Tag Archives: Politics

How to End the Iran War: Defying State Terror

2 Jun

Postwar Peacebuilding by Winners and Losers

Postwar Peacebuilding by Winners and Losers

Losing the War and Winning the Peace

Trump’s miscalculations relating to Iran’s capabilities together with a confusing by boastful claims of that U.S. attacks beginning on February 28 were a glorious success. President Trump seemed to be acting on the implicit premise that the militarily superior political actor automatically sets the terms the ending active warfare while making a transition to peaceful relations. This line of reasoning recalls the 1945 peace diplomacy at which the the winners of the war on the battlefield estabished a framework for peace that reflected this substance outcome. It was expresssed in seveeral domains. Perhaps, most noticeably in structuring the United Nations by giving the five winners of World War II permanent membership and a right of veto in the Security Council, the only organ of the UN system with authority to decide (not merely recommend) and to enforce (and not be in the position of the International Court of Justice that can decide but dependent for enforcement on the Security Council. This winners/losers framework was even more vividly exhibited by the war crimes trials held at Nuremberg and Tokyo. In these judicial proceeding only the international crimes of the losers were subjected to prosecution and punishment while the winners awarded themselves unconditional impunity. Such an outcome in the Japanese trials was aptly dubbed ‘victors’ justice’ by the historian Richard Minear in a book with that title.

The unarticulated premise of Trump’s diplomacy in the Middle East has also proceeded on a basis that only the victors in international armed encountered were entitled and empowered to dictate the terms of restored peace. The central fallacy such an approach relying on the analogy to 1945 peace building arises because of the deeply questionable boast that the outcome in Iran somehow resembles the Allied victory in the World War II sense. For starters, Iran does not accept the outcome as as a defeat as did the Axis powers in 1944-45 in instruments of surrender. Nor are such bizarre claims supported even among mainstream Western commentators who generally regard Iran as the winner, not only by not giving in the Trump demands but by the effective retaliatory measures that have inflicted high costs on the aggressors as well as on the stability of the international system. view by many Western assessments of the outcome.

Beyond cost-benefit calculations, we should never forget that Iran was the victim of unprovoked aggression, and was not the aggressor as were Germany, Italy, and Japan in 1945. This alone should serve to disqualify aggressor governments from framing peace arrangements, not only legally, but by giving weight to populist ideas of legitimacy. The United States somewhat understood this when in 1975 it accepted political defeat in Vietnam and only sought from diplomacy a graceful exit. The aggression, occupation, regime change, and state-building in the Iraq War of 2003 did give the world a bland foretaste of Trump’s reckless launching of the two Iran wars of the last year. Such betrayals of law and legitimacy were highlighted by the criminal attack on Iraq dramatized by the trial of Saddam Hussein, the deposed head of state and steadfast opponent of the US/UK aggression. These betrayals also illustrated brazen instances of absolute impunity for aggressors, somewhat accentuated by the criminal prosecution of Iraq’s head of state, admittedly a wrongdoer but for crimes unrelated to the defense of the sovereign rights of Iraq.  

In this second Iran War now in its fourth month, there is further distortion of a rule of law approach to the outcome of recourse to aggressive war clearly prohibited by Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. The aggressor although widely perceived to be the loser of the war insists without yet saying so on being treated as the victors were in 1945. There is this glaring normative difference. In the current context only Iran has the right of self-defense, as delimited in Article 51 of the Charter as it was massively attacked in a manner aggravated by the head Oman mediator’s statement that a negotiated settlement of the dispute concerning Iran’s nuclear program was on the verge of success. And yet the victim of aggression is being subjected by the Trump diplomacy with a take it or leave it ultimatum with a direct threat of a genocidal resumption of the war if Iran rejected what the aggressor was prepared to offer. The victim of aggression is thus expected to confront potentially dire consequences if it refuses the demands of the aggressor.

The extremity and vulgarity of such bullying threats challenge the Iranian leadership to be the adult in the room. Quoting Trump’s language suggests unprecedented departures from the canons of diplomacy to such a one-sided, bloody, extent as to be themselves instances of international crimes associated with prohibited threats. Whether or not enforceable as violations of international law these threats are the clearest possible instances of illegitimate diplomacy.

Trump said the following:

— April 4

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards or you’ll be living in Hell. JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

–April 7

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” Trump wrote. “However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world. 47 years of extortion corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran.”

 This style of diplomatic terrorism partially worked in Gaza with the connivance of others either too weak or insufficiently motivated to challenge the geopolitical bully. Even the UN was induced to support unanimously the Gaza application of rewarding an extreme instance of lawlessness and punishing further the extreme victimization of the Palestinian people. Iran’s distrust of such a diplomacy in light of this style of diplomacy combined with the background of the 2025 12 Day War which was paused after its goals of destroying Iran nuclear program were falsely proclaimed as achieved, representing an easy and quick victory for the combined aggression of Israel and the United States.

In this later instance Trump insisted in public utterances that Iran was also ‘defeated’ in the first days of the war, claiming the destruction of its virtually its entire naval and missile capabilities. In effect Trump’s diplomacy relied neither on rational arguments, international law rules, nor a genuine diplomatic process. Instead, it has relied for over three months on a weird, unprecedented mixture of irrationality, bullying on-again, off-again threats of state terrorism, inflated and premature claims of victory. It even advanced claims that its the assassination of the Supreme Leader of Iran on Day One of the aggression had produced a regime change in the form of new leadership ready to accommodate U.S demands (the Venezuelan model), a claim that turned out to be totally misleading. In actuality, after this assassination of a civilian, religious leader Iran enjoyed greater support from its population and continuity in its resolve to resist aggression and to devise means of retaliating (Hormuz and U.S. military bases in. Gulf) that exhibited strike capacities making a mockery of Trump’s boast of their destruction.

Trump’s premature victory claims was soon ridiculed as a further monumental miscalculation, overlooking Iran’s learning experience from the June 2025 12 Day War that Western ceasefire diplomacy was an entrapment mechanism. Applying these lessons from the past this second Iran War dragged on ruinously for the world economy. The US Government forced to appreciate the formidable economic and political impacts of Iran’s retaliatory measures, especially the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. 20% of internationally traded oil and gas passed through as well as a vital fertilizer supply chain on which many countries in the Global South depended upon to sustain agricultural productivity and food security for often food vulnerable populations.

In other words, Iran’s failed to blink in response to Trump’s genocidal threats, and hence the US faced a Plan B imperative to retreat being the only effective and least undignified way to cut losses. But this was not to be. Instead of a prudent step back, Trump beset by frustration and fury sought victory by means of bluffs and onr-sided demands disguised as negotiations that Iran, while skeptical, went along with as long as vaguely heading for some sort of mutually acceptable agreement. The only deescalation on the US side was to drop its earlier demands for regime change and an immediate agreement curtailing Iran’s nuclear program.

Current Observations

Beyond its international criminality, the Iran War was never even authorized domestically in the manner contemplated by the US Constitution, much less the UN Charter. It was also never justified at the outset by an explanation of the policy. It has become increasingly more unpopular with the citizenry as its adverse affordability effects st home were experienced. At the same time this partial backdown by Trump infuriated both Iran MAGA hawks wanting corporate access to Iranian oil and diaspora Iranians deeply resentful that regime change in Tehran was no longer on the diplomatic agenda.

Iran, long the rational actor in the encounter with the West on its side seems unwilling to settle for anything less than permanent normalization with both of its adversaries. Understandably, it resists an Israeli style ‘ceasefire’ that continues to violate Iranian sovereignty and views the stoppage of large-scale attacks as only a pause in an ongoing belligerent process rather than as an acceptance of seeking paths to a peaceful future. In view of this past and justified distrust of the US and Israel, Iran seems sensibly determined to insist on a framework of rules and peacekeeping forces committed to the avoidance of a third aggressive war against Iran after a passage of time to regroup. Iran also is demanding a lifting of sanctions and unfreezing of its frozen foreign assets so that it can resume normal state/society relations. Iran seems flexible about agreeing to negotiate at some future time a solution as to the stockpile of the enriched uranium in Iran’s possession. It is quite remarkable that despite the sustained hostility by Israel, including the assassination of nuclear scientists and others, Iran has not addressed the dangers and double standards embedded in the Euro-American indulgence of Israel’s unregulated and covertly acquired arsenal of nuclear weapons.

If the US can be persuaded to drop its threats and bullying, Iran seems willing to commit not only to the opening of the Strait of Hormuz but adding to the future stability of navigational rights of passage. This would be a notable contribution to the public good in relation to the highly interactive character of the world economy, both as to supply chains, inflationary surges, and currency markets. Such an outcome becomes daily less likely if the US continues to punch below the belt to win the peace after its most dangerous global misadventure in more than a century has managed to lose the war.

A Metaphoric Summary

This second Iran War epitomizes the limits of military power in this historical period. This has been previously illustrated by the victories of the militarily inferior side in the most notable anti-colonial wars since 1945. Whether the 20th century nationalist struggles of India, Indochina, Indonesia, Vietnam, Algeria, and South Africa are considered, and variations taken into account, the weaker side militarily controlled the political outcomes, although suffering great losses on its journey to liberation and victory. This is a lesson that the United States and Israel seem unable to learn, believing against the evidence that as in earlier times the militarily superior side always wins wars. The quip attributed to Stalin, ‘how many divisions does the Pope have?’ is illustrative of this militarist mindset deeply embedded in the obsolete consciousness of elite foreign policy advising geopolitical actors.

In the interplay of Iran and the United States there is a metaphorical rendering of the two sides that sheds light on how the conflict has unfolded since Trump reascended the presidency in 2025. The diplomacy that is playing out at present pits an experienced poker player against a veteran chess player. Trump by bluffs in the form of threats seeks to intimidate opponents with better cards, while threatening so convincingly that they fold their better hands rather than wait and see whether the bluff is backed up by a hidden winning hand. Iran quietly measures its rational options under circumstances where the options of the two sides are visible to all. The poker player acts by hidden impulses, as well as assessments of the other, often with impatience. The chess player calculates by analyzing what the opponent is aiming to do, countering with defensive moves while also probing weaknesses to gain an advantage that will if it holds create checkmate opportunities.

In real life, most often a subtle mixture of bluffs, threats, tactics, and capabilities are deployed, with more or less skill, and less rationally in times of change where secrecy and technological innovation play leading roles. Ideas are also crucial. For instance, anti-colonial victories became possible when nationalist ideologies and patriotism were seen as providing callings to resist foreign encroachments. Also, vitally important were the longer, deeper willingness of a people defending their homeland to make sacrifices and prolongs the struggle to the point  that the foreign invader become inclined to make transactional assessments of whether the gain is worth the pain.

Iran seems motivated to endure the pain of prolonged resistance, while the US is impatient to cut loose from a poorly calculated launch of an expensive, failed war, blocked only by its autocratic leader who seems psychologically incapable of admitting defeat and grabbing the option of a graceful exit, which would requires the US to impose credible constraints on its warmongering partner.

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Isreal, the United States Entrapped by Iran War of Aggression: The Quest for Real Peace

17 May

[Prefatory Note: The post below are my modified responses to questions posed by the Quds News Agency, a Palestinian youth journalistic network. The Iran War was widely rationalized after the fact as ‘a war of choice’ as if recourse to war continues to be a discretionary option in the 21st century. Iran’s resilience also suggests that non-defensive warfare is becoming a lose/lose venture in many contemporary situations, as well as radiating harm far beyond the national boundaries of the sovereign space that is the geographic locus of the combat zones, a sign of how interconnected the world has become with respect to reliable supply chains.]

  1. The Zionist regime is facing serious crises within the occupied territories, including internal disputes, reverse migration, lack of security, and psychological problems. As you know, the Zionist regime, in addition to the war with Iran, is also heavily involved in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. The Zionist regime violates the ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon on a daily basis. How do you evaluate these ceasefire violations and crises?

