OPINION - America abandons its own project, the United Nations system

- What Israel is doing to the civilian population of Gaza is an example of one fundamental reason international law was created, to prosecute those carrying out crimes against humanity

- The author holds a master’s and PhD in history from Istanbul’s Sabanci University, where he taught Turkish history for nine years.

ISTANBUL

“There is a tendency on the part of some to assume the fact of United States (US) leadership of the free world. Leadership is accorded where trust has first been given. And trust is dependent on conduct. It is cautiously given and quickly taken back.”[1]

“There is a reason we’ve never endorsed the International Criminal Court (ICC) because it is a direct affront to our own sovereignty. We don’t put any international body above American sovereignty.”[2]

As the weeks pass in Gaza, as the Israeli military commits more atrocities and crimes, as the Israeli leadership insists on its bloody, self-destructive path, and as US officials continue to do nothing whatsoever to force the Israelis to desist, the situation looks more and more ominous. As it was for Darius and Xerxes, vainly raining their massive armies on the defiant and determined Greek city states, victory for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a chimera.

Israel will be a pariah state until rational leadership emerges, the US will be known as the key abettor of the worst crimes against humanity committed in the early 21st century, and for forsaking the international order it had the lead role in creating.

International law takes another step forward

ICC's Prosecutor Karim Khan’s application for arrest warrants for two Israeli officials (including Netanyahu) and three Hamas officials,[3] if approved, may become a turning point in international law’s history.

The immediate comparison that came to mind was Spanish prosecutor Baltasar Garzon’s arrest warrant for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998, which resulted in Pinochet’s lengthy detention in the UK. Even if Pinochet was eventually allowed to return to Chile,[4] the simple fact that Pinochet was imprisoned because of his actions while dictator became a ray of hope for people everywhere whose societies had been subjected to similar crimes.

However, Khan recently explained that unnamed politicians from Western countries have expressed dismay that the ICC might issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials. Just the idea that international law might be applied equally to all disturbs the powerful.[5]

What Israel is doing to the civilian population of Gaza is an example of one fundamental reason international law was created, to prosecute those carrying out crimes against humanity. The US should resolutely defend Khan’s responsibility to act in such a situation.

Instead, US officials, both Democrats and Republicans, have actually threatened both Khan and the ICC, or questioned the ICC’s jurisdiction.[6]

America’s post-World War II global order

The ICC is a recent addition to the international order that the US sponsored after World War II.[7] US officials have acted with contempt towards international institutions in the past, but I do not remember a time when US officials so openly and publicly denied the legitimacy of the international order that the US created.

This is even more shocking when one considers that the international order was founded not out of America’s altruism, but out of self-interest. Between the wars, prominent American intellectuals began to focus on the problem of international affairs, recognizing that the British-led 19th Century global order had disintegrated, with ever growing chaos and violence the result.

For example, Dean Acheson, who would play a prominent role in the Bretton Woods negotiations and then serve as US Secretary of State from 1949-1953, gave the following comments in November 1939 during a speech at Yale, shortly after Germany sparked the outbreak of World War II:

“The world order, which is so vital to us, will continue to disintegrate… unless vigorous reconstruction is undertaken. … Any action, of course, requires a limitation upon our power to act at any time in any way we please… . It is this so-called impairment of our sovereignty which frightens many of us from the idea of accepting responsibilities in the world essential to make our own position more secure.”[8]

The international order’s reality

The international order founded after World War II was intended to serve both humanity and US interests, as Acheson’s comments make clear. All the same, the UN and its related institutions were never perceived as a panacea for humanity’s troubles. In his memoirs, Acheson quotes Dag Hammarskjold, the secretary-general of the UN from 1953-1961, as stating that.

“The Charter… does not endow the UN with any of the attributes of a super-State… The UN is, rather, an instrument for negotiation among… Governments. It is also an instrument added to the time-honoured means of diplomacy for concerting action by Governments in support of the goals of the Charter.”[9]

Those realities, however, did not mean that the system could not grow or change over time, that international law could not gain stature, even enforceability, over time, or that the UN could not become more than just a forum for long-winded speeches. In fact, these possibilities have been embraced: as the globe developed during the Cold War and its aftermath, more of humanity became aware of the UN’s potential.

American vision withers into self-obsession

Unfortunately, US officials long ago lost sight of the fact that US interests and security required not just a strong military, but also compromise with others in order to ensure global security and prosperity. The “new world order” that former President George H. W. Bush proclaimed in 1990 meant simply that US interests would henceforth dominate its decision-making.[10] Since then, US officials have paid only lip service to the idea that the global order was for all humanity, their actions made clear that they saw themselves as the New Rome, the new Leviathan, subject to no other law.

The results have been, to understate considerably, disastrous. Now, the US not only shrugs off the international community, it provides the weapons that have killed more than 35,000 Gazan civilians.

Then and now

I frequently find myself pondering the immense difference in understanding that the US politicians of Acheson’s time displayed in comparison to today’s American officials, regardless of political affiliation. Even figures from backgrounds as humble as Cordell Hull[11] and Harry Truman[12] understood that US prosperity depended on a stable world system which the US needed to both anchor and interact with in a manner that displayed respect for other societies. Even a staunch isolationist like Arthur Vandenberg[13] understood that the post-war global situation required him to modify his political ideology and embrace a positive, global role for the US.

Clearly, today’s US officials are no longer able to comprehend that they, and the US, must sometimes forego self-interest in order to maintain a constructive and stabilizing role in global affairs.

And equally clear, it is up to the rest of the world to reform the current system, or construct a more viable alternative system that can provide peace and prosperity for as much of humanity as possible.

[1] Former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, “A Democrat Looks at His Party,” 1955. p. 96.

[2] Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson (Republican, Louisiana), speaking to the press, 22 May 2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyrrMGdTCJY.

[3] https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-applications-arrest-warrants-situation-state. Dr. Norman Finkelstein’s reaction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgSXEPoZB6Q.

[4] Jack Straw, the British Home Secretary of the time, infamously allowed Pinochet to go free on questionable grounds: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/663170.stm.

[5] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/20/world/video/icc-chief-arrest-warrants-application-amanpour-digvid-ldn. See also: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/28/israeli-spy-chief-icc-prosecutor-war-crimes-inquiry.

[6] See Speaker Mike Johnson’s comments in Footnote 2; see also U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s statement: https://www.state.gov/warrant-applications-by-the-international-criminal-court/ and https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/20/us-lawmakers-slam-icc-prosecutors-israel-arrest-warrant-requests.

[7] https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/ICCAtAGlanceEng.pdf

[8] “Morning and Noon,” Houghton Mifflin Co., 1965. pp. 273-274.

[9] “Present at the Creation,” W.W. Norton & Co., 1969. p. 743. See also: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/712438?v=pdf.

[10] https://bush41library.tamu.edu/archives/public-papers/2217.

[11] Born in the Tennessee mountains; Democrat; Secretary of State from 1933-1944.

[12] Missouri farmer with no university degree; Democrat; President from 1945-1953.

[13] Senator from Michigan, 1928-1951. Was the most prominent Senate Republican in the years after WW2.

*Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu.