‘Law of the jungle’ as US backs settlements

Yesterday the US Secretary of State stood at a podium and reversed more than 40 years of global law.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank are "not per se inconsistent with international law" said Mike Pompeo.

The move flew in the face of international agreements, United Nations policy, and rulings by international courts.

Saeb Erekat, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, called it an attempt “to replace international law with the law of the jungle”.

In this dispute, the liberal world, led by Europe and America, has desperately tried to patch together a delicate peace.

The main tool has been international law — the set of rules generally accepted in relations between nations.

Now many fear that international law itself is a victim of Monday’s abrupt US decision.

Recently the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the doomsday clock — a symbol which represents the likelihood of a man-made global catastrophe —to the closest point to midnight it has ever been.

This was justified by the threats of nuclear war, climate change, and the decline of democracy.

Today, many experts add a fourth threat: the collapse of the liberal international order.

Wild West

We should not despair says one camp. The US policy shift on Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank makes no difference from a legal point of view. Americans do not make international law: that is up to bodies such as the United Nations. These will last long after Donald Trump is gone.

Sorry, but the law of nations has been on the skids for 20 years, long before Trump, says another camp. In the 1990s. During the past decade, the number of liberal democracies has actually been declining, reversing a seemingly unstoppable trend. The idea of rules-based international order is really just a myth.