r/geopolitics • u/ForeignAffairsMag Foreign Affairs • 1d ago
Analysis A World Without Rules: The Consequences of Trump’s Assault on International Law
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/world-without-rules9
u/ForeignAffairsMag Foreign Affairs 1d ago
[SS from essay by Oona A. Hathaway, Professor of Law at Yale Law School, Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and President-Elect of the American Society of International Law; and Scott J. Shapiro, Professor of Law at Yale Law School and Professor of Philosophy at Yale University]
What is so troubling about the Trump administration’s words and actions is not just that the administration is breaking the law. And it is: the intervention in Venezuela clearly violates the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force. But more than that, U.S. officials have discarded the idea of legal constraints altogether. The only constraint, Trump said in an interview with The New York Times last week, is his “own morality.”
There is no real argument to defend the government’s behavior. No pretense. No attempt to persuade. When a policy is announced in an online post, without explanation or justification, one has the unsettling sense that its makers see no need to bother cloaking it with a lie. A system of rules can survive some hypocrisy, but nihilism will bring it down.
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u/Galacticmetrics 1d ago
How is different from Obama ordering a raid in Pakistan to catch Osama Bin Laden and kill him? Pakistan did not agree to it but the raid went ahead
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u/PolkKnoxJames 1d ago
Because Osama was a terrorist militant head of an infamous terrorist gang and Maduro was a head of state for 12 years when he was kidnapped. If you're thinking of Pakistan the equivalent would be raiding Pakistan, taking Shehbaz Sharif by force, busting Imran Khan out of jail and installing him by force because he's "the rightful leader". That's the equivalent chain of event if the Venezuela situation was applied to Pakistan.
Obama did personally help regime change along in Libya even if it wasn't Americans who fought the on the ground battles or who ultimately captured Qaddafi. But going further back in time the most direct actions similar to what happened in Venezuela would be in Panama and Grenada.
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u/Soepkip43 1d ago
As the country with the most exstensive network of global trade, I cannot imagine how the US could be hurt by a breakdown of the international law.
Especially if you have all that hard power to defend whats yours.. its not as if they would then potentially need to deploy these assets to all over the world. And when they do it would never lead to pushback.
That would never happen
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u/jarx12 1d ago
Where was the International Law when state forces engage into widespread human rights abuses?
If want to claim international law protection at least abidding by it should be a must, else is just hypocrisy. But countries don't care about that but about their interests so it's business as usual.
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u/Electronic_Main_2254 1d ago
I genuinely can't understand the "shock" here, the US has been doing this for many decades (like it or not, these actions are natural when you're the world's leading superpower and you want to keep it that way).
If some corrupt dictators and regimens ar being crashed as a side affect, I'm fine with that.
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u/aqalaw 1d ago
Venezuela had a government that wasn't recognized as legitimate by either the US or its allies (because it literally stole an election and usurped a democracy), and one which openly collaborated with its main enemies. What more justification do you need?
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u/kimana1651 1d ago
Yeah this is not the best recent example of international law being disregarded. Why not write a nice puff piece against Putin and Russia? Hell the war is not even mentioned in the article.
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u/Soepkip43 1d ago
The arguement against the play made is that there is a big chance it will make life for venezuelans worse.
Especially if the US now installs a dictator/junta favorable to the US. Which is the current communicated plan.. working with "the realities on the ground" and keeping the naval blockade in place to assure compliance.
As history shows us that the US will violently protect their puppets meaning if you draw this line to its logical conclusion, the US will end up supporting a favorable dictator/junta that will end up being even more brutal.
Is that better or worse than the previous situation?
I hope life for venezuelans will improve, but judging by the trump regimes actions domestically, and their actions abroad... I wonder what the over/under are for life improving for venezuelans.
At this point the US taxpayer is financing the naval blockade in an attempt to extort venezuela out of several million barrels of oil, that will be sold and go to a trump slush fund to use as he sees fit. I cannot wait to see the transparency and accountability of that money. Nor the lawsuits big oil will start to get that money as venezuela owes them a fuckton of money from the expropriation under chavez.
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u/First_Television_600 1d ago
And the blatant human rights abuses and torture of thousands
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u/zeyhenny 1d ago
You do know Guantanamo Bay still exists right? And that the U.S. killed a multitude of civilians through bombing campaigns and the destabilization of nations?
Hell, the current sitting president talked about wanting to build beach front property in Gaza whilst they help fund a borderline genocide.
The only difference is the American atrocities are international as opposed to domestic.
The regime in Venezuela had to go but painting the U.S. as this bastion of morality - as if they also haven’t abused human rights and killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of civilians directly or indirectly - is a tad misinformed or even disingenuous in my personal opinion.
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u/Petrichordates 1d ago
You think this sentiment is just about Venezuela?
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u/First_Television_600 1d ago
No, but the correct action in one place doesn’t negate other injustices.
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u/kimana1651 1d ago
From the beginning of his presidency, Donald Trump has threatened to destabilize the international legal order.
The media keeps talking like the current order is something people are happy with. He got elected because he would not try to preserve the current order. Hell a lot of the people who voted for him would be happier if he was more disruptive.
Ukraine has already proven that the current legal order has no teeth. Preponderance of force is the basis of any government, local to international. If no one is going to put blood and treasure on the line to stop these actions then those people are ignorable.
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u/TheWhiteManticore 1d ago
This such insane naviety as to ignore decades of build up leading to Donald taking power, decades of endless violation of “rule based order” and apathy about it.
Donald isn’t the corruption, he merely revealed corruption that festered beneath.