Groucho Marxism

The rules-based international order is a post-WWII framework of laws, institutions (United Nations, World Trade Organisation, and International Monetary Fund), and norms supposedly designed to govern state behaviour, promote liberal democracy, and foster economic cooperation. In a recent speech, the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney argued that this decades-long arrangement is coming to an end. It is difficult to know whether we are witnessing the demise of something truly unique in human history or whether the whole thing was a sham. Most would probably argue that the truth is somewhere between these two extremes. Personally though, I am inclined to think the whole thing was a sham, as exceptions have always been made for certain countries, particularly the US and Israel.

The sham has now well and truly unravelled. Israel’s genocide in Gaza has exposed the rules-based international order as a farce. The question now is: what comes next? President Trump’s recent behaviour provides a clue. We’ve all seen how Trump is has been acting like a medieval king, holding court and threatening to invade neighbouring countries. He also recently set up his ‘Board of Peace’ – an Orwellian title if ever I’ve heard one – and installed himself as lifelong chair. It is not clear at this stage whether this initiative will get any traction or whether Trump will forget about it as soon as he finds something interesting to watch on TV. But quite a few dictatorships have already signed up, as has Tony Blair (no surprise there!).

Trump’s threats to invade neighbouring countries and his administration’s resurrection of the Monroe doctrine are quite telling. We seem to be witnessing a return to a pre-WWII geopolitical situation whereby countries aim to achieve dominance within their perceived ‘sphere of influence’ – which, in the case of the US, is the whole of the western hemisphere. You could take this as a sign that the US government on some level understands that it is no longer powerful enough to act as global enforcer. This might be viewed as a good thing for countries outside of the western hemisphere, who are now at lower risk of invasion. But it also creates a global power vacuum which will encourage regional powers elsewhere in the world to assert their dominance.

One such regional power is Israel. The US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, recently created an international incident by suggesting that Israel would be justified in taking over a vast stretch of the Middle East on Biblical grounds. This was met with condemnation by many governments in the region and around the world. But his comments are entirely consistent with the ‘Greater Israel’ concept. Recently an image has been circulating of an Israeli soldier’s uniform featuring a hypothetical map of Greater Israel covering not just Palestine but all of Jordan and Lebanon, as well as parts of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps the governments of these countries are now waking up to the realization that they might be next.

For some time, Israel’s strategy has been to turn neighbouring countries into failed states that it will able to invade easily. If recent reports are to be believed, the US is about to launch an attack on Iran, despite the fact that Trump himself has always been against such intervention. Of course, the official reason will be that the US is attacking Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. But there is no evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, and even if it was, there is no way these weapons could reach America. Nobody in their right mind really believes that Iran poses any real threat to the US. If the US does attack Iran it will be doing so entirely at Israel’s behest. More and more it seems that the Israeli tail is wagging the US dog.

The cementing of Israel as the dominant power in the Middle East is sometimes referred to as ‘Pax Judaica’, Latin for ‘Jewish peace’. The term is also used to describe a hypothetical or emerging global order dominated by Israel, framed as the successor to ‘Pax Britannica’ – the era of relative stability between the Napoleonic Wars and the WWI – and ‘Pax Americana’ – the era of relative stability following WWI (coinciding with the rules-based international order). During both of these periods a hegemonic power adopted the role of ‘global policeman’; in the first case Britain, and in the second case the US. The suggestion behind the Pax Judaica concept is that Israel is aiming to usher in a new geopolitical period with itself as global hegemon.

It is beyond doubt that Israel is aiming to establish dominant control in the Middle East. We have seen this with the Abraham Accords. These are ostensibly a series of normalization agreements establishing diplomatic, economic, and security ties between Israel and several Arab nations. In reality, they are elite-driven, top-down arrangements that lack popular support among citizens in the Arab signatory countries and sideline Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Israel’s blatant disregard for international law has precipitated the end of the so-called rules-based international order. We are now witnessing the beginning of a new order in which Israel will cement its place as regional hegemon and aim to become one of the dominant powers of the world.