The following is Domingo’s valedictory blog and does not necessarily represent the view of the Next Century Foundation:
As the United States ups the ante under Trump, the media cycle has shared numerous stories about the end of the “international rules-based order”. Canadian president Mark Carney gave his viral speech on its end implying how the US has become once again an imperialist power. He taps into a narrative that has categorically ignored the plight of the Global South. Despite a strong desire for liberal democracies around the world to portray the moral supremacy of so called international law, its potency has only ever been marginal as an equalising force.
Funnily enough, Mark Carney has authorised Canada to aid in the US and Israel-led devastation of Iran. As the United States and Israel enters into a war with Iran, as lovers from afar, other nations, whose leaders confess the illegality of their war on Iran, slowly but surely begin to commit their resources to the US. French President Emmanuel Macron has publicly stated the illegality of the war but regardless provides military assistance to the USA. And British Prime Minister Keir Starmer criticises the war but regardless provides “defensive” assistance to the US and Israel. Ever reliable in their words, politicians are.
This is not to say that the work of the UN and other groups focused on international cooperation have not done good work, but rather that the system developed post World War II was never really set up to make the world generally more peaceful, equitable and safe. Behind the financing of foreign aid and development projects loom the heavy hands of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. While one hand provides loans for poorer nations for development projects, the other forces them to end these projects when they can’t pay back their exorbitant debts. Case in point would be the IMF forcing Madagascar into austerity, at the time resulting in a lack of funding for their life-saving anti-malaria project.
The reality of hegemony
As the present develops, a multi-polar world is coming into the fold. The myth of the international rules-based order was at its height under the monopolistic alliance of Western nations. Now as the dollar is slowly decentred from the global economy, the USA seeks to reset the playing field in its own interests by toppling governments, expropriating energy resources and enforcing capitulations on competitors. Fangs and claws are only revealed when cornered and weakened.
Beforehand, the US and its allies could rely on the legacy of their shared history of imperialism and colonialism to maintain a system of dependency in more fashionable, media-appropriate methods. Whilst poorer nations struggled to play catch-up with developed nations, the West could play the philanthropist whilst never allowing the playing field to be altered in a way that structurally benefited those who struggled. The developing world relied on the massive funding of USAID and the UN on America’s funding, where they always held unchecked power to veto anything remotely ‘radical’ from changing the game away from their national/corporate interests. Michael Parenti, an renowned scholar on imperialism, famously names the US ‘The Gangster State’, because for all intents and purposes, it behaves like a mafia on the global stage, now as well as 60 years ago.
Cycles of violence
It is true that since the beginning of this year, Trumps geopolitical behaviour has turned more aggressive than the past decade of US presidents, but he is playing a game well established prior to him. It’s imaginable that the history of US violence throughout the world is in fact a precedent – these examples form the limits of US administrative imagination. Over the past 150 years, the US has backed coups and either started or worsened wars in South America, Middle East, Asia, Africa, anywhere that their energy, political, and capital interests drag them.
The international stage has always been based upon inequality, particularly through war. It is the birthchild of war. As the League of Nations was formed after World War I, German colonies and Ottoman territories were divided among the winners. Those native to the distributed lands were not considered as their own people with their own means of governance. The establishment of the UN was also predicated on the colonial powers of the world, rebalanced after World War II. Palestine is the skeleton in the wardrobe. Perhaps the UN has improved its methods, but my main point is what the system indicates and the question it has brought to the forefront.
The role of human rights
How do we deal with the façade that is international law? So much work has been done to create a system of human rights, conflict resolution and spaces for peaceful negotiations. The problem has always been who keeps human rights. More often than not, ideas of human rights are formed around states. Legally enshrined human rights are fought for by the working population, the biggest class of society, and only then protected by the state. In industrial countries such as the UK, gender equality was fought for by the Suffragettes, through both non-violent and violent means. As is the case for worker’s rights through unions. Because states often represent the interests of capital and maintaining a status quo, they often look to regress our human rights over and over. We rely on states to maintain human rights because they have such control over our lives, domestically and internationally, they are our primary protection against violation, but as they give they can also take. It is people, through protest and resistance, violent and non-violent, that keep states in check and protect the rights of the world. There are many imaginative ways of non-violently holding Western hegemons accountable as they desperately rely on the cheap energy, food and labour of the Global South – they are not self-reliant. People must come together in solidarity and community, as should less powerful nations. They have the power to make hegemons understand what they rely on to stand up.
For further reading see: The Board of Peace: Challenged by Phase Two Gaza Reconstruction?
