Kmflett's Blog

International Law: all that is solid melts into air

E P Thompson, the late socialist historian, was in a minority on the left in defending the importance of the rule of law. He did not of course think that the law was neutral or that it produced, in general, verdicts that supported working people. His point was that the law had to have an appearance of neutrality and allow for the possibility that the rich and powerful might occasionally lose cases.

This is a useful context for the US’s war crimes in Venezuela kidnapping the President & his partner and taking military action. Trump is a man of peace only in the George Orwell 1984 sense.

What will happen next is unknown to Trump and most others. Russia has been one of the few so far to condemn what has taken place. However Putin will surely ponder if he could not similarly kidnap Zelensky, probably with Trump’s blessing.

The US is of course not a signatory to the International Court of Justice, indeed Trump has sanctioned it because it has taken action (so far largely ineffective) on Israel. Israel also does not recognise the ICJ, although it notes it existence enough to complain about its rulings

Perry Anderson’s The Standard of Civilisation (New Left Review Sept Oct 2023) is a very useful piece on the realities of international law. After the First World War came the League of Nations and after the Second, the United Nations. However behind this lay an ideological perspective that whatever European countries and the US do is in accordance with international law and what others do is not. Palestine in this context has no chance and Trump’s reassertion of the Monroe doctrine may place the southern American countries in an equally difficult place. Israel facing ICJ orders is exceptional. Anderson notes that Gramsci saw hegemony as the ‘successful representation of a particular interest as a universal value’

The post-1945 rules based international order may have had some positives for some, but it didn’t stop Iraq or Libya or Afghanistan. It was in short a very partial measure in the interests of some but certainly not others

The power that will shift things lies with protests in workplaces, colleges and on the streets.  Protest can work more quickly and effectively than the Courts, important though their role can be.

In the meantime while I’m hardly Zelensky’s No.1 fan he would do well to make as sure as he can that neither Putin or Trump know where he is. And let’s hope that a wave of protest on Venezuela finally does for Trump, the senile Satan as some US critics brand him