In Gaza War not all victims are equal: A critique of US rules-based order

Not long ago, the United States preached to the world to follow an order based on international law. But the sheer number of times it broke international law meant it had to come up with a new term. It then began mooting a ‘rules-based’ system, which Washington says must dictate how foreign affairs are conducted.

This situation has always had an air of hypocrisy about it, not to mention the underlying message of ‘do as we say and not as we do’. As with George Orwell’s 1984, there are three well used and abused, largely meaningless slogans when it comes to self-adherence, – democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights.

Since the end of the Cold War and the self-proclaimed ‘End of History’ that proclaimed the inevitable absolute hegemony of US global geopolitical supremacy and the norms and values of Western liberal democracy, the world has become a rhetorical place of equals.

However, there are some specific countries and governments that are subjectively considered more equal than others. This is most clearly observed during times of political and/or armed conflict.

War and the moral high ground

As has been noted throughout the passage of time, starting with Sun Tsu to Machiavelli and to von Clausewitz, war is politics by other means. War is also a violent political activity that is by its nature an inhuman state of body and mind.

Yet there is an attempt to try and selectively and subjectively moralise war as an activity in international relations, precisely because whereas the military factors determine the outcome of individual battles it is politics that determines the outcome of wars.

This politics must be perceived to be something that is just and legitimate (even if it is not) in order to prime and mobilise the public crowds to be for one side and consequently oppose the so-called other through the engineering and manufacturing of public consent.

The situation creates various cognitive dilemmas and contradictions owing in no small part to the highly relative nature of how the event is communicated to audiences.

In effect, the situation arises where not all victims of war are communicated as being equal. Some of the victims are then presented to audiences as being ‘worthy’ victims, and other victims of the very same war as being ‘unworthy’ victims. The main difference of definition lies in the political nature of war where the ‘worthy’ victims are those killed by the enemy and the ‘unworthy’ victims are those killed by the ‘good’ guys (US and allies). This is tied to shaping public perceptions on the moral and legitimacy aspects of contemporary warfare.

The selective and subjective invocation and application of the supposed moral high ground in war serves as both an offensive as well as defensive information weapon. On the one hand, it can be used defensively by the communicator by claiming a just and moral cause for the war in question and to attempt reducing criticism and resistance to it.

On the other hand, it can be used offensively to target another country and its government by criticising the moral dimensions of how they conduct their war. The intention being to force a defensive and reactive posture that interferes with the operational aspects of the war, which can be used to provide indirect political support to an ally or proxy of the US.

The making of good and bad guys

The binary nature of the politics of propaganda demands that for every ‘bad’ actor doing something ‘evil’ in the world, there should be a ‘good’ actor coming to the rescue of the appointed victim of the event. This is increasingly not an easy task in an evolving system of global geopolitics that is currently witnessing the relative decline of the US-led Western world and the rise of the multipolar non-Western world.

However, as with every Hollywood movie narrative in the world of white hats (good) and black hats (bad), the self-appointed epicentre of all that is morally good and wholesome in this world is the United States and the rules-based order with their so-called universal values and principles. The other end of the scale is often benchmarked using China and Russia as the absolute opposite of those ‘good’ values, characterised as having a lack of moral value and moral virtue and therefore by deductive reasoning projected as being a source of inhumanity.

Therefore, the desired cognitive conclusion is that the rules-based order is something to emulate, follow and to obey, whereas the ‘Axis of Evil’ is something to avert, avoid and reject.

Bad wars and good wars

As with the application and invocation of the concept of morality, not all wars are equal, and this is best demonstrated in how the rules-based order reacts to the Ukraine War (‘bad’ war) and the War in Gaza (Israel’s response a ‘good’ war). The US hypocrisy is patently apparent to the multipolar world.

First and foremost, it is clear and incontestable that countries and people have the right to self-defence. The issue of proportionality of the military response and adherence to international law, rules of war and humanitarian law create the context of legitimacy and mark the line between legitimate and illegitimate in terms of the political and moral dimensions.

Furthermore, under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter on the right to self-defence the issue of law does not apply when an attack comes from within an occupied territory.

The US was very quick to condemn the Russian conduct of military operations in Ukraine and has been very quick to denounce the toll of civilian casualties.

Various measures of moral and ethical attributes have been stressed, eager to establish a moral high ground and impose weaknesses and threats to Russia’s war effort. Russia has been utterly condemned, diplomatically, economically, socially and politically. It has been labelled as a global pariah. Similar forms of demonisation and accusations have been used against China, together forming some of the leading elements of the rising multipolar order – ‘bad’ actors waging ‘bad’ wars that are devoid of any moral high ground.

The Gaza War may be one of the pivotal and key moments to potentially accelerate the decline of the US-led West, especially given the crisis of its self-presumed global moral ascendency.

It is a remarkably Orwellian world of doublespeak where calls for a humanitarian ceasefire to halt the Israeli onslaught on civilians is decried as enabling Hamas and as being anti-Semitic.

The Gaza War is the new peace, slavery is freedom and ignorance of the global public is strength.

There are calls from Western politicians to support Israel’s undoubted war crimes and the continued massacre of civilians.

Calling for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by leaders of the ‘free’ world or for the deaths of as many Palestinian civilians as possible clearly demonstrates the hypocrisy, the complicity and the lack of moral high ground of the ethically bankrupt and corrupt rules-based order.

Instead, according to EU foreign policy head Josep Borrell’s categorisation of the world, it is the jungle and not the garden that is calling for human compassion, reason and a return to morality.

One does not need to be anti-Semitic to criticise Israel’s excessive military actions in Gaza, but one is absolutely without a heart or a soul to remain aggressive or even passive to the humanitarian plight of Palestinian civilians there.