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[Prefatory Note: Interview by Mohammad Ali Haqshenas, initially published on April 20, 2024, by International Quran News Agency. In light of the relative mildness of the Israeli response, I would revise somewhat my responses below. It now seems either that the US reaction to the Damascus attack or the concerns of the Netanyahu war cabinet rejected, at least for now, the temptations of a wider war. Iran as well seemed to accept an outcome of its retaliation directed at Israel, resulting in neither death nor damage was nevertheless sufficient for its purposes. The overall situation remains unstable, and hence uncertain, but Netanyahu’s escaping accountability for failures in Gaza seems for the present to rule out the option of a wider war against Iran, with US active involvement.]
QNA – Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to achieve goals in the “inhumane” war on Gaza and seeks to widen the conflict, a former UN special rapporteur says.
“Netanyahu has failed to achieve the goals of Israel’s massively destructive and inhumane response to October 7, leaving his last best option, the widening of the war in ways that make Iran the main antagonist of Western interests,” Richard Anderson Falk, a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, told IQNA.
The comments come amid boiling tensions in the region after the Israeli regime targeted the consular section of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, on April 1.
The attack claimed lives of high-profile Iranian military personnel that were in Damascus on advisory mission.
Faced with the international organizations’ inaction, Tehran decided to respond to the attack. Iranian armed forces launched Operation True Promise with dozens of drones and missiles against military targets in Israeli-occupied territories on April 14.
What follows is the full text of the interview with Professor Falk about the issue:
IQNA: What do international laws and conventions say when it comes to targeting a country’s diplomatic mission?
Falk: The immunity of consular facilities from international attack is one of the most widely respected and uncontroversial commitments of international law as formalized by the Vienna Convention on Consular Immunity. Even without this Convention Israel would be bound by a similar body of constraints that are considered part of “customary international law” or enjoying the status of “jus cogens” norms, binding on all sovereign states whether or not a treaty exists, and in the event that a treaty exists, being a non-party does not relieve a government of a sovereign state to comply with the legal framework.
In this instance such arguments are unnecessary as both Israel and Iran are parties to the Vienna Convention as are another 191 states.
IQNA: Following the Israeli strike against the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Tehran urged the United NationsSecurity Council to condemn the strike but the Council failed to do that due to the US support for Israel. What does this inaction mean when we take into account the responsibilities of the UN to maintain international peace?
Falk: Such action in the UNSC by the USA to insulate Israel from its obligation to comply with international law with regard to consular and embassy immunity is a reminder that when it comes to enforcing international law, the UN was designed to be weak, giving a right of veto to the five countries victorious in World War II, which arguably is the UN’s greatest deficiency when it comes to achieving the paramount war prevention goals of the UN.
In effect, the 1945 architects of the UN subordinated upholding international law to according primacy to these five geopolitical actors in relation to enforcement or even interpretation of relevant legal obligations. Although only five countries are accorded a right of veto in the UN Charter, it has been used, especially by the US to thwart the will of the majority of states and of members of the UN by being extended to shield “friends” and allies from accountability.
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Some years ago the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, complained about this situation by the pithy phrase “the world is greater than five.” The world may be greater, but the UN is not. There are many situations of this kind concerned with securing compliance with international law by UN members who cannot veto a proposed UN decision but enjoy a sufficient special relationship with one of the five that suffices to block any UN enforcement initiative taken against it.
IQNA: What are the long-term implications for international law if such attacks go unchecked?
Falk: The implications for international law are what they have always been in modern times. When the obligations of law clash with the strategic interests of powerful states, geopolitical policies prevail, and the core obligation of the rule of law (treating equals, equally) is ignored. This generalization applies to the pre-UN history of international relations.
A good example is the war crimes trials conducted at Nuremberg and Tokyo in 1945 where the crimes of the victors were exempted from legal scrutiny while the crimes of the losers were the subject of indictment, prosecution, and punishment. More concretely, the atomic bombings of Japanese cities and the strategic bombing of German cities were accorded impunity. A double standard highlighted by being described as “victors’ justice.”
