The Vanishing Global Order

The ICC arrest warrants, Beijing's fist and Iran's murderous tentacles: all related

Yesterday the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israel’s PM Nethanyahu, its former Defence Minister Gallant and, somewhat mysteriously, the already dead Mohammed Deif from Hamas. Note that the ICC charge is for crimes against humanity and not genocide which is being pursued separately by the ICJ which as opposed to the ICC is part of the UN. A number of western governments wasted no time to confirm that they would comply and arrest Nethanyahu and Gallant if these men were ever to set foot on their territory. Apparently there is nothing wrong with throwing a longtime democratic ally under the bus and in doing so ensuring that Israel is further isolated and treated as a pariah in the world community. A basis of legitimacy is wilfully created to further pursue economic and potential arms embargoes against Israel, not to mention further attacks on Jews everywhere, just witness how a former Israeli Justice Minister got barred from Australia for no good reason at all. And there is more of that to come, Israelis and Jews are targeted once more. The US, which is not a signatory to the ICC agreements have thankfully rejected these arrest warrants with Biden and Trump showing a rare and promising sense of unity.

Whatever your views on Israel’s conduct of the war and the obligation to be compliant with signed international treaties, let’s just consider what other state actors have been up to over the past few weeks. A sampling. At the COP29 UN Climate Summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, we could witness a rogue murderer like Belarus’ Lukashenko having an unimpeded good time, mingling with all the other attendants. Yet at the same time he is successfully hunting down opponents across borders. Xi Jinping in the meantime was awarded all the honours when attending the G20 in Brazil while at the same time the unprecedented crackdown on democracy - in violation of international treaties - in Hong Kong continued. Not less than forty-five democracy activists in the former British territory were given prison sentences of up to 10 years for, get this, organizing primaries for a legal election. Also in Hong Kong this week the trial against seventy-six year old Jimmy Lai continued, a man held in solitary confinement for some four years now and who is, according to his son Sebastien, no longer in great shape. Also this week it was revealed that Iranian agents have attempted to murder Canadian human rights lawyer Irwin Cotler who now as a result is living under round-the clock security.

Notice the common thread? Some can get away with the most serious human rights violations and crimes while the international legal order lets itself be manipulated, willingly, by darker forces that seek to further isolate certain democracies, like Israel. Sure you can argue that Putin can no longer travel and it is unlikely that Nethanyahu will ever have to face a court. But the point is that the once irrefutable benchmarks of human rights and moral clarity have been thrown out of the window. Countries like China and Iran have discovered that they can not only manipulate international law (Iran funding South Africa to go after Israel in the international courts, or chair UN human rights committees) or just completely ignore said instruments of law (Xi trampling of Hong Kong’s Basic Law and Joint Declaration). Whichever works best, use the law for your own unique interests or completely ignore it altogether. Note that Lukashenko still has an aircraft piracy charge against him, yet he has lived and travelled fairly unencumbered so far. Evade and manipulate international law, great. And if those routes no longer work for you just try and find a way to kill your opponents as Irwin Cotler has found out.

The consequences for all these actions are minimal. Spineless leaders like Canada’s Trudeau or many in the European Union dutifully recycle talking points around international law and treaties without bothering to note that these have been manipulated, tweaked and ignored by the world’s most nefarious dictators. Only the Americans are apparently capable of taking a clear moral position and it would have suited some well to at least critically examine the rulings and arrest warrants before jumping on the ‘let’s arrest them’ bandwagon. Founding treaty signatories have an extra duty of care to critically evaluate what is being asked of them.

And there is no outcry on the streets either. Young protestors rally for murderous terror groups like Hamas, a movement that has overtaken most of social media over the past year. So much that its now dead leader, Yahya Sinwar has recently been compared by the mayor of a large Canadian city to Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nelson Mandela. Yet you have to work very hard to find mass protests or grassroots campaigns about the real Mandela of our time, Jimmy Lai. Western values that promote democracy and human rights have long been traded away for political and economic benefits: there’s no doubt more to be gained from China than from Israel.

So anyone coming out stating that president-elect Donald Trump is undermining the global order, do think again. That order is already falling apart in very rapid order and the various thugs and rogues have discovered that nothing can or will stop them in promoting their increasingly well coordinated agendas. Taking down Israel by way of these arrest warrants is just one step in a broader move to roll back western countries’ interests.

While the global order of laws and institutions is vanishing we are experiencing a concurrent collapse of moral clarity, respect and decency everywhere, most notably among western leaders. And that is why standing up for Israel and for Jimmy Lai and all those others isolated and prosecuted is now more important than ever. We stand to lose not just freedom and democracy, we are sliding away deep into a dark disorderly morass that will define a world wherein no one will be safe again. And that includes you and me.

Welcome new subscribers, the newsletter is growing, steadily and I really appreciate your time to sign up and read. Feel free to look around, comment and engage.

Photo: the mother of one of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists, Elsa Wu, who protested the conviction of her son Hendrick Lui and was subsequently arrested by HK police. Truly heartbreaking scenes. Here is a full list of all those arrested and convicted. Photo by Kyle Lam/HKFP.