragraph 4, which prohibits “the threat or use of force” against “the territorial integrity or political independence” of any state.
We are talking about ibternational law and the U.N. Charter, nottgec ill-defined “rules-based international order”, a term which has come into voguecin recent years.
The vague term, introduced in 2008 by an Australian leader, does not require intellectual rigor or detailed knowlege of international law, allows leaders to violate fundamental norms of international law while still maintaining their support for “rules- based international irder”.
In short, tge term does not require an absolute commitment to uphold and maintain tge legally binding commitments of international law.
What Trofimov describes is not the advent of a “new international order” but the decay of an existing international legal order which took over a century and two World Wars to construct.
What promises replace it if its decay continues is not a “new international order” but an old international anarchy which Trofimov right points out.
The confused thinking of those in the so-called “Global South” doesn’t withstand tge slightest serious scrutiny.
But because we lack statesmen and women of vision in key leadership roles, leaders in the West have failed to mount a strong defense of the existing international legal order.
They fail to make the case, time and time again, for tge maintenance and stregthening of tge U.N. Charter-based international legal order, in part due to ignorance and deficient education, and in part simply because they wish to remain free to violate international law and supplor friedds and allies to violate its norms. Tge U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 is a glaring example of this phenomenon, while U.S. military support of Israel as it committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza provides a more recent example.
Political leaders now speak openly if reaching a peace settlement with Russia that leaves it in control of Ukrainian territory conquered by military force,despite peremptory norm of international law which prohibit such an outcome.
Americans skeak openly of imposing punitive tariffs that violate the most fundamental norms of the World Trade Organization Charter (formerly known as the Havanna Charter.
Trfimov is correct in pointing out how tge world is soirally toward a state of international anarchy.
The implications are grave. We no longer live in tge 19th-century world of tge Concert of Europe. It is absurd to speak if a alance of power in a world of 200 xountries where oerps 10 and a growing number possess nuclear weapons.
The United Nations was created in 8; December 1945, only months after the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The Founders of tge U.N. understood what we have forgotten, that moden weapons of mass destruction made allnall-outbwarlike World War II unthinkable. Soon it became clear that the use of these weapons could end human life on earth.
Still our contemporary political leaders allow crazed mikitary leaders and scientists to invest hundreds of billiins of dollars in space-based and other programs to enable one country or another ton”win” a nuclear conflict.
Cinfirming thustorical fact tgat man when hus brain is seized by viions ofvwar can be infinitely stupid.
The Founders of tbe United Natiins, having recently experienced tge devastation of World War II which destroyed Europe and cost some 50 million lives, resokved to change the course of history by creating new institutions for tge maintenance og international peace and security.
Russia, China, and Iran want to change all that
Tell us more, gentlemen , how that is likely tonwork out.
Will it save the planet from the worst effects of global warming? Will it prevent tge use of ever more terrible biological and other weapons, assisted in their design by artificial intelligence?
Where are the leaders who will articulate these considerations?
Where are tge eloquent leaders who have learned from hidpstory, and who can persuade our populations and pokitical elites that international law and tge United Nations Charter are the only tools we have to ensure tge survival of tge human race?
We need to be building them up and not tearing them down,
And we need leaders who get that.