It is a mistake to conclude that international law is useless because of this subordination to geopolitics. For one thing, an effective international legal order is essential to sustain the stability of relations in most areas of interaction among sovereign states. Trade, investment, finance, communications, travel and tourism, diplomacy are among the areas of international life that depend on mutuality of interests and the practice of equality when it comes to enforcement and implementation.
Many would insist that the US has weakened the UN by its “irresponsible statecraft.”
Beyond this, “responsible statecraft” by dominant states (‘dominance’ does not refer to the same political actors that possess veto rights at the UN) can unilaterally exercise restraint in the use of the veto or in pursuing conflictual behavior. Many would insist that the US has weakened the UN by its “irresponsible statecraft.” The extent to which the US has managed relations between the UN and Israel in an excessive manner is illustrative. It is as much a reflection of domestic political considerations as it is of the international conflictual context.
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Even when international law is flagrantly violated as it was in the Damascus attack, and Israel is protected against a punitive response at the UN, the impact on world opinion, global solidarity initiatives, and the clarification of legitimacy ensure that international law plays a role in the behavior of states. Populist action often influences the actions of leading geopolitical actors.
In the post-1945 anti-colonial wars the weaker side militarily generally prevailed politically, in part because international law and the flow of history was on their side. Transnational activism in the form of boycotts and sanctions often is vindicated by assessments that the targeted country is violating international law in serious ways.
International law, even if not implemented by the inter-governmental order of states or by the UN, is helpful in mobilizing civil society to take a variety of nonviolent coercive actions.
In short, international law, even if not implemented by the inter-governmental order of states or by the UN, is helpful in mobilizing civil society to take a variety of nonviolent coercive actions. This dynamic contributed to the collapse of the apartheid regime in South Africa 30 years ago and it is mounting ever stronger pressure on Israel in light of its Gaza genocide, further justified by its defiance of international law.
IQNA: Iran said it used its legitimate right to self-defense by launching strikes against Israel. What do international laws say about this?
Falk: There are several issues present. Does a single attack of this nature, however unlawful, engage the right of self-defense as specified in Article 51 of the UN Charter. This Charter definition is linked to “a prior armed attack” as distinct from an act of aggression, but given the paralysis in the UN, it might be deemed reasonable in view of the frequency of past lethal violations of Iran’s sovereign rights and the failure to take any punitive action against Israel’s defiant attitude in shaping national policy in the security domain.
A further international law issue concerns matters of proportionality and discrimination. Estimates vary as to the scale of the Iranian attack involving 170 or more drones, 120 ballistic missiles, and 30 cruise missiles, and yet little damage resulted, and no one killed. As Iran gave some notice of its planned retaliation to the US and other governments, it may have intended, as some commentators have suggested, that its retaliation for Israel’s responsibility in relation to the Damascus attack, its retaliation to be symbolic and performative, rather than a full-scale attack as suggested by the array of drones and missiles.
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To some extent, because of enforceability issues, what a state does in retaliation for such one-off violation of its sovereignty is assessed and judged in relation to precedents reflecting past practice. If deemed to be consistent with such practice it is legitimized and widely viewed as reasonable, whereas if not, it is regarded as unacceptably provocative. Israel has reacted to the Iranian attack of April 14 as an unacceptable provocation, despite its own prior attack causing high-profile Iranian deaths and the paucity of damage inflicted by Iran’s retaliation. Israel is proposing a retaliation to Iran’s retaliation. If Israel carries out its threat in a way that causes death and destruction in Iran it is almost certain to escalate the conflict in dangerous ways. When acting in these grey sectors of law, such as the law governing international retaliation, the criterion of reasonableness offers some guidance to both actor and responder. Of course, perceptions of reasonableness may vary greatly.
IQNA: Some analysts believe that the Israeli regime targeted the consulate to escalate tensions with Iran and use this as a cover to continue its massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. What is your take on this and how can Tel Aviv be held accountable for its crimes in Gaza?
Falk: As suggested above, Netanyahu has failed to achieve the goals of Israel’s massively destructive and inhumane response to October 7, leaving his last best option, the widening of the war in ways that make Iran the main antagonist of Western interests. The backgrounding of the Ukraine War in light of the events in Gaza lend plausibility to this kind of ‘politics of deflection.’ Israel is a master of shifting public attention from its crimes to its critics or to lesser objects of concern.
