Tag Archives: Legal/Constitutional

What is the Rules-Based Order?

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By Kim Petersen

Source: Dissident Voice

In fits of, what might well be termed, masochism, some of us now-and-then tune in to the legacy media. When doing so, one is likely to hear western-aligned politicians rhetorize ad nauseam about the linguistically vogue rules-based order. Now and then, the word “international” is also inserted: the rules-based international order.

But what exactly is this rules-based order?

The way that the wording rules-based order is bandied about makes it sound like it has worldwide acceptance and that it has been around for a long time. Yet it comes across as a word-of-the-moment, both idealistic and disingenuous. Didn’t people just use to say international law or refer to the International Court of Justice, Nuremberg Law, the UN Security Council, or the newer institution — the International Criminal Court? Moreover, the word rules is contentious. Some will skirt the rules, perhaps chortling the aphorism that rules are meant to be broken. Rules can be unjust, and shouldn’t these unjust rules be broken, or better yet, disposed of? Wouldn’t a more preferable wording refer to justice? And yes, granted that justice can be upset by miscarriages. Or how about a morality-based order?

Nonetheless, it seems this wording of a rules-based order has jumped to the fore. And the word order makes it sound a lot like there is a ranking involved. Since China and Russia are advocating multipolarity, it has become clearer that the rules-based order, which is commonspeak among US and US-aligned politicians, is pointing at unipolarity, wherein the US rules a unipolar, US-dominated world.

An Australian thinktank, the Lowy Institute, has pointed to a need “to work towards a definition” for a rules-based order. It asks, “… what does America think the rules-based order is for?

Among the reasons cited are “… to entrench and even sanctify an American-led international system,” or “that the rules-based order is a fig leaf, a polite fiction that masks the harsh realities of power,” and that “… the rules-based order can protect US interests as its power wanes relative to China…”

China is aware of this, and this is expressed in the Asia Times headline: “US ‘rules-based order’ is a myth and China knows it.”

The Hill wrote, “The much-vaunted liberal international order – recently re-branded as the rules-based international order or RBIO – is disintegrating before our very eyes.” As to what would replace the disintegrated order, The Hill posited, “The new order, reflecting a more multipolar and multicivilizational distribution of power, will not be built by Washington for Washington.”

The Asia Times acknowledged that it has been a “West-led rules-based order” and argued that a “collective change is needed to keep the peace.”

It is a given that the rules-based order is an American linguistic instrument designed to preserve it as a global hegemon. To rule is America’s self-admitted intention. It has variously declared itself to be the leader of the free world, the beacon on the hill, exceptional, the indispensable nation (in making this latter distinction, a logical corollary is drawn that there must be dispensable nations — or in the ineloquent parlance of former president Donald Trump: “shithole” nations).

Thus, the US has placed itself at the apex of the international order. It seeks ultimate control through full-spectrum dominance. It situates its military throughout the world; it surrounds countries with bases and weapons that it is inimically disposed toward — for example, China and Russia. It refuses to reject the first use of nuclear weapons. It does not reject the use of landmines. It still has a chemical-weapons inventory, and it allegedly carries out bioweapons research, as alluded to by Russia, which uncovered several clandestine biowarfare labs in Ukraine. This news flummoxed Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. Dominance is not about following rules, it is about imposing rules. That is the nature of dominating. Ergo, the US rejects the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and went so far as to sanction the ICC and declare ICC officials persona non grata when its interests were threatened.*****Having placed itself at the forefront, the US empire needs to keep its aligned nations in line.

Thus it was that Joe Biden, already back in 2016, was urging Canada’s prime minister Trudeau to be a leader for rules-based world order.

When Trudeau got together with his Spanish counterpart, Pedro Sánchez, they reaffirmed their defence of the rule-based international order.

It is a commonly heard truism that actions speak louder than words. But an examination of Trudeau’s words compared to his actions speaks to a contradiction when it comes to Canada and the rule of law.

So how does Trudeau apply rules based law?1

Clearly, in Canada it points to a set of laws having been written to coerce compliance. This is especially evident in the case of Indigenous peoples.2

It seems Canada is just a lackey for the leader of the so-called free world.

One of the freedoms the US abuses is the freedom not to sign or ratify treaties. Even the right-wing thinktank, the Council on Foreign Relations lamented, “In lists of state parties to globally significant treaties, the United States is often notably absent. Ratification hesitancy is a chronic impairment to international U.S. credibility and influence.”

