In March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a war crimes arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin for his actions in Ukraine. “It’s justified and it’s a very important point,” US President Joe Biden said at the time. A year later, the ICC prosecutor requested another arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Then Biden’s response was radically different: “This is intolerable. »
In March 2022, the Biden administration also celebrated the precautionary measures imposed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ordered Russia to cease its military operations in Ukraine, ensuring that the highest court of the UN “plays a fundamental role in the peaceful resolution of conflicts”. conflicts. » When two years later the same court issued precautionary measures for Israel to end its Rafah offensive, the United States remained silent, Israel ignored the order, and Biden was forced to defend the The Israeli operation – which he had previously described as a “red line” for Washington – then defined it as a “limited” offensive.
There is more. When Putin announced the illegal annexation of Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporozhye, Biden announced new sanctions on the same day. “The United States condemns the fraudulent attempt to annex sovereign Ukrainian territory. “Russia is violating international law, trampling on the United Nations Charter and showing contempt for peaceful nations around the world,” he said. But when in July this year the ICJ declared the Israeli occupation of Palestine “illegal” and defined Israel’s policy as an attempt at “annexation” that violates the principle of prohibiting the use of force in international relations and whose goal is to “create The United States criticized the Court’s decision, calling it too “broad” and saying that it “complicates efforts to resolve the conflict.”
Building on the ICJ ruling, the United Nations General Assembly shortly thereafter approved a resolution denouncing the Israeli “violation” of the territorial integrity of the Palestinian territories. Isolated, the United States voted against the text, like only 13 other countries in the world. In the case of Ukraine, however, he was one of the main promoters of a resolution approved by a very large majority in the General Assembly to defend the “principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity represented in the Charter of the UN,” Biden said at the time. . “History is watching us. “The lack of support for Ukraine at this critical time will not be forgotten,” he added.
There is also a certain imbalance in Washington’s reactions to attacks on peacekeepers deployed in different parts of the world. In March, eight soldiers from the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo were injured in an attack. “The silence of the international community in the face of such brazen actions – from one of the main participants in UN peacekeeping operations [Ruanda]– is equally appalling,” the American ambassador to the UN Security Council declared at the time.
Biden maintained the same silence after Israel’s continued “deliberate” attacks on peacekeepers deployed in Lebanon. During a press conference on Hurricane Milton, a reporter asked the president if the United States was asking Israel to stop attacking U.N. troops, to which Biden responded briefly: “Totally and absolutely “. For his part, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin simply expressed his “great concern” about these attacks, without elaborating further on the implications of an attack on peacekeepers. , as dozens of countries around the world condemned Israel’s illegal actions. and his request to withdraw from the UN mission.
The US and EU have imposed several rounds of “unprecedented” sanctions against Russia for its aggression against Ukraine and violation of international law. This is not the case against Israel, even if the speech of the EU’s high representative for foreign policy, Josep Borrell, deviated sharply from the American line – and even from that of the President of the European Commission , Ursula Von der Leyen.
For Biden as for Von der Leyen, the only one responsible for the situation of the Palestinians in Gaza is Hamas. This was reflected in their speeches on the first anniversary of the October 7 attacks on Israel, in which Hamas killed more than 1,200 people and kidnapped 250 others, most of them civilians.
The new international (dis)order
On its Ukraine support website, the United States – which has imposed several rounds of sanctions against Russian leaders since the invasion began, while publicly defending Israel’s actions in Gaza – claims that “ all members of the international community are subject to common standards and must suffer consequences if they fail to respect their solemn commitments. “These principles extend beyond Ukraine. These principles extend beyond Europe. These principles form the basis of the international order that the United States and our allies and partners have built and maintained together. »
“What Ukraine and Gaza are testing is the so-called moral universalism on which the international order is based and its translation into common norms of international law,” José Antonio Sanahuja, professor of international relations at the Complutense University of Madrid. “This moral universalism should lead to the condemnation of the aggressors, as well as those who violate international humanitarian law by their conduct in hostilities. »
For his part, Carlos Corrochano, professor of critical theories of international relations at the University of Sciences Po in Paris and author of the book Keys to World Politics (Arpa), affirms that “the discourse of universalism has historically been used by Western elites to justify their policies. imperial and colonial projects and objectives. “But this Eurocentric universalism is not the only possible universalism. Like any political concept, the meaning of the universal is contested and the left must recover it as a battlefield, moral compass and political horizon,” he adds in statements to this newspaper.
“This very complex operation must begin with the condemnation of any double standards. That is to say the strongest and most energetic condemnation, of course, of the hypocrisy of the European establishment, which has no problem condemning in the strongest terms the imperialist aggression of the Russia against Ukraine, while legitimizing the regime’s non-existent “right of reply”. [Benjamín] Netanyahu. But also to the double standards of the left camp which, although it condemns the genocide in Palestine, is lenient in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine,” explains Corrochano.
Sanahuja argues that what we are witnessing in today’s conflicts is “the breakdown of the most fundamental norms of the international order.” “The war of conquest returns against the principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity, apartheid is reaffirmed (at least for those who did not want to see it) and we are once again faced with crimes against humanity, on a large scale, or genocidal violence. », Explains the professor. Meanwhile, “the United Nations is wallowing in impotence and exercises as necessary and laudable as the recent ‘Pact for the Future’ could be a kind of titanic orchestra trying to keep multilateralism alive while it is already sinking,” he adds.
“I call this situation a new ‘interregnum’ in which the old continues to die and the new cannot be born,” Sanahuja explains. In this context, “international politics becomes even more realistic and cynical, and this is the attitude that societies, beyond the elites, adopt.”
Cemetery or hope of international law
A good part of Palestinian and international civil society is fighting so that Gaza does not become the “graveyard of international law”, as the famous Palestinian lawyer Raji Sourani declared to elDiario.es. Faced with the double standards of the United States and their European allies, this international law has become the last hope.
“Despite its many pitfalls and limitations, international law is one of the tools that can most easily be reoriented toward progressive goals,” Corrochano tells elDiario.es. “International law, despite the shadow that hangs over its colonial origins, is the only gap in the current global system that allows us to influence and move towards a different system, the only common language that can give us specific victories in a world order. which is unfavorable to us,” he explains.
“In recent months, we have tested the limits of the institutions of international law, whether the ICJ or the ICC, but we have also seen that international law can produce speeches unthinkable not long ago, that it can be put in the service of emancipatory causes and that its content is truly contested,” affirms the Sciences Po professor.
Corrochano believes that the discourse completely changed after the Gaza war. “This hypocrisy has only further discredited the West. The “rules-based world order” that Western elites claim to defend is now defended, in reality, by much of the South. » South Africa’s trial against Israel for genocide before the ICJ is the perfect example, he says. “He already said it.” [Gustavo] Petro in the middle of the Davos Forum: “The slogan liberty, equality and fraternity which popularized the French Revolution is no longer based in Paris, but in South Africa. »
In this sense, Sanahuja told this newspaper that these double standards also exist in the countries of the South. “We talk about the moral and political bankruptcy of liberal internationalism in the West – and it is real and perhaps irreversible, as P. Mishra or C. Nguyen argue – but also in the South, in the Arab countries , etc. They were also victims of double standards and the hypocritical, partial and selective use of legitimizing arguments to defend or criticize each other. Ukraine enjoys some support, insufficient and very measured, but Palestine, in particular, is very alone.”
