On January 7, 2020, President Donald Trump tweeted that a larger war with Iran had been averted:

The crisis had been precipitated by President Trump’s almost certainly illegal act of aggression against Iran, through the killing of Qasem Soleimani, a Major General in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and head of its Quds Force.  

By killing Soleimani, President Trump has tested the boundaries of what he can do as President. Killing a top-ranking general of another country’s armed forces—an act of war—seems to have had little consequence for Trump, at least for now. 

Aggression is banned by international customary law as well as the United Nations Charter. It is considered a jus cogens norm, meaning a norm of the highest order under international law, which all states are obligated to protect and maintain. 

How did we end up in a world where the President of the United States can commit aggression without consequence? And what does it mean for the international system where one of its most powerful players can evade scrutiny and accountability for attacking other countries without legal justification?

THE FAILURE TO PROSECUTE BUSH-ERA OFFICIALS FOR WAR CRIMES, INCLUDING THE CRIME OF AGGRESSION, WAS A MISTAKE

Prior to the assassination of Soleimani, the most egregious example of the crime of aggression this century was also committed by an American President—specifically, George W. Bush. 

President Bush and his Administration, eager to overthrow Saddam Hussein to implement a neo-conservative ideological agenda of maintaining American power in the Middle East for a “new American century,” lied to the American people and the global community, committing an outrageous act of international aggression against the Republic of Iraq. Iraq, in its then current form, was annihilated, producing two decades of instability, social crises, unimaginable poverty and destruction, and further acts of violence from warring paramilitary factions and religious groups—including ISIS. 

The war was not conducted in self-defence and was not authorised by the United Nations Security Council. In 2004, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan himself confirmed that the war was illegal and not in conformity with the U.N. Charter.

When Barack Obama became President in 2008, he dismissed the possibility of accountability or oversight over potential criminal wrongdoing by the Bush Administration. Instead, he said he wanted to “look forward” and put the past behind him. In hindsight, it is clear that the failure to hold Bush-era leaders accountable has now created an ossified, institutional resistance to accountability for international crimes. Whether it was illegal wiretapping, torture, or the supreme crime of international aggression, Obama looked the other way, and people were never made to account for their actions. From the perspective of a rules-based international system—from the perspective of justice itself—this was a terrible mistake with decades-long consequences.

TRUMP’S STRIKE ON IRAN INDICATES THE POSSIBILITY OF LARGE SCALE AGGRESSION TAKING PLACE ONCE AGAIN

Both the ease by which President Trump simply ordered an act of war against another country, and the blatant nature of the aggression itself, are a stark warning to the international community that further acts of aggression could happen at any time, with a single phone call—or single tweet—by an enraged President. 

While rational people may find it hard to believe that the United States would ever commit the type of large-scale aggression that was the hallmark of the Iraq War ever again, these are not rational times. Fascism is on the rise all over the world, and seemingly inconceivable political notions—Brexit, a Trump White House—have merged into the white noise of seemingly inconceivable environmental notions—melted ice caps, cities inundated, tens of millions of climate refugees moving inland, and continental-wide wildfires. 

President Trump’s threat to target 52 Iranian cultural sites (a war crime under international law) raises the spectre of potential use of the nuclear weapons arsenal kept and maintained by the United States. Prior to his election, President Trump asked an unnamed foreign policy expert three times why the United States cannot use its nuclear weapons. And in August 2017, Trump threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” plainly evoking a nuclear weapons attack. Trump’s willingness to break the customs of war, including by openly threatening war crimes, is a sign of someone willing to break the taboo that prohibits the use of nuclear weapons.

A RETURN TO INTERNATIONAL LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS IS THE ONLY SOLUTION

How much longer will countries around the world exercise patience with a foreign policy that is, at heart, gravely illegal under international law? Continued acts of aggression by the United States is ultimately self-defeating and dangerous. The United States not only risks its alliances and friendships with its allies. It also risks being seen as a rogue nation and pariah state that does not honour its obligations and exercises its power purely through military might. In simple terms, it risks being seen as an Empire that will stop at nothing—even annihilating entire societies, as it did with Iraq—in order to accomplish its objectives. 

The only solution is a return to basic fidelity to the law, including international law. Not engaging in further acts of aggression is a good first step, but it goes beyond that. The boundary of international law is only maintained and respected when there are consequences for lawbreaking. Thus, it is imperative that leaders of the United States who breach international norms face some measure of accountability for what they have done. This means it is far past time to investigate and prosecute those leaders who destroyed Iraq under a mountain of lies, who engaged in torture, and who are currently committing acts of aggression in the Middle East, Latin America, and elsewhere. The government of the United States must change its ways so that it works in good-faith with the international system. Instead of aggression, control, and dominance, U.S. foreign policy should be based on the defence of human rights, the primacy of self-determination for occupied and exploited peoples, and in maintaining a global common law that binds all countries equally, and holds the powerful to account when they commit grave international crimes.

The absence of accountability since the Iraq War has corroded the collective security mechanisms that make up the international system to the point of collapse. A Hobbesian, completely anarchic international system is much closer than the world wants to believe. It may already be here—the remnants and decay of global civilization sitting in plain sight, just a single tweet away from full exposure.

Dave Inder Comar is the co-founder of Human Rights Pulse and a practising attorney.

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