International Law Vs. Politics

When it is said that the Israeli Palestinian conflict is a political issue and not an issue of international law, what does that mean? It means universal standards and noble humanistic goals of comprehensive justice and human rights have been abandoned. International law and international governance are at heart humanism whereas politics is always a power game, Hobbes’ state of nature, the old realist point of view where dog eats dog. Something is lost when we get down into the mud and begin political wrangling. It is a case where might is right and furthermore it beckons further disputes which are power based and perhaps utilise military solutions. The fact is the world is in a position where it can opt for one path or the other. The instance of Kosovo and Serbia earlier in July where the International Court of Justice declared it was not illegal for Kosovo to declare independence is an example of the opposite case to the Israeli Palestinian conflict:

In the wake of July’s opinion by the International Court of Justice that Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence was not illegal, Mr Surroi noted that Serbia was now attempting to change tack. The Serbian leadership had said that the point of going to the ICJ was to make the issue a legal, rather than a political, one. Having been thwarted by the ICJ’s decision it was now trying to move the issue back to the political realm.

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The further problem with resorting to power and politics is that the cases are isolated, hence unfair as in some cases we give law and justice a go and others we declare we should have political solutions. If Serbia said that the United Nations was biased and held the position that the International Court of Justice is completely irrelevant then there would be fury and condemnation. How could Serbia be allowed to dictate the terms between it and the smaller adjacent Kosovo? Yet that reality is exactly the case between Israel and Palestine. If Serbia said it was going to ‘naturally grow’ onto territory of Kosovo there would be an international explosion, so thus contrasted Israel’s exceptionalism is extraordinary. Of course it exists because of the United States and their vested interest in having a strategic ally, Israel, in the Middle East. Palestine is thus an exemplary opportunity for justice as there are no clear-cut gains by anyone helping Palestine. Yet when the chips are down we go to politics (as have persisted for nearly two decades, how successful!, with the Israeli Palestinian conflict peace process).

How is Serbia and Kosovo different from Israel and Palestine (I cannot be bothered anymore using the traditional terms and eschewing the noun ‘Palestine’, as too many do)? I think the European Union is the difference. In Europe states can’t butt heads as there is a transnational organisation, that is a different point of reference which dodges the power game. In Africa and the Middle East in particular there are no transcending reference points, regional bodies like the Arab League of Nations are too superficial, thus state versus state contests are too default. I nonetheless believe that the United States has the political power to overrule this status quo, which is the pain of seeing them talk about the ‘peace process’ which is a codeword for politics, not the peaceful form of international law and higher standards.

When we demand higher standards of justice I believe we gain more humanity. When we deny standards of justice we deny the Other and lose some of our humanity. It may not be felt by many upon glancing over the newspaper when one article says the International Court of Justice played a role, while another article says negotiations were started, but our empathy and humanity rises and falls with the actions we take collectively.

International Relations

The world is becoming more interconnected. I think that is a premise almost everyone can accept. It follows from that premise that we need more people to understand the world and the implications of the changes the world is going through. The world also has global problems too (global economic recession, climate change, terrorism, political/religious conflict, etc…)  which cannot be pushed aside and need solutions. Furthermore there is no reality where one superpower can assert itself and unilaterally target global problems due to changes in the global balances of power, the rising effectiveness of economic trade to secure interests and military efforts becoming simply too costly and cumbersome to accomplish ends.

Despite distinctive ridiculousness the Bush Administration did distinctively make history and mark the uniqueness of the epoch with their War on Terror. For a nation-state to wage war, especially with the strongest military in the world, against a non-state entity, Al-Qaeda, was like two stupid things. First it was like trying to kill a fly with a bazooka, inefficient, costly and begging for collateral damage. Second it was like trying to physically punch an idea, something ephemeral. Having hundreds of thousands of soldiers spread across regions in the Middle East perfectly supported the Al-Qaeda sales pitch that there is Western Imperialism in the Middle East and broader therefore damage must be wrought upon them. Quite simply, they won. I vaguely remember a phrase by Nietzsche yet have always been struck by its message: no one remembers anything about the Roman guards who killed Jesus, yet all remember Jesus and what he preached. Ideas can win out in the long term, and its a rare moment in history when a militant Islamic extremist group is illustrating the power of reason, that is of non-physical ideas.

The Bush administration also gave us a hark back towards nation-states bumping heads, ignoring international bodies and global government (because the twentieth century taught us that doing that worked so well). As Lyotard said you can’t have the postmodern without the modern, so clearly we can’t have non-state entities like terrorist groups, multinational corporations and the like without states being existent. Furthermore with the likes of Asia’s rising countries the Western trend of the perfect babushka doll, amiable with international body (UN), good regional body (EU), sturdy nations, is counterbalanced. It is Bush all the time really, with China largely flaunting international rule and failing to be a ‘responsible global stakeholder’, Burma still disobedient, ditto North Korea, Fiji going loco and so on, the idea of any cooperate frameworks seems dim. The result is Machiavelli Europe, with tentative deals struck between powers, that is nation-states, everything possibly going on inside the different domains hence no universal standards of human treatment, no coordinated, hence strong, action towards global problems and possibly conflict.

Lastly this is the age for the pen, not the sword. That is for talk, not combat, for reform, not revolution. Post velvet revolutions even China does keep the channels of communication open, even if the conversations are unsophisticated. Likewise Russia. Apart from China and the Palestinian territories I feel the problems in the world are rather tractable. So excluding the hard cases we can see democracy in Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and flirtations with it in the Middle East (e.g. Iraq, Lebanon) and I think that ‘Asian Authoritarianism’ is an existent phenomenon (that is we can identify multiple countries in the geographical area of Asia with broad traits which are agreeably politically authoritarian) but even said countries will negotiate. Further many will liberalize markets and I cross my fingers and with partially hope and expect that we will see more like the Red Shirt protests in Thailand.

As I continue to sketch out IR in my mind I will aid it with these dot points I gathered.

• Natural Disasters
• Conflict Resolution
• Terrorism
• International Crime
• Climate Change
• Economic Trade
• Global Politics
• International Organisations
• Immigration
• Citizenship
• Refugees
• Aid
• Development
• International Law
• Human Rights
• Religion
• Culture
• Political Movements