Achieving accountability in a legal sense is almost impossible so long as the Global West, especially the US, supports Israel. Any sort of attempt at imposing accountability through the UN can be blocked by casting a veto in the Security Council, which the US has not been reluctant to do. Accountability in its political sense could be achieved if Israel is treated by many governments in the Global South as a “pariah state” as was the experience of apartheid South Africa; also important are solidarity initiatives rooted in civil society activism. Accountability in a moral sense is exhibited by public expressions of outrage on the part of peoples the world over as well as by the frustrations caused by unenforceability of ICJ decisions.
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IQNA: What do you think about the efforts of the ICJ to hold Israel accountable for its genocide in Gaza, especially given that the regime is planning an attack on Rafah where more than 1.5 million displaced have taken refuge?
Falk: This question raises complicated issues. The initiative in the ICJ has been greatly important for passing judgment on Israel’s moral and political wrongdoing with respect to the Gaza genocide yet limited in effectiveness. The ICJ has been unable to implement the persuasive legal pronouncements of its Interim Orders of January and March instructing Israel to take actions to mitigate further suffering of the Palestinian people. Israel has refused compliance, backed by the US, and seems poised to go ahead with its threatened attack on grossly overcrowded Rafah, with expectations of shockingly high casualties.
The ICJ and the UN generally are neutralized by “a crisis of implementation.” In the face of stubborn geopolitical resistance, it lacks the mandate, will, and capabilities to enforce international law, let alone promote global justice. If the UN became more robustly endowed, an obvious undertaking would be to form an International Protection Force that would give meaning to the Responsibility to Protect norm. As things are, such a justifiable response to genocide is unthinkable, which conveys a lot about why so many people are disappointed by or frustrated with the UN.
Professor Richard Anderson Falk is the author or co-author of 20 books and the editor or co-editor of another 20 volumes. In 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) appointed him to a six-year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967”.
The views and opinions expressed in this interview are solely those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the view of International Quran News Agency.
Erasing the UN
3 MarDonald Trump has articulated clearly, if somewhat vaguely and incoherently, his anti-globalist, anti-UN approach on foreign policy. For instance, in late February he told a right-wing audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference that “there is no such thing as a global anthem, a global currency, or a global flag. This is the United States that I am representing. I am not representing the globe.” A similar sentiment was expressed to Congress a few days later in a tone of voice and choice of words praised by media wonks as ‘presidential.’ On this occasion Trump said, “[m]y job is not to represent the world. My job is to represent the United States of America.” Such rhetoric coming from a normal American leader would probably be interpreted as an expression of geopolitical humility, implicitly rejecting the standard insistence on American exceptionalism, exemplified in recent times by the project to create and maintain the first global state in human history.
This potentially self-limiting language might even be understood as renouncing earlier claims to assert American global leadership as the keystone of world order. George W. Bush in 2002 gave this bold leadership claim a sharp edge when he insisted the that only the US model of market-based constitutionalism was a legitimate form of governance for sovereign states in the 21st century. Or even more grandiosely, in the spirit of Michael Mandelbaum and Thomas Friedman, that the United States as a consequence of its martial strength, technological prowess, democratic values and institutions, and skills of leadership provides the world with the benevolent reality of virtual ‘world government.’ Let’s face it, Donald Trump is not a normal political leader, nor is he someone disposed to embrace humility in any form, so we should take his pledge to represent American interests while leaving the world to fend for itself with many grains of salt, especially if we consider the specifics of the Trump worldview. What Trump seems to be offering is maximum disengagement from international and global arrangements designed to institutionalize cooperation among sovereign states, and that is where the UN figures in Trump’s unfolding game plan.
Even before being sworn in as president Trump engaged in UN-bashing on behalf of, and in concert with the Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu. His dismissive comment contained in a tweet is rather revealing: “The UN has great potential, but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk, and have a good time. So sad!” Of course, we are not told what Trump thinks might bring into being this ‘great potential’ of the UN. Also not surprisingly, the tweet was provoked by Security Resolution 2334, adopted December 23rd by a 14-0 vote, which sharply criticized Israeli settlement expansion as unlawful and as creating a major obstacles to establishing peace with the Palestinians. The Obama presidency was sharply criticized by Trump and others, including many Democrats, for allowing passage of this resolution at the UN by failing to do what it had consistently done for the prior eight years, shield Israel from often fully deserved, and long overdue, UN censure by casting a veto. It seems that Trump, a bipartisan consensus in Congress, and the new US Representative at the UN, Nikki Haley evaluate the usefulness of the UN through an ‘Israel first’ optic, that is, the significance of UN is actually reduced to its attitude toward Israel, which is viewed through Israeli eyes, and is unmindful toward the wide spectrum of UN activities and contributions to human wellbeing.
