Accusations have burgeoned that President Donald Trump is determined to destroy the “rules-based international order” established after World War II. Some of his actions certainly resemble old-style, 19th century imperialism. His initial demand that Denmark sell Greenland to the United States fits that description. One could readily envision previous presidents such as Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, or William McKinley making a similar move for U.S. territorial aggrandizement. Trump is a rather unashamed imperialist, willing to use threats or even military force to bully other nations.
However, despite the recent surge in warnings around the world (especially in Europe) that his actions are wrecking an effective, rules-based international system, that allegation is unfounded. The so-called rules-based system that the United States and its Western allies established has always been fraudulent and self-serving. Even some who bemoan the loss of that arrangement, such as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, have had to concede (however grudgingly) that the system has defects. According to Carney,
We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false — that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
The reality has been far more stark, ugly, brutal, and hypocritical than Carney’s sanitized version. Despite their pious, idealistic statements throughout the decades, U.S. and allied leaders have waged numerous wars of aggression, selectively empowered corrupt, murderous tyrants as clients, stolen land and other resources from disfavored nations, and embraced flagrant double standards with respect to both international law and basic ethics.
The so-called rules-based order has had two very different sets of rules. Washington and its allies (especially its allies in NATO) could do virtually anything they wanted without fear of adverse legal, economic, or military consequences from the “international community.” Countries not enjoying the status of being U.S. allies or clients—and especially those that were considered Western adversaries—have been shamelessly harassed and bullied. Frequently, such coercion has even occurred in the name of upholding noble international norms.
Members of the U.S. and European foreign policy establishment have repeatedly emphasized that the rules-based order “preserves stability worldwide.” For example, Joe Biden’s administration and its supporters insisted that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine posed a potentially mortal threat to that system and, therefore, must be decisively defeated. George H. W. Bush’s foreign policy team invoked the same rationale to justify assembling a coalition of countries that used military force to expel Saddam Hussein’s army of occupation from Kuwait in 1991.
Yet the United States and its allies have launched military interventions on multiple occasions throughout the post-Cold War era that contemptuously violated the purported standards of a rules-based system. NATO’s meddling in Bosnia’s civil war by bombing Bosnian Serb targets in 1995 certainly was inconsistent with such norms. The violation was even more blatant in 1999 when NATO launched an air war against Serbia, a recognized member of the United Nations, and then proceeded to amputate Kosovo, one of Serbia’s provinces.
Proponents of Washington’s various military interventions typically justify such deviations by arguing that principles of justice and human rights sometimes must overrule normal, recognized standards of state-to-state conduct. The justice/human rights rationale featured prominently in the case that Bill Clinton’s administration other interventionist advocates made with respect to the Balkan wars. Proponents of U.S./NATO military action alleged that a Serb-orchestrated genocide was taking place in Bosnia, even though the fatality totals touted at the time (200,000 to 250,000 mostly Muslim civilians) were consistent with those in a typical civil war. More rigorous and credible post-war calculations put the number of deaths at fewer than 100,000—including Serb fatalities.
Nevertheless, the same “genocide” narrative became a crucial feature of NATO’s intervention in Kosovo. This time, the claims were even less credible. Subsequent analyses confirmed that only 2,000 deaths had taken place prior to the onset of NATO’s bombing campaign. Even some candid supporters of the intervention, such as Brookings Institution scholars Ivo H. Daalder and Michael O’Hanlon, later conceded that what had occurred in Kosovo did not constitute genocide.
The rationales for the Western military interventions in Iraq and Libya were even weaker than those invoked with respect to Bosnia and Kosovo. Allegations that Saddam Hussein’s government was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks were baseless, as were the dire warnings that Baghdad possessed an arsenal containing weapons of mass destruction. Saddam’s human rights record was awful, a point that pro-intervention types predictably highlighted. However, it was not dramatically worse than the behavior of other governments, including Washington’s close allies Saudi Arabia and Israel. Nevertheless, George W. Bush’s administration and much of the West’s foreign policy elite approved the invasion and occupation of Iraq, in violation of the supposed rules-based international order they claimed to uphold.
The Obama administration’s justifications for leading a NATO assault on Libya were weaker still. Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi already had terminated his government’s embryonic nuclear program years earlier, and his relations with the West seemed on the mend. However, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other members of Obama’s foreign policy team cynically exploited one of the periodic armed rebellions in Libya to launch an air war to achieve forcible regime change—a point that Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates implicitly conceded. Other opportunistic NATO powers eagerly joined the latest regime change crusade.
The results of the Western military interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria were barely short of catastrophic. Helping Islamist rebels against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad produced a bloody civil war with hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees. That massive refugee flow has caused instability and major social tensions in other countries, including several of Washington’s European partners. The U.S.-led regime change campaign also has brought to power an ISIS alumnus and his henchmen as Syria’s new rulers.
The NATO intervention in Libya unleashed total chaos for several years. Nearly two decades later, the country remains divided, dysfunctional, and incapable of credible self-government. Although the level of violence is far less in postwar Bosnia and Kosovo, the overall degree of political and economic dysfunction is substantial. A patronizing multilateral imperialism under the auspices of the UN, the United States, and the European Union merely has supplanted the old-style imperialism that individual nation-states typically implemented in their spheres of influence.
Donald Trump may be guilty of many types of misconduct, including a worrisome fondness for authoritarian methods. But destroying a just and effective rules-based international system is not among his offenses. Such a system has never been anything more than a cynical, hypocritical farce.
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