The news is puzzling to so many of us. Each and every day , we are bombarded by atrocities committed by state actors as well as non-state actors such as non-governmental organizations in the international system. For the past two months, rapidly unfolding events in Gaza and Ukraine have grabbed the media headlines. From the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 with 298 casualties by Ukrainian separatists allegedly with the Buk missile obtained from Russia to the Israeli Operation Protective Edge in Gaza that has killed thousands of Palestinians since late last month, the carnage could be incomprehensible to the mind not conversant with international relations and politics.
States are the primary actors on the world scene. Their existence dates back to the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 that confers sovereignty on it . Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States of 1933 says that a typical state should have a population, territory, government and capacity to enter into relations with other states. The system in which states operate in is chaotic, that is, not disorganized but simply lacking a body above states that can effectively regulate their behaviour. To achieve their objectives, states therefore jostle for power. The state’s means of attaining influence in the system is amoral, that is neither good nor bad. It usually does whatever it needs to do to protect its strategic goals .Realists support this stance blaming state behaviour on the chaotic self-help system while idealists contend that states should consider moral means of attaining their goals.
International law gained prominence during the 1950s as a constraint to the tendency of state actors to resort to violent means to achieve their objectives. Article 2(4) and (7) of the United Nations Charter explicitly outlaws the use of force in the relations between states and the meddling of one state into another’s affairs. International law also frowns at the annexation or break-up of territories and prescribes rules and regulations that should govern warfare for instance. Unfortunately, the reality is that the law is subject to power on the international stage. Thus, Israel’s Operation Protective Edge has caused the deaths of thousands of civilians in Gaza even as Hamas has consistently fired rockets into thickly populated Israeli areas and used its network of underground tunnels to attack civilians despising international law. Russia desires Ukraine to remain its ally in Eastern Europe thereby serving as a buffer to the rapidly expanding European Union from Western Europe. It therefore annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014, instigated the current efforts by separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk to break away from Ukraine and is even alleged to have plans afoot to invade Ukraine in the nearest future.
Despite the robust growth of international law with doctrines like the Responsibility To Protect which tries to prevent state oppression of its own citizens, international politics has always been amoral and hugely influenced by calculations of strategic interests rather than morality to the detriment of huge numbers of casualties evidenced in the current crises in Gaza and Ukraine.
Allwell Akhigbe
amb.welo2013@gmail.com
