The press releases were published two years apart, but both carried the same heading: “The court indicates provisional measures”. The first, dated March 16th 2022, concerned Ukraine. The second, dated January 26th 2024, concerned the Gaza Strip. In both cases, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is the principal judicial arm of the United Nations, and whose members are, ipso facto, a party to, pronounced an order “which has binding effect”.
In 2022, in terse wording, the court enjoined Russia to “immediately suspend the military operations that it commenced on 24 February 2022 in the territory of Ukraine”. In 2024, in detailed terms, it enjoined Israel to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II” of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (also known as the “Genocide Convention”).
Neither Russia nor Israel complied with the demands of the ICJ, whereas Article 94 of the United Nations Charter stipulates that “Each Member of the United Nations undertakes to comply with the decision of the International Court of Justice in any case to which it is a party”. The preamble to the UN Charter, adopted on June 26th 1945, at the end of the Second World War, begins: “We, the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small […]”.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
It is obviously not the first time nor, alas, will it be the last that states would happily and with impunity violate international law, while referring to it when it suits them. But it is without doubt the first time that the concomitance of two wars, with potentially devastating consequences for world peace, demonstrate to everyone the cynical hypocrisy of nations which take it upon themselves to claim a universal privilege, of law, of what is just and right – namely Europe and the West, this political reality born from the projection of our continent upon others.
For it is an indisputable fact that the current leaders of France, European countries and the United States do not give the same import to international law according to whether this regards the fate of the Ukrainian people or that of the Palestinians. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the reaction was a legitimate cascade of diplomatic retaliations, economic and financial sanctions and military support for Kyiv. But in reaction to Israel’s war against the population in Gaza, the massacre of civilians and, now, famine, there have been vague calls for restraint and tardy humanitarian operations, but no effective move to halt the events – quite the opposite given that the Israeli army continues to receive Western arms.
A new Russian imperialism
Through this unbalanced position, Europe and the United States offer Vladimir Putin the ideological victory he seeks. The propaganda that accompanies his all-out drive for power, in which the first victims are the freedoms of the Russian people, is aimed at uniting the accumulated resentments that exist from the long domination of Europeans over others. In face of what he likes to call “the collective West”, which he designates as a symbol of decadence where supposedly, under the guise of democracy, traditional values and sense of identity have been lost, he presents himself as the champion of a new authoritarian and reactionary order of which Russia would be the protective power.
An illustration of this can be found in the Middle East, where the warlike intentions of this new Russian imperialism began with its ruthless attacks against the Syrian people in support of a barbarian dictatorship. Recently, large posters celebrating Putin appeared on billboards in the Lebanese capital Beirut, ahead of his “re-election” as president of the Russian Federation. Lebanese daily L’Orient-Le Jour reported that the posters display, alongside a photo of a waving Putin, slogans in Arabic variously proclaiming: “A new multipolar world”; ”Encroaching on the religious beliefs of others cannot be seen as freedom of expression,” and hailing “Moral values, family and cultural identity”. The daily reported that the posters have notably appeared in the southern suburbs of the capital where the Hezbollah has its headquarters.
International law cannot be divided in its application, and support for the Ukrainian people cannot be accompanied by the abandonment of the Palestinian people. Just as one cannot support the Palestinian cause and desert that of the Ukrainians. In both cases, the same principals are at stake, and they are no longer worth anything if there is one rule for some and another for the rest.
It is only by following that guiding line that a rampart can be built against Vladimir Putin and the imperialist and fascist menace that he represents. It is over Gaza that this is put to the test.
To support the war that Israel is leading there is to offer the Kremlin its victory in Europe. Because that is indeed the aim of Putin’s war; to bring down international law, this construction of rules, principles and supranational values built amid the shock of the catastrophe in Europe and its incommensurable crimes, and in the lucid realisation that ensuring peace in the world cannot be confided to nation states alone.
In the same manner that a proclamation of the natural equality of rights does not automatically install real equality, international law is a promise before becoming a reality. It is a lever for what is required, a universal horizon, a concern of humanity, and it is an old pledge given to the world by Europe. That the continent was not loyal to that pledge – far from it – takes nothing away from its force for change. “Since the narrower or wider community of the peoples of the Earth has developed so far that a violation of rights in one place is felt throughout the world, [and] the idea of a law of world citizenship is no high-flown or exaggerated notion,” wrote the 18th-century German Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant, in what were the closing words of his essay Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch. Published in 1795, it was the first work to set out this cosmopolitan law (“ius cosmopoliticum”), the foundation for “universal hospitality”.
No-one will stop us. […] It is a war of the sons of light against the sons of darkness.
“One” and “all” go together; none of the rights I have are not also those of others. There is no people that is not accountable for the lot of others. To take the measure of this, it suffices to follow the recent hearings at the ICJ in The Hague, between February 19th and 26th, on “the legal consequences arising from the policies and practice of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem”. A total of 49 states, members of the UN, and three international organisations presented oral statements during the proceedings, opened after the ICJ was asked for an advisory opinion by the UN General Assembly, and which the state of Israel did not attend, having only received the embarrassed support of the United States.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), whose name is associated with the philosophy of the Enlightenment and its hopes of democracy, was born and died in Königsberg, which is today Kaliningrad, the main city of Kaliningrad Oblast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad_Oblast , a Russian enclave of around one million inhabitants, situated between Lithuania and Poland. Its current governor is Anton Alikhanov, a loyal member of Vladimir Putin’s ruling party. Speaking in early February at a “congress of political scientists” held within the enclave, Alikhanov denounced Kant as being responsible for what he said was the “global chaos” and “global restructuring” today, in a tirade that employed the political speak of the Kremlin.
“I want to demonstrate that Kant, born here nearly three hundred years ago, is almost directly related to the global chaos, and the global restructuring that we are now confronted with. Moreover, he is directly related to the military conflict in Ukraine,” said Alikhanov. He said this was because Kant was “one of the founding fathers of the modern West”, which is marked by “impiety and an absence of superior values”. He designated Kant as the father of almost everything: “He is the father of liberty, of the idea of a constitutional state, of liberalism, of rationalism and even the European Union,” adding that “some even say that the idea of the United Nations comes from him”.
If ever one had harboured any doubts on the issue, we have there the illustration of what Vladimir Putin wants to do away with, namely an internationalist hope for a common world of solidarity, equality and universality of rights. It is also that hope which, since so long ago, is placed in peril by the enduring injustice imposed upon the Palestinian people through the stubborn negation of international law by the leaders of the state of Israel. It is a negation taken to the point of nihilism by the extremist coalition government in power alongside Benjamin Netanyahu who, in January, declared: “No-one will stop us. Not The Hague, not the axis of evil, and not anybody else […] It is a war of the sons of light against the sons of darkness.”
Vladimir Putin and his ideologists share that same language on the subject of Ukraine, and their determination to continue to the end with a vital, identitarian and civilisational war. However fragile and imperfect it may have been, the awakening which, in 1945, legitimised a form of international law which applied to every nation, was precisely born from the conviction, prompted by a tragedy, that this is how darkness wins. In Europe as in the Middle East.
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- The original French version of this op-ed piece can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse