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Neither Meloni nor Macron can stand up to the ECHR (LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP via Getty Images)
Everyone of a certain age who passed through British secondary education will have spent a few months learning about the League of Nations, which, to my knowledge, is not a subject of academic study anywhere else. Created by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the League was a global quasi-government with an expansive brief to abolish war and poverty worldwide. To read about its history is to follow it from one bruising failure to the next as it sought, inter alia, to outlaw the weapons of offensive war, set international standards of safety in the workplace, and constrain Mussolini on the world stage.
Here was the essential problem: even with the best will in the world, the League had no power to enforce any of its edicts. For this it had to rely on Britain and France, who were notorious flakes. The United States never even joined. And so it went on. The General Secretariat would pronounce, the Permanent Court of International Justice would rule, the levers would be pulled, nothing would happen. None of their high ideals were able to survive first contact with reality — that is to say, state expediency and national egoism. Whenever it counted the powers would look to their own alliances, their own security. Mussolini was left to annex Abyssinia in 1936 despite the League’s protests, because Britain and France were trying to court him as an ally; Japan was allowed to overrun Manchuria for similar reasons. It all seemed to carry a brute lesson: whatever the merits of internationalism and international law, the facts of life ran against them.
Why does English schooling fixate so much on the League, this odd sideshow? A corrective to teen idealism, maybe. These events, as told, seemed to be a mini fable in how the high ideas can’t compete against ordinary selfishness. It certainly had its appeal for teenage me: a smirker, an online troll.
But as a story this was over-keen and over-cynical. Too cynical, because it always underpriced the power of these ideas. “Why can’t we all just get along”, or, latterly, “global problems require global solutions” — these are powerful notions, at least among the very powerful. The armies that conquered Europe in the middle of the Forties were technically those of the United Nations, marching under its own banner of war: the “Honour Flag” — this just 10 years after the League of Nations was pronounced a dead letter. Had F.D.R. lived a little longer, something approaching a world state under the aegis of the UN would have resulted, with the planet governed as a kind of American-Soviet condominium — even Wendall Wilkie, his Republican rival, called for such a course. A lunatic idea, but not one that school-of-hard-knocks international realism can really assimilate.
Too cynical then, and too cynical now. Over the past 10 years almost everyone has again been announcing the decline of liberal international norms and the return of the nation state. Terrorism, strongmanism, populism, migration, and global diseases would force some collision with reality, the old niceties would be forgotten, and we would then revert to a harder and simpler form of rule under sovereign nations. What would this entail? Nearly every literary or political weekly at one point carried the front piece of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan as its cover. Even the vogue for the term “geopolitics” spoke to the new mood: a politics founded in expediency and the facts of life, not liberal ideas.
But nothing of the sort has happened. Whatever factors might be making the case for the nation state anew, the real story of the past decade has been a huge growth in the scope and depth of international law and obligation. These are advancing over the developed world much faster than they’re receding elsewhere.
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SubscribeI’m sorry, is this piece for or against “liberal internationalism”? It seems to think it’s for, but the case it makes is actually against.
Don’t be so tribal, you don’t have to be ‘for’ or ‘against’ anything, what you have to do instead is look at what’s in front of you and report on what you see. Or at least, on what you think you see.
Hope makes the author ” for,” but then reality triumphs.
I’m not sure – my impression is, this author is savvy beyond his years.
Seems rather mixed up to me.
Why does every article have to be simplistically and normatively “for”or “against'” something?
I almost stopped reading earlier, but persevered until i came to this:
“…the EU: now a closed market to British goods.”
In 2022, the UK exported £340 billion of goods and services to the EU, 42% of our total exports. [Source: House of Commons Library]
Travis should go back to school.
Serious question, does that figure take into account the Rotterdam Carry trade?
While back at school, he could also check up on (1) the League of Nations, which AFAIK was founded by the Paris Peace Conference generally, rather than by the Treaty of Versailles specifically (2) the spelling of Wendell Wilkie’s first name, and (3) the Spratly Islands dispute, which – again, AFAIK – doesn’t significantly involve Japan.
I’m not sure what the author is saying here, but these globalist organizations are a joke, with the one exception being the EU – some of the time. The only time nations follow the rules is when they perceive it in their best interests – and most of the time it isn’t in their best interests. The UN is nothing more than a massive work project for technocrats across globe. Does it actually do anything worthwhile? No one pays attention to the various climate accords over the years, except with the exception of Europe sometimes. The WHO has zero power. Only during Covid did any nation pay attention, and that was simply used an excuse to export any real decision making at the local level.
I fear you may be wrong about the pandemic and climate accords. They, the overclass, have been priming the populace for the concept of binding legal obligations about both topics. And damn the facts. The lazy acquiescence of the populace and such punitive techniques as freezing our bank accounts could put us over the edge and into the abyss.
