Jaqcues Baud, who was recently sanctioned by the European Union, is lamenting on Dialog Works that – The World Is Entering a Lawless Era (vid).
He is right of course, but late.
International law, developed over centuries, has been broken by the U.S. and other imperial forces ever since it was established.
But after World War II such breaches, even when obvious, were clad in propaganda which claimed that each of those was about the enforcement of higher values. Villains had to be fought, dictators opposed, evil communists had to be prevented from stealing from their people. The old and new neo-conservatives were masters in this. The blatant imperial attacks of Iraq and Afghanistan were sold as good men’s missions to bring democracy to the downtrodden and suppressed poor people in those countries. We had to liberate their women.
That propaganda that covered the brutal wars of conquest under the mantle of democracy promotion held up for a while. It served two purposes.
It allowed U.S. vassals to justify their co-operation with the imperialists. It also allowed a significant part of the ‘western’ populations to still feel good about their countries. When the wars went southward and losses increased they acknowledged that waging those wars were bad. But the consoling feeling was that at least “We Meant Well“, as one of those imperialists ransacking Iraq titled his memoir.
It worked for a while for some people. The Iraq war was protested against in Europe. Germany and France rejected the war and Congress renamed french fries into freedom fries.
But even their moral high ground has further deteriorated since.
The decade long dirty war against Syria was supported by all NATO countries. The 2014 Nazi-coup in Kiev and the following war against the people of Donbas were patched over. Western propaganda drowned out all protests. But the doubts about these wars lingered. The propaganda was becoming too obvious.
The ongoing genocidal war on Gaza marked a turning point. The Zionist propaganda that was used to justify it was no longer effective.
When that happened the powers-that-be turned to suppression. Protest against Israel mass-murder of Palestinians were criminalized.
Jacques Baud’s correct analysis of the Ukraine war, based solely on western sources, led to the EU absurd measure to censor him.
Joe Biden blew up the NordStream pipelines. Germany and EU did not even protest the blatant attack on their economies. The issue was covered by the German government with implausible stories of six Ukrainians in a sailing raft. No one ever believed those.
Donald Trump took the last step to free the imperialists of all laws.
He does not even try to justify his illegal attack on Venezuela with any propaganda. There is no talk of imposing democracy or any other moral justification. It is pure grab of oil – mafia style – with not a damn given about the consequences or how it looks. The indictment of Maduro is just laughable. It is not a legal case any sane jurist would bring.
The European wimps have failed to condemn this. That will correctly be interpreted as them being weak which, in consequence, will put them next on the menu. They could send troops to protect Greenland from a U.S. invasion. They won’t. Trump will take it without hesitation.
The total lack of moral justification and propaganda to hide blatant breaches of international law has two dangerous consequences.
The lack of lawfulness and moral clarity will creep from international relations into domestic issues.
As Thomas Fazi warns in The Telegraph: We will regret the dawn of a ‘might makes right’ world (archived):
As Western elites discard legal and moral restraints abroad, they will feel increasingly justified in doing so at home, accelerating the erosion of constitutional safeguards and civil liberties.
This process is already well underway. The question is no longer whether the so-called rules-based order has collapsed, but how much destruction will be wrought, abroad and at home, before Western societies are forced to reckon with consequences of the lawlessness unleashed by their elites.
Arnaud Bertrand warns of a second bad consequence – the loss of internal coherence.
What will be left of the Shiny City on the Hill – the ideal the U.S. people, in all their hypocrisy, still have of themselves – when its leaders are openly disregarding all morals and laws?
Bertrand asks how this, a total disregard of all your ideals, would feel if it would happen inside of your self:
You probably fall short – we all do – but the ideals still structure your behavior. They give you something to reach for, they provide the terms in which you can be criticized – including by your own internal dialogue. They make it possible for you to do better tomorrow.
The hypocrisy – the gap between ideal and reality – is not the problem. It’s the proof that the ideal still has a hold on you, that you can still be called back to it. As the saying goes, hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.
Now imagine you renounce all this. Imagine you stop being a hypocrite in the sense that you abandon your ideals entirely, that you start owning up to your worst self and become comfortable with your vices. You cheat on your spouse and stop pretending it bothers you. You neglect your children and make peace with it.
Have you thus become “refreshingly honest”? Maybe. But you’ve also died inside. You’ve become something deeply broken – beyond shame, beyond appeal. You’ve lost the internal architecture that makes moral life possible. The little light that said “this is not who I want to be” is extinguished.
That is what the United States just did [to itself].
The consequences of this are, frankly, terrifying. What happens when a nation stops telling itself it should be good?
When societies lose their own moral framing they dissolve into anarchy. When politicians no longer feel a need to justify their deeds the will rule by brutality. Western societies, with the U.S. in the lead, are now well on their paths towards that future.
What can be done to prevent that from happening?
There is an urgent need to call them out, to insist on moral clarity. To reject any inner impulse to walk down the same path. To live by the golden rule, to treat others as you would want to treated by them. To apply this to international relation just as down to this blogs comments.
If we don’t stick by this we won’t fare well.