The low regard in which the Global West is held is intensifying. The second Trump administration is not the cause of this. It is simply accelerating this ominous process by openly embracing a lawless, imperial contempt for primary international and metropolitan governance rules, norms and conventions in response to the persistent retreat of American global dominance. Meanwhile, the Global South clearly observes how America’s traditional allies remain overwhelmingly loyal — or silent — as the US persists in asserting its role as their exceptionally unworthy leader.

President Trump has certainly hit the ground running. He has so far applied his feverish political blow-torch to Greenland, Denmark, Canada, Panama, Mexico, China and now, the International Criminal Court. The EU seems unsure if it should send troops to Greenland to assist the US – or to defy Donald Trump.

Internally, Trump and his team have gone into combat against the federal bureaucracy, the FBI, the Pentagon, the Department of Justice, USAID and the CIA, just to begin with.

A foundational component in the explanation of how we got to the extraordinary place where we now find ourselves is the unparalleled way in which Western civilization transformed modern development by forging the best ever method of generalized, rational, scientific analysis (during the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment) following which it exported this understanding around the world. By this means, Western understanding globally fostered long-term fundamental improvements in education, healthcare, manufacturing, infrastructure, architecture, science, technology and institution building etc.

However, Western civilization also gave the world long-distance, voracious, colonial-imperialism, combined with war-based resolution of intense geopolitical contestation, on a scale never-before imagined. In fact, all this war-mongering acted as a primary stimulus for advancing modern thinking both generally (see above) and, particularly, to improve fighting prowess.

Alongside all the real human advancement in particular areas, the rank side of energetic Western globalized development proved to be uncommonly ugly. It included massive levels of Western organized trans-continental slavery and exceptionally predatory forms of colonialism.

All this competitive Western imperial expansion eventually fostered the gruesome world wars that erupted in the 20th century. In due course, Japan copied both the best and very worst of the Western development and expansion paradigm.

Most horrifically, World War II gave us the Holocaust, where highly civilized Germany organized mass murder on an almost incomprehensible scale. After the total toll, exceeding six million (predominantly Jewish victims) was revealed, the new United Nations responded with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Western nations led this attempt to establish a deeply legalized prohibition on any further use of militarized, civilian mass murder.

A very bad turn was taken about 30 years earlier, however, when the UK unilaterally announced its support, in 1917, for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, an Ottoman region, at that time with a small minority Jewish population. After World War II, this project was super-charged by the US and other Western allies supporting an extraordinarily determined, violently aggressive Zionist leadership.

On May 14, 1948, the new state of Israel was established and recognized on the same day by the US. Ever since, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, it has been expanding as it created an intensely divisive, apartheid state, while claiming to be an exemplary Middle East democracy.

Naturally, it was unthinkable for the West that Bavaria, in Germany, for example, should be turned over to the Zionists to establish a new Jewish state. A dispossessing, terror-based state imposed on Palestine (that favored Western geopolitical interests) was, however, completely thinkable.

So far, so bad and unjust.

Then came the shocking, bloody attack, out of Gaza, launched on Southern Israel by Hamas on Oct 7, 2023. Within days, Israel began its massive genocidal response which has continued since, until the current fragile ceasefire was agreed. Gaza has been largely levelled. Millions of Palestinians have been made homeless – and starved of food and basic care at all levels. Hundreds of thousands, mainly women and children, have been killed or maimed. The level of gross inhumanity is staggering.

America, the self-declared, enduring “leader of the free world” and high priest of the “Rules Based International Order”, has spent billions to support this non-stop, Israeli-run massacre. Most of its supine Global West allies, with a handful of exceptions, have actively supported this ghastly project or, at best, remained largely silent. No one dares speak truth directly to murderous Israeli-American power. Among other things, many are politically afraid of internal Zionist powerbrokers.

Meanwhile, America has continued to throw itself into the self-deforming project to somehow crush Russia (by fighting to the last Ukrainian) and contain China.

Astoundingly, Trump, cheered on by Israel’s accused-war-criminal prime minister, has now said America is gearing up to “take over Gaza” once the Palestinian residents are forced or provoked into departing. Steven Cook, writing in Foreign Policy, soon after described this project as “sheer lunacy”.

The Global South comprises about 85 percent of the world population – and about 39 percent (and rising) of global GDP. When residents from this broad zone cast their eyes towards Gaza (and Ukraine) and the extended history leading thereto, they cannot help, but see a manifest descent towards increasing lawlessness — and warmongering — across the US-led Global West, made starkly evident as the second Trump administration displayed, within a month of assuming office, a stunning level of local and global intimidation combined with reckless turmoil. The Guardian says what the world is now witnessing in the US is: “A coup veiled by chaos”.

Continuing Western preaching about the sanctity of universal human rights and the superiority of Western democracy simply stirs a repugnant level of hypocrisy into this acute assessment, which now informs thinking across much of the rest of the world.

Official observations from China, meanwhile, do not energetically repeat direct hostile commentary, in the Washington style. Beijing largely just allows the facts to speak for themselves as it astutely buckles up to weather the fresh, furious tempest lately unleashed by Washington on itself and the world.

Richard Cullen is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. He was previously a Professor in the Department of Business Law and Taxation at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

This is a republication from PEARLS & IRRITATIONS website at:  

https://johnmenadue.com/the-lawless-west/

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.