Israel, as led by the Netanyahu coalition adheres to an extreme version of Zionist ideology, which is committed to ethic supremacy for Jews, denial of Palestinian statehood in their own homeland, while pursuing expansionist river to the sea territorial goals by recourse to apartheid and genocide, with an outcome in Gaza of ecocide. Israel has been consistently defiant of international law as embodied in the 4th Geneva Convention on Belligerent Occupation as well as authoritatively enunciated by the International Court of Justice in a series of strong, highly professional legal assessments, supported by a large majority of the participating judges, including several from countries whose governments are complicit in many of Israel’s crimes.

Israel is paying an increasing reputational cost and pushback for these policies flagrantly in violation of international humanitarian law and universally shared ethical values. Israel has succeeded apartheid South Africa in becoming the leading pariah or rogue state in the world. Yet shamefully it continues to retain unconditional support from many Western liberal democracies, most prominently from the United States Government in an increased contested policy domains in which pro-Israel support is opposed by an emergent majority of the American people. In recent months it has been losing support from major European countries that had been complicit supporters of its genocide in Gaza.

Another way of viewing these developments is to observe that Palestine has already won the Legitimacy War for the high legal and moral ground in this encounter between the Zionist movement and the ancestral majority Arab population. In recent settler colonial situations the winner of the symbolic Legitimacy War has generally taken precedence over the battlefield military superiority of the colonial power. The French learned this lesson in Indochina and Algeria. The United States has unfortunately failed to learn a similar lesson from its experience in the Vietnam War. There is every indication that the Zionist leadership of Israel pays no attention to the relevance of the Legitimacy War in its policy calculations or to the outcomes of most political conflicts in the post-colonial world, where nationalist resistance has politically outlasted coercive foreign encroachments on territorial sovereignty that inflicts devastation and massive casualties but fails to overcome resistance until it finally withdraws in the face of combat fatigue and a rise in opposition in the metropole.

I believe that Israel faces a dismal future unless, as now seems unlikely, it repudiates Zionism, becomes a normal secular state, and respects international law and morality, and upholding with sensitivity in the context of the long suppressed Palestinian inalienable right of self-determination.

It is significant that genocidal settler movements enjoyed considerable political success prior to the adoption of the Genocide Convention of 1948 under the shadow of the Holocaust. The most spectacular examples are the breakaway white British colonies, above all, the United States, but less dramatically and more ambiguously, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand that remained members of the British Commonwealth, yet dispossessed native populations with equal or even greater fury.

  • Many international analysts and experts believe that the United States and Israel failed to achieve their goals in the war against Iran, and Iran emerged as a new superpower. What is your opinion? To what extent do you consider Iran to be the winner of this war?

Iran is emerging from this aggressive war initiated by the US, joined by Israel, stronger and more respected, feared regionally and globally. Iran is hardly ‘a superpower’ except in the sense of showing great resolve in resisting foreign, geopolitically motivated intervention, and yet surviving decades of punitive actions by Israel and the United States. This makes Iran so far ‘the winner’ in this war started on Febuary 28th by its unexpected ability to completely frustrating the aggressors states in their efforts to gain a painless victory by devastating Iran sufficiently by its ‘shock and awe’ tactics to produce a qick political surrender. Additionally, for the second time in a year Iran has endured devastating violations of its territorial sovereignty causing severe losses to the people of the country as well as unwarranted harsh sanctions. The deliberate assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader and the attack on a girls’ elementary school in Minab causing an estimated 200 deaths at the outset of the war highlight the experience of a militarily one-sided war in which the aggressors are only indirectly and marginally subject to military retaliation. Such combat tactics underscored the unwillingness of the aggressor states to conduct their military operations in a manner that would facilitate a diplomatic off ramp from its gross miscalculations of Iran’s will to resist and capacity to inflect discrediting harm to the region and the entire world by its defensive option of closing the Strait of Hormuz to maritime traffic.

This unanticipated closure of Strait of Hormuz demonstrated the extent of miscalculation on the part of the aggressor states, causing widespread hostility to the war in the U.S., especially severe for the poor everywhere and countries dependent on supply chain reliability from the Gulf region for their energy and fertilizer needs. Such an economistic combat tactic by Iran has somewhat evened the balance in the struggle, although the United States and Israel have been spared retaliatory devastation and even major economic harm. It is likely that the outcome of the Iran War will send Western war planners to revise the tactics relied upon by the geopolitical pursuit of strategic interests.

  • Some media outlets are reporting on the Zionist regime’s moves to drag the United States into war against Iran again. What is your assessment? Will the US and Israel war against Iran resume again?

In the context of autocratic leaders such as Trump and Netanyahu it is hazardous to predict what course the future will take in relation to Iran. Trump has exhibited an inability to admit political defeat and has often managed to conceal his setbacks by wildly exaggerated claims of success as he did in the early days of the Iran War. He seems to have confused exaggerated early US reports of devastating losses inflicted on Iran’s military capabilities with a victorious political outcome. When the Iranians refused to play along, demonstrating retaliatory capabilities by strikes against US military bases in the region, and later by the Hormuz closure, Trump reacted with genocidal threats and crude expletives. When Iran still showed no signs of wavering, Trump backed off, but did not cease his bluff diplomacy by pretending the war was over and it ended with an American victory. At the same time, incoherently Trump continued to utter threats directed at Iran coupled with derisive comments about their diplomatic proposal to end the war permanently. Trump is a typical display of childlike pique called Iran’s politely conveyed proposal ‘totally unacceptable,’ and insultingly discarding it as ‘garbage.’ Quite characteristically, Trump offer no counter-proposal in accord with diplomatic protocol rather in a rhetoric associated with master/slave hierarchical relations.

Where this will lead is impossible to forecast, although the present stalemate does not make me hopeful about what lies ahead.

With respect to Netanyahu the situation is somewhat different. Since the October 7 attack on Israel border villages, Israel has pursued a policy of absolute security for itself, no matter the costs to other societies in the Middle East. Such a policy has led to sustained genocide in Gaza, unrestrained settler violence in the West Bank, the Gazafication of southern Lebanon, and an insistence on the pursuit of its own goals in Iran as distinct, and more farreaching, than those of the US. Israeli goals seek regime change in Tehran, the total abandonment of Iran’s nuclear program, and an end to positive relations with regional pro-Palestinian Islamic movements in the region.

From the experience in Gaza, we should at least learn that Israeli ceasefires operate, at best, as temporary deescalation moves rather than signaling the end of violence. I would be happily surprised if Israel refrains from resuming its war against Iran, with or without the US, which seems improbable so long as Iran emerges as a stronger regional actor than it was before February 28th.

If genuine peace is to replace Western hegemony in the Middle East it must include a process of genuine denuclearization starting with Israel, and concluding with the establishment of a multinational nuclear free zone throughout the Middle East, with compliance monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Accompany this imperative step would be the establishment of a regional framework that gave due participation to Palestinian representation and established mechanisms promoting regional development.

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Responses to Questions from Asgar Ghahremanpour, Iran Daily, 4/26; Israel/Iran/IL

17 Apr

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  • 1. From the perspective of international law and the Geneva Conventions, how do you assess Israel’s targeting of civilian infrastructure, including elementary schools, universities, and hospitals — facilities that enjoy special protection under international humanitarian law? Specifically, how do such actions constitute war crimes under the Rome Statute?
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  • Israel has ignored international law since its inception in 1948, including the legal obligations of an Occupying Power in the Palestinian Territories of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Such an assessment has been validated by the International Court of Justice in its Advisory Opinion of July 19, 2024, Legal Consequences of Israel arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem. This authoritative rendering of international law in a highly professional manner, called for the withdrawal by Israel from these Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 within one years, a judicial determination overwhelmingly endorsed by the UN General Assembly. 
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  • Several years before the Gaza attack on Israel border villages of October 7, 2023 Israel was widely regarded as guilty of the distinct crime as specified in the 1973 Apartheid Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, considered binding on all states. This legal assessment was made in a series of independent studies and reports under the auspices of the UN and leading human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

    2. As a leading scholar of international law, how do you view the systematic nature of Israel’s attacks on civilian infrastructure? Do these actions, particularly the targeting of schools and universities where children and young people were present, meet the legal definition of crimes against humanity?

It is a fundamental norm of international law that the targeting of civilian infrastructure is not only unlawful, it is a war crime, if sustained it is a crime against humanity. Israel has repeatedly targeted schools, hospitals, and heritage sites resulting to severe physical damage but also in many deaths and injuries. This unacceptable pattern of war crimes has been aggravated by the blockage of humanitarian aid causing widespread disease, starvation, and malnutrition. There is little doubt that any objective international criminal court would find these combat tactics to constitute crimes against humanity.

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    3. The United States continues to provide military and political support to Israel. From the standpoint of international law, to what extent is the US complicit in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity? Under the principle of “universal jurisdiction” and the doctrine of command responsibility, can American officials be held legally accountable for their support of actions that violate international law?
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  • International law is somewhat vague about the degree to which crimes of a perpetrator also produce criminality for governments that act in complicity by the supply of weapons, munitions, funds, and intelligence. The Genocide Convention (1948) and the Apartheid Convention (1973) both impose an obligation on parties to the convention to take steps to prevent such crimes and to punish perpetrators, and seem susceptible to being interpreted as extending accountability to governments and individuals that knowingly lend support, even by way of incitement to commit such crimes.
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  • The Gaza Tribunal, the UK Gaza Tribunal, and Canadian Inquiry into Canadian Responsibility all acted on the legal premise that complicity was a crime for which those guilty should be held accountable.

    4. You have previously characterized certain actions by Israel as “genocide.” Based on the rulings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the definition of genocide in the 1948 Genocide Convention, do you believe the scale and nature of Israeli attacks on Gaza — including the destruction of civilian infrastructure, the siege, and the prevention of basic necessities — legally satisfy the elements of the crime of genocide?
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  • I have no doubt that the behavior of Israel in response to the October 7, 2023 assumed a genocidal character in Gaza (as well as later in the West Bank and South Lebanon) that would produce judicial findings that Israel was guilty of violating the Genocide Convention. The Gaza Tribunal at its public session and in its prior Sarajevo Declaration both occurring in 2024 responded to expert witnesses and survivor testimony with a clear understanding that Israel’s actions as well as those of the complicit Western states constituted genocide. The ICJ is proceeding from its 2025 Decision on Interim Measures that the evidence before supported an inference of ‘plausible genocide,’ but a final judgment will to be rendered within the months ahead to give an authoritative reasoned response on the central question of genocide.

    5. What is your assessment of the role and performance of international judicial bodies — particularly the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the ICJ — in addressing Israel’s violations of international law? In light of the ICC’s arrest warrants for Israeli officials, why has the international community failed to enforce these rulings, and what steps are needed to ensure accountability?
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  • The ICC is a weaker institution that the ICJ due to it resting on the Rome Statute that provides a treaty framework for its operations. Important countries, including the US, China, Russia, and India, as well as Israel have refused to become parties to the treaty and regard its issuance on November 21, 2024 of arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister,BenjiminNetanyahu and former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant as without a proper legal foundation. Also, the ICC proceeds only against individuals and was formally established outside the UN system.

  • Nevertheless, the ICC proceeded in a highly professional manner and came to legal conclusions that enjoy the approval of most international law experts. Sadly, there is no way of enforcing its judgments without voluntary compliance or independent UN action. So far, the political will to implement the arrest warrants is lacking.

  • 6. You have served as a UN Special Rapporteur. From your experience, why has the United Nations system, particularly the Security Council, been unable to effectively uphold international law regarding Israel’s actions? What structural or political obstacles within the UN prevent meaningful action against powerful states and their allies?
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  • There are two main reasons why international law has not been effectively implemented in relation to Israel. First, Israel enjoys the support of the liberal democracies of the West to the extent that the political will to enforce international law even in relation to genocide is not present. Secondly, the UN Security Council is the only political organ with enforcement authority, and its behavior is subject to a veto, which was cast on milder ceasefire resolutions, and was not presented for action to the Security Council in anticipation of a veto.

