Would you be able to attack and take over your neighbor’s home over a boundary line dispute? Could you legally threaten their safety, no matter how angry you were? The answer is a resounding no. Then why is it that when a conflict transcends national boundaries, we have no clear and immediate recourse against aggression other than threatening or carrying out more violence in return?
Our societies – local, national, and global – choose the behaviors we normalize. We have set murder and theft outside moral bounds in most societal contexts. So why do our moral codes end at state boundaries? Why is there no serious movement to abolish war?
The system of international law has been undermined at every turn to protect the ability of strong countries to do what they please. The United Nations has been kept weak, with the system of Security Council vetoes for the five permanent members making a farce of the idea of global accountability. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is an opt-in situation, applying only to those countries that have accepted the jurisdiction of the court – and neither Russia nor the United States have opted in. Most cases listed on the ICC docket target African or Middle Eastern officials, putting a fine point on who the court is and is not meant to scrutinize for crimes of aggression, war crimes, genocide, or crimes against humanity. This week’s preliminary decision of the UN International Court of Justice ordering Russia to ‘suspend’ military operations in Ukraine has been met with a shrug from Russia, which simply asserted that the court lacked jurisdiction.
The destructive impact of war is not new. Major and minor conflicts rage across the globe today, largely outside western headlines and sympathies. In the Sahel, Yemen, Afghanistan, and the list goes on – hundreds of thousands of people have been murdered and millions have had their lives destroyed by violent conflict, with zero recourse. The scale of global attention which the war in Ukraine has received makes evident the deep racism and Islamophobia at play in shaping whose lives may be acceptably threatened by war.
But because major powers across the world are paying attention, the attack on Ukraine also offers an inflection point: should it be legal to attack our neighbor’s home and try to occupy it? If not, isn’t it time to abolish war?
We have been conditioned to accept international violence – essentially mass murder in the name of states’ goals. While on the surface societies have moved beyond feudal systems with war lords vying for territory, today we have terrible weaponry that could destroy the whole of humanity many times over with the click of a button.
The fate of the world lies on a tenuous global ‘gentleman’s’ agreement that we probably wouldn’t click that button – but the threat of annihilation still hangs over us, with no real recourse at the global level. The only system of accountability we have invested in is the ability to annihilate others just as many times as they could annihilate us.
Excerpted: ‘As Global Horror Unfolds in Ukraine, Why Is War Still Legal?’ Courtesy: Commondreams.org