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Biden has paved the way for Trump’s egregious flouting of international rules | Mohamad Bazzi

Donald Trump wants to revive American imperialism. For weeks, the president-elect has threatened to seize Greenland and the Panama Canal, possibly by military force. And he promised supporters that he would pressure Canada, through economic warfare, to become the 51st US state. Trump’s repeated threats to undermine borders and use force have alarmed US allies, who are worried that, even if he’s not serious, the incoming president is eager to disregard decades-old norms about respecting territorial integrity and deploying military power.

Early in Trump’s first term in office, it became clear that he has contempt for international law and the rules-based order put in place after the end of the second world war to contain conflict between world powers. But this time, Trump is motivated not just by his disdain for global institutions and norms – or even the “madman theory” of foreign policy, where a president will try to appear unpredictable, or irrational, as a negotiating tactic to throw adversaries off balance.

Trump has been emboldened by the recent actions of world leaders who were supposedly far more concerned with preserving international peace and security. Joe Biden and other western leaders prepared the ground for Trump over the past 15 months, as they defied and weakened international law to protect Israel while it waged a devastating war on Gaza.

Here’s a summary of how western officials, especially the Biden administration, have repeatedly undermined international institutions and law to shield Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, from consequences for their war crimes in Gaza:

Shortly after South Africa filed a case in late December 2023 against Israel at the international court of justice (ICJ) accusing it of carrying out a genocide in Gaza, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, dismissed the petition as “meritless” and said it would distract from US efforts to secure humanitarian aid. Weeks later, the court, which is the UN’s highest judicial body, allowed the case to move forward and ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide by its troops in Gaza, and to allow more aid into the besieged territory. Israel, along with its western allies, ignored the court’s decision.
The Biden administration quickly exposed itself to charges of hypocrisy over its refusal to support the international court’s rulings on Israel, when Washington had urged US adversaries to abide by past ICJ decisions, especially after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The court’s orders are binding on its member states, but the ICJ does not have an enforcement mechanism aside from referring matters to the UN security council, where the Biden administration has used its veto power four times since October 2023 to protect Israel from demands for a ceasefire.
In May, Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC), another tribunal based in The Hague, announced he was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza. The prosecutor sought warrants against Netanyahu, and Israel’s then defence minister, Yoav Gallant, as well as three top Hamas leaders who had organized the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel. Biden and his top aides immediately sided with Israel, and called the decision to charge Netanyahu and Gallant “outrageous”. US politicians also threatened to impose sanctions against Khan and other ICC officials.
On 24 May, the ICJ issued another ruling, ordering Israel to stop its military assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had taken refuge after being driven out of their homes in other parts of the enclave. The ruling was the closest that the world’s top court has come to ordering a ceasefire in Gaza – and it exposed how Israel’s closest allies, the US and the UK, would continue to flout international law and institutions to protect Netanyahu’s government.
On 21 November, the ICC finally issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on charges of using starvation as a method of warfare and other crimes against humanity. It was the first time that leaders of a western-aligned state have been charged by the court since it was established in 2002 under the Rome statute. Netanyahu and Gallant face the risk of arrest if they travel to any of the 124 countries that signed the statute, although several European signatories, including Germany and France, have not committed to enforcing the arrest warrants. Biden again denounced the ICC’s move against Israeli leaders, even though he had applauded the court’s decision in 2023 to issue an arrest warrant for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, for war crimes in Ukraine.

The Biden administration could have used these international rulings and Israel’s growing isolation as leverage to stop sending billions in US weapons to Israel and force Netanyahu to end the war. Instead, Biden and his top aides worked for nearly a year to discredit international courts and prosecutors in order to protect Israel. After Trump’s disastrous first term, Biden had entered office in 2021 promising to put protection of human rights at the center of US foreign policy. But he acted like past American presidents, who waged or sustained US wars abroad while delivering grandiose rhetoric about respect for democracy and human rights. Biden laid bare the reality of his policies with his unconditional support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Biden and his advisers also exposed the US to potential complicity in war crimes, considering that Washington is, by far, Israel’s largest arms supplier. Since October 2023, the Biden administration spent a staggering $22.7bn in taxpayer funds to provide Israel with weapons, other security assistance and additional costs for direct US military activities in the Middle East due to the Gaza war.

For 15 months, Biden continued providing Netanyahu with US weapons and political cover at the UN, while Israel acted with impunity in Gaza. Is it any surprise that Trump would see Biden’s trampling of international law and supposed norms as a green light to exert US power in even cruder terms – to threaten a military takeover of Greenland or an invasion to reclaim US control over the Panama Canal?

Western pundits are outraged that Trump’s expansionist rhetoric, even if it is intended as trolling or a distraction, will embolden traditional US adversaries like Russia and China to seize territory in Ukraine or Taiwan. But this ignores the severe damage that presumably rational leaders like Biden have already done to the international order.

Once western leaders rendered international law meaningless in Gaza – allowing Israel to disregard the ICJ and ICC, and continue committing war crimes – no amount of lofty rhetoric could hide the hypocrisy and double standards of the US and other world powers. Gaza shattered the remaining facade of an international rule of law – and Trump is eager to take advantage of the ensuing chaos.