The crime of aggression is treated seriously in international law. Political leaders have a moral and legal obligation to do likewise. There can’t be room for political hypocrisy if international law is to mean anything.
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Tag: International law
Trump’s pre-modern approach to Sovereignty must be resisted
A common conception of sovereignty is the essential foundation of the modern state and international law. Trump’s contrarian understanding of sovereignty, evident in actions during his first term, could have far more damaging consequences in his second.
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Western leaders must acknowledge Israel’s rights are not untrammelled
Israel’s right to defend itself is not untrammelled and by implying that it is, political leaders are undermining the authority of international law. Instead, they should be drawing heavily on it to halt the carnage in Gaza and the colonisation of the West Bank.
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Would Australian defence of Taiwan amount to the crime of aggression?
The people of Taiwan are in a deeply unenviable position. But international law is neutral over political systems, and Taiwan’s democracy gives it no special right to secede. Does advocating for this make Australia a revisionist state?
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The difference between international law and America’s ‘rules-based order’
Restricting its foreign policy activities within the norms and processes of international law doesn’t sit well with the struggling hegemon, and the US has had to invent the imaginary and vague regime of a ‘rules-based global order’. Successive Australia governments seem prepared to go to war for a figment of the hegemon’s strategic imagination.
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The Trumping of international law and democratic institutions
Past US presidents used the potency of the American liberal democratic ideal to rally like-minded nations and to rein in and chasten the world’s miscreants. But under President Trump, the important institutions of constitutional democracy and international law have suffered serious damage, and the long-term prospects for peace and stability have been undercut as a result.
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