The U.S. — global champion to democratic sellout

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/03/2025 (234 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Western world is at a crossroads. Not only democracy but also our very humanitarian ideals are at stake, and the United States is hugely implicated.

Abandoning their previous role as global protector and promoter of democracy, it has conceded its relationship with the West to a new non-democratic world order.

The events since the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States, defined by a flurry of executive orders, have made the familiar strange and suspect.

From nation-to-nation relationships to regulatory safeguards to political checks and balances to the rule of independent laws to humanitarian aid, virtually all the taken-for-granted guardrails are under attack, and the world is suffering as a result.

Jurgen Habermas, world-renowned German philosopher and critical theorist and perhaps the most insightful analyst of 21st-century geopolitics, predicted an upheaval because of the U.S. reaction to 9/11 and an overreliance on U.S. protection and global leadership. In the 2011 The Divided West collection, he shared his perspectives on the prospects of future world peace, hopeful that out of the disruption would come a new commitment to human solidarity.

The U.S. is both a culprit and a victim of the way the world is unfolding, but since the Iraq war, is more a villain than a victim. Under then-president George W. Bush, the U.S. — with zero evidence and against the advice of the United Nations — initiated an unwarranted war based on an existential threat of weapons of mass destruction, thus violating several agreed upon principles of international law.

Habermas did not, and could not have predicted, what followed.

The wars in Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza adopted the American script. And just increased the chances of a Chinese attack on Taiwan.

The justification used in each case, not supported by the facts or devastating consequences, was the international right of a nation to defend its sovereignty. Instead, all of these wars are an attack on the UN Charter recognizing national sovereignty.

First, in a war where Iraq was never a threat to the U.S., an estimated 200,000 civilians were killed.

In the Russia-Ukraine war the numbers vary on both sides depending on who is reporting but the estimates are over 100,000 (including soldiers) on both sides, probably an underestimation.

In Gaza, latest estimates suggest that over 49,000 Palestinians and about 2,000 Israelis have been killed. Neither number accounts for the millions displaced in both wars. How can these humanitarian crises — human slaughter and displacement — be explained, much less justified?

All these wars are asymmetrical and illegal.

Illegal because, according to international law, there are no longer just or unjust wars.

Asymmetrical, because the instigators in every case are exponentially more superior militaristically, not necessarily ensuring an easy victory but ensuring utter devastation of homes, schools and hospitals and the like.

It’s like “we own you, we have a right to kill you and destroy your homes, and you can’t do any thing about it.”

Habermas: “Since the end of the Cold War, a unipolar global order has emerged in which a single military, economic and technological superpower enjoys unrivaled supremacy.” For the U.S., this is a mixed blessing.

Americans have revelled in this status as it gave them overwhelming influence in global affairs everywhere. The West’s expectation that the U.S. would continue to use its power for the greater good was obviously naïve and misguided.

That responsibilities seem to have been too much for them to handle, the resentments caused by overreliance too large to manage, and the temptations to control everyone has become too great.

The U.S., under Trump, has turned away from its former role as reliable friend and backup to become an aggressive, treacherous adversary. In that sense, not in the sense of Trump’s claims to disrespect and ingratitude, the U.S. is a victim.

The writing was on the wall before 9/11. America has made huge contributions to world peace and human solidarity in the past, helping found the UN, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the International Monetary Fund and various global trade initiatives.

It has been at the forefront of UN human rights declarations, climate change targets and affirmative action, ironically helping create them but often refusing to sign on to them or honour them.

With its latest actions, the U.S. has now lost any claim to moral authority.

The same is true of the international courts, the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. Refusal to accept and adopt global norms and laws is an American habit, regardless of which party is in power.

The U.S. as Trump knows no constraint, now even within its borders. Getting away with flouting global norms and international laws has simply been too easy, and now Russia and Israel are following suit.

What to do about this? Habermas suggested a new take on Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace, a global cosmopolitanism driven by humanitarian desires.

In my view this would require a change of heart among all the nations in the world regarding the meanings, the purposes and the value of sovereignty as self determination, particularly the more powerful ones, and specifically those who value their exclusive alliances like NATO or the various regional groupings which currently exist. It would require a more robust democratic commitment which did not privilege some nations over others, meaning countries would have to agree to release some of their control to an umbrella body with the ability to enforce a collective humanitarian and egalitarian agenda.

In keeping with this, the current UN Charter, conventions and declarations would have to be taken more seriously, achieving a status of laws binding on everyone.

As impossible as it may look at the moment, might we ask our Canadian politicians to create and initiate forums that are more inclusive and equitable where every nation, including those in the global south, are welcome and valued participants, deemed potential leaders and contributors to a more peaceful world order?

We, especially as Canadians who are relatively privileged, advantaged and safe by global standards, cannot remain casual silent spectators as our very humanity is under attack.

Our fellow human beings are being brutalized and killed in real time and in plain sight.

Surely, succumbing to the temptation that violence and war are the only solution to disagreement and conflict cannot be the best we can do!

» John R. Wiens is dean emeritus at the faculty of education, University of Manitoba. This column previously appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press.