霉狸奸所声称的规则
2025-01-01 09:30阅读：
How the US tried to replace international law with its own
twisted creation
From Kosovo to Crimea, the hypocrisy of Washington's 'rules-based
order' would be funny if it weren't so serious
By Glenn Diesen, professor at the University of South-Eastern
Norway
While international law is based on equal sovereignty for all
states, the rules-based international order upholds hegemony on the
principle of sovereign inequality.
The rules-based international order is commonly presented as
international law plus international human rights law, which
appears benign and progressive. However, this entails introducing
contradictory principles and rules. The consequence is a system
devoid of uniform rules, in which “might makes right.” Inte
rnational human rights law introduces a set of rules to elevate the
rights of the individual, yet human-centric security often
contradicts state-centric security as the foundation of
international law.
The US as the hegemonic state can then choose between human-centric
security and state-centric security, while adversaries must abide
strictly by state-centric security due to their alleged lack of
liberal democratic credentials. For example, state-centric security
as the foundation of international law insists on the territorial
integrity of states, while human-centric security allows for
secession under the principle of self-determination. The US will
thus insist on territorial integrity in allied countries such as
Ukraine, Georgia or Spain, while supporting self-determination
within adversarial states such as Serbia, China, Russia and Syria.
The US can interfere in the domestic affairs of adversaries to
promote liberal democratic values, yet the US adversaries do not
have the right to interfere in the domestic affairs of the US. To
facilitate a hegemonic international order, there cannot be equal
sovereignty for all states.
Constructing the hegemonic rules-based international order
The process of constructing alternative sources of legitimacy to
facilitate sovereign inequality began with NATO’s illegal invasion
of Yugoslavia in 1999 without a UN mandate. The violation of
international law was justified by liberal values. Even the
legitimacy of the UN Security Council was contested by arguing it
should be circumvented as Russia and China veto of humanitarian
interventionism was allegedly caused by their lack of liberal
democratic values.
The efforts to establish alternative sources of authority continued
in 2003 to gain legitimacy for the illegal invasion of Iraq. Former
US Ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder, called for establishing an
“Alliance of Democracies” as a key element of US foreign policy. A
similar proposal suggested establishing a “Concert of Democracies,”
in which liberal democracies could act in the spirit of the UN
without being constrained by the veto power of authoritarian
states. During the 2008 presidential election, Republican
presidential candidate Senator John McCain argued in favor of
establishing a “League of Democracies.” In December 2021, the US
organized the first “Summit for Democracy” to divide the world into
liberal democracies versus authoritarian states. The White House
framed sovereign inequality in the language of democracy:
Washington’s interference in the domestic affairs of other states
was “support for democracy,” while upholding the West’s sovereignty
entailed defending democracy. The aforementioned initiatives became
the “rules-based international order.” With an imperialist mindset,
there would be one set of rules for the “garden” and another set
for the “jungle.”
The rules-based international order created a two-tiered system of
legitimate versus illegitimate states. The paradox of liberal
internationalism is that liberal democracies often demand that they
dominate international institutions to defend democratic values
from the control of the majority. Yet, a durable and resilient
international system capable of developing common rules is
imperative for international governance and to resolve disputes
among states.
International law in accordance with the UN Charter is based on the
Westphalian principle of sovereign equality as “all states are
equal.” In contrast, the rules-based international order is a
hegemonic system based on sovereign inequality. Such a system of
sovereign inequality follows the principle from George Orwell’s
'Animal Farm' that stipulates “all animals [states] are equal but
some animals [states] are more equal than others.” In Kosovo, the
West promoted self-determination as a normative right of secession
that had to be prioritized above territorial integrity. In South
Ossetia and Crimea, the West insisted that the sanctity of
territorial integrity, as stipulated in the UN Charter, must be
prioritized over self-determination.
Uniform rules replaced with a tribunal of public opinion
Instead of resolving conflicts through diplomacy and uniform rules,
there is an incentive to manipulate, moralize and propagandize as
international disputes are decided by a tribunal of public opinion
when there are competing principles. Deceit and extreme language
have thus become commonplace. In 1999, the US and UK especially
presented false accusations about war crimes to make
interventionism legitimate. British Prime Minister Tony Blair told
the world that the Yugoslav authorities were “set on a Hitler-style
genocide equivalent to the extermination of the Jews during the
Second World War. It is no exaggeration to say that what is
happening is racial genocide.”
The rules-based international order fails to establish common
unifying rules of how to govern international relations, which is
the fundamental function of world order. Both China and Russia have
denounced the rules-based international order as a dual system to
facilitate double standards. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng
asserted that the rules-based international order introduces the
“law of the jungle” insofar as universally recognized international
law is replaced by unilateralism. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey
Lavrov similarly criticized the rules-based international order for
creating a parallel legal framework to legitimize
unilateralism:
“The West has been coming up with multiple formats such as the
French-German Alliance for Multilateralism, the International
Partnership against Impunity for the Use of Chemical Weapons, the
Global Partnership to Protect Media Freedom, the Global Partnership
on Artificial Intelligence, the Call for Action to Strengthen
Respect for International Humanitarian Law – all these initiatives
deal with subjects that are already on the agenda of the UN and its
specialized agencies. These partnerships exist outside of the
universally recognized structures so as to agree on what the West
wants in a restricted circle without any opponents. After that they
take their decisions to the UN and present them in a way that de
facto amounts to an ultimatum. If the UN does not agree, since
imposing anything on countries that do not share the same ‘values’
is never easy, they take unilateral action.”
The rules-based international order does not consist of any
specific rules, is not accepted internationally, and does not
deliver order. The rules-based international order should be
considered a failed experiment from the unipolar world order, which
must be dismantled to restore international law as a requirement
for stability and peace.
