International order must be based in reality - The Jewish Chronicle

Recent events, from Venezuela to Somaliland to Iran and West London, have highlighted the growing tension between international law and the realities of a shifting world order.

Consider Venezuela. A common criticism of the US capture of Nicolás Maduro is that it has undermined Washington’s moral authority to oppose dictators such as Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. This argument rests on the assumption that international law, despite its limited enforcement mechanisms, functions in a manner comparable to domestic law.

In practice, it does not. It operates more as a framework of norms than as a binding system. Such arrangements depend on a degree of consent that is notably absent among strongmen such as Putin and Xi, narco-terrorist regimes such as Maduro’s, and Islamist regimes such as Iran’s, which reject the legitimacy of the system while paying lip service to it.

Whatever one’s view of the legality of US action in Venezuela, and regardless of whether it ultimately improves conditions there, it is unlikely to encourage further aggression from Western adversaries. The opposite may be the case. By demonstrating both willingness and capacity to use force, the United States may have reduced the likelihood of a Chinese move against Taiwan or further Russian escalation in Europe. Deterrence, however uncomfortable the conclusion, has historically depended less on legal argument than on credible consequences.

This points to a broader question: not only whether the so-called rules-based international order can be sustained through rhetoric and legal argument alone, but whether some of its underlying assumptions would in fact promote stability even if consistently enforced.

If international law permits narco-terrorist networks to convert a state into a criminal hub – impoverishing its population, suppressing dissent, aligning with hostile powers and flooding Western societies with lethal drugs – while this arrangement is still described as “sovereignty”, it is reasonable to ask whose interests that sovereignty serves.

If the same framework accepts that Islamists in Iran may seize control of a state, repress their population, divert national resources and export terror abroad, yet continue to be treated as a legitimate government entitled to diplomatic protections, it is fair to question whether law and justice are being advanced. Order is not preserved by exchanging diplomatic pleasantries with criminal syndicates simply because they have captured the machinery of the state.

And if international law insists that Somaliland – having suffered genocide at the hands of Somalia – must return to its former tormentors in the name of “territorial integrity”, despite the fact that Somalia remains a failed state while Somaliland has rebuilt itself into one of the more stable and democratic polities in a volatile region, the result appears less like order than the entrenchment of past injustice.

Against this backdrop, the rebukes against Israel – including by the UK – for recognising Somaliland are hard to reconcile with a pragmatic reading of regional stability. Rather than engage with a relatively stable, moderate Muslim polity at a key strategic location, Somaliland’s former protector declined to extend recognition at an “emergency” UN session last week. At the same time, the Labour government welcomed the opening of the London embassy of a Palestine that, unlike Somaliland, lacks the attributes of a true state.

International law undoubtedly matters, but its authority is weakened when it is applied selectively or used to confer legitimacy on policies that sit uneasily with political reality.

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Topics:

Venezuela

Iran

Israel