All my adult life, I have been an enthusiastic admirer of the ‘International Rules-based Order.’ The rules-based international system is founded on relationships between states through international institutions and frameworks, with shared rules and agreements on behavior.
The rules-based system was developed after World War II. The rules-based international system, led by like-minded allies and partners, has produced peace, prosperity, and freedom, depending on who you ask.….…..
If you live in Western Europe or North America, you may have been convinced that the international rules-based order has produced immense wealth, peace, and freedom for many, depending on who you ask.
Over the years, my singular focus on this system has been that it has kept the world out of a third world war thus far to the exclusion of everything else.
I have repeatedly pointed to the number of years between World Wars I and two in previous articles. World War I began in 1914 and ended in 1918. A mere 25 years later, in 1939, the world was again embroiled in another violent conflagration.
The rules-based international system was constructed mostly by leading democratic allies at the end of World War II, mainly the United States and England. The system was put under the auspices of the United Nations. The UN is a construct of the new rules-based system.
Arguably, the International Rules-based Order, established 79 years after its inception, has helped to avert a third world war.
If your interpretation of the International Rules-based order has been as myopic as mine has been, like me, you would have missed all that I missed, including that I was evaluating the system through the eyes of Western propaganda.
Many are now arguing that the Rules-based Order may be reaching the end of its tether in light of what is occurring in Palestine and other parts of the world.
Why is there a question now when there have been numerous conflicts since the end of the Second World War?
Before we examine the why, let us first agree that when there are rules and laws, there is generally a need for someone or something to enforce them.
Additionally, the system needs legal sanctions, courts, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and law enforcers to work.
It is important to reconcile that for a system to work, everyone [must] be treated equally so that there is buy-in from stakeholders.
At the end of the Second World War, the four major Allied powers—France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States—set up the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg, Germany, to prosecute and punish “the major war criminals of the European Axis.” The IMT presided over a combined trial of senior Nazi political and military …
The International Court of Justice was established in the Hague, Netherlands; it is the only arm of the United Nations not based in the United States. Article 93 of the UN Charter states that all 193 UN members are automatically parties to the court’s statute.
Not a single Western nation nor Israel has been hauled before the court for breaches of International laws.
In fact, the United States has literally made itself and Israel above the powers of the International Court of Justice.
Despite American wars of aggression since the court was established, no nation has moved to have America held accountable.
The United Nations, based in New York City, and others were created by the Western victors, the United States, England, and France, who had just defeated German and Italian Fascism, or so we are socialized to believe.
Ironically, within the US, British, and French Military structures were Fascists, as is evidenced by the rise of white right-wing Fascism in England, France, and, more so, the United States over the last several decades.
The American Civil War was waged between white men and later freed African Americans, supposedly to free the enslaved African Americans. At the end of the war, nearly a million traitors who seceded from the Union, Union soldiers, and Blacks lay dead.
The Nation reconstituted quickly, arguably more mind-numbingly racist than before it went to war.
There was no penalty for the Southern Traitors; monuments were erected across the Country in their honor, even in northern states.
I digressed!!!
The Americans and the British saw themselves as the New Police Force in the new paradigm; however, as the power dynamic between Colonist Britain and its former Colony England flipped, England became a tiny, wet, cold, insignificant island that nobody cared about.
America was now in full hegemonic control of our planet with the fall of the Soviet Union. The rules were what America said they were. I can hear you saying, but the rules are enshrined in UN Charters.” Who determines what the rules are?
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely; cliché, yes, but appropriate.
Emerging from the Second World War victoriously, the West began to carve up the world into enclaves; what they never bothered explaining to their citizens was the tremendously important role the Soviets played in ending the War.
The Cold War period began immediately between the West and the Soviets. This period was frightening on many levels for our planet as most believed that the two factions would bring about nuclear armageddon.
Perhaps the closest the world came to that grim reality was in 1962 when the two powers brought the world to the brink of nuclear war over Soviet missiles on the Island of Cuba.
The disaster was averted, however, when the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles so long as the Americans removed their ballistic missiles from the nation of Turkey.
Americans celebrated the end of the crisis as a win for their new President, John F. Kennedy. Still today, Americans believe that Kennedy pulled off some bravado that forced Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to capitulate in fear.
The reality of what occurred is that Khrushchev was strategic in his Cuban gambit. He wanted the American ballistic missiles in Turkey gone. At the end of the standoff, they were gone.
That was a strategic loss the Soviet Premier could afford to take all day.
After the Soviet Union’s economic collapse, America had a free hand to do as it pleased. As the newly self-appointed world cop, it was already aggravating, starting, and creating global wars in Korea, Vietnam, Africa, Latin America, and even the tiny Caribbean region.
The United States was now the law; everyone did as they wanted, or American troops were deployed. The new argument for American expansionist mentality was restoring or creating ‘Democracy”. Afghanistan, Iraq, Lybia, Syria. There was no end to America taking military action to exert its will covertly or overtly, except the newest Colonial settler nation, Israel.
The United States and Britain created Israel in Palestine in 1947. A year later, in 1948, the United States recognized the infiltrator state as legitimate, the first nation to do so. Thereafter, it used its economic power to twist the arms of other nations to recognize the illegitimate state as a duly constituted state.
But that has only been the beginning, as America would support the illegal occupation of Palestine, send untold billions to arm the pariah state, allow it to have nuclear weapons while attacking other nations under the guise they possess such weapons, block its accountability in the UN and International Court Of Justice, threaten and try to intimidate those who spoke out against Israel’s atrocities and war crimes, all because the United States of America was established on the very same lie that Israel was created on.
Israel is a Colonial settler state, end of story; when a conversation about Israel begins, it must always be premised on the fact that it is illegal, it is illegitimate, it is based on a lie, and it should not be made to stand.
Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.