The hegemonic Western world order in crisis in Gaza

Few postwar world order crises have solicited world attention and concern as alarmingly as has the ongoing genocidal mass killings and wanton devastation in Gaza by Israel. The marginalised plight of the Palestinians has assaulted the consciousness of humanity and intruded into its sense of propriety as demonstrated by the Security Council vote on 18 April 2024 on the recognition of Palestine as a full UN member. This vote has isolated the lone vetoing US, the blind ally of Israel. This note unmasks few of numerous double standards and blatant defiance of the world order once passionately engineered in the heartland of Europe to reinforce its colonial imperial domination and exploitation of the Global South. NATO has been created to be the imperial force to guard the Euro-US military leadership in the world to advance their geostrategic control and geoeconomic interests.

Following the Hamas invasion of Israel on 7 October 2023 and Israeli invasion of Gaza on 27 October 2023, Israel bombed the Iranian Consulate and killed officials in Damascus on 1 April 2024. The inviolable protection and immunity of the Iranian Consulate and officials are guaranteed under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations 1963. Its Articles 31 and 33 ensure the 'inviolability of the consular premises' and Articles 40-41 guarantee the 'protection of consular officers and [their] personal inviolability'. Article 54 obliges third states to comply with such inviolable protection and immunity requirements of the Convention. These provisions entail precise legal obligations for all Convention members including Israel. No Western state has talked about or condemned this Israeli violation of the Convention, a product of the Euro-centric international law and order. These Western states found no contradiction in condemning the Mexican embassy in Ecuador raid on 5 April 2024 by Ecuadorian police to arrest former Ecuadorian Vice President who took asylum in the Mexican Embassy in Ecuador to avoid arrest for corruption charges. Many Western states, albeit including the US, were outraged by this raid and censored Ecuador for violating international diplomatic law and order. 

The US, UK, France and Australia warned Iran not to retaliate to deescalate the tension. When Iran launched strikes against Israel in retaliation on 14 April 2024, these Western states were quite quick to condemn Iran and imposed new sanctions. But they remained silent when Israel attacked Iran on 18 April 2024 as if the right to self-defence belonged only to Israel, which has no duty to deescalate the tension. The double standards of the Western states are also evident if one compares their strong opposition to Russian invasion of Ukraine and unprecedented support for Ukraine against their tendency to justify the Israeli invasion and destruction of Gaza as an act of self-defence. Iran faces strong Western opposition and sanctions for its development of nuclear power for peaceful purposes, a right that most Western states and Israel have taken for granted. 

Flagrant partisanism and moral depravity of the Western rule-based world order has exposed its hegemony that has galvanised global public dissent against the order in the Gaza crisis, paralleling to South African apartheid.

The moral depravity and bankruptcy of the Western rule-based world order has been exposed when its imperial mask fell in the post-cold war 1990s with the emergence of a unipolar world order dominated by the US and its military alliance. It manufactured a self-perpetuating image of benevolent leader in world rule-making and standard-setting, implemented selectively by military might, economic coercions, and veto power in the UN. It has been continually exonerating itself from abiding international law it promotes for others. The sovereign equality of all states as the propeller of peaceful coexistence of states by addressing power imbalances to sustain stable world order was routinely disrupted by the invasion of Iraq on false pretences in 2003 and Libya in violation of the UN Security Council resolution 1973 of 17 March 2011, and proxy wars in Syria and Yamen in a bid to change of regimes which resisted Western imperialism. The US displayed its arrogant unilateralism due to its belief that its pre-eminence as the only superpower elevated it above international law and the UN, asserting that the UN 'is dead and the US is not bound by international law' (The Observer, London, 14 July 2002, p 14). A culture of impunity emerged where violations of world order are overlooked and prosecutions for such violations do not apply to the US and its allies who pervasively reduced international legal obligations subservient to their political agendas, economic interests, and military strategies, rendering them more equal than others. States not enamoured with this hierarchical power like Iran are less sovereign and encounter Western resistance in exercising their sovereign rights. This is how the new Western world order manufactured in the 1990s has been eroding international order and peaceful coexistence of states in the 21st century.

Postwar organisations have been designed to complement the maintenance of a Western hegemonic world order. Both Roosevelt and Churchill dominated negotiations for the creation of the UN in the 1944 Moscow conference and 1945 San Francisco conference. The UN Charter was crafted to sustain their control over world affairs. This explains why the General Assembly, being the plenary organ of the UN represented by the heads of states and governments with democratic decision-making has only recommendatory authority. In contrast, the Security Council, composed of 15 appointed bureaucrats, has the decisive and mandatory decision-making power, absolutely controlled by the 5 veto yielding members and any one of them can paralyse the decision of the remaining 14 members. The purpose was neither to promote democratic decision-making, nor the maintenance of world peace and security, but to advance the powerful minority-dominated world order by making the rest of the world powerless.

The ICC jurisdiction is inoperative in most powerful states as they are not members. It suffers from its excessive west-centric systemic bias displayed in its statute and orientations. Its jurisdiction is so far limited largely to Africa. When the US-led Western states used the Security Council to indict Sudanese President Bashir and Libyan leader Gaddafi to the ICC Prosecutor, the speed at which the Prosecutor launched these cases suggests that the ICC is not immune from the Western influence. The ICC Chief Prosecutor made 4 investigations to assess war-ravaged Ukraine between 22 March 2022 and 7 March 2023; and the ICC issued arrest warrant against President Putin on 17 March 2023. In the case of Gaza devastation, the Chief Prosecutor visited Gaza on 10 October 2023 and 3 December 2023 in response to the mounting criticisms worldwide for its prolonged inaction.  South Africa-led 6 ICC members and a coalition of NGOs made several submissions to the ICC with compelling evidence of the commission of crimes of genocide in Gaza, the ICC is yet to take any concrete step to prosecute those responsible.          

Flagrant partisanism and moral depravity of the Western rule-based world order has exposed its hegemony that has galvanised global public dissent against the order in the Gaza crisis, paralleling to South African apartheid. The UK and US vetoed all Security Council resolutions against apartheid in the 1950s-1960s. They abstained from the Security Council resolution 276 against South African apartheid in Namibia on 30 January 1970 amid unprecedented international public outrage. Precisely the same happened in the Security Council resolution 2728 on 25 March 2024 for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The US opted for abstention on the face of mounting criticisms worldwide. These instances are the manifestation of the Western world order that is overtly discriminatory at its best and hypocritical at its worst.

The writer is Emeritus Professor of Law, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.