This essay accidentally makes a great case for hanging technocrats and their NGO proxies from lampposts.
When do we start?
‘The armies that conquered Europe in the middle of the Forties were technically those of the United Nations, marching under its own banner of war: the “Honour Flag” ‘ A large chunk of Europe was conquered by the Red Army, imposing 40 years of Marxist misery on Eastern Europe.
Institutions like ECHR thrive because they serve the purpose of the elite.
We should have addressed that “United Nations” by crushing Stalin in 1945.
I fear, if that was the case, the Neocons would have been active much earlier.
Never once saw an image of this flag carried in battle or displayed in mourning. The “Allies” and the “United Nations” were two separate things, weren’t they?
I really would like to know who the man behind the curtain is at the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Something just doesn’t add up for me.
Probably a woman, with ‘perfect hair’.
Great piece. The seeming worldwide advance of liberal internationalism (and it’s concomitants like wokism etc) certainly feels inexorable, generating confusion and consternation about a landscape that feels alien and no longer makes any sense, especially in the generations of old sweats like me (a late boomer) and even those much younger like early millennials, people who still remember (to varying degrees) the ‘other time’. It also feels more global than just the developed world, with countries as disparate as India and Costa Rica sucked into the whirlpool, seemingly against the grain.
However, my contention is that the instinctive (and non participatory) Machiavellian cynicism of your teenage self is much closer to mark than the intellectual reassessment of your twenties. Mass sentiment (about anything) is nothing new, the only difference about now being a very much more massive ‘mass’ and a more sentimental ‘sentiment’. The ‘power of ideas’, ok sure, but a great crack-up, triggerless (although no doubt many a grifting graun columnist will invent many a peg to hang their insane theories on), is precisely what I expect. In fact, to paraphrase Mephistopheles in Doctor Faustus, “Why, this is the great crack-up, nor are you out of it”.
Liberal internationalism isn’t inherently ‘Woke’. In the sense of giving a toss about gender, race, sexuality, inequality…etc. Most of it’s core principles derive from economics, evolutionary biology and game theory, and are very much mid-20th century. For example, a big principle is that rational actors may overlook short-term self interest in favour of longer-term cooperation, when systems are in place to monitor compliance and there is the prospect of repeat interaction.
The ‘Liberal’ in it in more in the vein of ‘Classical Liberalism’ than the American use of the term ‘Liberal’ to mean left wing.
All of it’s core principles are in fact contrary to economics, evolutionary biology, and game theory, and that is why it’s been an exercise in futility.
In many ways – the important ones – the author of the essay is correct. In the UK we are tied to the ECHR and we don’t seem close to pulling out of it. We are spending billions on inferior energy sources based on a theory, which is almost certainly wrong – but discussion has stopped and no-one dares to rock the boat. We are accepting millions of migrants, despite comments on UnHerd. We will try to join the EU again because there seems no way to stop it. Our police force has been corrupted and there doesn’t seem to be a way to control it. But….
Is this the sign of more liberal views or, perhaps, of more totalitarian governments? Slowly, governments are preventing discussion of the key things in life. When things change gradually, very gradually, ordinary people going about their daily lives do not notice a change from day to day or from year to year. Children are taught in primary schools about what is acceptable behaviour or what is not and disagreement from parents or grandparents is a sign of just their being old and out of date. Fifty years ago, those children grew up quickly with the responsibilities of family life – but not today because there is nothing to make them grow up. Whatever is said publicly, free speech is dead.
Exactly. We’re gradually transitioning into a peculiar kind of ‘liberal authoritarianism’.
Marxism by any other name….
Thought Police are still Thought Police, even if the thoughts they are policing are very different from one time or country to another. That is what we see now. People are arrested for standing and praying on English street corners for an abortion outcome that is not approved by the mandarins.
Compelled behavior outside of legal compliance is still compelled behavior. Unless of course, you change the law to compel the desired behavior and outlaw the undesired. That is what is happening now.
How immensely depressing.
I’d quibble on the claim that the UK is defending the EU’s eastern flank: to whatever extent this is true it looks a lot more like a newly independent UK ostentatiously proving that it is more globally relevant outside the squabbling, silly Brussels kleptocracy than inside it. Or to put it another way: Britain is helping Ukraine because it is prioritising its strategic alliance with the USA. The EU is merely an accidental beneficiary. To imply that leaving the EU and then still defending the EU somehow questions the point of Brexit is a claim that can only be made by someone who has never heard of NATO.
And as for EU markets, exports to the EU have not suffered anywhere close to as much as expected even by Brexiters like me, let alone the blood-curdling imprecations from the liars on the Europhile side. What has changed is that the huge trade deficit with the EU has improved due to the import substitution predicted by the Leave economists – this of course relates to the point in the article about Brexiters having been silly to assume trade interests would determine European realpolitik in the Brexit negotiations. They were wrong, yes, but not in any way that supports the Remain position.
