We must defend Western Civilization as we follow its path into the future--Part Two
The fallacious thinking behind the "New Multi-Polar International Order"
Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) in International Law, Harvard University
Contents
Part One: Western Civilization
Part Two: The “New Multi-Polar International Order”
Part Three: The Challenge of Defending Western Civilization and Building on Its Achievements
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Part Two: The “New Multi-Polar International Order”
Recently, Vladimir Putin has led a frontal challenge by Russia to the U.N. Charter and international law, which are main bulwarks of our current Western Civilization built on reason and law, not aggression and barbarism. China under Xi Jinping also poses a challenge to the U.N. Charter and international law by insisting that it has the right to absorb Taiwan, which it regards as a runaway province, by the use of force if necessary and by claiming sovereignty over the South China Sea in defiance of international law.
China challenges the U.N. Charter and international law by claiming ownership of huge areas in the South China Sea (within the so-called “seven-dash line”) despite an authoritative international arbitral decision issued under the authority of the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, to which China is a party, rejecting China’s legal assertions. China, ignoring the arbitral award and its obligations under U.N. Charter and the Law of the Sea Convention, seeks to impose its will by building military facilities on islands and outcroppings it does not own, implicitly ready to defend them or otherwise control navigation and fishing by the threat or use of force.
The Russian challenge to the existing international legal order based on the United Nations Charter and international law is a frontal assault on Western Civilization and its deepest values, such as the prohibition of the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity of another state, and respect for the physical integrity of the human person guaranteed by international humanitarian law and international human rights law.
Russia is blatantly engaged in ongoing aggression against Ukraine, and rejects the norms of international humanitarian law (the laws of war) and indeed has built its military strategy in Ukraine on their systematic violation.
China, on the other hand, has not rejected the U.N. Charter and international law to the same extent Russia has. It argues that the use of force against Taiwan would be a purely domestic affair and, importantly, has threatened but not actually launched an invasion of Taiwan. In the South China Sea, it is building military outposts on small islands and built-up outcroppings, ignoring international law, but has not yet engaged in a large-scale use of force in the area.
China argues that it is not violating international law. Most Western countries are focused on the threat of an invasion of Taiwan.
China has recently announced that it will not supply weapons and munitions to Russia, and holds itself out as a potential mediator to bring the Ukraine war to an end.
However, there can be no doubt that both Russia and China are challenging fundamental norms of the U.N. Charter and international law.
It is the Europeans and the Americans, the Latin Americans, Australians, and New Zealanders, the South Koreans and Japanese, the Africans and citizens of other countries which have embraced Western Civilization and its deepest values, who are now charged with defending it and carrying it forward.
For all the faults of racism and colonialism that characterized the ascent of Western Civilization, the crimes committed are no greater than those of their competitors and predecessors.
Yet notwithstanding its shortcomings Western Civilization has led the ascent of man to a higher plane, to a civilization based on reason and law, of representative government, aspirations of democracy, and thirst for the rule of law. Except in Ukraine, nowhere is this trend and thirst more notable today than in Africa, where new generations aspire to and in many places are practicing democracy.
To the incredible advances in human welfare brought about by the rise of Western Civilization, even in Russia and China, new authoritarian and totalitarian regimes now argue that by invading and threatening to invade other countries, by violating the most basic norms of international human rights and humanitarian law, both creatures of international law, that they are fighting to introduce a new multi-polar world order.
In point of fact, they have no blueprint for a new multi-polar international order, other than to violate the most sacred norms humanity has created through the flowering and triumph of Western Civilization.
The new international order they seek to establish is in fact the old international disorder where powerful states may invade and subjugate weaker nations, and where international humanitarian law (the law of war) and international human rights are no longer respected but rather violated with impunity. It is an international disorder where individuals, who international humanitarian law and international human rights law seek to protect, are crushed by the dictatorial power of the state.
The world is indeed becoming increasingly multi-polar. That does not mean that Western Civilization must cede its achievements over millennia to the new—and yet very old—forms of international anarchy and barbarism that proponents of a new multi-polar international order so piously promote and defend.
Among the many flaws in thinking of proponents of the new “old international disorder”, three stand out.
First, it is false to claim that the existing international order is simply the creation of a few Western states who use it to unfairly secure advantages from and hold back other states.
Western Civilization is no longer limited to Europeans and their descendants. Over the last century other countries from around the world have joined and become part of Western Civilization, which might arguably more accurately be termed World Civilization. Nonetheless, to maintain the focus on the core values that originally gained adherents in Europe and the Americas, we shall continue to use the term “Western Civilization”—with the understanding that most countries in the world today have joined and become a part of it.
Proponents such as Russia of a “new multi-polar international irder” are arguing in effect that the nations of the “Global South” should join in overthrowing an international order they themselves have joined and helped to build, and from which they derive enormous benefits.
Second, the Principles and Purposes of the United Nations Charter have since 1945 been accepted by nearly all of the nations of the world, virtually all of which are members of the United Nations.
Moreover, the basic norms of international law adopted in the U.N. Charter and through the processes established pursuant to its provisions have been drafted and adopted through representative processes in which all nations have participated. The International Court of Justice or World Court since its inception in 1945 (and indeed since the inception of its predecessor, the Permanent Court of International Justice, in 1919) has been made up of individuals representing the major regions and cultures of the world.
For example, the Law of the Sea Convention was drafted over many years with the participation of all interested states and was adopted pursuant to resolutions of the General Assembly of the United Nations. Subsequent to its formal adoption, the Convention has been ratified by the overwhelming majority of countries in the world.
Unfortunately, the U.S. is not one of them, due to the tendency of U.S. government lawyers to examine international treaties not with a two-power magnifying glass, but rather with a 100-power lens which causes them to lose sight of the whole purpose of the endeavor.
In the field of International Human Rights, the United Nations General Assembly approved the U.N. Declaration on (International) Human Rights in 1948. While not legally binding in the beginning, many of the rights enumerated in the Declaration have become part of customary international law through a process in which they were further developed in conventions (multilateral treaties) which have been ratified by a very large number of countries.
Most of the international human rights set forth in the Declaration had been adopted centuries earlier in the English Bill of Rights (1689) the Virginia Declaration of the Rights of Man (1776), the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen(1789), the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution (1791), and many other constitutions throughout the world.
In Europe and Latin America regional human rights systems have developed and over time gradually acquired compulsory jurisdiction over an impressive number of countries. Africa has also established a regional human rights organization and court charged with upholding human rights as set forth in the 1979 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and other conventions.
As these few examples make clear, it is absolutely false to maintain that the U.N. Charter and international law are not the product of a representative group of countries. In fact, many areas of international law have been developed in the International Law Commission, a U.N. body representative of all of its members which has laboriously studied and developed conventions in important fields of law, such as that of state responsibility under international law for the actions of a state.
Third, proponents of a new multi-polar international order have no blueprint for what they would introduce to replace the U.N. Charter and international law currently in force. They don’t have a blueprint because it is impossible to draw up a blueprint given the binding nature of the U.N. Charter and current international law.
All that they have to offer is a new “old international anarchy” in which Russia will be free to invade Ukraine and other countries and commit war crimes of utter barbarity without ever being held accountable before national and international courts for their crimes.
Next
Part Three: The Challenge of Defending Western Civilization and Building on Its Achievements
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