Yale professors: Trump's assault on international law is dangerous

Two prominent professors from Yale Law School have sharply criticized the US administration for undermining the international legal order, warning that its reckless actions risk plunging the world back into an era of "power alone creates rights, regardless of reason", according to a commentary published in Foreign Affairs on January 13.

Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro, both professors of Law at Yale Law School, argued that the administration's disdain for international rules goes beyond mere violations - it signals a deliberate rejection of the post-WWII order built on the UN Charter.

"For the past eight decades, legitimate grounds for war have been much more narrowly defined. The current international system rests on the premise that the use of force by one state against another is prohibited, even criminal, unless undertaken in self-defense or with collective authorization by the UN Security Council." they wrote in Foreign Policy.

They highlighted a series of actions by the US administration that flout international law, including attempts to interfere in Iran and Venezuela, as well as Trump claim that he would "take back" the Panama Canal, make Canada the 51st US state, acquire Greenland, and "own Gaza".

"What is so troubling about the Trump administration's words and actions is not just that the administration is breaking the law — and it is — the intervention in Venezuela clearly violates the UN Charter's prohibition on the use of force," Hathaway and Shapiro noted. "But more than that, US officials have discarded the idea of legal constraints altogether."

What troubles them most, the scholars stressed, is not just the violations themselves, but the administration's open disregard for the rules. "There is no real argument to defend the government's behavior. No pretense. No attempt to persuade. A system of rules can survive some hypocrisy, but nihilism will bring it down," they wrote.

"It is openly threatening sovereign states and territories - Venezuela today, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland, and Mexico tomorrow — not with lawful UN Security Council-authorized measures — but with unlawful unilateral force and coercion," they added.