US President Donald Trump may have done the global community of nations a favour with his military invasion of Venezuela. He has placed a firecracker under the much-vaunted concept of a “rules-based world order”. It is now time for world leaders to pause and reflect.
Does the concept actually work or is it time to press the reset button? Political analyst Kio Amachree makes the point that for 80 years since World War 2 the international political system “rested on a fragile but essential idea: borders are not changed by force, leaders are not kidnapped and power is constrained by law”. “(But) When Trump treats international law as an inconvenience rather than a guardrail, the message is clear to the rest of the world: act first, justify later and dare anyone to stop you.” A head of state decides one morning that he will violate the territorial integrity of another sovereign State, remove his counterpart by force and “run” the government of an independent nation.
He is like the drunk guy with the biggest pistol in the bar. In terms of the US War Powers Act of 1973, a sitting president may not commit the country to an armed conflict without the “statutory authorisation” of Congress. On Trump’s orders, the US military has been bombing so-called “narco terrorists” in international waters in what some US lawmakers say are unlawful extrajudicial killings.
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