    7. Regarding the future of negotiations: The current ceasefire in Gaza has been announced, but many fear it is fragile and temporary. In your view, what are the prospects for these negotiations? Under what conditions can a ceasefire be transformed into a sustainable and just peace? Do you believe that the current diplomatic efforts in Islamabad and elsewhere have the capacity to produce a legally binding and enforceable outcome?
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  • The Trump diplomacy leading to a ceasefire and setting forth a plan for the future of Gaza is a mockery of international law and morality. It rewards the Israel government for committing genocide, while punishing Palestine by inflicting a diplomatic process that denies its right of self-determination. The fact that the UN Security Council endorsed this outcome unanimously (although China and Russia abstained) in SC Resolution 2803 and was applauded by the UN Secretary General for doing so are shameful acts of submission to geopolitical pressures exerted by the US on behalf of Israel.
  • 8. Finally, from the perspective of international law, what are the rights of the Iranian people and other nations in the region to defend themselves against aggression? If Israel violates the ceasefire and renews its attacks, what legal recourses and defensive measures do regional states have under international law, particularly under Article 51 of the UN Charter concerning the inherent right to self-defense?

These are complex questions that deserve detailed responses that are not possible in this format. Briefly, Iran is the victim of an unprovoked aggression prohibited by Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, making Iran entitled to act within the full scope of the right of self-defense as set forth in Article 51. 

Israel has repeatedly violated the ceasefire to which it agreed upon, and has not been called to account. Palestine as a widely recognized state entity is entitled to act in self-defense, although it lacks the capabilities to do so. Other actors would be entitled to help defend Palestine in the spirit of collective self-defense but none have chosen to do so, except in an indirect way by South Africa through its ICJ initiative to allege Israeli violations of the Genocide Convention.

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Future No Kings Protests: Weeping and Resisting in Global Solidarity with Imperial Victims Worldwide

13 Apr

[Prefatory Note: My poembelow is intended as a sequel to an earlier poem Royalism in America, written in support of the No Kings protests of was a dramatic success as measured by turnout and public outrage directed at Trump’s abusive de-democratizing policies in America. It gave scant attention to the toxic harm inflicted on worldwide others and to the kind world order that would sustain peace, development, and justice. Economistic militarism has posed serious challenges to peace, Global South sovereignty, ecological resilience, and non-exploitative development ever since 1945. This degenerate behavior has been carried to extremes in the Gaza Genocide and exhibited by the War of Aggression launched on February 28, 2026 by the United States in partnership with Israel, itself following the open imperial revival of Monroe Doctrine imperial claims over Latin American sovereignty, and inalienable rights of self-determination. We who deplore ICE and what is represents, must also deplore the prolongation of Western militarism and what it means for life of children and civilians worldwide. We must stop climbing the escalation ladder that is one miscalculation away from a nuclear inferno.]

Future No Kings Protests: Weeping and Resisting in Global Solidarity

people came

                  over 8 million

                                    over 3 thousand gatherings

unique in American history

                  beyond the numbers

                                    were quiet passions

many dogs few police

                  not resistance yet

                                    disgust disquiet

a felt message

                  of rooted protest

                                    empathy for victims

of ICE faculty firings

                  many cruelties

                                    feared endured

by fugitives from poverty

                  undocumented refugees

                                    citizens bonding is right

walls detention centers wrong       

celebrate conscience

                                    refusing to cringe

in silent rage

                  any longer

                                    better for tears

it is time

                  it is time for welcoming

                                    words chants songs

BUT WHERE WAS THE WORLD

waiting sullenly

                                    disillusioned almost

 never fond of ICE

                  yet thirsting for words

of rage and compassion

this dirty war

the girls of Minab

                  rejecting peace

rejecting diplomacy

                  mercy even kindness

                                    pretending to care

demanding of Iran

                  silence about Israel

                                    their nuclear bombs

a record of genocide

                  crimes against peace

                                    partnering warmongering

with high tech

                  ai oligarchs

                                    passionate for profits

amoral wizards

                  of the nuclear age

                                    with hefty appetites

sustained by bluster

                  limitless narcissism

                                    zero empathy

our protest leaders

                  seemed nearsighted

                                    almost blind to horrors

beyond national borderss

                  reserving their tears

                                    a few american deaths

of course tragic beyond words

                  but what of the others

                                    many thousands perishing

forgotten fallen ones

in foreign lands

                                    perishing among rubble

infants with no arms or legs

                  no parents no home

                                    yet a life to live

being nearsighted in such a world

                  is a quiet sinfulness

                                    we want farsighted protests

a nationalist No Kings day

better than red and blue politicos

                                    hiding in aipac’s shadowland

still in public foxholes

                  safeguarding our future

                                    by bankrolling our present

as greed fear rage

                  battle for the public mind

                                    FOLLOW THE MONEY

after all No Kings

                  must message

                                    the pentagon arms merchants

ICE kills individuals

                  these wars kill millions

                                    far from our shores

dear organizers

                  this is a lament

                                    THERE IS LOTS MORE TO TALK ABOUT

local anger is fine

                  and yet

                                    next time let’s feel

                                                      the pain the courage

                  As if

                  THE WHOLE OF HUMANITY

                  At risk suffering wounded

IS SUBJECT TO UNLEASHED MADNESS

                  AT THE ABYSS

Richard Falk

Santa Barbara, California

April 13, 2026

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Decoding Trump’s Deadly Geopolitics

4 Mar

Trump’s Perverse Dualism: Contra Benevolent Internationalism and Pro Geopolitical Internationalism

[Prefatory Note: I write with a sense of urgency, a time when the human species is in great peril. The Second Iran War moves us closer to an abyss of unknowable depth. It is a time when the peoples of the world are our best hope, with neither the geopolitical actors, nor the UN, nor respect for law, morality, and decency are capable of resolving the multi dimensional global crisis and promoting a justife-driven future for humanity. The alternative to struggle is depaor. As the future is unknowable we owe to those we love and all humanity to carry bright torches that light the way forward.}

An Unlawful War

On February 28 Trump embarked on a war against Iran, deliberating targeting its Supreme Leader, a girls school and calling openly for regime change. This aggression has been sanitized as a ‘war of choice’ in the mainstream press as if such an option exists in the domain of international law. This sugar-coating language seeks to divert attention from the massive breach in international law.  The UN Charter couldn’t be clearer. Its core and most vital norm is set forth in Article 2(4), which without any qualification prohibits all uses of international force except in the exercise of self-defense against a prior armed attack.

In shallow efforts to legal justifications, pro-war hawks have called this unprovoked attack on Iran amid negotiations to end the threat of war ‘a war against Iranian terrorism,’ ‘a preventive war against an imminent Iranian threat to U.S. national security,’ and ‘a regime-changing humanitarian intervention.’ These are polemical talking points but not serious attempts to offer a rationale that remotely attaches a reputable argument as to the ‘legality’ of recourse to war.

Somehow Trump gave the game away when he declared that he supports international law so long as he is the final arbiter of what is lawful or not. The precedent being set by the U.S. in launching this war of aggression against Iran will long live in infamy, and not only for its victims, but for any hope of a sane, peaceful, law-abiding future for international relations. The Iran War coming after the Venezuelan military operation is a further sign that America’s support for internationalism has been replaced by a 21st century variant of imperial geopolitics.

Withdrawing from Benevolent Internationalism

I

In the first week of the New Year the White House released a largely neglected memorandum announcing U.S. withdrawal from 66 ‘international organizations’, 31 of which are situated within the UN System. Another 35 were independent of the UN dedicated to the functional tasks of global scope. In addition to ending participation, this withdrawal also means no more U.S. funding. This would disastrously limit the capabilities and performances of these organizations, whose work is vital in so many areas of international life. Such an initiative, although unprecedented, should come as no surprise. Donald Trump has never made a secret of his hostility to internationally cooperative arrangements established to address practical global concerns, whether it be climate change, disease control, cultural heritage, economic development, human rights, enforcing piracy on international waters and most of all, the management of global security and international conflicts.

The White House alleged that these organizations “operate contrary to U.S. national interests, security, economic prosperity or sovereignty.” An accompanying memo elaborated on “bringing to an end..American taxpayer funding” and how such actions contributing to the wider Trump effort to “restore American sovereignty.” These misleading abstractions hide the true motivation behind this regressive series of moves.

The veil of deception surrounding this deliberately dramatic move against what might be called ‘global wokism,’ (the liberal extensions of domestic commitments to ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ + reliance on cooperative international arrangements + support for the UN and human rights).  The Orwellian double-speak of the Trump Memorandum was somewhat clarified in a statement issued on the same day by the ever-dutiful Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. It had this candid heading, “Withdrawal from Wasteful, Ineffective, or Harmful International Organizations.” In the text Rubio elaborates that these organizations favor global governance and are “often dominated by progressive ideology and detached from national interests.” In other words, this anti-internationalism should not be sugarcoated as a revival of outmoded traditional U.S. isolationism. It is a matter of clearing the path that impedes Trump’s brand of narcissistic imperialism as set forth in the National Strategy of the United States, which was released in November 2025.

The concluding words from Rubio also express the Trump ethos that this wholesale withdrawal from internationalism is an unmistakable message that the US Government rejects any international entanglement that requires funding or dilution of American sovereignty:

“We will not continue expending resources, diplomatic capital, and the legitimizing weight of our participation in institutions that are irrelevant to or in conflict with our interests. We reject inertia and ideology in favor of prudence and purpose. We seek cooperation where it serves our people and will stand firm where it does not.”

Trump’s Geopolitical Internationalism

What the Trump leadership does not tell the world is that the U.S. has its own preferred manner of dealing with threats to its economic and political interests as amply illustrated by the recent Venezuela military intervention, the threats to unleash an unprovoked military aggression against Iran, and the Greenland gambit best interpreted as a menacing new form of territorial piracy.

In effect, these MAGA moves are rationalized as a repudiation of the woke liberal ‘global leadership’ style of American foreign policy that exerted influence by its participation in and funding of bipartisan internationalism. The argument, not without certain merits, is that the Obama/Biden geopolitics should not be romanticized as global benevolence, the virtues of ‘a rule-governed international order,’ or an embrace of fiscal conservatism. In this spirit it is responsible to recall that U.S. pre-Trump military spending was ten times greater than the next ten states, and devoted in large part to maintaining U.S. global dominance rather than national security as traditionally understood. To be sure, it is a glaring example of MAGA hypocrisy exposed by Trump’s seeking and obtaining from Congress a 50% increase in the US peacetime military appropriation, to a staggering total of $1.5 trillion.

A considerable amount of the bloated military budget will be used to pay the high maintenance costs of 850 military bases all over the world, a posture hardly consistent with the Trump claim to reduce American foreign policy ambitions to their earlier hemispheric dimensions, which itself overlooked U.S. colonizing adventures in the Pacific region that peaked at the end of the 19th century. The smaller pre-Trump military budgets proved sufficient to finance regime changing interventions and costly failed state-building and market-oriented undertakings most visibly in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Trump predecessor Joe Biden’s  Cold War nostalgia was not restrained by military budget constraints. He most revealingly chose war rather than diplomacy in the context of the Russian attack on Ukraine, and like Trump could find even less to criticize in Netanyahu’s genocidal approach to Gaza.

Trump’s refusal to expend US dollars to fund cooperative approaches to global issues, whether involving bettering economic and social conditions of others or working to control disease, food security and climate in ways that benefit the U.S. exhibits an extremely shortsighted and dysfunctional view of national interests. True such international activities go against Trump’s electoral pledge to contract the role of the state or to curtail the dangerously expanding national debt and certainly not to reduce militarist geopolitics. While defunding internationalism the Trump military budget is the highest instance ever of peacetime military spending. It can neither be justified by national security nor of benefit to the lives of the great majority of Americans.

As the National Security Strategy released by the White House in November 2025 explained, American foreign policy would henceforth reembrace the discarded Monroe Doctrine as expanded by the addition of the Trump Corollary. This bundle of initiatives was immediately dubbed the Donroe Doctrine, giving Trump’s brand of narcissistic geopolitics its due. This formal statement served as a clumsy doctrinal prelude to the attack on Venezuela as well as added threats directed at Cuba and Colombia to expect similar treatment if they don’t do what Washington demands. Even more radical in its implications were strong assertions that non-hemispheric actors were expected to refrain in the future from economic and infrastructure involvements in Latin America. Obviously, this was a thinly veiled warning to China to downsize, if not eliminate, its extensive investment and trade relations throughout Latin America. The message to non-hemispheric actors was henceforth to avoid economic, social, and political Latin involvements or else expect hostile pushback from Washington’s commitment to ‘hemispheric preeminence.’ Time will tell whether this grandiose claim of control over Latin America will spark a new cycle of national resistance to such a brazen contraction of the right of self-determination of these countries as conferred by Article I of the Human Rights Covenant of Political Civil Rights. It is also remains to be seen how China and other countries will respond to this outright interference with their freedom to engage in peaceful relations with Latin America.

