By Danny R. Johnson – Political News Editor
WASHINGTON, DC–The “rules-based world order” is a system of norms and values describing how the world should work, not how it works. This aspirational order is rooted in the ideological aftermath of the Second World War, when it was transcribed into a series of documents: the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Genocide Convention, and the Geneva Conventions on the laws of war, among others.
These documents have frequently been ignored in the more than seven decades since they were written. The UN Genocide Convention did not prevent genocide in Rwanda. The Geneva Conventions did not stop the Vietnamese from torturing American prisoners of war, did not prevent Americans at Abu Ghraib from torturing Iraqi prisoners of war, and did not prevent Russians from torturing Ukrainian prisoners of war today. Signatories of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights include known human rights violators, including China, Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela. The UN Commission on Human Rights deteriorated into a parody long ago.
Nevertheless, these documents have influenced actual behavior in the real world. Soviet dissidents used to embarrass their government by pointing to human-rights language in treaties the Kremlin had signed and did not respect. Even when fighting brutal or colonial wars, countries that had signed treaties on the laws of war either tried to abide by them—avoiding civilian casualties, for example—or felt remorseful when they failed. Americans who mistreated Iraqi prisoners of war were court-martialed, convicted, and sentenced to time in military prisons. The British still agonize over the past behavior of their soldiers in Northern Ireland and the French over theirs in Algeria.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s surprise attack on Israeli civilians are blatant rejections of that rules-based world order, and they herald something new. Both aggressors have deployed a sophisticated, militarized, modern form of terrorism, and they do not feel apologetic or embarrassed. Terrorists, by definition, are not fighting conventional wars and do not obey the laws of war. Instead, they deliberately create fear and chaos among civilian populations.
Although terrorist tactics are usually associated with small revolutionary movements or clandestine groups, terrorism is now simply part of how Russia fights wars. Although a sovereign state and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Russia began deliberately hitting civilian targets in Syria in 2015, including power stations, water plants, hospitals, and medical facilities, twenty-five of which were struck in a single month in 2019. These attacks were unquestionably war crimes, and those who chose the targets knew they were war crimes. Some hospitals had shared their coordinates with the UN to avoid being hit. Instead, Russian and Syrian government forces may have used that information to find them.
In Ukraine, Russia has once again used artillery, cruise missiles, and drones, including Iranian drones, to hit an even more comprehensive range of civilian targets: houses, apartment buildings, churches, restaurants, ports, and grain silos. Just last week, Russian missiles hit a shop and café in the small village of Horza, killing more than fifty people. This kind of strike had no conventional military justification. The point is to create pain, cause civilian deaths, and sow disruption—nothing else. Russian propagandists praise the destruction and call for more: “We should wait for the right moment and cause a migration crisis for Europe with a new influx of Ukrainians,” one of them told a television talk show.
Hamas is not a sovereign state, but it has the full backing of Iran, a sovereign state, and funding from Qatar, a sovereign state. Since 2006, Hamas has been the de facto ruling party in Gaza, a self-governing territory since the Israeli withdrawal in 2005. Nevertheless, Hamas does not see itself as part of any order. On Saturday, Hamas launched what appears to have been a well-planned, well-organized attack designed to spread civilian terror and create chaos.
Hamas deployed missiles and drones, including kamikaze drones used now in Russia and Ukraine, and teams of men with guns. Although they hit a few military outposts, they also murdered more than two hundred people at a music festival, chased down children and the elderly, and, in some towns, went from house to house, looking for people to murder. They abducted young women, beat them unconscious, and dragged them across the border, a war crime as old as Homer’s Iliad.
The Hamas terrorists paid no attention to modern laws of war or norms. Like the Russians, Hamas and its Iranian backers (also Russian allies) run nihilistic regimes whose goal is to undo whatever remains of the rules-based world order and to put anarchy in its place. They did not hide their war crimes. Instead, they filmed them and circulated the videos online. Their goal was not to gain territory or engage an army but to create misery and anger. Which they have—and not only in Israel. Hamas had to have anticipated a massive retaliation in Gaza, and indeed, that retaliation has begun. As a result, hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinian civilians will be victims too.
