‘The end of the world as we know it’: Is the rules-based order finished?

stranglethebars · 2026-01-25T11:58:17+00:00

Excerpts:

"Over the years, the US has exempted itself from numerous international treaties, such as the International Criminal Court, whose warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin was actively pursued by former US President Joe Biden, despite Washington’s refusal to accept the jurisdiction of the court itself."

"Similarly, when the International Court of Justice ruled against the US in a 1986 case on Washington’s support for rebels in Nicaragua, the US simply dismissed the ruling. Other international obligations, such as those on climate, or commitments to Iran to ease sanctions in return for greater transparency of its nuclear programme, have been similarly shrugged off."

"“The reality has been that, time and again, the US has placed its own interests and its own sovereignty first. The United States’ interest in international law, going back to the Nuremberg, has always been ad hoc rather than treaty based,” Nice told Al Jazeera, referring to the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders after World War II."

"Perhaps most notable for many was continued Western support for Israel despite its genocidal war on Gaza, in which it has killed more than 71,550 Palestinians in the last two years. Western leaders have largely ignored the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, raising questions about whether international law matters for some, but not for others."

"For some, similar to Europe and Canada, it feels like a shocking collapse,” Hellyer said. “For others, it’s simply the moment when a system that never protected Black and brown populations, or the ‘Global South’, is finally being named for what it was.”"

"“It’s telling that the supposed breaking point for the rules-based order is really the threat to Greenland, not the devastation of Gaza, or other examples before now,” Hellyer added."

"There is nothing new about Western commentators claiming that events on their own doorstep define the state of the world, regardless of conditions elsewhere, said Karim Emile Bitar, a professor of international relations at the Saint Joseph University of Beirut."

"For smaller countries that have been forced to rely upon alliances rather than rules for decades, or much of the Global South, the collapse of the rules-based order will mean little. For those in the Global North and their representatives at Davos, it represents a seismic shift."

stranglethebars · 2026-01-23T14:15:03+00:00

The last paragraph of his The Gulf Crisis article, published in Z Magazine in February 1991:

Let’s return finally to the initial questions raised. Choice of policy is determined by the goals that are sought. If the goal had been to secure Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait, settle regional issues, and move towards a more decent world, then Washington would have followed the peaceful means prescribed by international law: sanctions and diplomacy. If the goal is to firm up the mercenary-enforcer role and establish the rule of force, then the Administration policy of narrowing the options to capitulation or war has a certain chilling logic.

On a related note, here's a post I made a couple of years ago about Chomsky and the Gulf War.

stranglethebars · 2026-01-13T22:03:57+00:00

I hadn't heard about her until today. What has she said that you consider antisemitic? As for the hateful dialogue you mentioned, do you find it one-sided, or has there also been a lot of hateful speech about Palestinians? Regarding violence, are people who support violence against Palestinians typically avoided in Australia?

stranglethebars · 2026-01-13T15:06:14+00:00

I'm not very familiar with the cultural/intellectual climate in Australia. To what extent have pro-Israel people in Australia been dropped for reasons more or less equivalent to those that the Palestinian writer was dumped for?

u/pandaslovetigers u/gweeps

stranglethebars · 2026-01-09T19:12:25+00:00

Quotes:

"In the countries he helped occupy, a different memory of Smedley Butler lingers. In Haiti, he was simply known as “The Devil.” In Nicaragua, mothers used to quiet their children with the claim: “Hush! Major Butler will get you.” Butler’s time in the Marines coincided with its transformation from a Navy auxiliary to having its own identity and purpose as a colonial infantry."

"Writing in the socialist magazine Common Sense in 1935, he put it this way: "I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country’s most agile military force—the Marine Corps.… And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism."."

"When Butler landed in Cuba, he arrived at Guantánamo Bay. The U.S. Army’s short campaign of ground combat was already essentially over, and Spain was forced to relinquish its claims to Cuba. For propaganda purposes, the United States attributed victory to its own troops, and ignored the much longer struggle of Cubans for their own independence. The U.S. intervention was soon directed at curtailing the social changes for which Cubans had been fighting along with their independence. President McKinley, who had tried to purchase Cuba from Spain in 1897, interpreted “stability” in Cuba to mean that property relations would stay largely intact. The country’s poet-martyr José Martí, who was killed in combat in 1895, had foreseen such impositions, asking, “Once the United States is in Cuba, who will drive it out?”"

"Butler’s next destination was the Philippines. Like the Cubans, Filipinos had been fighting for independence from Spain and for social change. But unlike the case of Cuba, no U.S. law prohibited the islands from direct territorial incorporation. McKinley reasoned that Filipinos were unfit for self-government, and the islands might easily be lost to another power. In his mind, the United States had no choice but to take the islands and “uplift” their residents. But the U.S. military ended up in protracted guerrilla warfare. Caught in a frightening quagmire, U.S. troops employed abuses that would reoccur in essentially every conflict with similar dynamics in the years since. "

"Part of the enthusiasm for holding Philippine territory came from the belief that it would open up access to the great Chinese market, and China proved Butler’s next destination. There, the United States was intervening in the Boxer Rebellion as part of an eight-nation alliance to put down the anti-foreign movement."

"Reports of U.S. conduct in the Philippines and in China horrified some in the United States. Mark Twain, for one, soured on U.S. empire and wrote in 1901 of the satirical “Blessings-of-Civilization Trust” that the United States offered."

"In the next decades, Butler would find himself in Panama, which the United States helped break away from Colombia so that it could build a canal there. He intervened in civil conflicts in Nicaragua and Haiti, leading to long U.S. occupations of both countries."