This mass withdrawal from international cooperative problem-solving also is a virtual admission in this Trump Era that the U.S. has opted for ‘transactionalism’ and post-colonial imperialism. The most salient feature of this tectonic shift away from Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy in Latin America as brazenly announced to the world, and especially to the Hemisphere, including more shockingly to Canada, is that the U.S. is giving priority to its strategic ambitions free from discarded liberal pretenses of respect for international law and the United Nations. It seems to be telling the world that its only guide when it comes to foreign policy in the future will be the warped and personalist amorality of Donald Trump. In the future, Latin America can expect to be treated as an exclusive U.S.  ‘sphere of influence,’ perhaps more accurately known as ‘a sphere of dominance.’ If such is the case, the closest recent resemblance is to the Soviet relationship to Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

A Second Look at U.S. Withdrawal from Internationalism and Pre-Trump Resistance to Latin Economic Nationalism

In this sense the withdrawal from the 66 organizations is a gigantic step away from the U.S. engagement with the liberal approach that served as a bipartisan guide to American foreign policy and the projection of its blend of hard and soft power ever since 1945. The previous posture of American foreign policy avoided the arrogant Trumpian language of ‘preeminence,’ adopting as an alternative approach to the bipartisan post-Cold War euphemistic language of ‘global leadership.’  This earlier terminology also did not play by the rules of respect for the sovereign rights of states. It too was guilty of geopolitical disregard of legal constraints when it served strategic national interests. It resorted to regime change by covert interventions throughout the Cold War on behalf of its free market ideology and in opposition to economic nationalism by elected leaders or in the aftermath of popular revolution. This pattern of covert intervention in Guatemala in 1954 generated and orchestrated A coup against a democratically elected government that was alleged to have Communist leanings, and more concretely threatened the interests of United Fruit Company, nationalizing some unused land owned by this powerful corporate investor.

This pattern of a more overt justification for promoting regime change that combined an ideological rationale with underlying hostility to economic nationalism shaped the U.S. response to the Cuban Revolution a few years later. The U.S relied for many years on harsh economic sanctions while lending mar support to counterrevolutionary Cuban exile proxies in a series of failed attempts to duplicate its earlier success in Guatemala. Castro’s leadership in Cuba was delegitimized by liberal American leaders at the time as ‘incompatible’ with ideals and values of the hemisphere yet seemed more directly motivated by a toxic opposition to economic nationalism taking the principal form of nationalizing Cuba’s sugar industry by a mixture of hardline foreign policy hawks and coup-minded Cuban exiles. In a shameful continuing display of heartless foreign policy annual one-sided votes in the UN General Assembly favor ending sanctions against Cuba that have persisted for more that 60 years after the Castro ascent to power, causing severe economic hardship for the population.

The U.S. also lent covert encouragement to the 1973 anti-Allende Pinochet coup in Chile. It also carried out in 1989 a lawless intervention in Panama centering on the kidnapping of the de facto head of state Manuel Noriega and forcibly bringing him to the US to face criminal charges of drug trafficking. The self-serving code name for the intervention was Operation Just Cause officially defended as needed for the protection of U.S. economic interests, enforcement of drug trafficking, and for the security of the Panama Canal.

These were peculiar ways of expressing neighborly good will, to say the least, covertly carried out or ideologically asserted as elements of Cold War ‘containment’ geopolitics. This anti-communist veneer masked accompanying economic motivations to crush Latin nationalism and thereby promote the interests of US corporations to uphold the security of private sector investments that had long exploited Latin resources.  This pre-Trump strategic militarism was never limited to the Western Hemisphere as many American regime changing and state-building ventures were carried out in Asia and the Middle East.  The arc of US interventionism after 1945 stretches from the CIA engineered overthrow in 1953 of Mossadegh’s democratically elected government in Iran and its replacement by the authoritarian Pahlavi Dynasty to the Venezuelan undertaking in 2026. In both cases the common strategic stakes were to ensure that the vast oil reserves of these two countries were managed for profit by U.S. corporate energy giants.

Before Trump US foreign aid, support of the UN, and assorted initiatives such as the Peace Corps were in fact idealistic features of American foreign policy. Yet all along such policies had a hybrid character. They served also as PR ploys to pursue covertly the warrior and economistic sides of U.S. ‘global leadership,’ that is, covert means to prevent countries in the non-Western world from moving toward either socialism or economic nationalism. Unlike the Monroe Doctrine Era, which was preoccupied with resisting European intervention, the Cold War period and its aftermath represented a geopolitical reset that was rooted in Atlanticism, pitting the West against the non-West in alliance with Europe, as given salient expression in the NATO alliance.

This alliance originated as a collective defense arrangement designed to deter alleged Soviet expansionist ambitions toward Europe but revealingly has limped along for more than three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was its original justifying rationale. It should not be overlooked that principally the main NATO members after 1993 joined in their complicity toward Israel’s genocidal policies in Occupied Palestine. This was convincing testimony that the Atlanticist coalition that existed during the Cold War broadened its agenda to encompass Afghanistan and Israel/Palestine, redesigning containment to validate the post-Soviet civilizational containment of Islam. Such policies fulfilled Samuel Huntington’s prophetic expectations that the Soviet collapse would produce a ‘clash of civilizations’ rather than ‘an end of history.’

Beyond Hemispheric Preeminence

Atlanticism is currently being redefined by Trump as okay so long as it submits to his efforts to control coercively ongoing confrontations with the non-West shifting their ideational locus from Communism to Islam, with Iran currently in the U.S. gunsights. As mentioned, the distinctive features of Trump’s overtly nihilistic geopolitics, despite its declared intentions, will not be confined to the Western Hemisphere. As metaphor, and sign of political pathology, Trump’s absurd fantasy that if the Bureau of Peace administering Gaza is ‘successful,’ whatever that might come to mean, it will emerge as the peace-building center of yet another ‘new international order.’ In that event, the UN will be cast aside as weak, wasteful, and ineffectual, a relic of the old order that will be replaced by the strong, efficient, and effective Bureau of Peace as administered from Washington. This outlandish project can be understood as an institutional equivalent to Trump’s anger that he was robbed of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize that he alone richly deserved.

Looked upon more objectively, if a Nobel War Prize existed, Trump would surely deserve to be the leading candidate, and likely recipient.

Where is Trump’s Foreign Policy Headed?

In effect, Trump’s anti-internationalism should be reinterpreted. The U.S. is certainly retreating these days from the Atlanticist neoliberal globalist model of world order. This disappoints and worries those who continue to value the U.S. global leadership role, however blurry its nature, as the only feasible alternative to chaos, economic crisis, and Western decline. In contrast, what Trump seems to be now proposing is undisguised American unipolarity as qualified by transactional calculations of national advantage. This is the message to Europeans as evident in the leveraging of tariffs as a policy instruments to punish and reward, most recently softened somewhat by Rubio’s ‘breadcrumb diplomacy’ speech that seemed to delight the European audience attending the Munich Security Conference in mid-February. Rubio’s well-chosen words were received as reassurance that after all Europe would not be cut loose to fend for itself and could still rely on partnering with the U.S. so long as it let Trump run the show. The standing ovation given to Rubio at the end of his speech seem best understood as an unexpectedly servile display of fealty by the leadership of Europe to U.S. global imperialism

My suspicion is that, despite such appearances to the contrary, the Trump worldview might be slouching toward a ‘beautiful’ geopolitical bargain with America’s two geopolitical rivals: China and Russia. Its enactment would involve enlarged spheres of influence reciprocally accepted, and a trilateral management of global security. The UN would be diminished, if not relegated to the status of serving minor functional issues, a kind of ‘petty internationalism’ with tight budgetary constraints. It would be naïve to suppose that such a world order arrangement would benefit the majority of the world’s peoples or address the global public good as specified in general terms by the Preamble of the UN Charter, but we should all know by now that these goals were never endorsed by Trump.

A preferable alternative architecture for a new order exists but is hampered by the inter-civilizational rivalries now flourishing to block suitable attention to the agenda of benign internationalism focusing on nuclear weaponry, climate change, xenophobia, developmental equity, racism, human rights, fashioning regulatory frameworks for weapons, AI, robotics. Such a future is also treated as irrelevant by the ‘political realists’ who wield influence in the inner sanctums of the reigning geopolitical actors.  Such thinking, however outmoded, continues to dominate the foreign policy elites of almost all major countries undermining any present prospects for generating a new world order animated by promoting the global public good. The most that can be hoped for in the near future is a more prudent and responsible realism that becomes sensitive to the limitations of militarist geopolitics. Thus, adaptation to the changing global setting is confined to rearrangements of ill-fitting and often antagonistic ‘parts’ rather than finally affirming the politics of the planet as an organic ‘whole,’ which seems alone capable of preserving a humane and resilient future.

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The Epstein Entrapment Network: revelations of crime and the predatory erotic lives of the rich and powerful

27 Feb


[Preliminary Note: Responses to Qs addressed to me by a Turkish journalist, Murat Sofuoğlu, affiliated with TRT World. My responses have been modified.]

  1. What do Epstein’s ties with the high and mighty say about Western ‘elite’ structures?

These ties reveal networks of power and influence that has long been shielded from legal accountability, and even moral scrutiny. Epstein’s network of friends and associates gives to the wider public some sense of the lure of decadence with regard to sexual gratification. After Epstein’s first conviction of criminal abuse revealed in graphic detail in the batch of documents so far released. The dimensions of predatory sexuality, victimizing young women and old men, are convincingly confirmed in a documentary film titled Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich. The film also reveals a total absence of empathy for the helpless victims of these unlawful and despicable forms of sexual gratification with teen-age innocent girls drawn by money and deception from poor and vulnerable families. Exposure to these patterns of behavior by those who sit comfortably atop skyscrapers of corporate, financial, and political power influence enjoy an almost automatic entitlement to back alleys of collective narcissism apparently treated as if normal, an ethos that appears common among economic and political elites. Even when the shielding fails, as it did in the Palm Beach Epstein operation of his sanctuary for upper class pedophile. It was only the uncommonly conscientious investigations of the high and mighty that local law enforcement and dutiful police officials built a criminal case against Epstein. Even then the wheels of justice barely turned. Rather than the right to mount a defense during ‘a day in court’ such gilded perpetrators are generally able to intimidate, bribe, and threaten those representing the state as prosecutors and judges face hurdles that evidence alone cannot overcome. One lesson to be learned is that money and class often speak louder than law in such high-profile situations, even in the United States where the rule of law is sanctified in public discourse.

In an interesting presumably coincidental preview of the Epstein saga was the mainstream movie, Eyes Wide Shut,  starring Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise illustrating a tamer more religiously framed hideaway for rich and powerful sexual predators. Significantly, the sexually abused women were adults, compensated as if prostitutes, and without any political linked agenda as underlying Epstein’s habitual escapades on his provate Caribbean island and New York and Palm Beach mansions. Yet a suggestive similarity is the coercive suppression of any divulgence of such goings on in public space. Whereas Epstein equipped his various homes with sophisticated surveillance systems to ensure confidentiality by blackmail evidence to disgrace any informer or insider, the film relied on outright thuggery as threat and violence as needed. Confidentiality was achieved by keeping the guest list to a trusted coterie of carefully vetted rich and powerful had every social and material incentive to keep the events securely under wraps.  

2. Why do so many rich and powerful people need underage girls for their sexual satisfaction? What does this say about these powerful people?

