America Pounces on International Law Again
(Translated)
News:
On Sunday evening, US President Donald Trump announced a successful US Air Force bombing of three major sites in the Iranian nuclear program. (BBC)
Comment:
This American strike on Iranian territory, regardless of the pretext under which it was carried out, is a clear example that the so-called "international law" is nothing but a deception, the aim of which is to legitimize the great powers' colonization of weak countries.
When there is agreement among the members of the UN Security Council on a solution to a particular international problem, they issue the appropriate resolution and enforce their will by force under the guise of legal legitimacy. In such cases, everyone talks about the rule of international law.
This happened, for example, in Resolution 1973, which effectively allowed the overthrow of the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
But if the great powers do not agree among themselves and cannot reach a unified position or joint military coordination, then "international law" immediately turns into just an empty slogan that can be easily ignored.
Something similar happened in 2003, when the United States failed to obtain a resolution from the Security Council and decided to invade Iraq unilaterally. Before that, in 1999, NATO countries invaded Yugoslavia, then Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.
Every time something like this happens, the aggressor state tries to present its crimes in a beautiful guise of "concern for civilians", or "restoring violated justice", or other glamorous slogans.
For example, the Ukrainian crisis represents a fierce and competitive conflict between the great powers within the framework of what is known as the "European problem". Russia, after considering that adhering to international law constitutes a threat to its existence, decided to invade Ukraine, ignoring all its international treaties and obligations.
As for the strike on Iran, the United States has once again trampled on international law. In fact, the American nuclear power, along with the Jewish entity - which is supposed to possess a nuclear weapon - is unilaterally imposing its will on another independent country. It is worth mentioning that in this comment I rule out the fact that this American aggression against Iran is happening even though the latter has been one of the most prominent implementers of American policies in the Middle East over the past decades.
On the one hand, the United States is using its veto power against any resolution issued by the UN Security Council condemning the Jewish entity, even though this pampered child of America is committing every war crime imaginable against the people of Palestine in the Gaza Strip.
On the other hand, realizing that the UN Security Council, due to the veto power - this time from Russia - will never issue a resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iran, the United States is launching a unilateral strike against its nuclear facilities.
The essence is that the concept of "international law" cannot truly exist, because the concepts of "law" and "international" are inherently incompatible. There are three reasons for this:
1- Law is a normative legal act issued by a representative (legislative) body, i.e. by a ruling authority. However, an international ruling authority cannot exist by definition.
2- The law must be enforceable, i.e. there must be a mechanism to implement it. Within the state, such a mechanism exists in law enforcement agencies. At the international level, this is not possible, because the current "peacekeeping forces" are only formations of the armies of individual countries. These armies in turn will not protect international law or, for example, the sovereignty and interests of other countries if that protection poses a threat to their countries or conflicts with their interests, as is the case in the Ukrainian crisis and in the violation of the Budapest Memorandum by the aggressor state - the Russian Federation - and also by the other signatories to this agreement.
3- The law regulates relationships, and this regulation is only appropriate within the framework of one society, and cannot be applied when the actors are sovereign states, because each state has the sovereign right to establish or avoid relations with other states according to its interests.
Since the emergence of the idea of international law, there has been disagreement among Western jurists about the essence of its rules. Many have questioned its binding force. For example, Western thinkers and jurists such as Immanuel Kant, Thomas Hobbes, John Austin, and Georg Hegel denied the existence of general international law.
But later, under pressure from the great powers that were promoting this idea, the so-called "international law" became an accepted reality in international relations.
As a result, international law, with all its institutions, has become merely a tool for conflict and competition between countries such as the United States, Russia, Britain, France, and China. Meanwhile, the rest of the countries, their peoples, resources, and lands have become victims of the criminal use of this "law" by those major powers.
This is precisely the main reason for the state of instability that prevails in many parts of the world today, where the suffering of the people of Palestine, Iran, or Ukraine is only a small link in an endless chain of crimes committed by the great powers.
Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut-Tahrir
Fadl Amzaev
Head of the Media Office of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Ukraine
