International relations and impunity
The war of the United States of America and Israel against Iran is yet another case of power that runs unchecked within its sphere of influence. America has the privilege to operate with impunity in many parts of the world because there is no authority that will impose penalties. What unfolded in Venezuela foreshadows what will happen to Cuba and maybe even to Greenland and Iceland. One by one, the weakest links in the chain are being dismantled without anyone doing anything to stop it. Russia is pinned in Ukraine, while China cannot project strength away from home.
The inherent limitation of a rules-based international order is that there is no sovereign. Without a supreme authority that has the capacity to enforce the law, all norms remain inapplicable and are effectively non-binding. Any sufficiently capable regime can brazenly disregard them, violate the national sovereignty of other states, and grab any resources it deems worthwhile. The sole deterrent is the military might of its adversaries. By extension, rules are enforced when the balance of forces permits as much.
The United Nations architecture gives the impression that there is ironclad supranational law that guides all humanity. While this is the stated aim, any UN-led initiative that gets to be applied is so because it is aligned with the interests of great powers.
The Palestinian catastrophe demonstrates that the so-called “international community” is a figment of the imagination at worst, or a happy coincidence at best. The law is not designed to protect the weak no matter the circumstances. It all depends on power dynamics, where expedience is the deciding factor.
Israel has been gradually yet steadily assuming the same privilege of unaccountability in its ambition to become the region’s uncontested despot. There is no reason to believe that toppling the Iranian government will make the Israeli military any less assertive. If anything, a potential win in the war against Iran will galvanise those who aspire for a greater Israel that dominates the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. Those on the sidelines have gotten the memo. Strategists in Turkiye, for instance, must be analysing events in light of the clear potential for a time of reckoning in the decades ahead.
The gist is that justice only exists among equals. For as long as the mighty do not think of themselves as being on the same footing as the rest they will exploit their advantageous position. This is true in the relations between states. It also is in effect at the interpersonal level: you only deter a bully by making the cost of bullying prohibitive, not by appealing to their sense of morality. Calls to justice are, in this regard, an admission of weakness.
Is this a pretty world? No, it is ugly and dangerous. Though it is sobering to recognise how things work. For only then can you cut through the platitudes and prepare for action.
Europeans, in particular, have long lived with a boutique view of politics, in which soft power can be decoupled from hard power. Hence their belief in the vaunted “European values”. In truth, soft power is effective when it has hard power as its backstop: they exist on a continuum. Europeans had that in the form of their vassalage to the USA. They might eventually develop their own capacity in the decades to come, if the European integration process continues apace towards military union, while the Americans get progressively weaker by all the wars they inevitably involve themselves in. At any rate, such an outcome will only contribute to peace by balancing out competing interests, not by holding some imaginary moral high ground.
There are no benevolent actors in such matters. Those who desire freedom must be ready to fight for it. Global justice is not attainable. What we can hope for is a viable balance of forces.
As for the ongoing war, the Iranian regime has blood on its hands, as do its counterparts in Israel and America.