As suggested, it is less the illicit need than a carefree demonstration of impunity for what occurs in the collective privacy and confidentiality provided by Epstein’s supposedly secure and luxurious playgrounds. It comes to an abrupt end at the undisclosed cost of surveillance, which created a different set of vulnerabilities to blackmail than the risks of being exposed held accountable for the criminal exploitation of underage girls, who often are scarred for life by the experiences of pleasuring older men, and have no off ramp by way of resignation from high visibility career positions. Epstein’s fastidious management pf the predatory sexual behavior of guests, as is now well-established. was monitored by a sophisticated network of cameras apparently installed and even managed by Mossad agents. In effect, a punitive system to safeguard privacy and confidentiality, perhaps further reinforced by threats of physical retaliation to anyone daring to expose linkages between sexual gratification oblivious to law with the exertion of political influence among the rich and powerful augmenting Israel’s leverage in the United States. As yet, there is no reliable information on whether Epstein’s extraordinary wealth was owed in part to these Israeli ties, but the frequency with his interactions with the former Israel Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, is to say the least, suggestive of a principal/agent relationship.

3. Does this show something is profoundly wrong in Western political and financial power networks?

More investigative work is needed to disclose whether there are equivalent non-Western outlets for the sexual appetites and political maneuvers of the rich and powerful. In one sense, Epstein’s files do not indict the West as such. It seems primarily an American class phenomenon, with exceptions made for such transnational Western elite public figures as Prince Andrew and Ehud Barak, Israel’s former Prime Minister, and unlikely prominent intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky, Stephen Pinker, Alan Dershowitz, and even Stephen Hawkins whose associations did not necessarily involve participation or even knowledge of the lurid sides of what I call Epstein’s entrapment network. The participation by Americans was more salient than the involvement of Europeans, and certainly than non-Western upper echelons. This is tentatively confirmed by the contents of some leaked and unredacted files detailing the multiple, as yet unspecified involvements of the Epstein network with such eminent public figures as Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.


4. How do many ordinary people, who want to have a quiet family life with their partners and kids, perceive Epstein’s links with big politicians and rich people?

I suspect there is great diversity of response, although the public majority culture is portrayed by the media as one of moral outrage. In a few high-profile instances, the disclosures to date have resulted in some prominent resignations and disavowals by such academic celebrities, as the former Harvard President, Larry Summers, and the wild-eyed ultra-Zionist controversial professor and lawyer for controversial criminal defendants, Alan Dershowitz, and by corporate billionaires and celebrity lawyers. It appears that those who identify as Republicans overwhelmingly are in denial or minimize the engagement, especially of Trump with the Epstein phenomenon. This minimization is reinforced by the selective release and redaction of files that might incriminate Trump or MAGA adherents. So far there has been a bureaucratic coverup that has limited the impact of the release of what should be in political culture that still upheld the rule of law on ‘ordinary people’ as shaped by partisan party politics, with Democrats far more appalled than either Independents or Republicans.

Epstein was an unusual figure for such a dark role, harboring seemingly genuine interests in higher education and technological innovations along with his strong, yet still vague and shadowy attachments to Israel. He befriended and managed to somewhat implicate Noam Chomsky, a critic of Israel and bitter adversary of Dershowitz. Chomsky’s image the most admired and influential public intellectual of our time has been tarnished by his murky connections with Epstein who seemed a financial advisor and friend of Chomsky and his wife. What remains blurry is the extent to which Chomsky was deliberately attracted to be a friend or to be rendered vulnerable a high-value target of Israeli intelligence.

There is also an element of governmental power at play in this unfolding Epstein affair. The fact of Trump is America’s most unabashedly autocratic president further bolstered by a Republican grip on Congress and the Supreme Court, and of course, the Executive Branch has so far led to the shielding of some, the exposure of and would have been handled somewhat differently if a liberal, upstanding president was in the White House such as Barack Obama, although even Obama refrained from any legal scrutiny of highly controversial behavior of his predecessor, George W. Bush, widely believed to have authorized interrogation practices in Iraq and elsewhere, that violated human rights and the International Convention on Torture (1984), ratified by the U.S. in 1988, and at least 173 countries..

In concluding it may be the highly relevant to note the degree of moral hypocrisy on matters of family loyalty and sexual mores that exist in the U.S. as distinguished from its European soulmate states, which seem more comfortable acknowledging the frailties of human nature. By no means is this meant directly or indirectly as a partial exoneration of those who conspired in their own entrapment within ‘Epstein’s World.’ Nor does this whitewash ordinary people who brush morals and law aside in favor of loyalty to a political party or national leaders. The loudest chant of American constitutionalists has long been that we are ‘a country of laws, not men’ now only overheard as a dissident whisper.

5. Do these ordinary people question the legitimacy of the system they are living under these powerful people’s influence? If so, would you project a significant popular challenge against the existing political/financial system?

A growing number of ordinary citizens in the United States are shocked by the ugly spectacle of the Epstein disclosures, but this may lead in the short-run, at least, to greater repressiveness of independent media and oppositional critics rather than to significant reforms, must less a systemic challenge to the deep roots of the Epstein crisis in the inequalities currently wrought by wealth and political power. There are various forms of corruption evident in most countries of the world, and this is accompanied by moral hypocrisy that effectively shields private behavior from public scrutiny. In the U.S. context the present declining popularity of Trump’s second term leadership may embroil him and other establishment figures in belated attempts to impose criminal accountability for ‘statutory rape’ of underage girls, a crime that in the U.S. has no statute of limitations.

So far, the Republican Party has privileged party loyalty to moral and legal accountability with respect to Trump and his friends and associates. Whether the widening cracks in this support structure will withstand further disclosures is of course uncertain. We can expect that Trump will do his best to divert attention even if this means a costly and dangerous second attack on Iran even more unprovoked that the first attack of a year ago.

What we do know with some confidence is that the Epstein files will continue to preoccupy both elites and ordinary citizens for some time to come, at least in the United States. It should also have the international effect of casting additional doubts about the U.S. attachment to liberal values of human rights and democracy, and of course about the claims of moral superiority associated the creed of American Exceptionalism, persuasive as a public philosophy in the US yet dismissed with increasing cynicism elsewhere in the world.

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Whither World Order: The Lamentable Present, The Unknowable Future

22 Feb

[Prefatory Note: My Responses to An Egyptian Journalist, Muhamed Abd Elaziz 15 Qs on International Law, Gaza, Personal Experience, and many other topics. My most comprehensive interview on current international maladies, 2/20/2026}



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1- Throughout your long career in international law, what was the moment when you felt your work made a real difference?

It is hard to say what qualifies as ‘a real difference.’ In my opposition to the Vietnam War as a scholar of international law I think that I made some difference in the public discourse, especially after years of unexpected resistance by the Vietnamese people inspired by their charismatic leader, Ho Chi Minh. On my return to the USA from my first of two wartime visits to North Vietnam in 1968, I conveyed to the US Government peace proposals more favorable to US interests than what was negotiated by Henry Kissinger several years later. The media gave my trip and proposals prominent attention.

Similarly with respect to the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 that brought the Islamic Republic of Iran into power, especially as a result of media quotations of my generally supportive opinion of the popularity and legitimacy of the anti-Shah movement.

After I became active in promoting solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for their basic rights my views were excluded from mainstream thinking in the media, Congress, and even in academic circles, although it did not prevent me from being active on oppositional media platforms and among peace/justice civil society groups. My activism climaxed with an unexpected appointment by the UN Human Rights Council to be the Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine (2008-2014), which gave me an important venue to advance my views, although it was accompanied by defamatory campaigns to discredit my role as an independent expert reporting on Israel’s systemic violations of International Humanitarian Law and commission of Crimes Against Humanity.

I continued to write books and opinion pieces that expressed my commitment to progressive causes within the US and the world, with abiding efforts to promote denuclearization of international relations, ecological resilience, and anti-colonial/anti-imperial geopolitics, as well as the promotion of US foreign policy position more compatible with the global public good and greater sensitivity to moral imperatives.



2- Which international conflicts do you think were mishandled?

This is a big topic, and I can only give a short response. In my view the peace diplomacy in 1945 and after the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the 9/11 attacks, the Ukraine War, and the October 7 Palestinian attack on Israel’s villages close to the Gaza border were handled particularly poorly from the perspective of sustainable peace, human rights, and the pursuit of world order and global governance reform..

After 1945, the US gave up on a crucial treaty effort to rid the world of nuclear weapons, it oversaw the design of the UN in ways that kept the management of global security under the control of geopolitics rather than Rule of Law, and at first took a non-committal stand against European colonialism. After the Vietnam War, it failed to appreciate that in most instances the legitimacy of anti-colonial warfare prevails in wars overcoming the possession of military superiority by the colonial side and its allies. Its foreign policy elites dedicated themselves to eliminating the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ by which public opinion in the US opposed intervention and wars fought with no perceived or convincing national security justification; it is generally believed that the Vietnam Syndrome was overcome by the rapid, casualty-light and inexpensive Iraq War of 1991.

After 1945, the Global West, led by the US was far more concerned with preparing for conflict with the Soviet Union than it was with creating a world order respectful of international law and devoted to the global public good. The result was to identify national interests with militarized geopolitics, an expensive and risky arms race, an ideological conflict between market economics and socialism, and producing internal repression of political dissent. After the Cold War, positive modifications with respect to nuclear weapons, climate change, UN reform could have been undertaken, but was effectively resisted by Kissingerian realism premised on beliefs associated with hard power historical agency,

After 9/11 the US without any consideration opted for a global war of terror rather than seeking a more stable framework resting on respect for the sovereignty of states in the Global South, a stronger UN, and cooperative frameworks for the enforcement of criminal law. Instead the US resorted to high tech tactics killing many innocent civilians, displaying no respect for territorial sovereignty in its reliance on drones, shock and awe tactics, with the goal of stricter management of security subject to US global dominance of a unipolar world order.

After the Ukraine War, rather than recourse to diplomacy and a negotiated compromise, to which Russia was receptive, the US-NATO led response chose to wage a geopolitical war against Moscow at the expense of Ukraine and its people. Now four years later the various parties seem unwilling to negotiate in good faith, allowing the killing to continue. It seems likely the war will end as it might have four years earlier by an exchange of negotiated concessions and security reassurances.

After the October 7 attack on Israel launched from Gaza, Israel initiateded a genocidal assault with the backing of leading Western countries, with spillovers to the West Bank and region. The genocidal strikes continued killing at least 80,000 Palestinians and were implicitly linked to the Israeli quest for ‘Greater Israel’ that called for the erasure of any Palestinian resistance, either by ethnic cleansing or total victimization. The nature of the alignments on either side of this conflict exposed the Islamophobic reflex of the leading Western liberal democracies and the heartless quest for Jewish primacy in Israel even if meant institutionalizing a harsh version of apartheid. 

3- How do you see the state of human rights internationally today?

The observance of human rights has declined in recent years, especially in the liberal democracies of the West, but also reflecting authoritarian and xenophobic trends throughout the world, and in virtually all leading sovereign states. The voluntary adherence to the norms of international law with respect to human rights has also been negatively affected by the failure to address Israeli apartheid and genocide, and the widespread repression of pro-Palestinian solidarity protests and policy initiatives. The internal curtailments of human rights in the leading liberal democracies has also set back all efforts to increase compliance with human rights legal stardards.


4- How would you assess the current role of the United Nations in resolving existing conflicts, such as those in the Middle East or Palestine?

The UN is weaker than it has ever been since ir was established in 1945. This partially the result of the UN’s inability to protect the Palestinian people, and others, from Israel’s defiance of international law, highlighted by the refusal to respect Palestinian basic rights, above all, the right of self-determination, related rights of resistance to its denial in this kind of settler colonial context, and reaction to Israeli uses of force against several neighboring countries. This has been dramatized by allowing Israel and the United States to oversee in a manipulative manner the current ceasefire arrangements and control the future of Gaza, institutionalized in the shameful Board of Peace, which rewards the perpetrators of genocide and severely punishes its victims.

5- If you could change one previous international decision, which one would it be and why?