It must be acknowledged that the Obama presidency did only slightly better when it comes to both the UN and Israel. True, Barack Obama in his annual addresses to the General Assembly affirmed the importance and contributions of the UN by concrete reference to achievements, and used these occasions to set forth his vision of a better world that included a major role for the UN. Also, Obama recognized the importance of the UN in dealing with the challenge of climate change, and joined with China to ensure a multilateralist triumph under UN auspices by having the 194 assembled government successfully conclude the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change. However, when it came to war/peace issues such as drone warfare, threats of war directed at Iran, modernization of nuclear weapons, and the defense of Israel, the Obama Administration flexed its geopolitical muscles with disdain for the constraining limits imposed by international law and international morality. In this core respect, Trump’s approach, while blunter and oblivious to the etiquette of global diplomacy, appears to maintain fundamental continuity with the Obama approach.
With respect to defending Israel even when it faces responsible criticism, I can report from my own experience while serving as UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine, that the defense of Israel’s unlawful behavior within the UN during the Obama years was unconditional, and deeply irresponsible toward respect for international legal obligations, especially in relation to upholding international humanitarian law and norms governing recourse to non-defensive force. American chief representatives at the UN, Susan Rice and Samantha Power, both called for my dismissal from my unpaid post in vitriolic language without ever confronting the substance of my criticisms of Israel’s murderous periodic attacks on Gaza, its excessive use of force in sustaining the occupation, its expansion of unlawful settlements, and its discriminatory administration of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. I mention this personal experience to underscore the willingness of the Obama presidency to go all in with Israel despite the awkward fact that Obama was being harshly attacked in Israel, including by government leasers, and hence also in the US. Obama was being wrongly accused of being unfriendly to Israel as compared to earlier American presidents. Israel has high expectations that Trump will sway with the wind from Tel Aviv.
More to the point, Trump’s view of foreign policy at this stage appears to be a primitive mixture of state-centrism, militarism, nationalism, overall what had qualified until World War I as realpolitik. There was back then no UN, few international institutions, no international law prohibition on aggressive war, no Nuremberg Principles imposing criminal accountability on political and military leaders, no tradition of protection for international human rights, and no affirmation of the inalienable right of all peoples to self-determination. It was a Eurocentric state system that combined the interaction of sovereign states in the West with colonial rule extended directly and indirectly to most of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Of course, now the colonial system has formally collapsed, China, Russia, and India have risen, Europe has declined, nuclear weapons continue to shadow human existence, and the specter of global warming dangles a sword of Damocles over the human condition. Trump seeks to restore a simpler world with his raucous rally cries of ‘America First.’ This is to be accomplished by carrying out a series of promises: to renegotiate trade arrangements, build walls, crush terrorism, terrorize undocumented immigrants, liberate police from accountability, bar Muslim immigration, and develop the world’s most feared nuclear arsenal. It is not a pretty picture, but also it involves a reckless disregard of the fragility of our interconnected and networked world order that mandates a globalizing framework for common problem-solving rather that a retreat to a glorious past that never was.
Of course, it would be misleading to leave the impression that the Trump worldview is bereft of any constructive thoughts about how to engage with the world. Trump’s controversial connections with Putin and Russia impart a contradictory impression: what is favorable is an evident interest in exploring prospects for a cooperative relationship, which goes against the grain of the American national security establishment, including several Republican heavyweights, which seemed likely in an expected Clinton presidency to be readying the country for a dangerous plunge into a second cold war. It would be ignited with reckless bravado by confronting Russia along its borders; in contrast, what is dubious about the Trump overtures to the Kremlin are the backdoor dealings with Russian officials during the presidential campaign and subsequently, reinforced by the ‘golden shower’ innuendo and unresolved concerns that Trump’s withheld tax returns might reveal awkward information about indebtedness or business dealings or both.
