Mush-headed US perspective — a comment about the supposedly rules-based order

© 2024 Peter Free

 

23 February 2024

 

 

Alas, the Empire is falling?

 

Consider the following mush from Ishan Tharoor at the Washington Post.

 

The column laments the fragmentation of the United States' supposedly 'rules-based order'. But it does so, without explicitly recognizing that the Imperial United States' imposed order created the problems that he complains about.

 

Here, in excerpts:

 

 

Some analysts and policymakers are starting to question whether the marshy trenches carving up the battlefields of southeastern Ukraine represent the civilizational fault-line many Western leaders claim they do.

 

That was already the view of many outside the West in the wake of Russia’s invasion, and it has only deepened amid the explosion of the parallel war in Gaza.

 

For many onlookers, the Israeli military campaign that followed the deadly Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7 has served as a reminder of long-standing double standards on the world stage.

 

Israel, traumatized by what was the single deadliest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust, has destroyed much of Gaza, killed tens of thousands of civilians and sparked a staggering humanitarian crisis that may only get worse.

 

Perceived Western complicity in Palestinian suffering is hamstringing U.S. diplomacy.

 

The “rules-based order” is a concept dear to Western leaders, not least Biden, and invoked constantly when they set out their positions on world affairs.

 

They may see in Ukraine the defense of the “rules-based order” against Russian brutishness, but in the ongoing calamity in Gaza, it’s easy to also see its breakdown.

 

“International law cannot be an a la carte menu,” Lana Nusseibeh, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the U.N., said . . . .

 

“It must apply equally to all, and it is more essential in the long shadow cast by the Palestinian question and injustice that has persisted for more than seven decades.”

 

But the emerging reality is that we do live in an increasingly “a la carte” world of waning U.S. clout, shifting alliances and the steady erosion of international law and the universal principles that undergird it.

 

© Ishaan Tharoor, In Ukraine and Gaza, twilight for the ‘rules-based order’, Washington Post (23 February 2024)

 

 

Avoidant reasoning

 

In essence, Tharoor claims that the one-sided, non-inclusive imperial slant of the rules-based order is not responsible for the 'a la carte' impositions that it always has been responsible for.

 

For example, it is not as if a new state of serially expansionist-minded Israel was plopped down over an already existing Palestinian population, just yesterday.

 

Indeed, Palestine-dispossessing Israel came into recognized existence at the same time the US-controlled rules-based order was created. Immediately after World War 2.

 

Notice, also, how the Washington Post's column implies that the immediate cause of the (now-fragmented) application of rules has been caused by "waning" American power.

 

Waning American power is, indeed, pertinent. But only because weakened US control now allows successful rebellion of many nations against the unfairness of the original 'rules'.

 

Those imposed rules' inequitable application has always been there. Just not as visible as it is now. What with many nations beginning to throw off their Empire-imposed chains.

 

 

The moral? — Why would anyone who opposes mass slaughter, pillage and imperially motivated thievery . . .

 

. . . mourn the loss of the United States' rules-based order? The American scheme's pillage-prone nature was inherent from its beginning.

 

Thus, the disintegration of this alleged 'order' will (arguably) not be a tragedy for humanity. However much its fragmentation impedes Neocon America's looting impulse.