What happened is that Brussels’ refusal to prioritise trade simply resulted in large tranches of the UK market being lost to EU exporters: Brussels was quite happy to throw the economic interests of its own member states under the bus in order to serve its own narrow power interests, and that’s exactly what it did. I recall realising that the naive Brexiters were going to be proved wrong at the time, when remembering how Brussels treated the smaller Eurozone members during the banking crisis aftermath: a scandalous display of corrupt bullying and anti-democratic arrogance that ought to have informed the UK political class a great deal better than it did about the likely reaction of the EU to a Leave vote. However, you can hardly advance this admitted error on the Leave side as vindicating a Remain position: all it does is prove that Brussels is running a protection racket that it will defend even at the cost of damaging its own member States. That’s a good reason to get out of the damn thing, not stay in it.
Anyway, I get the feeling that this article might not age well.
Regarding your last sentence — that same feeling haunted me throughout my reading…
Indeed, it may not age well at all. As Zhou Enlai said when asked about the impact of the French Revolution ……. “it’s too early to tell”.
Defending the EU isn’t the same as defending Europe.
The best laid plans of mice and men have created numerous institutions to regulate the selfish greed of mankind. But every such institution, from local government to the UN, is powerless to restrain the greed of an individual that for personal reasons are determined to get what they want. Should we improve the institutions or surrender to such individuals? Be careful what you wish for, strongman are out for themselves, not you.
As are the institutions.
“..All the world powers have now accepted global AI regulation..”
There is no such thing as global AI regulation – for good reason. What there is instead, is a lot of hot air about global AI regulation which keeps a lot of talking heads in well paid gigs. The reason is trivial – governments can globally coordinate regulations around things like social media etc, but AI effects are not at all limited to network effects. For example AI will soon start causing big livelihood losses once companies start to adapt AI for their internal work, and there is absolutely nothing any government can do anything about that. Governments can police massive neural nets requiring huge processing power (or ‘compute’ to use the buzz word), but only for a bit. Ultimately, governments cannot go around sending doddering bureaucrats to companies and homes to stand over the shoulders of thousands of programmers, saying “You can’t code that, it’s against AI regulations!” – although I’m sure a Starmer government will actually try that out. The cost of ‘compute’ has been dropping vertiginously for decades (Moore’s law etc) and the frontier AIs of today will always be ubiquitous and cheap as chips (geddit) tomorrow, so global or even local AI regulation is not a thing.
A totally innocuous post, slamdunked straight into the sin bin. Just why UnHerd?
This regularly happens to me, despite my posts being absolutely innocuous (proven by the fact that they all have been restored after my complaints to UnHerd Support).
I suggest that everyone who has their comment removed should write immediately to UnHerd support asking about the specific reasons why their post has been taken down.
Often, the first reply is generic and semi-automatic referring me to the “Community Rules”. I write again and then my comment is restored pretty quickly. Once, exasperated by the inadequate responses, I wrote directly to Freddie Sayers and my comment was restored seconds after that + I received a normal and clear reply.
The moderation system on this site is way below the level at which UnHerd positions itself as a publication. (Yesterday I just could not post at all and received a rather unsatisfactory, to put it mildly, explanation).
The more people write to UnHerd Support, the higher the chance that something – finally! – will be done about this deplorable situation.
I think, perhaps, this article could’ve done with a one-paragraph primer on the three theories of International Relations.
Realism which essentially sees the world as now and forever governed by great power rivalry and competition due to the state of anarchy. States are rational, but paranoid, and most diplomacy and international cooperation is window dressing.
Liberalism which focuses on game theory-derived ways in which rational actors can cooperate to achieve shared interests, often through international organisations and agreements. Despite what I’ve seen some people suggest, this isn’t inherently ‘woke’. If anything, Game Theory traditionally comes from Economics and Evolutionary Biology.
Constructivism which in this context focuses on the influence of norms and soft power in shaping what actors actually choose to do. I.e. it treats states as somewhat irrational.
Extreme takes abound, but I’d wager you’ll find very few people who have systematically studied IR and come to the conclusion any one of these explains state actions to the exclusion of all others. Good faith treaty negotiations tend to be fit a Liberal paradigm pretty well, military conflict is generally pretty Realist and a lot of the minutia of how the the politics plays out, as well as some of the more-counter intuitive foreign policy decisions states make, are explained pretty well via Constructivism (and I say that as somebody who loathes post-modernism generally).