It was the decision back in 1945 to entrust the management of global security to non-accountable geopolitical actors, accorded an exemption from a legal duty to comply with the UN Charter. A closely related decision, important symbolically and substantively, was to impose accountability for war crimes only on civilian, military, and corporate leaders of the losers in World War II, coupled with the refusal to allow legal scrutiny of the crimes of the winners. The winners were expected by the American prosecutor, Justice Jackson to adhere in the future to the standards imposed on the losers at Nuremberg but consistently failed to do so with impunity.

6- Is it possible for the Iran nuclear deal to be revived and for Iran, the US, and Israel to live in peace?

It seems doubtful so long as the US steadfastly supports Israel’s patterns of hegemonic security policies applied not only to the Palestinian people, but to neighbors that either are sympathetic with the Palestinian ordeal, most notably Iran, or are perceived by Israel’s leaders to pose future obstacles to its goals of hegemonic regionalism. Peace in the region also depends on the West giving up its ideas about prevailing in an inter-civilizational struggle between the Islamic Middle East and the Christian West, a current struggle whose deep psycho-political and economistic roots can be traced back to the Christian Crusades of earlier centuries.

For regional peace to prevail in the Middle East to six interrelated steps must be taken: self-determination for Palestine, Israeli renunciation or drastic revision of Zionist ideology seeking ‘Greater Israel’ and regional hegemony; ending all US sanctions imposed on Iran; Israel’s giving up its nuclear weapons capability coupled with a monitored treaty to make the Middle East a nuclear free zone; the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that critically examines the various versions of the Israeli and Palestinian narratives from the time of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 forward to the present; s negotiated cap on military spending and sales by Israel; a Declaration of Coexistence based on ethnic equality, and signed by both Heads of State and reinforced by a pledge of Permanent Members of the Security Council to suspend. any use of the veto in connection with any recurrences of the Israel/Palestine conflict. .

7- In your opinion, did the US and Israeli strikes succeed in destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities?

Of course, it is impossible to know with any precision, but all signs suggest that Iran has restored its enrichment facilities, which may both enhance its defensive capabilities and make it more vulnerable to further (unlawful) attacks by Israel and/or the United States. There is no justification in contemporary international law with respect to preventive war, including to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weaponry.

8- Do you think the current Iranian regime is facing an existential challenge, and how do you see the future of the Islamic Republic?

The Islamic Republic has proved remarkably successful over the decades in opposing external and internal opposition to the stability of national governance and to the protection of its rights as a sovereign state. Iran has been unfairly dealt with respecting its nuclear program, given Israel’s and the US hostility, threats, and uses of force since 1979. It is the core example of the doctrinal application of the clash of civilizations hypothesis that assumed policy relevance throughout Atlanticist region in the post-Cold War global setting. Trump’s pro-Israeli diplomacy has intensified the challenge of military attack and regime-changing interventions, but his transactualism could also lead to some kind of pragmatic agreements that would include a long-deferred normalization of relations with the Islamic Republic. Trump’s brand of narcissistic geopolitics includes a willingness to make abrupt and unexpected policy shifts.  

9- Did the IAEA play a secret role in revealing the uranium enrichment levels to Israel and the US?

It seems the IAEA was the victim of Western geopolitical manipulations, but it is difficult to set forth reliably the fully story without access to the classified inner activity  that led to these irresponsible IAEA reports on the restoration of Iranian enrichment capabilities.


10- What do “ICC” and “ICJ” need to have stronger enforcement mechanisms?

The ICJ to be stronger at the stage of enforcement would benefit from a curtailment of the P5 right of veto in all instances where the issue is one of ICJ enforcement. The GA could also urge compliance or even the imposition of sanctions, not with the force of a legal obligation, but as a moral duty.

The ICC, which unlike the ICJ, is not part of the UN System and relies on the treaty framework of the Rome Statute for its operations has currently no means of enforcement beyond the voluntary compliance of non-parties, which include the three leading geopolitical actors of our time, Russia, China, and the United States. A strong GA resolution might produce various kinds of pushback by sovereign governments and civil society actors that could increase pressure for both compliance and success. An alternative would be a UN Charter amendment giving the GA authority to enforce the judgments of both international tribunals. Such an innovation would depend on the P5 to recommend unanimously that such an amendment be adopted..

In the end, the political will of major states would be decisive in many instances, either to induce compliance or to support non-compliance. At present, most governments are resistant to obligations that encroach on national sovereignty, but in this setting of enforcing ICJ (including Advisory Opinions) and ICC decisions have a greater formal claim if the state in question is a member of the UN or a party to the Rome Statute.



11- Did Israel try to win you over to its side during your time as the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestine?

No, they made no attempt after losing their opposition to my appointment as Special Rapporteur at the Human Rights Council. Their entire effort during the six years I served as an unpaid UN appointee was to discredit me as an objective observer, accusing me of ethnic bias in repeated defamatory smears. Sadly, the UN exhibited little support even when I was detained in an Israeli airport prison facility while on a UN mission seemingly responsive to inflammatory comments from UN Watch, an NGO that devotes its energies and resources to the aggressive and often unscrupulous   defense of Israel against critics, resorting to lies and insults. It is a sign of UN weakness that UNW is neither disciplined in its behavior or more appropriately delisted by the UNOSOC as possessing UN representational credentials.

12- How do you see the changes in Gaza and the entire Middle East since 7 October?

Although the future is unknowable, especially given a variety of factors, and hopeful possibilities should not be excluded from the political imagination although the present circumstances make the near future looks dark from perspectives that favor constructive responses to Palestinian grievances, greatly aggravated by Israel’s recourse to genocide for more than two years, flagrantly violating the Genocide Convention. The entire world witnessed in real time the horrifying daily images of the cruelty of the genocide, as well as Israel’s defiant posture, and the shocking civilizational support Israel received from the white Christian world on the first few months after October 7.  At the same time, Trump is mercurial leader capable of making abrupt changes in the US role, already somewhat evident clinging to a two-state solution contrary to Israel’s wishes, although vaguely promised, and then only to be realized at some distant point in the future. It does appear to counter Israel’s present drive to establish Greater Israel as soon as possible. However, such a pledge is not without its contradictions. These are mainly shown by the absence of US criticism of Israel’s  indulgence, if not encouragement of settler violence in the West Bank, an approach more consistent with de facto annexation than of any serious effort to demand that Israel policies meet the preconditions for establishing a viable Palestinian state. At present, without even the courtesies of deception, Israel seems more determined than ever to make any form of Palestinian statehood less and less feasible or desirable.

Besides this, Israel and the US pay no attention to the 2024 ICJ Advisory Opinion clearly obligating to withdraw from all three Occupied Palestinian Territories, a judicial outcome endorsed overwhelmingly by a GA resolution.

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13- Do you see President Trump’s plan as an American occupation of Gaza?

It is a somewhat original joint colonizing vision to be implemented by a multi-state ‘Board of Peace, advantageous for Israel, punitive for the Palestinians, and under the uncontested partisan leadership of Donald Trump. It is in my view a disgrace that the UN Security Council unanimously endorsed the Trump Plan in SC Res 1803, which is a symbolic vindication of Israel’s genocide and a further punitive framework for the indefinite subjugation of Palestinians to a blend of ethnic cleansing and a harsh version of apartheid. Whether the outrageous Trump idea of supervising the reconstruction of Gaza to be the Riviera of the Middle East is situated somewhere on a policy spectrum linking predatory disaster capitalism to imperial geopolitics, and hopefully it is the imperial fantasy of a displaced realtor, and like many such flights of fancy, never to be realized. .

14- During your meeting with Ayatollah Khomeini, what exactly took place between you? How would you describe the impact of that encounter on you?

In Jannuary 1979 I was accompanied by Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General, and Donald Luce, an anti-war religious leader, accepting an invitation from Mehdi Bazargan, the Interim President of the Islamic Republic, asking me to form a small delegation to visit Iran so as to have direct contact with the revolution and its leaders during the climactic days that were on the verge of producing victory for the popular movement of opposition to the Shah. During our time in Iran the Shah abdicated as his downfall as Iran’s leader became the only unfinished business of the victorious revolution. It was a perfect moment to have this conversation with symbolic leader of this revolution that surprised the world by its successful resistance to the Shah’s repressive apparatus.

While we were still in Iran, just prior to Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Iran, we were told that because our visit was viewed as a success we were told that as a surprise reward we were being offered the opportunity to meet with Ayatollah Khomeini on our way back to the United States at his exile residence in a suburb of Paris/.

We had rhe meeting sitting in a circle within a large tent on the lawn of his residence. We covered many topic of lasting significance, but the one that remains uppermost in my memory was Ayatollah Khomeini’s initial questions to us as to whether, unlike in 1953, the United States would accept the will of the Iranian people and be open to normal diplomatic relations, which was his preferred future provided it was not a ruse to induce the new leadership to drop its guard.

We also inquired about the wellbeing of the Jewish minority, and his response was reassuring: “Judaism is an authentic religion, and if Jews do not involve themselves as agents of Israel, it would be a tragedy for us if they left Iran.” I came away from our several hours sitting on the ground in the tent with the distinct impression that Ayatollah Khomeini’s had a distinct preference for a peaceful diplomatic future with the West. Unfortunately, due to a number of factors, this has remained ‘the road not taken’ and to quote the renowned American poet, Robert Frost’s final line of the poem,.’and that has made all the difference.’

There is much else of interest that transpired at that meeting, including our impressions of this charismatic historic religious leader, but that would unduly lengthen my response, and will be saved for another occasion.  

15- Why did you receive death threats for several years after your New York Times article titled “Trusting Khomeini,” and how did you deal with it?

Of course, I do not know the true motivations of those who transmitted death threats. It was more than disagreement with my assessments. I suspect it was to make me fear the consequences if I did not remain silent in the future. These threats did not alter my strong conviction that the US Government should at least test the willingness of Iran’s new leadership to act in accord with this stated desire for normal diplomatic relations based on mutual respect and shared benefits. It was an opportunity missed to demonstrate that the US was ready to grant legitimacy to the outcome of internal national struggles to shape the political identity of a sovereign state, an essential feature of the right of self-determination.

Because the road taken by all US leaders was one of confrontation and hostility toward the Islamic Republic, not in keeping with a rational assessment of US national interests,, it challenged the new leadership in Iran to give the highest priority to regime security and territorial defense. Whether these preoccupations were responsible for the harsh and seemingly intolerant policies of theocratic governance is impossible to discern. Interpreting whether the decades that followed might have been different if the US and Israel had not constantly Iranian historical anxieties about the past  is a matter of pure speculatiom. Perhaps, a more convincing picture will emerge if Iranian policy insiders offer a careful analysis of how the security threats and destabilizing policies spearheaded by Israel, backed by the main members of the Atlanticist political community that emerged after World War II, turned governance into an understandable obsession with national security and regime stability.

16- Do you believe the George W. Bush administration was complicit in the 9/11 attacks? Do you possess any information that you haven’t previously published?

I am not an expert on the ongoing debates about what really happened on 9/11, but I do know that there are many loose ends and unanswered questions in the official version of the alleged Al Qaeda attacks. There is no present receptivity in Washington to opening the issue to objective scrutiny by an independent international commission of inquiry.

I have not seen any convincing evidence of active complicitly by George W. Bush beyond the well-established facts of complacency in the face of warnings of some kind of terrorist attack. The immediate launch of the Great Terror War was a regressive response, but consistent with the policy impulses of the ‘foreign policy elites’ that control the shaping of US national interests. An additional source of suspicion arose because the US was being pushed by Israel to adopt an anti-Iraq position in the Middle East. It is doubtful that the 2003 Iraq War would have been launched without the camouflage of the 9/11 attacks, which provided a falsely constructed rationale for engaging aggressively against any adversary of the United States, especially in the Middle East. It is worth revisiting ‘the clean break’ neo-con manifesto drawn up with encouragement from Israeli leaders in the 1990s.

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Geopolitical Obstcles to International Law Enforcement: Deficiencies in the Management of Global Security

9 Feb

[Prefatory Note: Ressponse of Richard Falk to Questions posed by the Iranian journalist Asgar Ghahramanpour, 9. February 2026]

1. **In light of the rise and consolidation of far-right and nationalist movements—such as the Trump phenomenon in the United States and similar trends in Europe and elsewhere—how do you assess the current status of international law within the emerging global order?**

   Would you say that international law is increasingly retreating in the face of power politics?