Whether Trump is going to abandon this effort to smooth things with Moscow under this pressure from the US intelligence and security bureaucracy will be a defining feature of whether his foreign policy gets early stuck in the Washington swamp, or risks the governmentally unsettling effects of discontinuity with the past. There are some cynical interpretations of Trump’s opening to Russia as primarily intended to set the stage for intensified confrontations with China. If this view is even partially correct it could easily generate a cold war of its own, although with new alignments. It might quickly lead to hot battlefield incidents that could further escalate, giving rise to renewed fears of nuclear war.
Trump occasionally expresses an appreciation of international cooperation for mutual benefit with other states, as well as recognizing the benefits of keeping traditional alliances (NATO, Japan, South Korea) alive and threatening those countries that menace the global or regional status quo (North Korea). What is totally absent is any acknowledgement of global challenges that cannot be met by states acting on their own or cooperatively through bilateral arrangements. It is here where the erasure of the UN from political consciousness is so troublesome substantively as well as symbolically. To some degree this erasure preceded Trump and is widespread. It has not been challenged as yet by even the Sanders’ end of the political spectrum in the US. I found it telling that Obama made no reference to the UN in his Chicago farewell speech, which can be most accurately understood as a more positive and polite version of Trump’s ‘America First’ engagement with the world.
Even better, on an abstract level, Trump expressed some sentiments that if concretized could overcome some of the forebodings being voiced here. In his speech to Congress on February 28th Trump said “[w]e want harmony and stability, not war and conflict. We want peace wherever peace can be found.” He went on to point out that “America is friends today with former enemies. Some of our closest allies, decades ago, fought on the opposite sides of these World Wars. This history should give us all faith in the possibilities for a better world.” If this outlook ever comes to inform the actual policies of the Trump presidency it would give grounds for hope, but as of now, any such hopes are mere indulgences of wishful thinking, and as such, diversions from the one true progressive imperative of this historic moment–political resistance to Trumpism in all its manifestations.
Dark lines of policy have also been set forth by Trump. The angry defiance of his Inaugural Address, the belligerence toward China, threats toward North Korea, exterminist language in references to ‘radical Islamic’ extremism and ISIS. Trump’s belligerence toward the world is reinforced by lauding military virtues and militarism, by appointing generals and civilian advisors to top positions, and by boosting the military budget at a time when the United States already spends almost as much on its military machine as is the total of military expenditures by all other countries, and has only a string of political defeats to show for it.
These contrasting Trump imaginaries create an atmosphere of foreboding and uncertainty. Such a future can unfold in contradictory ways. At present, the forebodings clearly outweigh the hopes. Although Trump speaks of fixing the decaying infrastructure of the United States and not wasting trillions on futile wars, especially in the Middle East, his inclinations so far suggest continuity in such brutal war theaters as Syria, Yemen, and Libya.
We have reached a stage of human development where future prospects are tied to finding institutional mechanisms that can serve human and global interests in addition to national interests, whether pursued singly or in aggregate. In this central respect, Trump’s ardent embrace of American nationalism is an anachronistic dead end.
What I find particularly discouraging about the present bipartisan political mood is its near total erasure of the United Nations and international law. These earlier efforts to modify and ameliorate international anarchy have virtually disappeared from the political horizons of American leaders. This reflects a loss of the kind of idealism that earlier energized the political imagination of those who spoke for the United States ever since the American Revolution. There was admittedly always much hypocrisy and self-deception attached to this rhetoric, which conveniently overlooked American geopolitical ambitions, slavery, and devastation visited on native Americans. It also overlooked imperial maneuvers in the Western Hemisphere and the ideologically driven foreign policy of the Cold War era that brought death, destruction, and despair to many distant lands, while keeping a dying European colonialism alive for many years by deferring to the warped logic of the Cold War.
Finally, I believe that the agenda of resistance to Trumpism includes a defense of the United Nations, and what its Charter proposes for the peoples of the world. We need a greatly empowered UN, not an erased UN.
Tags: America First, geopolitics, Israel First, nationalism, Trump worldview, UN, UN-bashing, US foreign policy