Even when it comes to the war in Ukraine, which is superficially a textbook case of a great power trying to guarantee it’s own security by securing an exclusive zone of influence, the fact that Putin is former KGB and has a profound distrust for NATO, and nostalgia for the USSR, almost certainly has played a role in getting to this point. Likewise Eastern Europe’s memories of and fear towards the USSR. Even the US’s incentives in supporting Ukraine have never entirely made realist sense to me. Russia could have evolved to be more like Turkey re. the West, which is to say, deeply critical and sometimes in conflict, but able to cooperate as well. But it didn’t. Constructivism partly explains that.
If this young man had been alive between the world wars I can only assume he would have been informing us of the progress being made by the League, whatever he writes about it now. Today, he demonstrates not merely his ignorance about Brexit but about the world in general. Given Putin’s record in Ukraine, Chechnya and Georgia, China’s treatment of its Uighurs and Tibetans, the bloody rule of the generals in Myanmar, Japan’s remilitarisation, the establishment of Aukus, the Chinese threat to Taiwan, North Korea’s ability to fire missiles over and close to its neighbours, while the UN does nothing even as its Council on Human Rights regularly condemns Israel and is led by states like Iran whose proxy militias create wars in the Middle East—how can he possibly believe that great power politics are at a discount and liberal internationalism prevails?
Why do you publish such rubbish?
Well, I read about the league of nations in school. However, I cheered when I heard how it failed.
The world doenst need bigger government. Bigger government just means more weasels, just look at Fifa.
The world needs smaller governments. Ones that dont have the power to assassinate people with drones in far off lands or invade Ukraine.
Belarus may not be in the ECHR but neither are Canada or Australia. Leaving would put us in their company not Belarus. Countries with a long tradition of human rights and Common Law. Only thick as mince liberals think we would become another Belarus!
This rambling article could be summed up as ‘supra-national institutions carry on untrammelled because no national leaders have developed the balls to stand up to them’
You’re welcome.
I read the entire article and yet I have no idea what the point it supposed to be. Understated points fight with understated opposite points. Probably clever – clear would have been better.
True. But note the efforts to thwart the attempts by ICJ/ICC to rein in a bunch of genocidal terrorists now in control of a state in Palestine.
This is pretty daft stuff. The author doesn’t seem to understand the elementary difference between rhetoric, virtue signalling and substance! LGBT are not being advanced in Saudi Arabia or Russia, not are “human rights” more generally. And you can add China and India to that list. Those illiberal nations represent the majority of the world’s population, in case the author had noticed are gaining in power and confidence rather than the opposite.
A couple of years ago there was a fascinating film about two gay Iraqi soldiers who fell in love, were desperate to get reunited outside their country, where they would have probably been killed. The UN LGBT friendly authorities said all the right things about the issue. But the UN workers on the ground, drawn from very religiously Muslim conservative communities, were disgusted by them. They basically did everything they could to prevent their being allowed to travel to the United States, including spreading false accusations that one had been involved in the Abu Graib mistreatment / torture of Iraqi prisoners.
And of course our own elites showed little compulsion about the dubious invasion of a sovereign country (Iraq) when it suited them. Indeed the former proponent and distributor of the lies that were undoubtedly told to the the British Parliament and public is now a supposedly sensible centrist politician excoriating others on the supposed “Far Right”
I would agree that a great deal of lip service is paid to liberal internationalism, but almost no weight whatsoever when push comes to shove, as Russia’s invasion of a neighboring country might provide some indication of.
I think this article is fundamentally pretty daft because it doesn’t seem to appreciate the essential and rather obvious difference between rhetoric and reality!. The Liberal international order grew up under US hegemony. While I certainly don’t claim it was entirely hypocritical, it certainly was not opposed to the advancement of US economic and geopolitical interests. The UN and other international institutions were founded at that time on a very Western model.
As we all ought to be familiar with by now, this situation is now very rapidly changing for better and for worse. The majority of the world’s population are not being governed by liberal regimes. “Human rights” in any sense understood in the West are NOT being advanced in Saudi Arabia despite the fact that they might head up some UN committee on the issue! And that is not even to speak of for example LGBT “rights”. The Liberal international institutions and indeed the underlying philosophy are largely employed entirely transactionally, up until the point that they no longer cease to be of value in supporting the power of authoritarian regimes. So for example we will get Vladimir Putin and his ideological supporters berating Western anti-Russian racism.
And most obviously the only democratic state in the Middle East, Israel is sanctioned under the guise of these liberal institutions far more often than any other.
The author has got this one wrong. While international law is charging ahead (the ECHR climate change case against Switzerland being a notorious example) it is because it is being hijacked by vested interests and needs to be reined in by sovereign states. Sovereign states themselves, particularly the Global North, have been openly thrashing international law for the past twenty-five years (the bombing of Serbia from which there is a direct line of fire to Ukraine), Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc. The situation is dreadful.