International law is definitely being marginalized in contemporary international relations by the rise of ultra-nationalist political leaders and authoritarian governments. This negative trend is making a severe impact on political consciousness as a result of the adoption and revival of an imperial foreign policy by the U.S. under Trump, although the pragmatic use or neglect of international law in the management of global security preceded Trump, and can be traced back to 1945 when the winners of World War II became self-anointed as the architects of ‘a new world order,’ a role most prominently associated with the design and establishment of the United Nations.

It is notable that the UN Charter designated the Security Council as the only political organ of the new Organization that was provided with the legal authority to reach obligatory decisions binding on sovereign states. Most significantly it refused to allow international law or ensure democratic representation of the non-West to control outcomes in the Security Council in the face of opposition of even one of five winners of World War II given permanent representation while other member states were selected on a term basis. The role of international law was curtailed by according these five winners in 1945 not only permanent SC membership but more significantly a right of veto. This meant that if a breach of international law was to be dealt with even by a majority vote of 14-1, it would still fail, and have no legal effect if the lone dissenting vote was one the P5, which not only crippled the role of the SC in relation to geopolitical rivalry, as during the Cold War, but was highly undemocratic if evaluated from demographic perspectives. This absence of democracy also was present in the internal makeup of the P5 giving the US, France, and the UK great power status in the form of SC permanent membership and the veto, and excluding such Global South great powers as India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Brazil, creating an everlasting Western dominance in the SC, including a right of each P5 member to block any effort to reform the SC because all amendments of the Charter were nullified unless the support of all five.

The net result of this extensive role of the SC in UN affairs has been to make the Organization submissive to the P5, and to confer geopolitical primacy with respect to the management of global security, including war prevention and resistance to genocide as well as subordinate to the strategic interests of the powerful rather than responsive to the regulative principles of law that should possess universal applicability, and governs the strong and weak alike.

It is a mistake to think that the whole enterprise of international law is failing. International law works effectively in any substantive setting in which there exists a mutual interest in its applicability. The routines of international life, including most commerce and trade relations, air and maritime safety, communications, tourism, and diplomatic representation are complied with because the logic of reciprocity is operative. This is not true in domains of behavior such as armed conflict in which differentials of hard power determine political outcomes and uphold strategic interests and reflect the ambitions of the powerful. In these latter contexts international law has long been marginalized by design leaving the management of global security to the discretion of the geopolitical actors for any given issue involving the implementation of international law as the disappointing UN response to the recent Gaza genocide illustrated.

2. **Do you believe that the era in which international law functioned as a normative framework capable of restraining state power is coming to an end?**

   If so, what kind of alternative global order appears to be taking shape?

It is a fiction embraced by naïve legalists to suppose that international law ever controlled the management of global security or inhibited the strategic priorities of dominant states. There were eras of greater peacefulness when Great Powers acted prudently with respect to militarization and conflict resolution. The idea of a rule-governed international order applied selectively and within the limits set by those domains of international life where reciprocity prevailed, and differentials in power and wealth were minimized as in international trade and investment as compared to the colonial era.

The experience with nuclear weapons is illustrative of this pattern of marginalizing international law despite the risks of leaving the use of this apocalyptic weaponry of mass destruction entirely under the control of the most dangerous geopolitical actors. Rather than favoring denuclearization and disarmament, the same five winners in 1945 continued to leave this weaponry essentially unregulated except to the extent of seeking maximum control over the spread of the weapons to other states. The result has been costly arms races, dangerous crises, abetted by a scheme of deterrence + nonproliferation, with a resulting nuclear hegemony. If ever there was a basis for universal rule governance it was with respect to nuclear weaponry, but it could not overcome the ideology of ‘political realism’ that dominated the thinking of foreign policy elites of the major states, and was systemically opposed to accept any arrangements that restricted their hard power capabilities.

Whether this discouraging character of international relations will change in light of the Gaza Genocide, aggressive uses of forces, extreme violations of human rights, ecological instability is impossible to predict, although it seems unlikely in the present atmosphere. The antics of Trump’s narcissistic geopolitics are generating a tidal wave of anxiety about the human future, as well as bearing witness to the devastating consequences of unchecked lawlessness. We can only hope that civil society activism and more responsible political leadership will emerge to create a more viable international legal order than was framed in 1945.

3. **Based on your experience as the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, to what extent does this case illustrate the gap between the principles of international law and the political will of powerful states?**

   What are the broader implications of this gap for the credibility of the international system?

There is no doubt that this gap between law and politics exists in relation to the management of global security, including war prevention, conflict resolution, genocide, apartheid, and ecocide. This should not confuse us about the reliance on compliance with international law by all sovereign states, including those most powerful, whether labeled as Great Powers or in the UN context as the five permanent members of the Security Council or P5. As suggested in my prior responses where the logic of reciprocity applies to the behavior of sovereign states, international law provides a stable and convenient basis for the myriad of interactions that make routine international interactions trustworthy. For the agenda of global security and strategic ambition the design of the UN itself recognized the lack of political will to close the gap between international law and its dependence for implementation on political will and capabilities, epitomized by the right of veto conferred upon the winners of World War II, arguably at the time the most dangerous political actors in the world.

At present, despite the widespread disappointment and tension arising from this gap, there is still the absence of political will among the leading geopolitical actors (U.S., Russia, and China) to close the gap. From a legal perspective, this gap is insulated from remedy by each of the P5 possessing an unrestricted right to veto any proposed amendment of the UN Charter. The most that can be realistically envisioned in the near future is more prudent or responsible behavior by these dominant geopolitical actors and by secondary geopolitical actors of limited geographic scope to restrict their lawlessness to the security agendas of. regional geopolitical configurations of power, although U.S. imperial geopolitics and Russian and Chinese spheres of influence geopolitics ensures that the harmful gap between what international law requires and what international politics determines will continue to cause immeasurable harm, especially to vulnerable peoples and nations, or states that have resources coveted by geopolitical actors.

4. **Some argue that international law has always been subordinate to politics rather than an independent constraint upon it.**

   From your perspective, is the relationship between politics and international law inherently conflictual, or is there still room for a constructive and mutually reinforcing relationship?

To avoid confusion and repetition, please consider the relevance of my responses to earlier questions. In sum, with respect to all aspects of global security international law, in practice and design, has long been subordinated to politics, but only for regional and global political actors. And then only since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 when Europe gave birth to a self-serving format for an international normative order that legitimated coercion in the course of colonizing projects in the Global South.

A deficient version of symbolic international law enforcement occurs at the conclusion of major wars ending in victory for one side. As in the aftermath of World War II the winners prosecuted the war crimes alleged to be committed by surviving German and Japanese individuals at Nuremberg and Tokyo, which critics persuasively derided as ‘victors’ justice.

As also suggested in previous responses, where reciprocal benefits result from compliance, international law has long provided a reliable framework guiding the behavior of individuals, corporations and financial institutions, and governments in many international interactions, although even here there are important subtle

encroachments by the rich and powerful on the rights of the poor that escape from the discipline of a legal order administered on the basis of equality of all

5. **At a time when powerful states increasingly disregard or actively undermine multilateral institutions such as the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and the global human rights regime, how do you envision the future of multilateralism? **

There is little doubt that this is a bad time for internationalism, given global trends toward ultra-nationalism and xenophobia, which tend to devalue cooperative multinationalism. These trends are accentuated by the intense US hostility to internationalism given Trump’s diplomacy on behalf of the United States, which continues to be the most influential world state, although in danger of losing this status due to China’s continuing rising star. Early in 2026 the U.S. Government, by executive order, withdrew and stopped funding for no less that 66 international institutional arrangements, 31 of which were within the UN System.

The global scope of ecological challenges as well as the complexities of digital age communications, global migration flow, vulnerabilities to disease epidemics makes it likely that a new cycle of functional pressures will in the years ahead restore and even expand dependence upon multilateralism. This seems probable, although the signature reality of the present global setting is radical uncertainty, or put differently, the unknowability of the future.

6. **Can global civil society, academics, and human rights institutions play a meaningful role in restoring the legitimacy and effectiveness of international law, or are such efforts structurally constrained by the current global power configuration?**

In line with unknowability of the future, an initial response is to underscore unknowability, together with an awareness that there are many historical examples of surprising happenings in international life that were not anticipated by relevant experts or public opinion. Among notable recent examples is the victory of Vietnamese nationalism in opposing the militarily superior US intervention in the Vietnam War. Other important examples are the collapse of the Soviet Union, the peaceful transition of the apartheid regime in South Africa into a multiethnic constitutional democracy, and the Arab Spring attacking dictatorial rule in several Arab majority countries at least briefly. In light of this defining feature of  unknowability, it is appropriate to struggle for a desirable future. This suggest that civil society activism is worth supporting as strongly as possible in the hope of both restoring and enhancing the role of legitimacy and withit, the effectiveness of international law in relation to global security and human rights priorities.

Of course, resistance from current geopolitical configurations, statism, and predatory capitalism is to be expected, and current prospects for a successful transformation of irresponsible patterns of geopolitics seem low, this may change over time in unpredictable ways. The struggle for law and justice is imperative, even without any assurance that it will be successful in the short term, but neither is it doomed to failure.

7. **Finally, what advice would you offer to the new generation of international lawyers and policymakers seeking to defend and advance international law in a world moving toward unilateralism, authoritarianism, and weakened global governance?**

My first advice would be directed at teachers and commentators on law and global politics to adopt a paradigm of international law pedagogy that emphasizes the importance of justice-driven law in relation to global security, human rights, and ecological policy agendas. My second advice would be to urge all students of international relations and law to be required to study international law within a framework that is less vocational and more humanistic as integral to engaged citizenship in democratic societies. This educational commitments needs to be supplemented by societal beliefs that such moral literacy is expect to be present in all phases of the professionalism of law, lawyers, and judges, as well as of foreign policy advisors.  

This reorientation of pedagogy would also necessitate a prior critique of prevailing versions of ‘political realism’ that continue to dominate foreign policy decision-making, especially in the governments and ‘think tanks’ of geopolitical actors in a manner, which among elements would downgrade the historic agency of militarism. This would include studying the record of defeat of the militarily superior side in most anti-colonial wars since 1945. The link between international law and international legitimacy would also be stressed to make the key point that if international law is not implemented by governments and inter-governmental institutions it still legitimates civil society secondary enforcement capabilities in the form of solidarity initiatives and informal pressures by protests and boycotts, mounted to promote national and international sanctions.

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World Order After 1945, After Vietnam War, and After Second Coming of Trump

3 Feb

[Prefatory Note: This post elaborates upon a lecture of mine on Janurary 26, 2026 at a webinar in a series convened and moderated by the Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee, which has kept alive the relevance of the Vietnam experience to current struggles. The invitation to me proposed the topic of ‘World Order After Vietnam.’ In this modified text I devote attention to the relevance of world order after 1945, as well as the Vietnam War itself, and subsequent developments.

One point of clarification: We speak of the Vietnam War rather glibly, which glides over the crucial reality that tragic abuse of power is better understood as ‘America’s War in Vietnam.’ Having noted this, I will stick by the standard terminology for the sake of convenience.

Feedback is particularly welcome as I intend to work further on this theme.

I welcome this occasion to be at virtually together with comrades in the Vietnam anti-war movement, and grateful to John McAiliff & Doug Hofsteter for this invitation, as well as Chris Appy who heads the Ellsberg Initiative at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for illuminating and lucid comments in his role as discussant. I had my doubts as to whether I could meet such a challenge. Part of my predicament in this talk recalled T.S. Eliot’s words to a NYC audience at the start of a poetry reading that I attended over 60 years ago: ‘I am reluctant to make any comments about my poems to an audience that knows more about them than I do.’ In that vein, I realize that there are many with us who have experienced the Vietnam and its aftermath with deeper experience and knowledge than I bring to this challenging topic.]

