We must defend Western Civilization as we follow its path into the future--Part Three
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 Three: The Challenge of Defending Western Civilization and Building on Its Achievements
The choice we as individuals and all countries in the world now face is stark. We must choose between (1) Western Civilization, (which is now universal) and the rule of law, and international law in particular, and a centuries-old movement of international society toward law and reason, on the one hand, and (2) a return to brute power politics, both domestically and internationally, on the other, where the individual stands naked before the power of the state, and smaller countries are subjected to military domination by large and militarily powerful states.
If one stops only for a minute to contemplate how the second alternative might play out, in a world of proliferating nuclear weapons and other and new weapons of mass destruction, where technology offers authoritarian regimes the prospect of being able to stomp out the face of the individual human being, one can appreciate the true nature of the utterly hollow claims countries like Russia and China are making as they seek to establish what they call a “new multi-polar international order”.
To cite but one example, Russia has invaded Ukraine in violation of the most fundamental norms of international law and continues to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, pursuing a military strategy of barbarism built on the systematic violation of fundamental human rights and international humanitarian law.
Russia even has the effrontery to proclaim recently that it has invaded Ukraine and committed untold atrocities there in order to defend the United Nations Charter.
There should be no illusions among the countries of “the Global South” whenever Russia and China argue for the advent of a new multi-polar international order. They should insistently ask the following questions:
Will this new order prohibit the international threat or use of force, as Article 2 paragraph 4 of the U.N. Charter does now?
Will it prohibit the commission of war crimes and genocide, as the U.N. Charter and international law do today?
Will it protect international human rights, as many U.N. bodies and treaties currently do?
Will there be organs of enforcement of intenational law, international humanitarian law, and international human rights law, such as those which currently exist?
How will the members of the enforcement bodies be chosen, and what obligations will nation states have to enforce their decisions?
As this list of questions demonstrates, China and Russia are not proposing anything that could be termed a new multi-polar international order, but rather merely a return to an “old” international anarchy which will allow them to dominate the world through the use of their military power.
They advocate not a new multi-polar international order, but rather a return to an “old international anarchy” which Western Civilization has spent hundreds of years seeking to overcome.
Western Civilization is now the dominant civilization in the world, from Japan and South Korea to the new democracies in Africa which are gaining strength.
For Russia, there is a better way to uphold the United Nations Charter: Withdraw all of your troops from all of the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders of 1991, stop attacking the country with missiles and drones, return all of the children and other Ukrainians you have forcefully removed from their country, and pay for all of the damages, both human and material, which you have caused by invading the country and conducting this war with absolute barbarism.
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See also “Why I care about the war in Ukraine,” Trenchant Observations, June 26, 2023.