The CFR added, “In fact, the United States has one of the worst records of any country in ratifying human rights and environmental treaties.”

It is a matter of record that the US places itself above the law. As stated, the US does not recognize the ICC; as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the US has serially abused its veto power to protect the racist, scofflaw nation of Israel; it ignored a World Court ruling that found the US guilty of de facto terrorism for mining the waters around Nicaragua.

The historical record reveals that the US, and its Anglo-European-Japanese-South Korean acolytes, are guilty of numerous violations of international law (i.e., the rules-based, international order).

When it comes to the US, the contraventions of the rules-based order are myriad. To mention a few:

  1. Currently, the US is occupying Syria and stealing the oil of the Syrian people;
  2. It attacked, occupied, and plundered Afghanistan;
  3. It has been carrying out an embargo, condemned by the international community, against Cuba and its people for six decades;
  4. The US has been in illegal occupation of Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay since 1903; even if deemed to be legal, it is clearly unethical;
  5. American empire has a history of blatant, wanton disregard for democracy and sovereignty;
  6. The US funded the Maidan coup that overthrew the elected president of Ukraine, leading to today’s special military operation devastating Ukraine, which continues to fight a US-NATO proxy war.
  7. Then, there is the undeniable fact that the US exists because of a genocide wreaked by its colonizers, which has been perpetuated ever since.
  8. Even the accommodations that the US imposed on the peoples it dispossessed are ignored, revealed by a slew of broken treaties.3

The history of US actions (as opposed to its words) and its complicit tributaries needs to be kept firmly in mind when the legacy media unquestioningly reports the pablum about adhering to a rules-based order.

  1. See also Yves Engler, “Ten ways Liberals undermined international rules-based order,” rabble.ca, 17 September 2021. []
  2. Read Bob Joseph, 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality, 2018. []
  3. Vine Deloria, Jr., Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence, 1985. This governmental infidelity to treaties is also true in the Canadian context. []

Electoral Politics and the Illusion of Control

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By William Hawes

Source: Dissident Voice

We have all been told a lie. The lie that says democracy can be maintained only through voting, through purely representative, parliamentarian means. When the founding fathers set up the Constitution and Bill of Rights, they were wary of any truly popular, working and middle class control of the United States. Our government was to be run as a republic, designed by elites, for the elites. Our three branches of government were not simply invented for checks and balances: another reason was to stymie any massively popular mandates that would go against the interests of the oligarchy.

Today, the checks and balances used ostensibly to prevent tyranny are being used against us: even though a high majority (65%) is against government surveillance which violates privacy, and 78% want Citizens United overturned, we are stuck with a broken system and statesmen bought off by corporations. Even though 80% of eligible citizens didn’t vote in the 2014 elections, this year our out-of-touch pundits and mass media puppets prattle on unceasingly about our democracy, still misguidedly believing these candidates represent the will of the people.

Just sixteen years ago, our very own electoral system, in the form of a gilded cage, shut down the popular will of the people, as Al Gore won about 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush, yet still lost. Although the decision was made over 200 years ago, we have decided that the antiquated Electoral College system should still be used today.

More broadly, our never-ending election cycle serves as a palliative for ordinary Americans, but does nothing to cure the underlying disease and rot within our political system. Progressive liberals can take pleasure in Sanders’ statements supporting a raise in the minimum wage, debt relief for students, fighting income inequality, etc. Yet Sanders has no broad coalition in Congress to advance his agenda and to fight his “revolution”. Isolationist, non-interventionist conservatives can take pride in Trump’s support of Russia’s fight against ISIS in Syria, and his token rhetoric towards re-working unfair free trade agreements and bringing back jobs. Yet Trump’s pandering towards racists and xenophobes will only accelerate the descent towards fascism that the US has been slipping into for decades.

The second lie we’ve been told, or assumed implicitly, is that we are in control of our national destiny. Through the vote, we can supposedly make a clean slate every four years, to make up for the misdeeds of our past political leaders. The truth is much murkier. Our national security state and intelligence services have been built up to Leviathan levels, and presidential candidates are instantly discredited and marginalized for suggesting even small decreases in military spending. Corporate lobbyists and the conglomerate multinationals control the political landscape, determining the limits of discourse and shutting down anyone who exceeds the boundaries. Absurdly, third party candidates, some of the only ones with fresh ideas to invigorate our democracy, are demonized. Mainstream media coverage reinforces these imaginary limits of discussion, and Independents, Greens, Socialists, and Libertarians are relegated to the sidelines.