We are now living through a period of radical uncertainty with respect to the future of world order, an atmosphere agitated by the Gaza Genocide and Trumpism, the resurgence of geopolitical primacy and rivalry, prospects for radical modifications of modernity due to AI and related technological innovations, a transactional and narcissistic US leadership, a discredited  and weakened UN coupled with the emergence of cooperative international frameworks, a divided US versus a resurgent China, and a threatening conflict reality that is stimulating increased military spending, new modes of warfare, danger of warfare fought with nuclear weapons. A time of world order transition or rupture, from the end of the Cold War & US dominated unipolarity to a yet unknown future—What does this Trump phenomenon and the Chinese rise portend for the human future?

I think a few brief bullet points on world order before Vietnam would be helpful in giving some background to both changes and continuities relative to world order after Vietnam:

–World Order after WWII was designed by the winners, which defeated hopes for a peace system restraining hard power militarism, in accord with the precepts of political realism that understand international history as largely the story of military superiority and economic inequality as expressed  a favorite quote of hyper-realist through the ages, and recently by Henry Kissinger, and now Stephen Miller: “the weak do what they must, the strong do what they will.” Thucydides has been typically interpreted wrongly endorsing this cynical outlaw whereas more careful reading of the context of this adage suggests it is a prophetic warning that such Athenian corrupt behavior with respect to morality will lead to its downfall. The intention, contrary to the amorality of post-Machiavellian realism, was a counsel of moral self-constraint to those with power at a time when the prohibitions of international law did not yet exist.

 –the design of the UN could have worked had the winners of World War II acted with moral and now legal self-restraint: permanent veto rights for the winners, criminal accountability for the losers at Nuremberg, Tokyo; it is true that international law seems never to have been intended to displace the geopolitical management of global security by the architects of world order after 1945, but neither was its existence denied; the hope then was that at least the liberal democracies of the West (US, UK, and France) and their allies, would voluntarily exhibit respect for the contemporary code of law and morality as embodied in the UN Charter, and thus comply with international law and morality without burdening the Organization with enforcement duties that would have required a superior military capability even in relation to nuclear superpowers, which would have caused a different set of problems that have been identified by criticisms of world federalism as the solution to peacebuilding challenges.

–In retrospect, we should realize that even the leadership of liberal democracies could not be trusted to comply with international law or observe moral values if in tension with the pursuit of strategic ambitions or the supposed requirements of national security. As a result, it is understandable to blame the leading members of the UN, and not the UN, for its disappointing performance in relation to global security, genocide and ecocide prevention, human rights generally, and peaceful resolution of international conflicts. 

–Cold War excesses from the outset suggest wartime trust was dissipated even prior to the surrender of Germany and Japan: covert regime-changing interventions displacing elected leaders: Mosaddeq in Iran (1953); Arbenz in Guatemala (1954); political assassinations Lumumba, Castro Ché Guevera, attempts for both ideological and economic reasons; Soviet failure to hold elections in Eastern Europe and interventions to uphold the pro-Soviet status quo; see James Douglass, Martyrs to the Unspeakable: Assassinations of JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and RFK (2025) interpreting the corrupting impact of these violent killings on progressive politics in the US.

–death rattle of European colonialism but not delegitimized by the UN Charter or among conservative elite circles. The emergence of predatory globalization as legitimized by Clinton, Bush presidencies, neo-con influence favoring Huntington view of Cold War Islamic threat demonized as ‘terrorism’ and associated with Israel’s frontline struggle against suicide bombing reaching a climax in response to Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

The Pedagogy of the Vietnam War

         –Lessons learned by US foreign policy establishment (militarized bureaucracy; Think tanks)—avoid ground warfare & minimize US casualties, abolish the draft, manage media discourse; technological innovations; proxy war option (Ukraine: Biden-fight Russia by arming Uk & discouraging diplomatic compromise); pacify citizen activism; overcame ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ in Iraq War (1991)

         –Peace Movement failures: sedated by the ‘Vietnam Syndrome into ‘game over’ delusions, overlooking systemic character of the partnering of militarism, nuclear hegemony, capitalism and political leaders’ short-termism

Major Developments in World Order Since the Vietnam War:

         –Vital turning points: end of Cold War; 9/11, Al Qaeda, & Osama bin Laden; Great Terror War; Iraq War and occupation, 2003; rise of & rivalry with China; Ukraine War; Israel’s response to October 7; anti-woke, anti-immigrant politics in liberal West; Abraham Accords and geopolitical deference of Muslim-majority countries to US hegemony; reelection of Trump, 2024; inauguration of Zorhan Mamdani, 2026, ICE rampage, ecological and climate change neglect; global rise of authoritarianism, xenophobia and ultra-right nationalism; transformative technological innovations- AI, robotics, hybrid warfare.   

         –formal defeat of European colonialism, but not of colonial mentality, generating economic and security residual colonialism in Africa, imperial encroachments elsewhere

         –US reliance on economic warfare, principally through sanctions broadly applied and political destabilization; the current Iran Protest Movement

         –end of Cold War, Berlin Wall, the Gorbachev vision of a new world order & Russia’s decline, temporary withdrawal from geopolitical rivalry; neoliberal globalization and the deindustrialization of the US, heavy indebtedness, precarious finance-oriented hegemony through dollar after abandoning the gold standard;

         –Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ reliance on Israel to fight US proxy wars in the ME; Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilization’ hypothesis- containing Islam rather than USSR and left ideologies; Israel given a free hand in the region, as well as with Palestine (liberal societies swallow severe legal/moral wrongs of apartheid, genocide, ecocide); containing Islam—Iran, Hezbollah, Syria, Muslim Brotherhood,  Egyptian coup; Huntington validated by 9/11 attack, Taliban, ISIS, Hamas.

         –US state-building ‘democratizing,’ containment p.us projects: Libya, Iraq (after 2003), Afghanistan, and now Venezuela; chaos, not democracy, state-destroying;

         –The anti-apartheid campaign contra South African racism, UN support and global solidarity via boycotts, divestments, sanctions;

         –The world order deficiencies as Israel intensifies repressive apartheid policies by recourse to  Gaza genocide, with West Bank spillover; discrediting of UN as weak, geopolitically neutralized, and most shamefully, a unanimous endorser of the Trump Plan in the SC 1803 (Nov. 17, 2025), given approval by SG, formation of Board of Peace at World Economic Forum, 2025;

         –US withdrawal from and hostility toward ‘internationalism’; started the year by withdrawing participation and funding from 66 international institutional arrangements-31 from within the UN System. These include the Climate Change Framework Convention, WHO, UNESCO; Board of Peace as shift toward what might be called ‘imperial internationalism;’

         –Rise and spread of authoritarianism, decline of rule of law internal to the state, from the Orban model to the rightest recent victory in Chile (some friction, Brazil: Lula over Bolsonaro; Trumpism; hard borders; realignment prospects.

         –US National Security Strategy 2025: Declaration of Imperial Internationalism

                  //Venezuelan attack

                  //US Western Hemisphere preeminence (challenging China’s trade and infrastructure diplomacy of mutual interests

                  //rejects liberal post-Cold War  

What Prospects for New Order

         –Spheres of Influence trilateralism 

        –Imperial Internationalism

         –End of NATO and alliance diplomacy; hard and soft power transactionalism; Europe as marginalized; a new state-centric world order

         –Rise of Regionalism and Civilizationalism (clash and alliance models)

–UN Reform or Collapse: a reset to moderate geopolitical influence, and restore confidence

–Functional Internationalism: cooperative global problem-solving mechanisms

–Polycentric Balance: Bandung-revived NAM; BRICS; Chinese Development Collective Framework

–Revolt against international payments system as tied to dollar: failure or success

–Extending US Imperialism: Venezuela, Greenland, Canada, Cuba, Iran; and reactions- European realignment, heightened geopolitical rivalry

–Important global challenges: climate change, ecological instabilities; heightened risk of major wars

–key national challenges: reviving democracy and human rights; demilitarization and domestic investment in infrastructures, restored respect for truth and rationality, internationalism, prudent geopolitics; more equitable distributions of wealth and income, defeating the economics and politics of inequality

Concluding Remarks

–a time of radical uncertainty and unparalleled complexity; humility about forecasting the future;

–present world order precarious, unjust, militarized

–nuclear hegemony as geopolitical core of managing global security

–transactional statism versus civilizationalism

–hope, struggle, and the unknowable future

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Is a Non-UN Conflict Resolution Framework Feasible, Desirable? Trump’s Board of Peace is an Obstacle and Warning

29 Jan

[Prefatory Note: Initially framed as questions responding to Middle East journalist, Mohamed Abd Elaziz, raising question about Stage II of the Trump Plan for Gaza, inaugurating the Board of Peace at the Davos World Economic Forum this January. The questions raises some key issues. My assessment is that the Board of Peace deserves to fail. It insults the Palestinian people, is blind to flagrant violations of the Genocide Convention, and indirectly further undermines international law and UN authority with respect to global security.]


1- How do you view the legitimacy of establishing an independent peace council to intervene in international conflicts, compared to the traditional mechanisms of the United Nations?

The mechanism may work in certain situation, but not if as in the Trump Plan it is

slanted in favor of the wrongdoers and is prejudicial to the legal rights of the aggrieved and victimized party. The idea of an independent peace council could only achieve legitimacy if it is mindful of the imperative of equality with respect to the parties when addressing conflicts and its activities are professionally shaped by their joint participation, with an eye toward determining whether part of the peace council’s writ  covers potential accountability of one or both parties in the form of reparation or recommendations of investigation and possible prosecution for individuals seemingly involved in wrongdoing in relation to law, morality, and human rights. Given the present structure of international relations, it seems highly unlikely that leading states would participate and fund such an independent peace council with a mission of conflict resolution as it would encroach upon the traditional sovereign prerogatives with respect to strategic national interests.

2– Do you believe that such initiatives could serve as leverage for UN reform?

It could in principle, but not in the setting of Israel/Palestine, where the partisan nature of the interactive process is one that by its composition, framework, and agenda rewards the perpetrators of genocide and further victimizes those who continue to suffer from severe and cruel wrongdoing by Israel, the U.S, and complicit enabling states. To the extent that UN affirms such an unjust initiative it brings shame to the Organization as it did by the unanimous endorsement of the Trump Plan in UNCR RES 2803 on January 17, 2026, and further stigmatized of the Organization by the show of support for the resolution expressed by the Secretary General, which included encouragement for the establishment of the misnamed Board of Peace that can be more accurately identified as the Settler Colonial Peace Council.

At this time, it is hard to say whether the Trump Plan, especially the Board of Peace by its apparent intention of marginalizing the UN, dramatized by situated its inauguration at the Davos World Economic Forum rather than within the UN System might generate a strong effort to engage in UN reform. This would require a considerable mobilization of pressure and is risky in that might lead to the US exit, which would actually play into Trump’s anti-internationalism approach that seeks to heighten US transactionalism as well as geopolitical outreach.

3- What are the potential risks if a peace council were to assume a larger role than the United Nations in managing global crises?

I have no confidence that such an independent peace council could work unless free from geopolitical manipulation by the US, Russia, China, and above all the US. It would need to be funded independently, and its executive members determined by some process that assured selection would take account of geographical, civilizational, ideological, gender diversities and maybe even strived to obtain an inter-generational balance. If, and this is a big if. such a peace council could become truly independent of the narcissistic geopolitics of Trump it might pose a constructive challenge to transform the UN as now constituted. The UN has performed disappointingly over the decades when it comes to conflict resolution, the enforcement of international law, the accountability of wrongdoers. This is not an accident. It should be remembered that the UN was set up in a manner that protected the strategic interests of the winners of World War II, as exemplified by conferring the right of veto and permanent membership in the SC as a way to ensure that the UN would act in a manner hostile to their perceived priorities. If a IPC could be based, staffed, and funded on the primacy of justice rather than currently as a reflection of the primacy of geopolitics it might displace the UN in the vital policy sphere of the management of global security. It is with respect to global security that the UN has most consistently failed the peoples of the world. This was illustrated dramatically, grotesquely, and fundamentally, by the recent pathetic efforts of the UN to oppose the Israel/US genocidal partnership that has produced the ongoing acute Palestinian ordeal.

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