{"id":303646,"date":"2025-09-29T12:00:19","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T11:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=303646"},"modified":"2025-09-23T07:03:47","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T06:03:47","slug":"a-dangerously-divided-world-highlights-the-need-to-empower-international-institutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/09\/a-dangerously-divided-world-highlights-the-need-to-empower-international-institutions\/","title":{"rendered":"A Dangerously Divided World Highlights the Need to Empower International Institutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

22 Sep 2025 –<\/em> On 13 Sep, the British public was startled when more than 110,000 people turned out<\/a> for a raucous far-right rally in London featuring racist conspiracy theories, anti-Muslim hate speech, and violent assaults upon police.\u00a0 Whipping up the crowd, Tommy Robinson<\/a>\u2015a popular far-right agitator, march organizer, and five-time convicted criminal\u2015told the assemblage<\/a> that British government officials believed \u201cthat Somalians, Afghans, Pakistanis, all of them, their rights supersede yours, the British public, the people that built this nation.\u201d\u00a0 Signs carried by the demonstrators invoked racist and xenophobic themes, such as:\u00a0 \u201cWhy are white people despised when our money pays for everything?\u201d<\/p>\n

Well-known speakers from abroad echoed these sentiments.\u00a0 The prominent French far-right politician, Eric Zemmour<\/a>, warned the angry crowd that they were facing \u201cthe great replacement of our European people by peoples coming from the south and of Muslim culture.\u201d\u00a0 Elon Musk<\/a>, the arrogant U.S. multibillionaire, demanded the dissolution of parliament and new elections. Thanks to the \u201crapidly increasing erosion of Britain with massive uncontrolled migration,\u201d he said, \u201cviolence is coming,\u201d<\/a> and \u201cyou either fight back or you die.\u201d<\/p>\n

In recent years, the racially-tinged hatred of immigrants, particularly Muslims, Arabs, Africans, and Latin Americans, has fueled the rise of political parties on the far right<\/a>.\u00a0 These \u201cpopulist\u201d parties have made astonishing gains in European nations, and they top the polls today in powerful countries like Britain, Germany, and France.\u00a0 Far-right political parties, drawing upon anti-immigrant rhetoric, have also experienced surges of popularity in Japan, Australia, and the United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When nations face sharp xenophobic and racist divisions within, they do have governments that can take action to counter them.\u00a0 Responding to rightwing violence at the London rally, police made dozens of arrests and Prime Minister Keir Starmer<\/a> publicly proclaimed that Britain would \u201cnever surrender\u201d to far-right protesters who used the British flag as a cover for violence and to instill fear.\u00a0 Britain was a \u201cdiverse country,\u201d he said, and he would not tolerate people being \u201cintimidated on our streets\u201d because of their background or the color of their skin.<\/p>\n

But the situation is quite different in the international arena, which more closely resembles a lawless wilderness in which nations can engage in criminal violence.<\/p>\n

In February 2022, the Russian government\u2015flouting the UN Charter<\/a> and its 1994 treaty commitment<\/a> rejecting the use of force against Ukraine\u2015launched a full-scale military invasion of that much smaller nation.\u00a0 Seeking to justify the onslaught, Vladimir Putin claimed that Ukraine was \u201cRussian land\u201d<\/a> and that he had to \u201cdenazify\u201d<\/a> it.\u00a0 On March 2, when the UN General Assembly passed a resolution<\/a> condemning Russia\u2019s invasion and calling for its withdrawal from Ukraine, 141 nations supported it, 5 nations (including Russia) opposed it, and 35 nations abstained. \u00a0Two weeks later, the International Court of Justice<\/a> ruled, by an overwhelming vote, that Russia should \u201cimmediately suspend\u201d its military operations in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The Russian government, however, simply continued its military assault upon Ukraine and, over the ensuing years<\/a>, nearly a million Russian troops and close to 400,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed or wounded.\u00a0 In addition, according to a February 2025 UNICEF report<\/a>, thanks to the Russian bombardment of Ukraine\u2019s housing, electrical systems, water supplies, and other civilian infrastructure, 3.7 million Ukrainians have been internally displaced, more than 6.8 million have fled abroad, and much of the country lies in ruins.\u00a0 \u201cNo place is safe,\u201d it noted.\u00a0 \u201cOverall, some 780 health facilities and more than 1,600 schools have been damaged or destroyed.\u201d\u00a0 This July, the United Nations announced<\/a> that there had been some 48,000 documented civilian casualties in Ukraine, among them thousands of children.<\/p>\n

The Israeli government, too, has displayed a shocking disregard for international law and human life.\u00a0 After the Hamas-led terrorist attack<\/a> upon Israel of October 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a massive military invasion of the tiny Palestinian enclave of Gaza.\u00a0 The assault, vastly excessive in firepower and bloodshed for the task of defeating Hamas or pacifying Gaza, sent millions of innocent Palestinians desperately fleeing death and destruction as Israel\u2019s military forces obliterated homes, schools, hospitals, journalists, and humanitarian aid workers.\u00a0 According to observers, some 65,000 Palestinians, overwhelmingly civilians, have been killed, famine is rampant<\/a>, and much of Gaza has been pounded into rubble<\/a>.\u00a0 A recent report by a UN commission of inquiry<\/a> that examined the conduct of the invasion and the statements of the Netanyahu administration concluded that the government of Israel was committing the crime of genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the Israeli government has ignored international law<\/a> for decades by refusing to withdraw from the West Bank\u2015Palestinian territory seized by Israeli military forces during the 1967 war\u2015and by bringing in hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers to colonize it.\u00a0 In turn, the settlers, now numbering 700,000<\/a>, have engaged in widespread violence, recently escalating, against the residents of Palestinian villages in an effort to drive them out and seize their land.<\/p>\n

The United Nations, of course, is supposed to maintain international peace and security.\u00a0 Unfortunately, however, it has never been granted the necessary power and resources to handle that job.\u00a0 Furthermore, the UN Security Council is hamstrung by the great power veto.\u00a0 As a result, effective global governance is sadly lacking, and rogue nations remain free to flout international law and the norms of civilization.<\/p>\n

In addition to giving a free hand to national criminality, the absence of effective governance on the global level also cripples efforts to tackle other major world problems.\u00a0 After all, how are vital issues like curbing the nuclear arms race, combating climate change, and battling disease pandemics going to be addressed without a global approach and global enforcement?<\/p>\n

Consequently, much of the world\u2019s future hinges on empowering international institutions to enforce international law, overcome dangerous social divisions, and help ensure human survival.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Lawrence S. Wittner (<\/em>https:\/\/www.lawrenceswittner.com\/<\/em><\/a> ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY\/Albany and the author of <\/em>Confronting the Bomb<\/a> (Stanford University Press).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

22 Sep 2025 – On 13 Sep, the British public was startled when more than 110,000 people turned out for a raucous far-right rally in London featuring racist conspiracy theories, anti-Muslim hate speech, and violent assaults upon police.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":174595,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[100,639],"class_list":["post-303646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","tag-direct-violence","tag-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":303647,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303646\/revisions\/303647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}