As the neoliberal order reinforces and deepens material poverty and intellectual ignorance, public discourse narrows without totalitarian overt manipulation. This makes issues seem as if they are progressing naturally, when public debate and consent is in actuality homogenized and conformist. This is analogous to the concept known to scientists as “shifting baselines”: here it applies to a public that accepts deeper cuts to social services, increases in privatizations, and increased militarization and policing of the public sphere, because the momentum seems inexorable and immutable. The establishment uses rhetorical threats and excuses to further corporate agendas and destroy civil society, all in the name of maintaining “economic growth” and upholding “law and order”.

The truth is that only by staring into the abyss can we collectively begin to dig ourselves out of our self-dug graves. The US has been in an unofficial recession since 2008. Millions of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, with minimal society safety nets, leading to insecurity, uncertainty and cynicism towards the future, and crippling anxiety. Politicians routinely show they do not care about the working class and the poor when they speak to the “middle class”, whatever that means anymore. Our leaders are handpicked by Wall Street billionaires, and/or defense and fossil fuel industrialists. Abroad, covert war is ongoing in a dozen or more countries in Asia and North Africa.

With so many minds confined to the hypnotic and myopic gaze focused on high technology, mass media, and our official “leaders”, 21st century man falls further into enslavement every day. As Fromm would say, we Escape from Freedom into self-indulgence and apathy, leaving hard decisions to technocrats and oligarchs. Control over our food, medicine, intellectual property, and basic social and environmental rights are consolidated into a handful of multinational corporations who inundate us with false needs through advertising and propaganda. Computer algorithms tell us what to buy, and social media manipulates our emotions, fulfilling the preaching of techno-dystopian prophets who warn of non-human intelligence guiding humanity towards dark futures.

Revolutionary fervor lurks under the surface, yet whether a popular progressive movement can blossom remains to be seen. Conversely, a missed revolution could easily result in an authoritarian and fascist takeover by the reactionary far-right. One thing we know for certain is that continuing under this two-party charade will only lead us to our doom.

Average citizens have never had any control of the republic since its founding. A complete constitutional overhaul is needed, and forms of direct, consensus, and deliberative democracy must be woven into a hybrid system. Elections should be funded by the public, with no corporate money allowed, shorter election cycles, and no discrimination towards third parties, unlike the current Commission on Presidential Debates. State governments should gain power, and federal programs reigned in and redefined towards streamlined regulation and oversight. Tax subsidies should be stripped from the fossil fuel industries entirely and redirected towards the best scientists and engineers in the field of renewable energy.

What is desperately needed is a shift in worldview to promote government that sees its job as not simply to tax and legislate, but to also support healthy life-world systems. Also, promoting humble and dedicated leaders who are stewards of community and the Earth, who do not insist on blatant exploitation of distant nations and pillaging resources, would go a long way. This cannot be done within the confines of the Democratic and Republican parties, who thrive on domination, coercion, control, and manipulation of public interests.

To break the cycle, we must collectively embrace our frailties and limitations. The deadly, patriarchal energy technologies such as the petrochemical industries and nuclear energy must be shut down. We must learn from the man-made tragedies of Bhopal, Katrina, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, and dismantle dangerous plants and factories, and begin to move humanity away from areas susceptible to natural disasters and coastal flooding. The US, Russia, and the nuclear nations must formally apologize for the atmospheric nuclear testing in the fifties and sixties which will kill millions from cancer, and ban nuclear weapons for good.

Learning to relinquish control and learning to keep one’s ego in check are two of the ultimate tests our leaders must accept. As the Tao Te Ching says:

Therefore the sages:
Manage the work of detached actions
Conduct the teaching of no words
They work with myriad things but do not control
They create but do not possess
They act but do not presume
They succeed but do not dwell on success
It is because they do not dwell on success
That it never goes away.1

  1. Tao Te Ching: Annotated and Explained. Derek Lin. SkyLight Paths. 2006.  Translation by Derek Lin. [↩]

 

William Hawesis a writer specializing in politics and the environment. You can find his e-book of collected essays here. His articles have appeared online at Global Research, Countercurrents, Dissident Voice, and Counterpunch. You can email him at wilhawes@gmail.com Read other articles by William.