WHY JUSTICE IS SO BLIND

The American non-recognition of the authority of the International Courts is a serious setback, as it deprives The Hague of its intended clout both in practical terms and in principle. In cases like this, the most natural recourse for the world community would be to turn the offender into a pariah nation. But don’t we all know that the world can not do such a thing toward the unanimously recognized superpower, the United States? We also know that the United Nations has been dubbed by the US an anti-American and anti-Israel organization, but there has been nothing demonstrable for the world body to be accused of, so that it could live up to this image.

On the other hand, the European Democracies, on their own, can do much more than the whole world can in showing the United States their intense displeasure for its disrespect of the International Justice System. Is it then, yet another egregious case of the legendary European hypocrisy, which Europe has already been notorious for, for centuries? Or else, is it a deliberate stance of separating a priggish Europe from the American values and politics?

Let us advance several possible explanations, and then select the most credible one.

The Europeans are so “nationalized,” that they do not care much about international justice. There is hard evidence to the contrary. The nations of Europe have by now become so multi-culturalized (in fact, far more so than the famously multi-cultural United States of America), that the concept of International Justice has perforce been moved to the front-most burner on the center stove of the European kitchen. Ergo, that first explanation just does not hold water.

The European Union sees itself as a self-contained super-entity, and only takes seriously the affairs of the EU. For as long as the International Court of Justice, at The Hague, remains an effective tool in the affairs of Europe, the Europeans will be satisfied with its somewhat limited function. Wrong again, if we consider this under the angle of the preceding rebuttal. The affairs of Europe have become so internationalized, with the influx of Afro-Asian and Middle-Eastern social influence, that it is now impossible for Europe to withdraw into its proto-European shell. In particular, the energy dependence of Europe on the outside world has grown so exorbitantly that the shell itself has become so thin and utterly vulnerable as to render the idea of self-sufficiency a universally recognized, and thus publicly exposed, chimera.

This European leniency toward America’s exhibitionism of superpower arrogance and disrespect for the rest of the world is in fact an expression of Europe’s profound disrespect toward modern American values and politics, an act of America’s isolation from Europe, on the part of Europe, without actually showing her the door… yet. This last explanation seems to me the most credible (if you have a better one, you are most welcome to venture it!), and, in that case, its political implications for the future of the world are colossal!