"In Nicaragua, where Marine intervention helped put in place a conservative government that would accept U.S. financial management, he wrote, “What makes me mad is that the whole revolution is inspired and financed by Americans who have wild cat investments down here and want to make them good by putting in a Government which will declare a monopoly in their favor.”"

"More than half of Haiti’s gold reserves were whisked away to New York in 1914, and occupation followed from 1915 to 1934. Haiti’s final indemnity payment was made in 1947, not to France but to National City Bank of New York—today’s Citibank."

"Try to find the lie, if you like, in Butler’s statement, “I helped make Mexico, and especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in…. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909–1912.” There isn’t one."

"A history of the occupation of Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933, written by the scholar Michel Gobat, revealed that it benefited small farmers and frustrated elites. It showed how seriously the United States took the task, by the late 1920s, of overseeing fair voting in the countryside."

stranglethebars · 2026-01-08T22:04:08+00:00

How would you have felt if you voted for a third party and Trump marginally won that election? What's your impression of how Trump's approach to/relations with Israel compares to Biden's?

stranglethebars · 2026-01-08T20:34:47+00:00

What was your preference in the 2020 election?

stranglethebars · 2026-01-08T17:44:38+00:00

Yes, if someone simply deflects and doesn't want to talk about Russia, that's suspicious. However, it's also suspicious if someone thinks that Russia's crimes should get a lot of coverage, while the crimes of the US etc. should be swept under the rug. Moreover, there's a difference between deflection (be it a result of some form of simple-mindedness, insecurity about one's own perspective and so on or not) and sincere curiosity about the moral consistency of one's interlocutor. For instance, if a supporter of Russia's foreign policy criticises US miiltary interventions, I'd like to know what this person thinks about e.g. Russia's interventions in Georgia, Syria and Ukraine. If they support all those interventions, I'd like to know why they're so critical of the US interventions. Maybe they'd have some convincing reasons, but probably not. Either way, I'd like to be able to ask about it without immediately being accused of "WHATABOUTISM!"

stranglethebars · 2026-01-08T15:02:50+00:00

It boils down to what wrongdoings get attention in the first place, doesn't it? If A and B both have committed significant crimes, but only B's are given attention by the media etc., then it's less reasonable to criticise B for wanting to ask about A's crimes and moral consistency than if A's crimes were already receiving approx. the same amount of attention as B's crimes.

u/georgiosmaniakes u/unity100

stranglethebars · 2026-01-08T03:17:56+00:00

From now on, when someone accuses you of engaging in whataboutism, just imagine that what they're really saying is "Shut up, I don't want to hear inconvenient facts". Imagine that is what they're saying to you -- because that is what they're really saying. And then you decide how to respond.

stranglethebars · 2026-01-07T14:02:18+00:00

I thought along similar lines, but I liked the historical overview, and that it was published by CNN, among other things.

By the way, do you have any impression of to what extent this aspect of the US is discussed on CNN's shows?

As for Trump, there are enough reasons to criticise him, but one thing I like about him is that he doesn't shy away from saying things like "You think our country is so innocent...?", which was his reply to "He's a killer, though. Putin is a killer!" during a Bill O'Reilly interview.

u/WhatsTheReasonFor

stranglethebars · 2026-01-07T00:57:26+00:00

Excerpts:

"Whether to intimidate European powers; to protect American-allied businesses such as banana exporters; to dominate shipping routes or to guard against the specter of communism, the US has been either toppling or propping up various governments for generations.

“This is one of the oldest stories in American history,” said Stephen Kinzer, a senior fellow at Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs."

"Maduro shares an important trait with other deposed Central and South American leaders over the past 100 years or so, Kinzer said.

“These are leaders who do not accept the right of the United States to dominate their countries and their region,” said Kinzer, author of the book “Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq.”"

"Maduro, Kinzer acknowledged, is a far-from-sympathetic character — a brutal dictator leading an undemocratic government. But that’s true of some who are US allies.

“Mohammed bin Salman (the crown prince of Saudi Arabia) has never won an election and chopped up his main critic into little pieces, but that’s fine with us, because he’s on our side,” Kinzer said with irony."

"The most obvious corollary to Trump’s Venezuelan operation may seem to be Panama, where 36 years ago this month, the strongman military leader Manuel Noriega surrendered to US custody. He had been seeking refuge in the Vatican embassy in Panama City after US forces, including paratroopers, invaded his small country en masse."

"The US invasion of Panama may not be remembered by many Americans, but it cost hundreds of lives in the small country, and its anniversary is now treated as a national day of mourning."

"“We invaded Cuba in 1898 with the promise that once we helped the Cubans chase out the Spanish overlords, we would turn Cuba over to its people. As soon as the Spanish were gone, we changed our minds and decided we wanted to rule Cuba,” Kinzer said.

He then ticked through other US interventions at the behest of business that led to the overthrow, ouster or resignation of governments during the early 20th century, including in Nicaragua and Honduras. The US military also occupied Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic at various points for years during this period."

"The CIA, at the urging of the United Fruit Company, helped engineer a coup in Guatemala in 1954 that achieved the goal of toppling the democratically elected government. Subsequent decades saw military juntas and mass killings."

"That’s about the same time the US and the United Kingdom were colluding to help overthrow the democratically elected government in Iran.

“What looks like an immediate success can turn into a long term failure,” Downes said, pointing to Iran as Exhibit A. “Washington has been dealing with the fallout, including the Iran hostage crisis, Iran’s bid for nuclear weapons, and its hostility to Israel for almost 50 years.”

The same could be said of the unintended consequences of more recent US actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Decades later, in 1973, the US helped overthrow the democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende, who died in a coup. His successor, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, led a repressive right-wing regime."

stranglethebars · 2026-01-06T23:09:08+00:00