The intellectual world seems to be rather worried about the arrival of Donald Trump for a second term as president of the United States of America. A kind of disillusionment when it comes to international relations. While the New York Times wonders about the constitutional crisis that this new mandate represents, in which the personal power of the president could call into question the historical US system of balance of powers, international doubts about the effectiveness of international law seem to be emerging, as Donald Trump has successively questioned the sovereignty of Canada, Denmark over Greenland and the Palestinian and also Israeli community over Gaza.
However, I did note a positive contribution by specialist Bertrand Badie on France Culture’s L’Esprit public programme on 9 February 2025 (38:00).
I wanted to intervene because I’d like to give a slightly different point of view to what has been said. Of course we all agree on this display of power and strength, and that was our consensus earlier, with all that that implies.
I’m a little irritated when I hear people talking about a return to strength and power. We like to hear commentators talk about a return. Force has never left the international scene. The United States intervened in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and the Dominican Republic. France has intervened in Africa at least 50 times since decolonisation. Not to mention the USSR and Russia. It’s important to keep a cool head in the face of this famous return to violence. What’s more, this return to violence is merely rhetorical, at least for the moment.
However, there are two strong amendments. I don’t agree with what has been said about international law. I think 2024 was a very positive year for international law. For the first time, the International Criminal Court (ICC) went after people from the upper, developed, Western world. Nettanyaou is the subject of an arrest warrant that no longer concerns only African dictators. For the first time, the ICC has clearly stated that there is a risk of genocide. The law is asserting itself. The role of the law before sanctions is to assert itself, and it has never asserted itself so clearly. And that’s something we’ll never be able to erase and we’ll have to live with. Mr Trump is in his usual vicious circle of “I’m going to condemn them, sanction all these judges, etc.” [sanctions against ICC staff who can no longer travel to the United States]. We’re in the midst of a dynamic of inversion, where we see the law emancipating itself from its Western tutelage, which was its main progenitor, and rising up against the abuses, excesses and crimes committed by this Western world. And this has been perceived and received in the South, which is very important for international relations.
Finally, mobilisation, instrumentalisation and the use of force don’t work. All those who have tried it, for example Putin, just can’t do it. We have to look at the results for France in the Sahel.
I don’t quite agree about China. China does indeed have power ambitions commensurate with its capabilities and successes, but it is careful not to mobilise military instruments too much, because it understands very well that in the end this is not helpful. The big winner in this story is Mr Xi Jiping, who paradoxically seems to be the guarantor of the law, of international trade law, of the right to sovereignty and territorial integrity, while there is much to be said about the Uighurs, Tibet, the China Sea and manoeuvres in Africa. But these are not manoeuvres of force, but manoeuvres of cunning, as our ancestor Machiavelli would say.
I wish Mr Trump well in his use of force, because I’d like to know when was the last time the United States alone, without a mandate from the United Nations, managed to do something by force alone, apart from the Grenada operation in 1883.
I would have liked to end on a positive note. But the very next day, on February 13 2025, Les Echos published an interview with another specialist, Thierry de Montbrial, who spoke of the prospect of a 3rd world war.
Les Echos: It was once believed that law could regulate international relations…
This belief is ideological. Many people confuse global governance with international law. (…) Contemporary history amply demonstrates that the great powers apply the law only when the resulting decisions are compatible with their interests. (…) In the period of profound transformation we are living through, realism makes it even more necessary to distinguish conceptually between governance and law. (…) Borders are constantly shifting: the principle of the long-term inviolability of borders is a fiction. We have now entered a second Cold War, which will be very different from the first. The prospect of a Third World War cannot be dismissed any more than it was during the Cold War. And it’s in this context that I worry about the European Union. (…) In my view, many of its member states are more focused on their national interests than on those of the Union as such. (…) [China] will do everything to achieve its objectives in Taiwan. Since they have a political system that allows them to be patient, they will wait for the right moment when the West – especially the Americans – will be in a state of weakness. Then they’ll seize the opportunity to move in. I think this is the most likely scenario. (…) I’m afraid that the next few years will be much harder than we think and that we’ll take it too easy. (…) Should we also remember that it was the First World War that put an end to the first globalisation?
However, Thierry de Montbrial insists that his aim is not to scare, but to make Europeans in particular aware of the possibility of a major crisis and the need for reform. Things could change in the next few years if we don’t collectively pay attention,” he says, but “the tricks of history can always surprise us”.
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